Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Is Star Trek still a thing?

It's corpse still hobbles around from time to time, this is basically a mourning thread.

 

[AlfredHitchdick]

Dam Rip Star Wars and Star Trek. And i guess Doctor Who.

It's corpse still hobbles around from time to time, this is basically a mourning thread.

If you like watching minorities and fat women in space, sure. Real Star Trek died in 2005.

I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

 

[Mr. Racewar1488]

I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

Don't watch anything post-2005. Some of it is shit, some of it is great, some of it is mediocre. Deep Space Nine is serialized so don't watch random episodes of that. TNG after season 1 is pretty solid. Voyager isn't great but watchable. Enterprise has SOVL.

 

[Mussolini’s Merkin]

Dam Rip Star Wars and Star Trek. And i guess Doctor Who.




I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

General rule of thumb is that the first season of any show is wobbly but it’s worth sticking with.

Original batch:

TOS (Original Series) - it can be a bit campy but there’s a reason it’s beloved. It is very charming and worth a watch. Might not be the best starting point though.

TNG (Next Generation) - First season is really rough with a few good episodes, there are watch guides out there that give a good idea of what to skip. It picks up after and there are some absolute bangers. Probably the best place to start to get a taste.

DS9 - My personal favorite, great characters and storylines. Much more morally grey than the rest of the original series but without losing optimism. First season isn’t bad at all apart from one stinker ‘Move Along Home’. It has some of the best performances in all of Star Trek and some of the best episodes.

Voyager - It’s a mess, but there’s fun to be had. Captain Janeway bounces between competency, idiocy and being a member of the Schutzstaffel on an episode by episode basis.

Enterprise - The ugly duckling of the original batch but I have come to appreciate it more recently. T’pol has a cracking set of… ears.

The dark times:

Discovery: The abbreviation is STD and it is fitting. Everyone is fat and miserable, all communication is yelling or crying. Jason Issacs is great in it though.

Picard: There is an ongoing psy-op that season 3 was good.

Strange New Worlds: Haven’t seen it, apparently it’s not too bad, but there are musical episodes so take from that what you will.

Lower Decks: When the show that respects the lore of Star Trek is also a low rent Rick and Morty ripoff you know you are in trouble.

Academy: Isn’t out yet but it is shaping up to do to Star Trek what Pol Pot did to Cambodias educational system.

 

[Brain Problems]

Picard: There is an ongoing psy-op that season 3 was good.

I see this take more often than I should and it genuinely makes me feel like I may have taken brain damage at some point. Picard was laughably bad in such profound ways that I think by virtue of just being slightly less laughably bad than before people somehow have elevated Season 3 beyond its station? Madness!

This may be harsh but I think if you put a gun to my ahead (aside from eating the bullet first) I'd rather watch STD than Picard.

 

[NSA]

The NX refit has some good ideas, but it feels very unnatural and messy. Double struts plus a neck section? The ship is a tangle of struts.

Here is some design autism:
One of the things that really bugs me about the NX, is how flat and lumpy it is compared to the Akira. The Akira is a much more beautiful ship. The problem is, the Akira is a rollbar design, with the aft section higher than the saucer and the engines hanging underneath.
With the NX, they wanted the engines above, since that's more traditional, so the entire design had to get crushed downward, with the rollbar section completely flat.
I think flipping the entire design upside-down is the less terrible option, but that means the double hull pieces end up on the bottom of the saucer, which actually looks ok.
This is a MSPaint technical schematic of what I am talking about:

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Dam Rip Star Wars and Star Trek. And i guess Doctor Who.




I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

Mussolini above more or less covered all the bases.

To go into more autistic detail;

Spoiler: The Good ol' days

The original Star Trek series from the 60s is a good place to start. It's a very charming show but if it's too "of it's time" for you, you could probably try the original 6 films too, they're direct sequels to the original series and the only one I'd avoid is the very first one called "The Motion Picture". The rest are serviceable to great.


