10 reasons why TOS is better than TNG

Amen to that, brotha!

 

Since Star Trek 2009 made almost as much money as the four NextGen films combined, I wouldn't be so quick to declare it the most successful. Plus you have to keep in mind the fact that TNG premiered during a time when it had no competition for sci-fi viewers.

They're two distinct shows separated by eighteen years and vastly different TV landscapes...

 

If you adjust for inflation, Star Trek Eleven still hasn't made as much as ST:TMP. It's about twenty-two million dollars short.



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And the TNG movies were made more or less on the cheap compared to NuTrek. It's not just how much comes back, it's also how much went it.

 

No TOS means no TNG. No TNG and there is still TOS, and TOS is still iconic. Who needed who?

TNG ran longer, but that means there are a lot more bad TNG episodes too.

Troi was annoying (No, the chair has emotions, you can't sit on it!). Riker was a flake. Worf was a growling wimp. Wesley was, well Wesley.

TNG went over the top with the preachy prime directive stuff. It was well intentioned, but the prime directive got silly with TNG.

The TOS Enterprise is arguably a more beautiful design. The Enterprise D, however, does not get enough love. It was one of the best designs.

Tasha Yar - terrible character - the best thing she did was die, but then she kept coming back.

Sir Patrick Steward is awesome, but he never had the chemistry of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad. He didn't have strong enough supporting actors to play against.

Shatner is a self-obsessed ham, but he was Captain Kirk.

They're my top two trek shows, but TOS is my pick. There are some TOS clunkers, but it's a great old show.

 

Why are TOS fans so defensive? It wasn't a TNG fan that started this divisive shitfest of a thread.

 

Peace and tranquility and civility be unto you.
Without civilized divisiveness we'd be a conflict-free show.
That was already tried once in 1987 and it didn't always work.
Not enough infinite diversity, for one thing. Lots of sensing, yes.

Besides, without TOS, there'd be no absolutely no TNG. The TOS is father to the TNG.

 

^so, a fan of the show has an blank check to crap on what came after. Because the show they're a fan of came first. Or something like that.

But seriously, I don't think anyone disputes TOS is the seed of the franchise. But let's be honest; that in of itself doesn't diminish what was accomplished by TNG, as much as some would like to argue otherwise.

 

Here's my question, though -- how often did Star Trek live up to the same criterion?

Star Trek is replete with extremely human-like aliens, and for "reurgitating real-life human problems," look no further than "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." As for the Holodeck, the series didn't need such a conceit to trot out studio wardrobe and sets when they were busy visiting the planet of the gangsters ("A Piece of the Action"), the planet of the Romans ("Bread and Circuses"), or any number of other "alien" planets that were little more than a "planet of the hats."

The difference here is that the characters on Star Trek were their job, while the characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation were much better developed as people. Outside of a couple of verbal tics, the supporting cast on Kirk's Enterprise were interchangeable. It made little difference if Uhura said "hailing frequencies open, Captain" or the dialogue was handed to a crewman-of-the-week. Sub out Worf or Geordi or Riker for a guest star, though, and you have quite a different dynamic.

Not according to Box Office Mojo.

 

Yeah, I can't stand the argument that TOS is better simply because it came first. What does the order of the shows have anything to do with their quality? TOS was the beginning of the Star Trek universe, yes, but IMO Trek didn't become truly great until TNG.

 

^What's weird is that TNG's season 1 (and 2) which are closest to the TOS "look and feel" are the ones considered the weakest (though I don't personally agree) for the series. Hey, it totally got better after Gene left, didn't it?

Another thing is that TNG is both accused of being "soap opera instead of science fiction" and yet full of "technobabble"...

uh, get your stories straight, haters.

 

There are no reasons why one is better than the other. That's because they're both good in their own way.

Besides, they're both Star Trek, and that alone makes them better than any other show or franchise out there. The same applies to DEEP SPACE NINE, VOYAGER, and ENTERPRISE. And while I think the latter two are the redheaded step-children of the franchise, They're both Star Trek, and again, that alone makes them better than any other show.

 

^yep! I personally prefer some series to others, but while they all have occasional stinker episodes, they all are distinct and have something to offer.

 

Yes its so much better to play around in the 24th century version of the TV/Gaming system then you know go to strange new worlds like the frickin Voice over promises

 

I used the consumer price index Inflation Calculator, at the US Goverments Bureau of Labor Statistics webpage.

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

And the numbers I use for each movie came from the-numbers.com, which give worldwide gross figures, and not just the US gross like your webpage.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/StarTrek.php

")

 

But in the end its the same thing, only difference is TNG+ used the holodeck instead of them randomly running into entire worlds inhabited by aliens that just happen to look like humans and have an entire planetary culture that resembles certain Earth eras.

 

TOS's biggest strengths was its sci fi.

But one of TOS's big weaknesses was leaving the "supporting" cast members out of the loop and its weak sense of continuity.

With TOS we all know it was "The Big Three" that got most of the spot light. And even then it was kind of superficial.

Kirk marries an alien (forgets about it later), falls in love with an android, a doomed woman and various other women..It just seems too one dimensional of the man.

And we're not even bringing up the 'past loves'.

With TNG, pick any character-you'll at least get one episode dedicated to that character. At least enough to know about that person.

Even O'brien got a few and you could say he appeared infrequently on the show.

The 'move on to the next adventure without mentioning anything that happened previously' kind of gave it a cartoonish quality.

So Kirk just falls deeply in love with a woman one minute, it doesn't work out, forgets about it and two months later he falls deeply in love again and then....come on, man

Because of that, some fans can't watch TOS and take it too seriously.

 

The thing that we learned with most of the characters was that they were extremely dull and whiny in the case of TNG.

This is, once again, absolute bullshit.

Both By Any Other Name and Is There In Truth No Beauty? reference the Galactic Barrier from Where No Man Has Gone Before. By Any Other Name also references events from A Taste of Armageddon. What are Little Girls Made Of? mentions Kirk's brother that we later see in Operation: Annihilate!. Elements of The Corbomite Maneuver are referenced in later episodes Journey to Babel and The Deadly Years. The Organian Peace Treaty which originates in Errand of Mercy gets a nod in both The Trouble with Tribbles and Day of the Dove. I, Mudd is a direct continuation of Mudd's Women. The Menagerie directly references The Cage.

Then we have recurring enemies in the Klingons and Romulans.

Do I need to go on?

If you're going to rip TOS at least rip it for something it actually did wrong...

 

Except TOS's sticks to the show's premese where as TNG's gives the impression that that crew is screwing around instead of doing their jobs.

Plus the danger factor in TOS planet of the week episodes is more believeable then in TNG holodeck episodes because going to a new planet always has the potential for danger where as the safety system for the holodeck should only break down once or twice before they put some ultimate fix that stops that once and for all or they stop using this dangerious piece of equipment unless Geordi is incompetent ipetent which seeing as the ship didn't blow up the second he became chief engineer he isn't.

 

As an esteemed fellow poster has mentioned elsewhere, bacon is better than Star Trek.

This is the kind of foolish topic that should have died on usenet in 1989.