Is every episode SOMEBODY'S favorite?

Lower tier? Voyager? :vulcan:

Popularity isn't only measured by people watching. It's also measured by how they engage with it in other ways.

For example, this is a screenshot I just took of the basic stats of the number of Star Trek stories published on fanfiction.net:

star-trek-fanfic-stats-ffn-net-png.34582


Note which series outranks TNG by more than two to one. It's Voyager.

VOYAGER has The Most Stories of all of them. They range from short drabbles to stories that have been going on for years, and the chapters number well over a hundred. There's everything from humor to adventure to some that explore some very serious ethical ideas.

That's a sign of an engaged fandom, and fanfic writers don't do it for money, like the professional authors do. They do it because they love the show and have a story to tell.
As a fanfic writer with a lot of stories (mostly VOY!) posted on ff.net, I don't think comparing VOY's numbers to TNG's in this regard is entirely valid, for one simple reason: Fanfiction.net started in 1998. That places it during the run of Voyager, and three years after the run of TNG. Not surprising that people would be writing more about a then-current show. Now if you look at fanzines, a publishing phenomenon that's largely (though certainly not entirely) died out with the rise of the fanfic websites, you'll see a fair amount of TNG fanfic.

That said, it's interesting that TOS's numbers on ff.net also outpace TNG's.
I believe it. I have four or five VOY stories on this site myself. Proof that the series and the characters had incredible opportunity for stories, both silly and serious. It's too bad such a wellspring of story potential went to that particular set of showrunners.
I have long suspected that one reason why VOY has produced impressive fanfic is because the showrunners (with some "assistance" from the network, to be sure) so spectacularly failed to exploit the story possibilities.
 
I actually like being the dissenter. You can't have an interesting discussion by agreeing with people.
Sure you can if you're willing to explore the whys and the values of what makes people like similar things. But, that takes being willing to go deeper than many are comfortable doing so, and spend much of their lives avoiding.
 
Dissent can have the same effect, it's just more direct. Subtlety has never been my strong suit.
I'll freely admit that this is both a personal and professional bias because one of the trainings that I have to do for my work is called "Motivational Interviewing" which is all about how to have meaningful conversations that support either cooperative change or personal change. So, to me at least, agreement is the easy part. Finding the why is the more interesting part.
 
Except maybe Quantum of Solace.
Only thing I even remember about that one is Bond going back to the PPK. In other words, giving up nine rounds of magazine capacity and trading down to a round about one-third as powerful. Like trading in a broadsword for a steak knife. Rest of the movie... :shrug: I don't know... had something to do with water I think.
I've heard there was some kind of product placement deal with Walther. They were starting production of that new variant in the States and wanted to sell a lot of them. Not sure. As far as the .32 goes, field operatives did, and presumably some still do use them. They are extremely pleasant to shoot with no real recoil. In an era before polymer guns, they could be made with aluminum components where possible, whereas that wasn't really possible with .380. I have an old secret-policeman Hungarian Makarov clone in .32. The grim reality is that the kind of firearms that someone in that situation would either be used for people that couldn't shoot back, where contact range was good enough, or just enough of a distraction to get away. Argentines issued their own home-grown copy of the PPK too, and still sell it (oh the weird historical joy of German things getting made in Argentina after the war. Funny, really).

But mostly all I remember of QoS was a big hotel exploding for hydrogen reasons and some woman drowned in oil. I can't remember anything else about the movie and I have seen it several times.
 
I'll freely admit that this is both a personal and professional bias because one of the trainings that I have to do for my work is called "Motivational Interviewing" which is all about how to have meaningful conversations that support either cooperative change or personal change. So, to me at least, agreement is the easy part. Finding the why is the more interesting part.

Fair enough. As someone who isn't a "people person", forming connections with others is kind of above my skill level. Ergo, I can usually express my opinions with impunity.

I've heard there was some kind of product placement deal with Walther. They were starting production of that new variant in the States and wanted to sell a lot of them. Not sure. As far as the .32 goes, field operatives did, and presumably some still do use them.

The PPK, the .380 variant anyway, is a good hideout weapon. Problem is, James Bond regularly got into serious firefights in that era, and the 17-shot P99 (also a Walther) made more sense. And in any case, no reason why they couldn't use both: the PPK when Bond is in his tux, and the P99 when he's running around in battle fatigues.

Argentines issued their own home-grown copy of the PPK too, and still sell it (oh the weird historical joy of German things getting made in Argentina after the war. Funny,

Lot of people have them. The US couldn't import them because of our 1968 gun laws, so we either a workaround by manufacturing PPK's in-country. Same thing with mini-Glocks.
 
Lot of people have them. The US couldn't import them because of our 1968 gun laws, so we either a workaround by manufacturing PPK's in-country. Same thing with mini-Glocks.
Bersa (Argentina) gets around the problem by making them heavier than stipulated in the law. Walther did the same thing for awhile then finally manufactured in the States. By that time the market was bigger and people would buy for nostalgia and collecting with all the "Bring backs" from the war prices skyrocketed.
 
Bersa (Argentina) gets around the problem by making them heavier than stipulated in the law. Walther did the same thing for awhile then finally manufactured in the States. By that time the market was bigger and people would buy for nostalgia and collecting with all the "Bring backs" from the war prices skyrocketed.

We see some Bersas in the US, too. They're not our biggest gunmaker, but they seem to have a decent reputation.

If someone says that "And the Children Shall Lead" is their favorite, I'm going to tell them I think they're stringing us along.

Well, one thing I'll say... Kirk looked more comfortable giving pickie-uppies in that one than Picard did in "When the Bough Breaks". :lol:
 
I'd completely forgotten "Oasis" until it was brought up here. But reading the MA description of it, it came right back to me, and I don't recall ever disliking it.

I would definitely agree that "Threshold" was hokey, and "Code of Honor" has a certain racist stench to it.

At any rate, I know there are people who like "The Man Trap," just as I know there are people who don't see the "eye-scream" invocations in "The Red Angel" and "Stardust City Rag" as gratuitous.
 
If someone says that "And the Children Shall Lead" is their favorite, I'm going to tell them I think they're stringing us along.

Actually, there is a lot about ATCSL that I like. I first started watching TOS before being old enough for grade school, so I liked seeing the kids. I like the look at non-Starfleet life. I've always liked the scene with the food slots and picking ice cream, and the girl playing bees and having a breakdown while saying she'll sting Kirk.

My other guilty favorites are Way to Eden and ST:Insurrection. Neither TOS episodes are in my top 10 but ST:I is my favorite TNG era movie and my 3rd overall favorite.
 
I think there’s a minority of very great episodes across Star Trek and a minority of terrible ones.

In between that is a huge morass of episodes that are neither here nor there. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a person say Spock’s Brain is their favourite, I’d be more surprised if someone said Retrospect (VOY), Strange New World (ENT) or various other bland offerings were their favourite.
 
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