Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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Side note, @MembersSchoolPizza 's rundown of all the various iterations of Trek was fairly on point, but I wanted to weigh in about the movies:

I never liked the whole "Even Trek Movies are good, Odd Trek movies are bad," line... (Even before Nemesis utterly sank that notion.)

I'm not the biggest TOS show fan, but I would actually say that all 6 of the original TOS movies- Including both Star Trek (I): The Slow Motion Picture, (my personal least favorite of the 6, and the one I would say to skip if you were going to skip any.) and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (The one that most people hate, and even I will qualify as "So bad it's good"), are worth watching at least once.

"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" is a good movie, and an essential watch if you actually care about the overall story of these films, as it's the middle part of an otherwise well-written trilogy. It just has the misfortune of being sandwiched in between Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, (One of my personal top 5 favorite movies of all time.) And Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home i.e. the one with the whales... Which is a hella-dumb fun stereotypical 80's movie that a lot of people who aren't me love more than anything... (Ok, so I don't like it as much as most people seem to, but I still say it's worth watching... And there's a decent chance you'll like it more than I do...)

I agree that the evens/odd thing is slightly over sold, and I do agree 3 is perfectly good. 5... Has redeeming moments, it's just that the core plot is so dumb. And both 7 and 9 were at least watchable, although with regards to 9, I never want to hear Data ask Worf if his boobs were firm ever again.

I can't recommend 1 at all, though. Sorry, I just can't. 1 and 10 perfectly end-cap 8 otherwise serviceable-to-good movies as being utter trash, as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I can recommend The Motion Picture as is a sleeping aid if you've got a bout of insomnia. It's very similar to 2001 in that regard, which is unsurprising considering it was trying to be that movie.

I watched, amongst other episodes, The Thaw which @intelligent-calcium recommended and it was required some level of theatre-tolerance to enjoy but it was good. And I am so far agreeing with @UnKillFill that Voyager seems "fine for what it is". I'm curious about this comment, though:

Who is the outstanding actor, in your opinion? The reason I ask is not because I think there are no good actors, but because I think there are several. Jerry Ryan is actually a fine actress. A fact which may be somewhat obscured for some by her amply ticking all the boxes for someone you could suspect was cast for their looks. The scenes of her calling out Janeway on not letting her choose to return to the Collective are very good, imo.

Yeah, I'll admit that some of my distaste for Voyager is just because I was very let down by it, and really feel it squandered it's premise. It's... It's a popcorn show. It's fine, but it kinda leaves me wanting more.

Anyways, the actor I was referring to is Robert Picardo. His performance was often a bit on the silly side, but he was consistently my (and many other people's) favorite character on the show.

Jeri Ryan was fine, once you got over the fact that she was obviously meant to be eye candy - not a knock on her, but on the directors. Her and her skin tight suit was why the show sometimes jokingly got called "The Seven of Nine's Boobs Show" after her inclusion.

Most of the actors were "fine" on the show, I just think Picardo was the only real standout. Most of the rest of them were crippled by badly written characters, but for whatever reason the writers consistently did well by Picardo's character. Unlike some poor schmuck's like Chakotay and Ensign Kim.

Episode reference please. *ahem*.

Heh. They weren't literally nazis. More like "feminism run amok", or something. The episode was Angel One. Season One, Episode 14.

Alas, as I said I watched some of this. I felt it wasn't awful - it definitely had some good acting in it and decent moments. I liked the twist with the captain. I guess a lot of what people hate about it only applies to true fans who can see the ways it doesn't fit with Star Trek in general and get annoyed by that? Which didn't apply to me as I had only seen some Trek casually prior to it. Also the writer or director said in interview that the Klingons were an analogue for Trump Supporters so that didn't exactly help.

There's about five "major" complaints I have with Discovery:

1) The unneeded, unexplained, and frankly unpleasant remake of the Klingons. I concede the Klingons got redesigned from the original series when the first movie came about, but to be fair they got resesigned from "indistinguishable from humans Russia analog" to "interesting alien race", which I don't feel needed to happen a second time.

