Old Star Trek fans: don't you sometimes get happy just because there are new series?

[Richard S. Ta]

I’m kind of in two minds as per the arguments presented in this thread.

One the one hand, I am happy that there is still some interest amongst those who can in producing Star Trek. I’m happy it was made.

But then on the other hand, all streaming Trek has been a series of intense ups and downs for me. There are shows I like. Shows I don’t care for at all. Even shows I don’t care about in the first place.

I mean, sure, okay. Star Trek sitcom. I’ll watch it and most likely it’ll be funny or whatever, but when I want Star Trek, I’m wanting a very specific thing. 45 minutes of cool space adventure.

There’s other shows I go to for comedy.

But then, I like LDS so… eh, I’m open to Star Trek sitcom.

I dunno. I wish I loved the new stuff with the same intensity as I do the old, but I don’t. I know that Trek from TOS-ENT is inconsistent a lot of the time, but it gets it right more often it doesn’t in terms of presenting, for want of a better term, a ‘world’. I just don’t get that from a lot of the new stuff.

 

[Commander Troi]

I, on the other hand, am simply happy to know that every now and then I will see a new episode that will take me to the stars. But am I the only one? Too naive and not savvy enough to "really" understand what is needed in a new Star Trek series?

You aren't the only one. VOY and ENT disappointed me, but then there was NOTHING on TV and then there was DSC and I was crazy happy and came back to being a Trekkie.

 

[evilchumlee]

Prior to Discovery, yes.

Post-Discovery... not really. Discovery was like a shot to chest. It killed a piece of my soul.

When I first heard about it, I was excited beyond belief. Some of the early details came out and... yeah, I was totally on board. Excited. I remember some EARLY test footage of the ship came out and I was like "Ok, it looks weird for the era it's supposed to be in but I can still get behind this." Some more details came and I was like "Odd choice but ok". I remember the first leaked image of a Klingon and I was like "Obviously fake, no way they would do something like that." Then... more came.

By the time the show was about to air, I was still desperately trying to kid myself into thinking it wasn't going to be what I was afraid it would be. Then I watched the first episode. I thought, "Ok... ok... it was bad, but it's the pilot, they're always bad." But... it stayed bad.

DSC actually made me overall less interested in Trek. Even the stuff I like that's coming out now (honestly, most of it?) i'm just not as excited about anymore, and I don't even bother to try to get excited about what could-be because they probably won't do it. "You want Legacy? Too bad, you get more DSC-related stuff and some kinda sitcom." I wasted all my excitement on DSC.

I'm less of a Trek fan than I was in 2016. That's ok, I guess.

I still could be excited for a new Trek show. It's still inside of me. It came out for PIC S3. The rest, even when good, just hasn't excited me. LDS is fun but I feel like it's ultimately throw away. PRO is surprisingly good for what it is but doesn't quite hit the excitement button. SNW is generally pretty good, although I felt there was a sharp decline in S2. I'm pretty sure i'm not going to even bother to watch Section 31.

I'll give Academy a chance, but i'm not at all "excited" about it.

I wish I was excited by Star Trek anymore. I could be. They're just choosing to make literally anything other than what would actually get me excited about Star Trek.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Post-Discovery... not really. Discovery was like a shot to chest. It killed a piece of my soul.

Man, that's some Shakespeare level drama,

 

[fireproof78]

Man, that's some Shakespeare level drama,

"Shot through the heart.
and you're too late.
You give Trek
a bad name."

 

[evilchumlee]

Man, that's some Shakespeare level drama,

Prick me, do I not bleed? Give me a crap Star Trek show, shall I not complain on-line? CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF INTERNET RAGE!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Prick me, do I not bleed? Give me a crap Star Trek show, shall I not complain on-line? CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF INTERNET RAGE!

Karidian would be proud.

 

[BillJ]

I dunno. I wish I loved the new stuff with the same intensity as I do the old, but I don’t. I know that Trek from TOS-ENT is inconsistent a lot of the time, but it gets it right more often it doesn’t in terms of presenting, for want of a better term, a ‘world’. I just don’t get that from a lot of the new stuff.

I think a big thing for me, is that the hit-to-miss ratio is a lot lower than when they were producing a lot more episodes.

 

[Nerys Myk]

There was a big section of TNG that was a miss for me. And pretty much all of VOY (so much that I bailed). PIC3 is the big miss in the current era. DISCO was running on fumes in its last season, so it was a good idea to cancel.

 

[BillJ]

There was a big section of TNG that was a miss for me. And pretty much all of VOY (so much that I bailed). PIC3 is the big miss in the current era. DISCO was running on fumes in its last season, so it was a good idea to cancel.

I think the only clean hit for me, was Lower Decks. Even then, I haven't watched since the beginning of season three.

 

[fireproof78]

There was a big section of TNG that was a miss for me. And pretty much all of VOY (so much that I bailed). PIC3 is the big miss in the current era. DISCO was running on fumes in its last season, so it was a good idea to cancel.

I look at it like a bell curve, and only about 47 to 50% are going to "hit" for me with any regularity. The rest are probably going to miss at some level. The outliers are going to stand out and be memorable.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Always. And the only ST incarnation I would choose to ignore would be one focused on S31.

