After watching it completely through within the last few years, I can say I rank it higher than Voyager.
…i mean, let’s be fair: voyager set the bar so low the franchise nearly fizzled-out in its wake and arguably never recovered…
I don’t understand the hate for voyager. Sure it had some problems, but I thought it was great. Both at the time and looking back on it
As someone who watched it with no nostalgia glasses: it is not good trek.
I can’t think of a really outstanding episode off the top of my head (maybe the Tuvix one? But even that is just … rough?). And there are some episodes in there that I actively dislike in a way I don’t with most of the other series.
I like Kate Mulgrew, she was a strong actor for the role and the theme is a banger, otherwise … meh.
I also think it’s fairly weak overall but there are some really great outstanding episodes. Blink of an Eye, Counterpoint, Scorpion, for some examples. And I also agree that the worst Voyagers are really very bad, but are they that much worse than other series’ follies? Is Threshold worse than Code of Honor? Sacred Ground worse than Turnabout Intruder? Fair Haven worse than Profit and Lace?
Is Threshold worse than Code of Honor?
I’d say it’s worst. Being racist is horrible, but it wasn’t until “Threshold” that ST became actively and willingly stupid.
But “Threshold” won an emmy!
Star Trek really has 2 different genres, there’s action/adventure and there’s real hard sci-fi where philosophy is at the forefront. Voyager generally appeals more to the action/adventure fans, whereas the previous iterations appeared like the entire series was heading in a more philosophical direction with TOS to TNG to DS9 increasing in their thoughtfulness. VOY was seen as a huge backslide to people who were tuning in largely for the philosophical aspect of the show.
Considering there was and still are very few popular philosophical and thought provoking shows that challenge the viewer’s world view and biases, I think it’s fair to be upset that the new direction of the show is to dumb down everything and focus more on the action.
Of course, that’s not to say that Voyager was completely devoid of any philosophical debate, but I don’t think anyone can make the case that it’s equally as intelligent as TNG and DS9.
I’m retroactively annoyed at the stranded but in good repair situation. But voyager failing made Battlestar a thing so…
I also think it’s just a weird transition period for tv. Still had crap budgets and weird unpolished plotlines due to the need for season-long fillers. If you cut each season down to 8-10 episodes as we sometimes do today, could be a fine show.
Same here. I also don’t see the issue with it. It. Very much fits the vibe of DS9 and TNG and gave us some very iconic characters.
Enterprise, when it wasn’t actively sexually harrassing T’pol, was great.
The problem is, the episodes where B&B are using Jolene Blalock as a sounding board for their fetishes are so bad, that it drags down the series as a whole.
They were doing the breast they can 😒
when it wasn’t actively sexually harrassing T’pol
I never understood that need. T’pol was already fiercely exotic, what with her flawless face and remote Vulcan disdain. They could have put her into a spacesuit for the entire series and she would have still been attractive AF purely due to her personality and strength of character. About the only improvement I would have liked to see is more of her character arc being in conflict with her Vulcan upbringing, particularly in trying to deal with those infuriatingly irrational humans, and her emotional entanglement with Trip.
I’m not a huge trek nerd, but recently watched the whole series, and the two main irritations were the blatant/unnecessary/annoying/offensive sexualization, and the theme song.
It’s easy to skip the opening sequence but the gratuitous fetishizing was pretty awful. The whole series would have been better without.
The scenes in the isolation chamber in underwear applying gel to each other were totally unnecessary and unpleasant to watch, especially nowadays. They have aged very poorly.
It’s been a long road
getting from here to there
It’s been a long time
Enterprise was my favorite star trek. I can’t even watch discovery, it’s horrible.
I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today’s social issues as if they’re universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It’s not that Disco isn’t progressive; it’s just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I’d expect that being judged harshly for one’s gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I’m all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can’t make it work, it just all comes apart.
That rather ignores the fact that Adira was an amnesiac stowaway at the time, with some pretty understandable trust issues.
It also ignores that the characters in the scene in exactly the way you’re saying they should have.
I see your point, but I still don’t think the scene works, but thinking about it like that makes it much more watchable. My point is that the scene is simultaneously poignant and a throw-away. It’s a “big deal” but also just one scene.
By the 32nd century, something like that should be such a non-issue for humans, that it would be like stating just another fact about yourself (amnesia and trust-issues aside), which lends itself to being a throw-away…but that defeats the purpose of the scene. Again, I am all about the message and Stamets’ reaction, but it felt very 21st century and on-the-nose.
