What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Thats a good point; if we never had something first and different to compare to, no one would have minded Curtis *at all* .....

 

Funny how perspective is. What you just described, to me, sounds very enjoyable and I would have loved it as a miniseries / 13 episode Season 5.

 

TNG is utter overly politically correct crap
Its main characters are dull as dishwater
Enterprise is a lot better than many give it credit for
The post 2009 films are terrible
Sometimes "good ole country Doctor" McCoy, sounds like a redneck

 

Heh, there were nice Worf-centric episodes on both shows, and Worf's humour alone is of nice value, and Micheal Dorn delivers it in a perfect deadpan.

Also, on TNG Worf was very useful as a foil. He was the "we've considered the military/aggressive action, but we're not going to engage in it until we have sufficient reason to" in many briefing scenes.
Basically, he was there to allow other characters to give a reason why they don't "just kill/destroy/detain X", as some viewers would suggest. That's a very useful role, I think.

What do you mean by "politically correct"? I have trouble parsing it the context of Trek.

Controversial opinion of my own: I don't like Trip. Most ENT fans seem to gush over Trip, but I don't. I hate the way he talks: his extremely pronounced American accent is grating and the fact that Connor Trineer keeps his mouth open even when not talking even more so. Also, the character was irritating.
He's almost as bad as Wesley, so almost half as bad as Neelix and Michael Burnham.

 

I'm ok with the Valeris forced mind meld. That "needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few" shit goes both ways

I've come around on the forced memory implant that Picard got in The Inner Light too. Wrong? yeah. Wronger? not really

Even O'Brien's prison sentence isn't that terrible, when you consider they do have memory wiping capabilities in that universe

 

Isn't there another thread like this? Is it closed? Just curious. Not nitpicking.

 

I haven't liked any of them since Undiscovered Country.

 

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it either. It worked out great for Picard, imo. In the real life he had sacrificed family life for his career. This was a way for him to have the best of both worlds.

 

The Disco Klingons are great. Never thought I'd say that, but after my recent Disco season 1 rewatch I started to find an appreciation for them. And now I'm doing a TNG rewatch (which is probably, like, my 6th or 7th rewatch) and suddenly it's hard to go back to the depiction of the TNG Klingons. I actually... perfer... the Disco Klingons. Man, this is weird. I might need to have my temperature checked or something. I can't believe I'm saying this.

Also, modern Trek writers should never let canon get in the way of a good story.

 

I want to like the Discovery Klingons. I'm super on-board with established Aliens being redesigned as newer technology and bigger makeup budgets become available. And I'm definitely not so attached to the TNG Klingons that I am against a redesign of them. As far as I'm concerned they could re-design all the species, starting with Bajorans and Betazoids to make them more alien.

It's just that a lot of the Discovery Klingons, particularly L'Rell in Season 2 look kinda like dumb, dopey Saturday Morning Cartoon Monsters rather than something threatening or fierce. I'm not sure what element of the new makeup it is even. I just always have feeling that if L'Rell was chasing you, you could escape her by putting a lampshade on your head and standing very still.

 

I hate the way the Prime Directive is interpreted much of the time in the 24th-century Trek series, particularly when it's presented as an argument for letting people die due to a natural disaster. In TOS, the PD is invoked as an argument against cultural interference, which is certainly reasonable; however, if a planet faces destruction from natural causes, as in "The Paradise Syndrome," the Enterprise doesn't hesitate to intervene. In TNG and VOY (I'm less familiar with DS9), our "heroes" cite the PD as a reason for letting entire planets or species die due to natural causes, even when they could save people without the people ever knowing intervention had taken place. "Home" is a particularly insufferable example of this. Hearing our enlightened heroes invoking "nature" or "destiny" as reasons for refusing to do the compassionate thing is infuriating.

