I wish I could fly through space and explore all the unknown worlds out there, that's why I love star trek! I think they did a good job until they started trying to veer away from the motif set forth by FOUR fully successful and incredibly popular series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) What I love the most about the first four series is that they were always exploring new worlds and seeing new things in the universe while they simultaneously told a story arc and it seemed like the writers were genuinely trying to stretch the limits of what people would imagine is possible to exist out among the stars, it made it a truly unique work of video-graphic art.
VOY struggled out of the gate and improved, but even then the franchise-rot was settling in. 90s Trek showed a continual drop, with no real sustained spike, in ratings, up to 2004 when it ended.
I also love how they portrayed humanities future potential in a very positive light, world peace, no more need for currency within our own species, scientific idealism, peaceful cooperation and exploration with the species we meet. Its a refreshing change from the millions of sci-fi stories that believe we are a hopeless species who will only end up killing anything intelligent we find out there. It seems that most authors believe humanity is much closer to the alternate negative dimensions version of events rather than the altruistic peaceful society that The Federation stands for. That's just depressing. If that's true we don't deserve to continue as a species, so I prefer to hope that Star Trek will be a good example of how humanity can still choose to show their best side and save not only our world but ourselves and our future.
Shows are just a reflection of the time in which they were made. Noting the 1960s had the highest amount of assassinations and stuff, what it dreams of is rather phenomenal. The 1980s were at a height in digging up 60s shows for nostalgia. Munsters Today, Bonanza Next Generation, War of the Worlds (granted, a TV show based off of 1953 movie based off the decades-older radio play and that probably stemmed from a novel as well), The New Monkees... the 80s regurgitated so much that it all but choked on it the way a massive drug addict would. In the 80s, you can see certain fads and trends repeat - such as flaunting gore - seep into some of these shows as well. WotW embracing it rather successfully for the most part, but far less so for TNG during its bold first season and it's not like TNG needed it but they tried... TNG was almost unique that it was not only riding coat tails of its progenitor but managed to become its own popculture-defining entity in its own right and led to spinoffs using its themes. "The Munsters Today" being arguably the only other example of this, but even then guess which series has dated worse? Yup, TMT had with all those puke pink and turquoise sets. At least the 80s were more into sequels and not reboots where they change the root premise (a la Battlestar Galactica, which didn't need anything changed...)
I tolerated their experiments in the star trek enterprise even though the time travel was horribly convoluted and made little sense, they even ignored previously established super powerful beings for the convenience of forcing their story arc to exist mostly because I liked how they did do a bit of exploring and random adventuring or encountering random ships of unknown aliens unlike anything imagined in previous series.
Prequels often try to answer questions nobody really asked, and/or really cared to see a lengthy discussion of. "Caprica" is another example of this, and TBH what was told in the pilot and premiere more than told us all that mattered. Same for Han Solo and ANH; taking 2 minutes of exposition and making 2 hour prequel movies needed more than what was given to them and what was told in 1977's two minutes was more than sufficient to get the story going. Did we need those details fleshed in? No. Will they impact our like of what was made if they didn't work out? No. Can they enhance what was made if people like it? Yes.
TOS made time travel its own and used it consistently. TNG onward had to develop n-dozen new means to accomplish it, and it got laughable real fast. It's amazing I didn't tune off "Little Green Men" but given they glossed over the premise, rightly so despite cheesily, what's left is a rather fun story showcasing DS9's livened-up style...
However after that it seemed like they went all out sell out and tried to change the show to imitate the most popular mainstream counter parts such as "The Expanse" which seemed to be in direct competition with ST Discovery or it seems like Picard is a direct counterpart to the Mandalorian, as if their trying to make the new series about Picard as rough and gritty as the new series about the Mandalorian. Come one can't we please just have our series back? I dont care if "new viewers" like it, what about the already established fan base? Are we such worthless pushovers that they think we'll just throw our money at them no matter what they put the star trek logo on?
