Never a trekker or a trekkie; never wore a uniform or attended a convention; never read the paperbacks; only saw a couple of the cartoons. But I still remember, shortly after my thirteenth birthday, watching the sneak preview episode (Man Trap) of Star Trek. At last! Intelligent science fiction on TV! I pestered my parents for my own TV so I'd never miss an episode ...and got one for Christmas.
FWIW, I think the best episodes of TNG are better than the best of TOS, but prefer TOS simply because the denouement of most episodes was something you could follow along with the characters, as opposed to too many TNG episodes where 45 minutes of drama was solved with 2 minutes of "deus ex technobabble". DS9 has a few interesting episodes but is basically a dreary soap opera in a sci-fi setting (on a space station whose technological marvels consume so much power there's nothing left for lights). Voyager I thought would be a mature "Lost In Space" but mostly is nearly as silly, cardboard characters acting illogically on a spaceship a fourth the size of Enterprise but apparently about ten times as powerful. Enterprise isn't Star Trek; it's first couple of seasons can be taken as a decent science fiction program, then it degenerates into soap opera territory with that entire mess of a time travel war and characters consistently acting out of character (had they stuck with the original premise of Earth's first interstellar ship it would have remained interesting, instead of having Archer & Co. traveling the entire universe getting involved in the politics and wars of every race they encounter ...in a ship that is apparently superior to all those more advanced planets' products).
Will give my two cents worth on the movies later, but will risk banishment by stating I am the only Star Trek fan who hated that Abrams abomination; it was so egregious that for the first time in twenty years I walked out on a movie.