Star Trek: The Animated Series is a continuation of the original 60s show that came out in the 1970s. It's basically just episodes of the original series that would've been too expensive to film normally. They got the whole original cast to come back, which is fun, but it's... VERY 1970s animation-wise. Think the original He-Man cartoon in terms of movement lmao.


After that you can try Star Trek: The Next Generation, a sequel show that takes place around 90 years later and follows a whole new cast. Skip to season 2 or 3 if season 1 is too bland for your taste. The rest is wonderful television.


Star Trek: Deep Space 9 is a great show all around and takes place during the same period as the later half of Next Generation, with some characters crossing over from the two, but it's very different from most Star Trek shows as there's... well, no trekking. It's more or less an ensemble show taking place on a single space station orbiting one planet, so you can't really jump around or you'll get lost with the characters and storylines.


Star Trek: Voyager is... boring as fuck, but some people love it. It'll probably take a while to get into, so be warned there. It has some good stuff but good god you gotta wait it out.


Enterprise (later rebranded as Star Trek: Enterprise) is the final "original" Star Trek show that ended (sadly very abruptly) in 2005. It's a prequel series that takes place around 100 years before the original 1960s show and shows how the "Federation of Planets" got it's start through the adventures of the very first spaceship named Enterprise, which becomes the most famous ship in the series. Season 1 and 2 are very rough, but the show hit it's stride in season 3 and 4.


Unfortunately, the studio pulled the rug on them midway through season 4, so despite said 4th season being the best in the series the final episode was so shit and completely unnecessary that most people don't even consider it canon.You WILL be blueballed at the very end if you fall in love with this series. It's a heavy price to pay.

For all anyone knew, that was essentially the end of Star Trek.



That is, until... 2009. Everything after this point is the modern shit era. Do not pass this point.

Spoiler: The Bad Stuff

The series was "revived" with the JJ Abrams trilogy of movies starting in 2009 which take place in a parallel timeline and are all-around complete dogshit star trek movies, but are good enough dumb lens-flare filled action movies if that's your thing. This was the beginning of the dark times.


Then came Star Trek: Discovery. I don't even want to talk about it. It's so shitty you can't even watch it ironically and make fun of it, it's that bad. It's nothing but fat retarded minorities crying and sucking each other off in space while completely raping the lore of established characters, alien species, and even the universe itself.


Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a spinoff from Discovery. 'Nuff said.


Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a new (as of yet unreleased) show and, you guessed it, another spinoff from Discovery.


Star Trek: Picard is a memberberries nostalgia-milking show that tries to trick people that loved The Next Generation into watching it by dangling the aging cast of that beloved show in front of them. Sucks balls.


Star Trek: Lower Decks is basically Star Trek Rick and Morty. The animation style even looks almost the same. It can be funny but if it's not your thing it'll annoy the fuck out of you.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Picard: There is an ongoing psy-op that season 3 was good.

Factory-grade Abrams mystery box bullshit. It's like they put it on an assembly line. Some guy’s just pulling a lever that says “UNANSWERED QUESTION,” another lever that says “NOSTALGIA BAIT.”



Patrick Stewart used to be worth his weight in gold. Now he says a line and you’re like, “Uh oh, Grandpa's brain is leaking again.” Just sloshing around. It's honestly smart that they didn’t actually put Janeway on-screen. Because if you put her in a scene with him it’d be painfully obvious who still has command of their faculties. “We’ll just mention her name from light-years away.”

 

[Ultraman Orb Dark]

The writing on those first two seasons was shockingly bad. Somehow even worse than early seasons of Voyager. It would get better in seasons 3-4, but man, that episode alone soured me on the whole show. So cringe and retarded that when it first aired I just stopped watching any Star Trek for several years out of disgust.

It's like watching TNG's first season. You can't believe the show got better when it started off this poorly.

I'm with @Phillip Green, it was just a catastrophic combo of bad writing and leads who were so miscast, it felt comedic.