2) The spore drive. Odin' Fucking Buddha, the spore drive. It's so ungodly stupid it hurts the brain. Every single thing about it is stupid. Just when you think it couldn't be any stupider, they find a way.

3) Star Trek has always been an ensemble show. A bunch of characters, all getting, if not equal, then at least decent screen time of their own. Discovery isn't. It's the Mike Burnam Show. Season two got a little better about this, but there's still very clearly one main character that everything revolves around. No other Trek had been this way. Yeah, maybe a bit of that is just "not what we expected", but it's a radical departure from the formula.

4) It doesn't help that Mike's character offensively retconnected probably the single most beloved and iconic Star Trek character in some really, really stupid ways.

5) I know there's an inherent problem in trying to do prequels for a sci-fi show, because aesthetics and special effects technology both have progressed... Enterprise is frequently cited as being too high tech looking, for example, to be a prequel show. But at least Enterprise tried. The ship was small, cramped, industrial looking - it looked plausibly like you might imagine an early starship might look. Discovery... didn't even try. Discovery is set (almost) contemporarily with The Original Series. There should be some passing resemblance between the two, and there isn't. Yeah, yeah, apparently there are new uniforms on The Enterprise, but I mean there's not even the vaguest visual similarities between Discovery's ships, props, etc and The Original Series. Plus the ship is huge (internally, regardless of how big or small any technical specs might officially say it is), the technology is too good. If you told me the show was set post-Voyager, there's nothing about the show's presentation that could prove you wrong.


Not just that, they have newt babies together.

Yeeeeah. It's generally regarded as either the worst or second worst Voyager episode for a good reason. Which is a little unfair in some respects, I thought Paris' actor gave a great performance in it, but yeah, really stupid.


Yep. even lopped off his "bar of latinum" for the episode, because at one point he proves he's a woman by flashing everyone. Not the worst DS9 episode, actually, but close. Saved only by the fact that Ferengi episodes tend to be kind of silly fun, and are judged accordingly.

As regards the DS9 discussion I've kicked off, I always had two impressions of it. One that it was a more realistic, deeper take on Star Trek. Two, that it was heavily ripped off from Babylon 5 and that the writer of B5 had previously sent them his proposal, they turned him down and then used his ideas for it. That left a sour taste in my mouth as a huge fan of B5. I probably would think it's good if I had the time to do it justice but right now, more feeling like some casual watching.

You can certainly point to a multitude of similarities between the two shows - both set on a space station, both with a commander who kinda "goes native" to an extent and ultimately has a Higher Destiny of a sort, both involve a back story of an aggressive species conquering a world full of Deeply Religious Aliens, but who have since been liberated, and the ensuing tensions between them, a big war taking up a ton of episodes later on, etc. But despite accusations, the script writers deny that they did anything of the sort deliberately, and for what it's worth the two shows got on amicably, even having friendly softball games between the cast and crew.

If you want just a couple of episodes to "try out" DS9, let me suggest... Let me suggest two.

Duet (Season 1, Episode 19) - One of the best DS9 episodes, period
The Wire (Season 2, episode 22) - A good Bashir/Garak episode. These two were a fantastic duo that had a lot of chemistry, but really any Garak episode is good.
 
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DS9 had a darker take on this. TOS and TNG were far more optimistic we could move beyond our worst traits, but DS9's human nature episodes had the audacity to say "sometimes even our best is going to be morally grey, can you live with that?" A bit divisive, especially given how it seems to defy Roddenberry's original vision, but still compelling to ponder.
I feel sorry for the Jem'Hadar

DS9 didnt defy Roddenberrys vision, it showed us that its hard work to stay a decent human beeing and that sometimes hard choices have to be made.
It also shows that those Super peacefull, Intelligent future humans are just a couple of bad evens away from going back to their Primal past...
 