My other controversial Trek opinion is thematically related, though it takes place before the establishment of the PD. Trip is in the right in "Cogenitor." He sees a sentient individual who's being treated as an object, and teaches them their worth as a person; I just can't see that as wrong. And Archer should grant Charles asylum on Enterprise -- or, if he refuses, it should be for the purely pragmatic reason that the Federation can't withstand attack by angry Vissians, not because he thinks it's wrong to interfere in an arrangement that amounts to slavery.

 

Some of my controversial opinions:

TMP is the best Trek film.
TOS is the best Trek series.
TAS is the third best series, after TNG.
90% of DS9 blows.
95% of ENT blows.
99% of DISCO blows.
I side with Janeway in "Tuvix."

No money means no money, not just no hard currency. As a human, or even as a guest alien, you can live comfortably on Earth without an money at all, you will never want for food, a place to live, free transportation around Earth, medical care, and a host of other things. But you will not be entitled to things that cost money, such as things sold by aliens on Earth, transportation to places not covered by your New World Economy entitlements. The economic relationship between Earth and the Federation is codified in its UFP membership. It involves trade and taxation of a fraction of Terran economic product measured according to terms specified there. A significant portion of Earth's economic output is labor. There are little known, seldom used conditions of New World citizenship, such as obligations to serve that have never been broadly invoked as far as we know, that form the backstop for the economic strength of Earth; post-atomic horror humanity has never become so leisurely despite wanting for nothing/little that pressed service has ever been necessary, except in special cases involving people who have already volunteered to serve in Federation organizations.

 

Deanna Troi was a lesser character but not a particularly bad one.

I don't find Scotty or O'Brien particularly likeable.

I liked that Picard was pretty steadfast in applying the Prime Directive, prefer that to the other captains' looser interpretations and applications of it.

 

Worf spoke Yiddish (the actors who portrayed his parents were both actors in Yiddish theater and spoke with that accent in their TNG appearances).

Bringing Troi and Riker together in the movies was lazy writing.

Unless Kurtzman and associates produce something that explicitly states otherwise, what happens in DS9 season 8 episode 1, as presented in What We Left Behind, should be considered canon.

 

I champion The Alternative Factor. When I consider how much I like the first season of TOS and how hard it was to produce I reason that at least one episode was going to have serious problems with script rewrites and guest stars. That episode is TAF.

But it's whacked out and I have more fun with it than Operation Annihilate or Court Martial.

Yeah there is a hole where the Lazarus and Lt. Masters relationship was supposed to be, it never seems like there are two of Lazarus exchanging places in our universe (just one weirdo) and Kirk should have taken McCoy seriously (Bones, if I had time I'd laugh) ---but I still love it!

I really like the sense of crisis created at the beginning of the episode (it could be a prelude to invasion). Plus this is one of the rare episodes where Mr. Leslie speaks!

Robin Curtis as Saavik has grown on me over the years and from day one I liked her in TNG'S Gambit.

I could have enjoyed much more of her in the TNG/DS9 Universe. She might be the best part of Gambit Pts. 1 & 2. Well her and Richard Lynch.

 

I might as well just outright say it: I don't think a lot of these opinions are controversial. Unpopular? Sure. But when I think "controversial", my mind goes somewhere else.

 

Aquiel Uhnari should have been Geordi's wife in "All Good Things" alternate future, instead of Leah Brahms. Apparently, Ron Moore actually considered it but changed his mind.

 

I agree so much! I hated the idea that Geordi apparently waited for Leah's marriage to fail (or possibly contributed to it failing) just so he could marry her. Aquiel would have been a better option, but imho a completely different woman, whom we have never seen during the series would have been the best choice.

Yeah I agree. It might be an aspect of fandom were "controversial" opinions and "unpopular" ones are seen synonymous. Similarly to how many people these days think a show/episode/character is "divisive" if any people at all voice dislike of them.

 

It was PC in the context that it was the exact opposite of TOS dropkick diplomacy
I would love to have seen Kirk ragdoll the baldy old coot of a Captain
It was too smug for its own good, Picard, Riker, La Forge and Troi were absolute dolts
I wasn't a fan