Kudos to PIC for not being a retread of TNG. At least in terms of feel. on the flip side, its leaning on Borg and Romulans and 7 is about as small-universe retread as anything can get. To compare, it was easier to swallow the changes in TMP and TWOK into Kirk's era. And TWOK had its share of gore too.
I'm sick of it, I'm about ready not to watch any new star trek series ever again, the last 3.5 series they came out with were basically a middle finger to the fans (because enterprise was half okay) they have all but said "...you know what, we hate our fan base and want a new one..." . It would be like if they took family guy and redrew it and rewrote it to imitate the simpsons from now on, sure it might still be an okay, but it definitely wouldn't be family guy anymore it would just be another show imitating something higher up in the "pop culture food chain". They even specifically said that they wanted to "Bring it to a new generation" which actually translated from PR double talk means "turning a classic into some desperate corporate shill scheme to get the wealthiest dumbest largest fan-base possible" so yeah, thanks for ruining something I used to be excited about.
I dunno. ENT was half-baked if not rubbish back in the day and season 4's use of fanwank wasn't all that stellar either. Coin toss. I've tried rewatching it, the acclaimed episodes did nothing for me. Good for me. If they did something for others, that's great.
For the new stuff, LD is a fun parody. Plus, I've seen enough clips, more in context thankfully, and a few episodes... it's not always my thing but I'm not not the "h8-r type" that's going going to waste hours making sappy videos and screech for an hour like some youtube channels do. Especially when they forget that TOS onward have their own share of boo-boos. Celebrate what works, and if something is so utterly bad then deride it (looking at a certain tribble short trek, where the YT screechers actually had a fair point for once in giving it a certain nickname... even then, being pre-Kirk and not as evolved, it makes a certain sense... if an unwitting one that's as backhanded to it as it is to the eras it's making the butt of jokes on. )
Now to be clear, these would be perfectly good TV shows, if they weren't supposed to embody the spirit of their predecessors, just take the Star Trek name off them and no one would even realise they were star trek, and they could have their own style and story arc and not have to worry about living up to Gene Roddenberry's original vision.
Gene's original vision wasn't always consistent either, nor was he alone in getting it to the screen.
That said, in TV and novel histories, movies too, old works do have an influence if not impact on new ones. The new ones usually embrace and extend or alter and make the innovation feel like its own work. If done wrong, people will just point, say "Frankenstein did it first
and better", then laugh in derision. One reason shows die is because the formula becomes stale. Sequels and revivals augment the formula but without eschewing it utterly. Another is it becomes so big it gets bland and increasingly relies on fanwank (how many Picard and Kirk and "old Enterprise" references can't be exciting?). Again, VOY is a good example of this. Ditto for latter day TNG films and definitely for early-TNG when it was using TOS as a crutch... ironic since the Romulans came in late in the day despite Gene's wishes of avoiding too much TOS tie-in, ironically ("The Art of Star Trek" pg 92 fleshes that out the fact they did not want TNG to rely on everything from TOS, which is also why the Ferengi were created. Klingons as allies was the only to get them in...)
I do wonder how many new shows made for the umbrella franchise would have lasted a season if it didn't have the big shiny name under it, only because they're reusing all the already-made stuff and not having... er, their own mission?
Stop trying to make it into something its not. Star trek was always like us nerds at school, it was never the most trendy with the "popular kids" and it looked different than the other shows even of the same genre, but it always seemed to be more aware of where we were and where we, for better or worse, could one day be. If you've ever seen a friend try to force another friend to try to be something they're not then you know that its not right and its a bad idea! ^_^
The problems with inclusion and exclusion, or wanting inclusion but not realizing they're excluding, sometimes overlap... that said for whatever reason, TOS was "adult sci-fi" but was still aimed at enough audiences since nerds alone weren't bring in the numbers. This somewhat goes back to "Gene's vision"(tm) as well. And which Gene, Gene Roddenberry or Gene Coon? Or between ST TMP and TWOK...