If you want to get into Star Trek I recommend watching some stand-alone episodes from each series and then watching the show you think you'll like best going from there. I'll list some classic episodes from the top of my head but I'm sure everyone else in the thread will have their own recommendations.
TOS: Balance of Terror, Arena, Trouble with Tribbles
TNG: Measure of a Man, The Inner Light, Best of Both Worlds 1&2
DS9: The Visitor, Waltz, Things Past (DS9 is very story arc based so it's hard to find pure standalone episodes, I probably already failed)
VOY: Living Witness, The Thaw, Deadlock

Overall, I think Star Trek is a very rewarding franchise when you can develop the right mindset for it, but it can also be the most boring and cheesy shit if you don't.
TNG has a lot of great ones. I'd save best of both worlds because it's almost an arc episode. Maybe substitute Brothers. The Ensigns of Command is also fun.

You can't bring up DS9 without mentioning Duet. I liked Hippocratic Oath too.
 
It wouldn't even be that hard to make a show that Trekkies actually like:

-Ignore STD.
-Clearly state that the entirety of JJTrek (Including the shitty random Romulan supernova thing that *everyone* hated), didn't happen.
-Don't insert your shitty social justard politics.
-Make a show that checks up on, and doesn't shit on, characters that everyone likes... Such as: B-4 as Captain Data, The Doctor from Voyager (Who was probably classified as a "Synth" and shut down in this shit), pretty much all of the TNG crew (Who won't appear in ST: P, because we can't afford the actors as series regulars *they aren't important anymore,* and most normies probably wouldn't even recognize them anyway.
-Don't make a show that *clearly and obviously* hates everything in the same series that came before it.

Thankfully this shit isn't even canon.
My dream show would be set ~50 years after TNG and be completely episodic about a ship exploring one of the Magellanic Clouds or something. Don't even worry about canon because you're on a new frontier where it doesn't matter and invite competent sci-fi novelists to come in and write thoughtful episodes.
 
I never liked the whole "Even Trek Movies are good, Odd Trek movies are bad," line... (Even before Nemesis utterly sank that notion.)
Reminder: nemesis didn't if there was a trek movie between insurrection and nemesis.

Wait a minute.... what came out between the films?

GALAXYQUEST! (It all fits)
 
https://youtube.com/watch?v=7C7UcA-1FyIPretty sure he went full bottom surgery but Federation medicine is so advanced that Bashir just grew him a new dick at the end of the episode so Quark didn't have to join Section 41%. Not posting the conclusion to Threshold because that episode is a downward spiral that everyone should experience for themselves. People love to shit on these episodes, and they're not wrong, but I think they're fun to watch at least once to see how bad it gets.


Chakotay becomes more enjoyable once you know that the advisor they hired for all the Native American stuff was a scam artist who just fed them bullshit.

That's hillarious. If only the Internet had been around back then he'd have had a thread here for certain. As to the trans Ferengi episode (I wonder if he's a top Quark or a bottom Quark), I now have to watch it no matter how bad it is. It looks hysterical. But it will be the first episode of DS9 I've ever seen so it might be confusing. My reluctance to pick DS9 stuff to watch is solely down to the feeling it would be a large investment of time to do properly. Whereas Voyager I feel comfortable starting with Scorpion and watching from there semi-selectively.

I watched some of Babylon 5 (up until season 2 episode 1) and the whole of DS9, so I might be able to advise you there.

For casual viewing, Voyager and TNG are the best, because they are designed to be, mostly, stand-alone stories. Easy to digest without needing to bing a whole season.

As for DS9, once you get to it, IMHO, it doesn't require as much commitment as B5 does. As you know, B5 started it's season wide arch since episode 1, so every episode had hints and heavy foreshadowing, but DS9 didn't become heavily "episodic" way until the dominion arc. In fact, much of its early episodes are classic "standalone science/philosophical problem of the week" trek. Especially the first few seasons.

