It became Formulaic because it had to adhere to certain rules,
No, it got formulaic because the people running it lacked imagination to think of anything really different, and they lacked the balls to stand up to the studio's demands that they try to recapture the old formula that had made TNG so popular.
it had to be such and such a way or the hard core fans got bitchy.
B&B never gave a rats ass about what the fans said, beyond trying to shut them up by saying "we're all very pleased".
It had to remain in the constraints of a certain set of ideals. IT LOST IT'S CREATIVITY TO FAN BELLY-ACHING. The people watching wouldn't LET them be UNCLICHED because they have this mentality of "WHAT TREK IS" (You've seen it over and over again the self-appointed guardians of canon who look to everything that doesn't fit there idea of canon.
Yeah, it's not like the studio had anything to do with it, what with their demands that the shows be episodic and as close to the TNG formula as possible, or that they inject as much sex into the show as possible, or that they bring in the TCW storyline and all the other familiar Star Trek technologies because they didn't think the original ENT concepts were futuristic enough. Yup, it was all just the fans bitching, yup, yup, yup...
You see the old guard who don't acknowledge TNG, you see the one who refuse to accept DS9. The people who hate VOY and refuse to see it as trek, and all the people who are anti-enterprise and wish it never came along.)
Which has nothing to do with actual continuity.
That's a largely subjective topic that continues to be discussed endlessly.
Trek was so much more than it's "CANON" it's set of rules that it became bound to by myopic fans who couldn't see the forest for the trees.
It's not so much that as I'd rather not have some Star Wars fan boy ruin a franchise I've become attached to.
When those "rules" got set aside that's when Trek did it's best and had it's best.
Actually continuity is a good thing within a show. Some of DS9's best early episodes used events from TOS and TNG as jumping off points, like their first MU episode. If all you're interested is being entertained for an hour and don't give a shit about continuity or character development, the Twilight Zone would probably be a better show for you.
When it got bogged down in the minutia and the anal retentiveness of it's hard core fan base it was at it's worst.
Uh, no, the fans just buy shit, and that's all anyone at the studio has ever cared about. The writers and the people who make the show like kudos from the fans as much as anyone else, but every series has its own group of dedicated fans, even if they aren't necessarily made up of the same people.
Space Seed was one of the best TOS episodes ever. City on the Edge of forever one if the best of the bunch. Best of Both Worlds a great suspensful two parter. The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage home, The Undiscovered country and First Contact, all great flicks which set Canon aside to tell great stories.
I don't really see how any of those examples skew from continuity very much, aside from Khan thinking that he'd seen Chekov before.
I sumbit it's you who fails to see that the canon all though it is fun to keep track of ISN'T what made Trek a success.
Good continuity is like quality control, and it can only add to its success.
It never was and never will be, it's an afterthought. A thing for the mental acrobats to waddle through and piece together so some 45 yr old living in colorado can put up a website about the great men in the future like Kirk, Picard, or Sisco. It's not there to strangle and deaden the story, like it's been allowed to do for the past ten years. It's not there to get in the way of storytelling. And anyone who thinks you have to stick to a made up history just because it's been around for Fourty years gah I can't end this sentence without making an attack so I'll just end here....
Again, I like how the people who say they like the movie can't help but attack the people who say they don't like it, rather than arguing reasons why they support the movie just as those who don't argue reasons why they don't like it.