I’d have preferred if Adira were just non-binary from the beginning and maybe have a quick correction of someone when they were misgendered. Or, let that scene be the reveal of something else, like the symbiont. With that change (I’d have to rewatch the season to see where this scene was in relation to the symbiont reveal), I think the scene would still work while tightening up the writing. I also think it’d get the message across, too.
Now, if the writers really wanted that scene to stay as-is, there are options. Make them an alien from a culture not as enlightened (which would cause other issues) or have this scene play into a bigger theme of Earth backsliding post-Burn (like a Dark Ages) to have mores closer to the 21st century and show the 23rd century crew as horrified by it and work to bring Earth and humanity back toward enlightenment.
This kinda sums up my main problem with Disco. There were great options on the table to realize a concept, but they just wrote it in an awkward way that is unsatisfying (at least to me). Sometimes, that awkwardness reads as performative/lazily progressive.
I’ve only made it to season 2, so I’m holding out hope that it gets better, but lazily progressive seems to describe it pretty well.
The one that really runs me rough it how Tilly is very clearly coded to be some type of neuro divergent, probably autistic, but also only when it is convenient and quirky and will not interfere with the plot too much.
Her suddenly being very socially adept when the plot needed her to pretend to be an evil commander or whatever, and she dropped all of her character flaws to make it happen just felt so out of character and lazy.
Also the scenes with Spock and “child abuse bad” at the start of the red angel arc was very ham fisted.
I much preferred how SNW handled the “our wonderful society is supported by horrible child labor and death” arc. Still about as subtle as a brick, but it at least felt like an attempt was made to encode a message, and not just saying it at the viewer like a pre-school cartoon recapping the message of the episode.
The scene you’re describing is a good example. Though I would argue that given this story line is set a millennium in the future, it isn’t just lazily progressive, it’s an ultra-conservative view of the future. It perpetuates today’s bigotries as universal truths instead of challenging the audience to perceive of a future without our current bigotries like the Kirk / Uhura kiss did 50 years ago.
Can you give some examples of this? Admittedly I didn’t much care for Discovery and didn’t pay a lot of attention through it as a result, but I’m not picking up what you’re laying down ;-)
The original series was based in a post-race society. When Kirk and Uhura kiss, it wasn’t an interracial kiss in the show because the concept of race doesn’t exist in the 24th century universe. It got backlash when it aired because some people couldn’t contemplate a the future without their current bigotry existing. Star Trek explored current social issues by visiting some planet with a veiled version of that issue.
Contrast that to Discovery where Burnham is having a conversation with an Admiral and the Admiral brings up Burnham’s family’s history of slavery.
Ah yeah, I remember a moment like that in DS9, where Sisko is lamenting the crew’s interest in a holosuite program set in the 50s because of how “our people” were treated back then. It always felt out of place for me, though DS9 is still my favourite Star Trek.
I very much enjoyed enterprise at the time, despite the horrible theme song and the flaws in writing that spotted most episodes.
Now, part of that is being a huge Bakula fan. I love the way he throws himself into roles. I think though, had there been another age actor in the role I still would have enjoyed the show.
It wasn’t great Trek. Probably the weakest of the older series, depending on tastes and criteria. Certainly wasn’t up to TNG, TOS, or DS 9. I’d put it on par with Voyager, though it was both bad and good in different ways, with the lack of attention being paid to established Vulcan history in Enterprise tipping the scales to it being lesser than Voyager.
But I really liked that they tried to go back to the whole “wagon train in space” vibe. And the cast was great. Can’t hold the iffy writing against the cast, and there were some great moments where the actors kept things from being worse just by virtue of how they carried their characters.
I don’t rewatch any of the series as a binge though, so my opinion might change when the flaws are showing up in rapid succession compared to the original pace of watching week by week and over time. I know binge watching made me almost hate shows I used to like a good bit (like Bones as an example).
I can’t compare anything to the newer shows since I’ve kinda stopped watching much in the way of “tv” the last few years, so I haven’t caught any of the stuff that has been done in the last decade. Could be that one of the new shows would be worse, in comparison to the earlier shows, I dunno. Doesn’t help that I despise the reboot movies, and the fact e that they happened kinda soured me on new Trek overall. The folks running things don’t seem to be interested in the kind of shows that made me enjoy Trek in the first place, but that’s second hand impression from seeing what people say online
LOL! But whether or not you like the theme song, I maintain that the visuals of the opening credits are the most imaginative of all the treks.
If not the most imaginative, certainly the most inspiring, and it evokes a strong insertion in our reality.
Theme song aside (I don’t mind it) the opening credits are the best, most imaginative of all the treks.