Okay, so as a big fan of BS5, I feel the first Season wasn't that integrated into the overall arc. There were certainly foreshadowing episodes and I think you needed it to really appreciate G'kar and Londo and Vir and De'lenn as characters. But plot wise I remember a lot of it being quite episode of the week. Also, I have to say if you stopped at Season 2, Ep. 1 you stop just as it was about to get really good.

One thing I will say about Voyager is that for all the reputation DS9 had about being the darkest Star Trek, Voyager imho had the most depressive episode of everything I've watched of Trek so far.

"Course Oblivion" wouldn't be out of place as an episode of The Twilight Zone.

There isn't a single trace of hope there.

Added to the list. An episode full of despair is right what I need the way my weekend has been so far. (Kidding.) (Not kidding).

Anyways, the actor I was referring to is Robert Picardo. His performance was often a bit on the silly side, but he was consistently my (and many other people's) favorite character on the show.

Jeri Ryan was fine, once you got over the fact that she was obviously meant to be eye candy - not a knock on her, but on the directors. Her and her skin tight suit was why the show sometimes jokingly got called "The Seven of Nine's Boobs Show" after her inclusion.

These two thoughts of yours are an interesting combination because one of the episodes I've just watched is the one where the ship's doctor takes control of Seven of Nine's body. She did an outstanding job of carrying off his mannerisms and personality in that episode. Apparently he would act out the scene first and she would then copy him. But that alone wouldn't account for it. She certainly has a pneumatic figure but must have worked hard to pull that off. When she goes quickly from one to the other as he leaves her body is really good. Well, I thought so. I get what you're saying though - I certainly don't think of his acting because he typically had lighter moments. Comedy is actually harder than drama, imo.

There's about five "major" complaints I have with Discovery:

1) The unneeded, unexplained, and frankly unpleasant remake of the Klingons. I concede the Klingons got redesigned from the original series when the first movie came about, but to be fair they got resesigned from "indistinguishable from humans Russia analog" to "interesting alien race", which I don't feel needed to happen a second time.

2) The spore drive. Odin' Fucking Buddha, the spore drive. It's so ungodly stupid it hurts the brain. Every single thing about it is stupid. Just when you think it couldn't be any stupider, they find a way.

3) Star Trek has always been an ensemble show. A bunch of characters, all getting, if not equal, then at least decent screen time of their own. Discovery isn't. It's the Mike Burnam Show. Season two got a little better about this, but there's still very clearly one main character that everything revolves around. No other Trek had been this way. Yeah, maybe a bit of that is just "not what we expected", but it's a radical departure from the formula.

4) It doesn't help that Mike's character offensively retconnected probably the single most beloved and iconic Star Trek character in some really, really stupid ways.

5) I know there's an inherent problem in trying to do prequels for a sci-fi show, because aesthetics and special effects technology both have progressed... Enterprise is frequently cited as being too high tech looking, for example, to be a prequel show. But at least Enterprise tried. The ship was small, cramped, industrial looking - it looked plausibly like you might imagine an early starship might look. Discovery... didn't even try. The ship is huge (internally, regardless of how big or small any technical specs might officially say it is), the technology is too good. If you told me the show was set post-Voyager, there's nothing about the show's presentation that could prove you wrong.

I can see all that (bar the spore drive which I don't know enough about Trek to know why that's different to the other handwavium gobbldeygook the show is full of). Hadn't thought about the ensemble / solo issue but obvious once you point it out. My biggest character issue with the show was her red-headed friend... Tilly? Deeply annoying character who probably should not be allowed anywhere near a starship. Also, why is the main character called Mike? Don't answer that - I know there's no actual good reason for it.
 