There have been a lot of things I wasn't particularly happy with, but that was also always the case. I wasn't happy with Una McCormack being tasked with writing a ST novel that is an unmitigated tragedy with an utterly hopeless ending as prequel to the first season of PIC (the only example I've ever encountered of a very well-written novel I profoundly wish I could un-read). I wasn't happy with the bad guys of PICs3 turning out to be renegade Changelings allied with a collective of Borg, even though I really like how it was handled. I wasn't happy with having DSCs2 being dominated by a Section 31 arc. I wasn't happy with DSCs2 and PIC both gratuitously invoking the "eye-scream" trope (and yes, invoking it just to make the point that the bad guys are really really bad is gratuitous!).

But then again, I didn't like having an entire season of ENT dominated by the Xindi War, or multiple seasons of DS9 dominated by the Dominion War, or so much of DS9 dominated by Bajoran mysticism, or DS9 being the genesis of Section 31.

And even though it was long before my time (given that I was introduced to ST in strip syndication, with the end of "A Taste of Armageddon," the beginning of "Space Seed," and the first entire episode I saw, "The Devil in the Dark"), I intensely dislike the fact that TOS debuted with "The Man Trap," with its Doc-Smith-hokey premise (the life on M113 metabolizes salt?!? On the scale of prepostrous, that's right up there with radium as a currency metal, and iron, with the most stable nucleus in the whole Periodic Table, being a source of tremendous power) and its nightmare-fodder monster. If ever there was an episode that negated the idea that ST was about more than just "killing off the nightmare-fodder monster of the week," that would be it!

I don't regret a single instance of my spending money on DVD sets of the online-only series. Not DSC, not PIC, not LD, not PRO, and most especially not SNW.

 

[BillJ]

But then again, I didn't like having an entire season of ENT dominated by the Xindi War, or multiple seasons of DS9 dominated by the Dominion War, or so much of DS9 dominated by Bajoran mysticism, or DS9 being the genesis of Section 31.

Even then, they did some nice "outside the immediate crisis" episodes like "Impulse" and "North Star".

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Yes they did.

I've said this before: If I want a closed-ended, arc-dominated series, I'll watch B5, which I regard not as a conventional series, but as a 5-year-long miniseries. JMS does that sort of thing extremely well (and it, too, did "non-arc" stories, especially in the first two seasons). In fact, one of these days, I'll probably plunk down the money for a B5 complete series DVD set, just so I can see the S1 episodes I missed. I wonder what a used copy is going for on Alibris . . . .

 

[kirk55555]

I'm happy that series I like have been made, so to me even the bad shows were worth existing so that I could get shows like SNW, LD and Picard S3. But, with Lower Decks ending, Strange New Worlds will be the only new Trek show I watch, and if it goes away and doesn't get replaced by a show I like equally or better then I'd rather Star Trek go into hiatus again then to only exist as Star Fleet Academy and (possibly) Prodigy. No Trek is better then exclusively bad Trek, in my opinion.

 

[fireproof78]

I would never wish for no Trek unless people declare that it's all bad.

Then I'm like "People need a break."

 

[Frontis]

Prior to Discovery, yes.

Post-Discovery... not really. Discovery was like a shot to chest. It killed a piece of my soul.

When I first heard about it, I was excited beyond belief. Some of the early details came out and... yeah, I was totally on board. Excited. I remember some EARLY test footage of the ship came out and I was like "Ok, it looks weird for the era it's supposed to be in but I can still get behind this." Some more details came and I was like "Odd choice but ok". I remember the first leaked image of a Klingon and I was like "Obviously fake, no way they would do something like that." Then... more came.

By the time the show was about to air, I was still desperately trying to kid myself into thinking it wasn't going to be what I was afraid it would be. Then I watched the first episode. I thought, "Ok... ok... it was bad, but it's the pilot, they're always bad." But... it stayed bad.

DSC actually made me overall less interested in Trek. Even the stuff I like that's coming out now (honestly, most of it?) i'm just not as excited about anymore, and I don't even bother to try to get excited about what could-be because they probably won't do it. "You want Legacy? Too bad, you get more DSC-related stuff and some kinda sitcom." I wasted all my excitement on DSC.

I'm less of a Trek fan than I was in 2016. That's ok, I guess.

I still could be excited for a new Trek show. It's still inside of me. It came out for PIC S3. The rest, even when good, just hasn't excited me. LDS is fun but I feel like it's ultimately throw away. PRO is surprisingly good for what it is but doesn't quite hit the excitement button. SNW is generally pretty good, although I felt there was a sharp decline in S2. I'm pretty sure i'm not going to even bother to watch Section 31.

I'll give Academy a chance, but i'm not at all "excited" about it.

I wish I was excited by Star Trek anymore. I could be. They're just choosing to make literally anything other than what would actually get me excited about Star Trek.

I didn't like DISCO either but then came Picard, Lower Decks and SNW and they've been better.

 

[Frontis]

I think a big thing for me, is that the hit-to-miss ratio is a lot lower than when they were producing a lot more episodes.

Oh yes, it's a lot easier to produce 10 good episodes per year than 20 or more.

 

[Nerys Myk]

"Shot through the heart.
and you're too late.
You give Trek
a bad name."

Is that from the opera Bon Giovi

 

[Dukhat]

I grew up with TOS reruns in the '80's, watched all of TNG and DS9 first-run, watched VOY through to the end but lost faith in the show around the 5th season. Watched the first two seasons of ENT but stopped after that because the Xindi arc completely turned me off. Did watch the 4th season though because of all the TOS references.