TOS Still The Best

I disagree. TOS is iconic, but the other series' have been totally eclipsed by what's on TV nowadays. It would be interesting to see what route a new TV Trek would take. The TNG Formula™ A/B plot TV format won't cut it anymore.

 

Agreed. I wonder if pushing the boundaries on a cable network might be a better avenue to try something new. The trouble with that, of course, is the potential of losing so many of the younger audience if the boundaries are pushed too much.

 

I'm just getting into Deep Space Nine, and I haven't seen Voyager yet, but I'm pretty sure any series is better than the reboot movie series. The original series will always be my favorite, but I do really like the amount of content in The Next Generation.

 

I agree completely.

 

TOS, NuTrek and Enterprise are the best to me. Even TAS gets an honourable mention in the top percentile.
TNG has the nostalgia of being the series that aired as I grew up.

DS9 and VGR ? very very meh.

 

The "garbage" today, at least on cable, is very intelligently written. Most of it's not to my taste, but that doesn't make it garbage. Breaking Bad was, however, and I'd put it up there with Dickens as one of the great fiction achievements.

 

I can't really compare 2 films against a television series they're based on that ran 3 years, they're two different mediums. I started with Star Trek in 1966, and every single TOS and TNG film has had something in it I don't like. I'm not that enamored of the new films, but I liked Into Darkness better than its predecessor.

 

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Topics with a point to discuss still the best.

Bald statements of subjective opinion as fact are not.

 

I think its all dumbed down crap..... NOTHING AT ALL LIKE STUFF THAT CAME OUT IN THE 80s & EARLIER

 

That's just nostalgia talking. There was great stuff and absolute crap from days gone by. There is also great stuff and absolute crap being produced currently.

 

Really? Dumbed down in what way? Since Breaking Bad was mentioned, lets start there.

 

I know what you mean, look back you only see the good things and forget the not good things, or at least they aren't as emphasised. For every good show there were probably 5 that we've forgotten that are best forgotten.

If I had to say the difference between then and now, it's more serialization and long term plotting and also more relaxation of certain censoring depending on what channel. I don't think intelligence levels are really a factor, although having to actually watch all the episodes and remembering what you say may promote the pretence of higher intelligence. IOW, you can just watch half of the episodes of some shows and be fine like episodic tv back then. And serialized plots can still be stupid, so this is not a mark of intelligence. I think Christopher and I discussed this a few months ago.

 

True. TV has been mostly crap since 2002. The only exceptions were shows that were remakes of stuff I liked as a kid, and even some of those were crap (I'm looking at you, New Battlestar Galactica!).

Oh well, at least The Simpsons is still on, even though I wasn't really "a kid" when that first started.

 

I think the original series had higher highs but also lower lows than the spin-offs and that it's a big strength of ST overall that at least some of the series really tried to differentiate themselves from their predecessors.

 

Funny since a lot of critics are calling this the second Golden Age of TV. "Breaking," "Orange," "Wire," "House of Cards," even the intelligent comedies, "Arrested," "Parks and Rec," etc.

There's crud for sure. And I'm really not a tv watcher. But I just don't know on what grounds you can judge today's tv as worse than 60s - 90s.

Bear in mind the original is the only Trek I continue to watch.

 

True, we haven't had good, intelligent TV since CHiPs, Three's Company, charlie's Angels, The Fall Guy, Dynasty and The A-Team. Also Knight Rider.

Seriously, every era has crap TV and every era has brilliant TV. We all have a favorite era. Some of the stuff on today is miles ahead of what critics called "a vast wasteland" in the 60's. Don't just lump everything in with Real Housewives of New Jersey and the like.

 

True, nowadays good TV is exceptionally good, but for every Breaking Bad or Fargo there are now a half-dozen dopey reality shows, which are a relatively recent fad that didn't exist back in the old days. After the first few times that Paul Sr. yelled at Paul Jr., it started to become tiresome.

 

Well, we also have hundreds more channels to fill up with programming. "Reality" shows are cheaper to produce.

 

And a lot easier for the mindless masses to absorb each week!
JB