I now have to watch it no matter how bad it is. It looks hysterical.
It really isn't. The entire episode is just embarrasing to watch and not because of any sort of respect towards "trans representation" or whatever bullshit, but because it's just cringy. The humour doesn't land at all and that's shameful for a Quark/Ferengi episode. If you need to watch any Ferengi-centric DS9 episode, pick The Magnificent Ferengi. A really funny episode though it helps to know a lot of context if you're going in blind.
Hadn't thought about the ensemble / solo issue but obvious once you point it out. My biggest character issue with the show was her red-headed friend... Tilly? Deeply annoying character who probably should not be allowed anywhere near a starship. Also, why is the main character called Mike? Don't answer that - I know there's no actual good reason for it.
She's called Mike because apparently Bryan Fuller (when he was still involved with the show in early production) likes giving female characters male names. It's incredibly retarded. And I agree with Tilly being a useless waste of space. It almost amused me how sidelined she actually was in S2 (not that anyone besides Mikey Burnham really got the time to shine).

My two cents about Trek is it's a campy franchise with a lot of heart to it. If that is missing from any of the series, then it just doesn't work. The lack of a large budget in individual episodes (not for the season as a whole, the series' had a pretty large budget they still had to stretch out for 26 episodes) meant that they had to be creative with their plotlines, which honestly has always worked in their favour. Trek has some wonderful bottle episodes and even the "let's just use whatever period costumes they have in the storage" stories are a lot of fun - you'll take A Fistful of Data's out of my cold, dead hands.

STD is a souless and tryhard late-GoT-tier shitfest with poor writing in every episode and not even a hint of planning put behind it. It's still early for Picard, but I have little hope for it. The old meme of "you can't judge a Trek show this early!" doesn't imho apply because this isn't the 90s anymore. Television has changed and so has the length of the seasons and how they're put out. If you're only giving me 10 or so serialised episodes, then you better fucking hit the mark from the start. The Mandalorian managed to do that, so this isn't an argument of "old good new bad". Picard is already showing worrying signs or bad writing and dialogue. And with such a short season, I don't see them fixing their shit.
 
So all the discussion about DS9 got me re-watching it again, and I'm struck by something.

Garak and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

O'Brien and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

Bashir is bromantically unfaithful to his bromantic partners, or else he's in an open bromance.

Although it's possible either or both are slightly less of a bromance, and more of a bromance. Garak outright was hitting on Bashir at times, and, well...

 
That's hillarious. If only the Internet had been around back then he'd have had a thread here for certain.

I'm sure there was quite a discussion about it, if you can find an usenet archive there's probably some hilarious stuff in it. for example I still remember the group alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die

My two cents about Trek is it's a campy franchise with a lot of heart to it. If that is missing from any of the series, then it just doesn't work.

in a better timeline we could've gotten

 
So all the discussion about DS9 got me re-watching it again, and I'm struck by something.

Garak and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

O'Brien and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

Bashir is bromantically unfaithful to his bromantic partners, or else he's in an open bromance.

Although it's possible either or both are slightly less of a bromance, and more of a bromance. Garak outright was hitting on Bashir at times, and, well...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ali3c7FaQGU:60
Bashir and Garak break up after that time Garak flips out because space drugs.
 
I'm sure there was quite a discussion about it, if you can find an usenet archive there's probably some hilarious stuff in it. for example I still remember the group alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die

Good Lord, you're as old as I am!
 
So all the discussion about DS9 got me re-watching it again, and I'm struck by something.

Garak and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

O'Brien and Bashir have a fantastic bromance.

Bashir is bromantically unfaithful to his bromantic partners, or else he's in an open bromance.

Although it's possible either or both are slightly less of a bromance, and more of a bromance. Garak outright was hitting on Bashir at times, and, well...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ali3c7FaQGU:60
Death to fujoshis.
 
So, while Picard just had to defeat an evil Borg Queen in a movies, Sisko had to question himself if Falsifying evidence, murdering criminals and an ambasssador to fool a superpower to joining them in a war effort, and maybe even dooming also them in the process was worth it.

