What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I’d just like to stick my head over the parapet and declare 100% agreement with this. I would take VOY over DS9 in a heartbeat.

 

Needs religion and canon to really be controversial.

 

I don't recall that post.

But truthfully, yes.

 

It's certainly better for watching individual episodes, because of its non-serialized nature. About the only significant changes to the characters are the Doctor's mobile emitter and Seven replacing Kes. So, you can skip between seasons pretty easy.

 

DS9 is a weeks long stay, Voyager's a drop-by and say hi. I do prefer the latter.

 

I prefer the characters and the environment. I like it because it's breezy and you can dip in and out of it. DS9 is a great show but I never rewatch any episodes because it feels to me that the best way to watch it is from Season 1-7. It's an undertaking. Voyager I dip in and out of sporadically, but I haven't revisited an episode of DS9 since my one and only watch about 15 years ago.

Tell a lie. I've watched the one where Sisko is an author in the 1950s a few times. But apart from that, zilch.

Voyager is a friend I can call on. DS9 is like a distant, unknowable relative to me.

That's not to say DS9 is not a good show. I greatly enjoyed it all those years ago. It's well regarded for a reason. It's just not a 'dip your toe in' sort of show.

 

In terms of actual character development, though, DS9 triumphs over all. Just compare character arcs for Sisko and Janeway...

Sisko goes from bereaved widower to single father to boyfriend to lover to husband and father (again). He also goes from non-believer to skeptic to believer. From station administrator to wartime commander. The S7 Sisko is very different from the S1 Sisko.

Janeway... well, she changes her hair. But actually, Sisko did that, too.

Also, compare the Lower Deck specials...

Nog began as an illiterate juvenile delinquent who was wiping tables at Quark's. He ended up as a seasoned Starfleet lieutenant and war veteran.

Harry Kim... switched from the clarinet to the saxophone.

 

You can add illiterate to Nogs category as well. That is actually pretty big all things considered.

Kira’s arc is pretty compelling as well.

 

Especially compared to Chakotay's.

 

That Ferengi wouldn't know /learn how to read always seemed strange to me. After all, the Ferengi would realize that bookkeeping is a useful skill and that more generally, knowledge is power, power that can be (ab)used to their own advantage.

We also see later on in several episodes that Quark is anything but illiterate, when he uses his skills hacking into computer systems and retrieving information, bookkeeping, and reading texts both Ferengi (rules of Acquisition) and supposedly Federation (when he looks into texts Odo is reading).

Or the Ferengi objection would need to have been not that Nog learned to read, but that he learned to read in the Federation way on that school (e.g. English).

 

Is it? Kira's arc or her past as a Resistance fighter seemed to replay over and over again, with constant embellishments. By the time the series reached Seasons Five to Seven, I found the constant focus of her past a bit redundant.

 

Chakotay wasn't exactly a sterling example of character evolution either.

 

He was such a bad, boring, dull boyfriend he turned Seven of Nine gay

 

Sequoia trees have survived unchanged since the Jurassic.

 

Wow, Sisko changed Janeway's hairstyle? Is there anything that guy can't do?

 

That's like saying conversion therapy works. I think Seven just naturally swung both ways.

Not of he could chop the Bun of Steel from the Chuck Norris of Star Trek from 60,000 kLY away. Clearly, his time in the wormhole gave him some interesting new abilities.

 

Janeway should have gone bald. Several other power figures of the era were. Picard. Sisko. The Borg Queen.

 

It's only the visual/casting that makes Code of Honor racist. Cast a variety of ethnicities in those roles, or make them visually alien (like reptilian or avian or something) and it's an acceptable episode. If one were to just read the transcript without any visual preconceptions, one would not find it racist.

Like you pointed out, the episode is a victim of miscasting.

 

Kathryn Janeway sent death back to hell without her, made fear itself afraid, spanked the Borg, deleted the Krenim timeship, and had the Maquis eating out of her hand like your granny's pet Pomeranian. She did not need to bow to the whims of Starfleet captain fashion.

Besides, the only bald woman in Trek canon was under an oath of celibacy. Kathryn decided that wasn't her thing.