What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I like that Discovery and Picard are building upon what's come before. Lower Decks, randomly referencing things willy-nilly without adding anything, not so much. LD actually is doing what some people like to accuse DSC and PIC of doing.

In the past, meaning the mid-'00s, I did want a reboot... but the JJ Films weren't the type of reboot I had in mind. And that's not the direction TV Trek went in when it came back, and since I like what they're doing, I consider "they should do a reboot!" to be a dead issue.

The type of reboot I would've wanted, during the Bush Era, was the type JMS wanted to do for Star Trek. (link) And I liked how the reboot for BSG turned out, so I was all for that. What we eventually got with the JJ Films came across to me as like the Transformers movies, except for people who are over 25.

Getting back to BSG, I really liked that DSC Season 1 had that kind of feel to it. Sometimes I think it's too bad the BSG-type feeling was dropped afterwards to "make it feel more like Star Trek!" Not that I don't like what the show is doing now, and I've enjoyed what it's since become, but still...

 

Controversial ST opinion:

I never liked TWOK all that much..... (ducks and hides)

 

All odd-numbered Trek movies are at least watchable and sometimes excellent.

 

Not sure why that would be necessarily offensive. I know people with jobs that really, really, really aren't for me.(Perhaps not to the point I'd rather die but their job would definitely drive me crazy or into despair, even if only because of the monotony). Doesn't mean I look down on those people though, I could in fact admire them for not being driven to insanity by it.

 

I preferred the S1 tone and style as well. I still like the show a lot, but I don’t find it nearly as exciting as that first season, which was such a welcome departure from the predominance of what we saw previously, while still existing in and exploring the “Star Trek Universe.” The following seasons have felt more and more like they are trying to make it “cuddly comfy familiar Star Trek” and it feels a little forced…like they are trying too hard to showcase the character relationships rather than let them develop organically.

I also wish they hadn’t jumped 900 years. I loved the pre-TOS setting. But, it is what it is. I still like the characters and I’ll be tuning in every week to see how it goes!

 

TMP: amazing if not for everybody.
TSFS: not as good as what immediately preceded and then followed, but solid entertainment with emotional payoff.
TFF: sloppy as Hell but the emotional beats almost all work and the Troika lift the movie above its flawed plot and terrible effects.
GEN: enough logical loopholes to fill a spatial anomaly five light-years across but a real Valentine to Trek fans that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga apparently forgot how to replicate over a decade later, plus the cinematography and production design are arguably the best in the series.
INS: okay, it's not great but it's watchable. And F. Murray Abraham is fun to pay attention to.
2009: the best opening ten minutes of any Trek film since TMP and a solid way to set up an alternate timeline and have fun at the same time.
BEY: I like it. Fight me. It's the most TOS Trek movie in over twenty years.

 

Felt waaaay too much like just a really long, regular episode of TNG, the production values were cheap at times, but I'd pay to watch F. Murray Abraham read the phonebook for an hour and a half...

I liked it, too, and I don't wanna fight - I just did my nails !

 

Read in T'Pau's voice.

 

DE WORD IS DE WORD...VAT CAN BE DONE?

 

Is it controversial to be glad that the S31 series probably isn't getting made?

I am already annoyed that Discovery pulled the organisation out of the shadows. Don't remove the mystery completely please!

Plus regardless of how much they have rehabilitated mirror Georgiou, she is still a mass murdering tyrant. I'd rather not see a series led by Space Hitler.

 

Hitler rose to power and created the Third Reich, Georgiou inherited power and the Terran Empire already existed. She didn't create shit. Hitler let the Jewish people suffer for years on end. Georgiou killed people quickly. Not the same type of thing.

Evil yes, but a different type of evil.

Dukat is more Space Hitler than Georgiou. The Cardassians were even modelled after Nazi Germany. The only difference is that people like Dukat better, so they don't call him that.

Also, Hitler views his race as the Master Race. That fits the Cardassians as well as it does the Terrans. I'd even say it fits the Cardassians better.

Then there's Damar. He was Dukat's second-in-command. Who knows what he did to get up to that point? And yet people accept him as "redeemed" by the final episodes of DS9 and pretend nothing he did before happened. Again, he gets a pass because people like him better. I'd also add that Damar ruled Cardassia under the Dominion for a longer period of time than Dukat and only really turned on the Dominion when it became clear they preferred the Breen and didn't care about the Cardassians. If his ego hadn't been bruised, he'd have been totally fine with going along with whatever the Dominion wanted as long as it benefitted him.

Then there's Garak. Everyone loves Garak. But he was high, high up in the Obsidian Order. Who knows what he had to do? And we saw what he was willing to do. He attempted to destroy the Changeling Homeworld and would've succeeded if he hadn't been stopped.

Georgiou is held to a double-standard compared to Dukat, Damar, and Garak. I have some ideas for why, but that opens up a whole other can of worms, so I won't go there...

EDITED TO ADD: I'm impressed it took us over 300 pages to get to this. I'm not looking to get into a dragged out argument over this, I'm really not, honest, but since this is the Controversial Opinions thread and this is a Controversial Opinion, I knew I'd be posting it on here eventually. It was always just a question of when.

So now I've done the deed.

 

Regarding Damar...

I think he rose to second in command simply because he was a good soldier and was loyal while Dukat was basically at his lowest, during his command of the Cardassian freighter. Loyalty goes very far with some people. With Dukat, he said to Sisko that the one thing he could not abide was betrayal, which means he places a high value on loyalty.

And Damar was still quite loyal to Dukat in "TEARS OF THE PROPHETS" and when he helped him get his surgery in the final arc.

And THAT is the main reason why Damar gets a pass for some things and not Dukat. Damar was a loyal person at heart, while Dukat was loyal only to himself.

Plus, there is no way Damar did as much in terms of slaughter and torture as Dukat did during the Occupation. Dukat did that for 10 years. And other than killing Ziyal, he never really killed innocent people.

(I know we can argue he was leading a war against the Federation, aka the good guys. But from his perspective, he was killing the enemy, and in his view, Ziyal was an enemy and a traitor because she was directly responsible for Kira and the others' jailbreak.)

And in the end, Damar was a patriot. Dukat only cared about Cardassia as a means to an end... an end with him being the most important person.

 

Very fair assessment. I will think twice before throwing around terms like Space Hitler!

I guess Georgiou is more of a Space Caligula?

Even so, I don't need that series in my life.

 

I don't want a Section 31 series starring Georgiou either.

Mostly because I detest Mirror Gergiou, because Prime Georgiou would have been my absolute favourite Starship Captain if they hadn't fridged her

 

Works for me.

 

Surprisingly, this opinion is probably not controversial.

My controversial opinion: I want Section 31 rather than Picard.

 

Actually, to be fair to Caligula, Mirror Georgiou is more of a "space the Caligula" than a "space Calgula". Mirrror Georgiou, like Emperor Cartega in Babylon 5, was more like the Caligula in space than like Caligula in space.

The real Caligula was not nearly as evil or as insane as he was often dipicted. He wasn't nearly good enough, or rational enough, but he was rather ordinary and small potatos in the evil and insanity department.

On the other hand, The Caligula is someone who is as evil and insane as Caligula was ever claimed to be.

The Caligula is a TV Trope.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCaligula

 

Controversial take: People are more willing to forgive and like the examples cited because they are men. It's inherent sexism, men can be redeemed, but women are damaged goods.

 

Thanks for going ahead and saying what I wanted to say but didn't.