Sisko is hands down the greatest Star Trek captain of all time, because he's a realistically drawn character with recognizably human motivations and flaws, and deals with moral dilemmas where it's not obvious there even *is* a pure, good and righteous option.

Picard was elevated by Stewart's acting chops and gravitas, but look past that and he's a fundamentally silly and unrealistic character. He's a well-intentioned liberal college professor... IN SPAAACE! The truth is, he'd probably end up being mugged for his space-wallet at Farpoint Station, by alien scumbags who don't give a shit about the bald windbag's naive lectures on ethics and diplomacy.

Remember when he had the chance to finally wipe out the Borg, after they had murdered billions of innocent people and kidnapped and techno-raped Picard personally? And he was like "no... the Borg have human rights too XD XD!"

Ridiculous, fake and gay. It'd be like if a mid-level American officer in WW2 had an opportunity to singlehandedly take down Nazi Germany and decided to stroke his chin while congratulating himself on his virtue instead. He'd probably be court-martialled and then shot, and rightly so.

Sisko is what you actually want in a CO. He's a fighter, a man who is always ready to get his hands dirty to protect the people depending on him. Because outside of the comfortable bubble the Federation exists in, it's a tough universe out there. There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you're going to survive out there, you've really got to know where your phaser is.

Also, he's a good Dad. And this helps explain the difference between DS9 and lesser Treks. There's a tendency in science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular for the protagonists to be strangely Peter Pan like free spirits untethered to wives and children and meaningful personal relationships you can't just walk away from to have space adventures.

Kirk boffed the alien chick of the week like a galactic James Bond. Picard only had his fish and his sex tourism to Risa. Archer had a dog. Like most people, I didn't watch Voyager.

This is fine for the purposes of writing adolescent genre fiction, but it's ultimately shallow and unsatisfying for neurotypical adult viewers because it's not a rounded or realistic depiction of actual human beings. Sisko had to juggle commanding a space station with being a single father, which gave him a depth and humanity we rarely see in sci fi.
 
Sisko is hands down the greatest Star Trek captain of all time, because he's a realistically drawn character with recognizably human motivations and flaws, and deals with moral dilemmas where it's not obvious there even *is* a pure, good and righteous option.

Picard was elevated by Stewart's acting chops and gravitas, but look past that and he's a fundamentally silly and unrealistic character. He's a well-intentioned liberal college professor... IN SPAAACE! The truth is, he'd probably end up being mugged for his space-wallet at Farpoint Station, by alien scumbags who don't give a shit about the bald windbag's naive lectures on ethics and diplomacy.

Remember when he had the chance to finally wipe out the Borg, after they had murdered billions of innocent people and kidnapped and techno-raped Picard personally? And he was like "no... the Borg have human rights too XD XD!"

Ridiculous, fake and gay. It'd be like if a mid-level American officer in WW2 had an opportunity to singlehandedly take down Nazi Germany and decided to stroke his chin while congratulating himself on his virtue instead. He'd probably be court-martialled and then shot, and rightly so.

Sisko is what you actually want in a CO. He's a fighter, a man who is always ready to get his hands dirty to protect the people depending on him. Because outside of the comfortable bubble the Federation exists in, it's a tough universe out there. There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you're going to survive out there, you've really got to know where your phaser is.

Also, he's a good Dad. And this helps explain the difference between DS9 and lesser Treks. There's a tendency in science fiction in general and Star Trek in particular for the protagonists to be strangely Peter Pan like free spirits untethered to wives and children and meaningful personal relationships you can't just walk away from to have space adventures.

Kirk boffed the alien chick of the week like a galactic James Bond. Picard only had his fish and his sex tourism to Risa. Archer had a dog. Like most people, I didn't watch Voyager.

This is fine for the purposes of writing adolescent genre fiction, but it's ultimately shallow and unsatisfying for neurotypical adult viewers because it's not a rounded or realistic depiction of actual human beings. Sisko had to juggle commanding a space station with being a single father, which gave him a depth and humanity we rarely see in sci fi.
Didn't Picard bang Crusher's mom at some point?
 