Scott Bakula in particular just wasn't fit for a character like Archer. At times, he came off as either a poor man's Captain Kirk or a poor man's Colonel O'Neill.

I would kill to know what Scott Bakula was thinking when filming this.

Is Star Trek still a thing?

Well it certainly still exists.

I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

While it's a more modern show, Prodigy is designed to introduce people to Star Trek, even if it's for kids. Those other two guys covered most of the bases.

 

[California Newt]

Enterprise has SOVL

Enterprise has

STRENGTH

OF THE SOVL

NOO ONE'S GONNA BEND OR BREAK MEEE

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

Patrick Stewart used to be worth his weight in gold. Now he says a line and you’re like, “Uh oh, Grandpa's brain is leaking again.” Just sloshing around.

See now he just makes me sad.

When crusty old man Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill came back to do the Star Wars sequel movies I could dismiss it as just grandpa needing drinking money or whatever. Lame and depressing in it's own way sure, but at least they could still act like the characters to a convincing degree. Patrick Stewart just looks and sounds... frail. He reminds me of Stan Lee near the end of his life when he was being dragged to signings and conventions while he was actively dying.

It's actually depressing to see him act in Picard because he's so obviously too old to be doing shit like this anymore. You can just hear how unenthusiastic and off he sounds now. He doesn't sound like Picard at all anymore, there's no sophistication to the writing or strength to the performance, he just sounds like senile Patrick Stewart reading bad lines.

 

[Ultraman Orb Dark]

See now he just makes me sad.

When crusty old man Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill came back to do the Star Wars sequel movies I could dismiss it as just grandpa needing drinking money or whatever. Lame and depressing in it's own way sure, but at least they could still act like the characters to a convincing degree. Patrick Stewart just looks and sounds... frail. He reminds me of Stan Lee near the end of his life when he was being dragged to signings and conventions while he was actively dying.

It's actually depressing to see him act in Picard because he's so obviously too old to be doing shit like this anymore. You can just hear how unenthusiastic and off he sounds now. He doesn't sound like Picard at all anymore, there's no sophistication to the writing or strength to the performance, he just sounds like senile Patrick Stewart reading bad lines.

"I'm an acting legend."

"Of course, Grandpa. Let's get you to bed."

 

[Gay Sex Enjoyer]

William Shatner puts more emotion and style into his boomer History Channel TV show voiceovers than Stewart has put into his actual acting for the past 8 years.

 

[Sweeter and Savoury]

I always loved the Loknar class ship, too bad it never made it into any cannon events.



I imagine that what the next gen NX-01 would have looked like.

 

[Travoltron]

I've never been interested in Star Trek. What should I watch or avoid?

TOS reruns were always playing at my house growing up, but I never got into Trek until I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on VHS and I was hooked from there. So that's my safest recommendation, to start there and watch the remaining movies. You can skip movies 1 and 5 if you want.

 

[Curzon Dax-sama]

You can skip movies 1 and 5 if you want.

Heresy. They're not the best movies ever made, but they're far better than nu-Trek bullshit. Without TMP, we wouldn't have gotten the refit Connie, which is a sexy ship. Without TFF, we wouldn't have gotten a measure on the extent of Shatner's ego, and there are some good scenes in there, too.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

See now he just makes me sad.

When crusty old man Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill came back to do the Star Wars sequel movies I could dismiss it as just grandpa needing drinking money or whatever. Lame and depressing in it's own way sure, but at least they could still act like the characters to a convincing degree. Patrick Stewart just looks and sounds... frail. He reminds me of Stan Lee near the end of his life when he was being dragged to signings and conventions while he was actively dying.

It's actually depressing to see him act in Picard because he's so obviously too old to be doing shit like this anymore. You can just hear how unenthusiastic and off he sounds now. He doesn't sound like Picard at all anymore, there's no sophistication to the writing or strength to the performance, he just sounds like senile Patrick Stewart reading bad lines.

And then they turn him into an android. And android that is exactly the same as he was so he's still old and only has a few years left to live. That's how retarded that fucking show is.

