What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I bailed on DS9, VOY and ENT all somewhere in their 1st seasons. Now, some of that was due to the fact that those shows were on during my college years, and I just couldn't get into it. DS9 was weird because I thought the pilot was amazing, but then the bulk of the 1st season was just so incredibly dull. I'd come back to VOY or ENT for "event episodes," but that was about it. I tried to re-engage with DS9 at "Way of the Warrior," but found that I had missed too much due to the semi-serialized nature of that show, so I just gave up.

I've watched all of them now either on disk or on streaming over the last 10 years, and I find that I like all of them quite a bit, actually. They all have something of value to offer. DS9 in particular is really great. VOY is like fun, forgettable comfort food (which is not a bad thing at all)...and ENT is different and interesting, particularly the last 2 seasons.

 

You bring up something I have observed in my own life.

Age and life experience is also a factor in what you do or don't like. You can find a show great growing up, but find it meh when you're 35. And the reverse is certainly true.

I've altered my view on many episodes over the years, partly due to getting older and also due to rewatching with my wife. (Rewatch for me, first for her.) She gave some perspectives and noticed some details on episodes that I had seen a dozen times that I never picked up on before.

Great example: in DS9's "LIFE SUPPORT", at the end when the camera is moving away from Bareil and Kira, the node on his head apparently looked much like that hat a pope would wear. To her, it was signifying him being a pure person because he died trying to make the treaty come to life... almost like it was a way of making him a saint. I always saw Bareil as honorable and a good person, but being so completely against the idea of religion in general, that bit never occured to me. But I can see what she was talking about.

(By the way, glad you were able to watch it all. You are of the body. )

 

Super Sentai +specials and movies ( 46 years)
The Pokemon anime + specials and movies (25 years)
Simpsons (34 years)

There is a couple

 

Counter (and I think more controversial): Rick Berman was a better shepherd and steward of Star Trek than is generally accepted. He managed to be involved with FOUR series (26 episodes per season TV shows!), and four movies over 15+ years most of which are still well regarded today. Some more than they were as they were airing.

He is usually painted as the problem with various others being pointed to as "the one who really kept things on the rails" (Roddenberry - no seriously, Piller, Moore, Beher, etc.) but Berman was the common denominator and the one who hired these people to begin with. His time simply ran out with Enteprise and Nemesis. It wasn't like that was when he said "Now they'll see what I REALLY wanted to do!" and ran the shows into the ground.

He had a thankless job but he was unthanked all the way to the bank.

(Yes, other than hiring Jerry Goldsmith his musical taste was terrible. Any good music in TNG era Star Trek was entirely in spite of him.)

 

Ah, THE SIMPSONS and POKEMON.

I was thinking in live action terms, not animation. But if that is on the table, add SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS and SOUTH PARK.

Never heard of SUPER SENTAI, but for some reason it sounds familiar. (Which is an odd contradiction in itself. )

I just thought of another... LAW AND ORDER and NCIS, though I've never seen either, but I know they were on for 20 years. Are there other live action ones?

In any case, it's still not the norm to have a franchise going continuously past about 5 years, let alone almost two decades. Berman still made a big accomplishment.

 

I think Berman was absolutely needed to "right the ship" after the first two rocky years of TNG, but IMHO once Voyager was off the ground he should have majorly stepped back from the franchise.

 

Super Sentai is what Power Rangers is based of (Power Rangers uses Super Sentai battle footage and then adds American life action parts)
It's a long running franchise that started in the late 70s. Roughly every year there's a new entry in the franchise. They don't have continuity between each other, but share common tropes (colourful suits, character archetypes, giant robot fights) and on occasion there are crossover specials and movies and such.

 

I think things got stale under Berman and the entire team...but I also think they did an amazing job of keeping it running and putting out relatively high-quality programming every week. I think I am pretty comfortable in this "controversial opinion": Berman did a much better job than Roddenberry would have done with the franchise.

 

Ahhhh, okay. I remember POWER RANGERS as a teenager. Wow... that show was terrible. I saw some episodes, but they were just really, really bad cheese. (And I truly love my cheese... my wife can attest to that and actually thinks some of the cheesy stuff I watch is terrible.)

That's still on the air?

 

+1.

Berman's got some not-so-pleasant sides to him but damn, did that man keep Trek alive for about 16 years once Gene stepped down from the day-to-day. I'll gladly take even "meh" Berman content from that period over what Gene was wanting and demanding to be canon by the end.

 

Just on the basis of Berman hiring real writers like Michael Piller instead of a lawyer (Leonard Maizlish, I think was his name, though I might have the last name spelled wrong) to handle stories makes your statement totally accurate.

 

I mean, it is known that he blocked some terrible ideas from the network. Like having the "boy band" on Enterprise who would do a song every week in the mess hall.

 

Oh man, I hated Power Rangers even as a kid, so I don't know whether it's on the air still.
From what I've seen the Japanese originals of Super Sentai are quite a bit more serious than Power Rangers was (like, people get actually killed and thigns like that), but they still have this corny Japanese children's program humour.
But I know Super Sentai is still on the air in Japan.

 

THAT is truly horrifying.

 

At least the boy band would have been something to laugh at.

 

At least over the first two seasons, I don't know if that'd have made the show worse

 

Definitely, infinitely worse.

If you have to resort to bringing a boy band on your show, you're already worse than you think you are.

 

I think Rick Berman made a lot of good creative and production decisions, but all of those are outweighed by his homohphobia and his sexual objectification and harassment of female cast members.

 

I see you put a lot of thought into that.
Spock's Brain
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1912/carrel/lecture/

 

Interesting. That article reminds me of the head transplant done to a chimpanzee in history. Chimp was still paralyzed but alive.

It's why the blood in Into Darkness bothers me very little because there are actual blood based therapies, plasma based therapies, platelet based therapies, all currently utilized.