3) Star Trek has always been an ensemble show. A bunch of characters, all getting, if not equal, then at least decent screen time of their own. Discovery isn't. It's the Mike Burnam Show. Season two got a little better about this, but there's still very clearly one main character that everything revolves around. No other Trek had been this way. Yeah, maybe a bit of that is just "not what we expected", but it's a radical departure from the formula.

That's a big problem with the show. Mikey is literally a Mary Sue, which itself was a parody of obnoxiously OP self-insert characters. The other characters aren't as interesting as they could be because they are there to check off diversity quota boxes without having interesting characters. The only character that even those that hate the show remotely like is Tilly, and that's because she's (often obnoxiously) buoyant and is well-endowed. Bad sign.

Picard was elevated by Stewart's acting chops and gravitas, but look past that and he's a fundamentally silly and unrealistic character. He's a well-intentioned liberal college professor... IN SPAAACE! The truth is, he'd probably end up being mugged for his space-wallet at Farpoint Station, by alien scumbags who don't give a shit about the bald windbag's naive lectures on ethics and diplomacy.

This^

Stewart is a tremendous actor (though a poor creative mind). The only reason I have to like Picard is because he is played well. That's about it. I don't know why so many people vociferously defend TNG as if its peak Star Trek. The worst stereotypes regarding Trek - boring, "heady," pretentious, obnoxiously liberal - really refer to TNG era Trek. That's not to say that TOS had its moments of liberal sanctimony, but the characters were iconic and lovable and the stories were generally good. The TNG era represents the age of decadence that is produced by good times.
 
That's a big problem with the show. Mikey is literally a Mary Sue, which itself was a parody of obnoxiously OP self-insert characters. The other characters aren't as interesting as they could be because they are there to check off diversity quota boxes without having interesting characters. The only character that even those that hate the show remotely like is Tilly, and that's because she's (often obnoxiously) buoyant and is well-endowed. Bad sign.

Oh, I dunno. actually liked most of the cast individually well enough, except Tilly, who I mostly just found irritating. Both captains were pretty good. The space cow second officer wasn't bad, even if his "spidey sense" super power was stupid. I actually quite liked the crazy lesbian engineer they picked up in Season 2.

It's just that they were all basically background set pieces for the Michael Burnam Show.

Stewart is a tremendous actor (though a poor creative mind). The only reason I have to like Picard is because he is played well. That's about it. I don't know why so many people vociferously defend TNG as if its peak Star Trek. The worst stereotypes regarding Trek - boring, "heady," pretentious, obnoxiously liberal - really refer to TNG era Trek. That's not to say that TOS had its moments of liberal sanctimony, but the characters were iconic and lovable and the stories were generally good. The TNG era represents the age of decadence that is produced by good times.

I love it in part because of those things. I admitted it's failings.
 
Didn't Picard bang Crusher's mom at some point?


Yeah, but he got cucked by a space ghost on that Scottish planet.

The whole approach to sex on TNG was weird, and maybe explains why so many autists and sex preverts are attracted to it.

So, theoretically the characters get their fuck on sometimes. But they don't act like it. There's no petty jealousy, passion, obsession, horniness, sexual tension, bickering, or any real human consequences at all.*

Riker gets fat and then cucked by Worf, and acts like everything is fine. It doesn't affect the plot or the interaction of the characters in any way. It's played as if it has no more significance to him than a holodeck game. Which is eerie, when you think about it.

Roddenberry, who was a weirdo, wanted to depict a utopian world where humans have none of the complicated emotional stuff that makes them human. At least it wasn't Dawson's Creek in space, I guess.

*Except for Miles O'Brien, who convincingly portrays a man who married a stone-cold bitch and is now dying inside, spending day after day standing at the transporter console with a thousand yard stare.

**Also Geordi getting oneitis over his Holodeck waifu, which was both true to the character and also lol
 
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