And if you start Star Trek and love it, do not watch anything made after Enterprise. The shows are so bad they manage to ruin both the past, future, and alternate timelines of Star Trek.

 

[Miller]

And then they turn him into an android. And android that is exactly the same as he was so he's still old and only has a few years left to live. That's how retarded that fucking show is.

And if you start Star Trek and love it, do not watch anything made after Enterprise. The shows are so bad they manage to ruin both the past, future, and alternate timelines of Star Trek.

Not just an android, a special one called a golem (because the jewish showrunner at the time loves to add jewish references in his scripts).

 

[Captain Syrup]

And then they turn him into an android. And android that is exactly the same as he was so he's still oldmand still only has a few years left to live. That's how retarded that fucking show is.

They keep giving him terminal sci-fi Alzheimer's and then curing it. They kill Data one more time and Soong pulls another identical robot out of his ass. (There’s like twelve Doctor Soongs now.)

Surprise, secret Picard son! That was lame in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it's lame here. They already killed the one Picard kid that people liked, in Generations. Star Trek loves recycling ideas because they think the audience forgot, but they keep remaking the bad ones.

This may be harsh but I think if you put a gun to my ahead (aside from eating the bullet first) I'd rather watch STD than Picard.

I won’t say STD is better but it’s a knife fight for which show is worse.

Not just an android, a special one called a golem.

 

[Phillip Green]

Picard was laughably bad in such profound ways that I think by virtue of just being slightly less laughably bad than before people somehow have elevated Season 3 beyond its station? Madness!

Picard Season 3 was just as retarded as the rest of the series. They had to include the mulatto junkie woman, and drunk box-munching Seven-of-Nine is now the Mary Sue character of destiny in a TNG rehash for some reason. The only new character that was any good was Captain Shaw, but being a competent white guy, they had to kill him off.

However, it got a lot of praise from low-discernment Trek fans because it was the first nu-trek production that didn't broadcast it's utter contempt for Star Trek. It didn't respect or understand these elderly consoomer Trekkies, but it wasn't actively abusing them. It tried, in it's terrible Kurtzman Trek way, to please them with tons of 'memba-berries, fan service, and patronizing. This was enough for these abuse victims to declare it "good" and start social media campaigns demanding a "Star Trek Legacy" show based continuing this sad storyline.

Paramount studios can't die fast enough.

Heresy. They're not the best movies ever made, but they're far better than nu-Trek bullshit. Without TMP, we wouldn't have gotten the refit Connie, which is a sexy ship. Without TFF, we wouldn't have gotten a measure on the extent of Shatner's ego, and there are some good scenes in there, too.

"Better than nu-trek" is damning with exquisitely faint praise. But you're right about TMP.

As I've aged, my opinion of it has continued to improve it really gets a bad rap that it doesn't deserve. It's a great movie with a couple minor flaws:

• The script isn't enough for the run-time. The original script was based on a proposed episode for Star Trek Phase II (the series that TMP replaced) titled "In thy image". While tweaks were made for the movie, the core of the story remained what was essentially a 40-minute TV episode.
• Starship porn. Paramount spent a lot of money on the fancy new Enterprise model, and they'd be damned if they weren't going to show it off. I always loved it, but, objectively, 10 minutes of Kirk slowly orbiting the ship to classical music, and another 10 minutes of the ship slowly flying over V'ger, really drag the pacing.
• The 1970's. The movie was filmed during the peak of disco, and it shows. Not just with Disco McCoy, but with beige sterile sets, and the drab pantsuit uniforms. All Trek has the smell of it's time, but TMP absolutely reeks of the Carter administration.

Aside from these issues, it's solid. Robert Wise was a legendary director, the acting is pretty good, and it's fundamentally a pretty good Star Trek story. Aside from the starship porn, the pacing is even OK.

On the other hand, STV is pretty much garbage. I can't really defend it aside from some cool minor production stuff like the TMP-era shuttlebay and commando uniforms/phasers.