Starfleet in which time period do you like the best?

Starfleet has operated for a millennia by the 32nd century. However, Starfleet in which time period do you like the best as a space faring exploration and defense organization? Which time period you like the least? Why?

(Yes, Section 31 has always been a part of Starfleet, feel free to talk about that as well)

1) Pre-Federation Starfleet - 22nd Century (ENT)
2) Pre-TOS Starfleet - mid 23rd Century (DIS Season 1&2, SNW)
3) TOS Starfleet - late 23rd Century (TOS, TOS films)
4) Mid to late 24th Century Starfleet (TNG, DS9, VOY, TNG films)
5) Late 24th to early 25th Century Starfleet (PIC)
6) 32nd Century Starfleet (DIS Season 3+)

 

I love tje 23rd century the best they had the best looking ships, equipment and uniforms, and it was the time when they still had a lot of the galaxy to explore

 

I personally like the late 23rd Century Starfleet (TOS films) the most, there is still the spirit of exploration, there was a better balance of exploration, diplomacy and defense duties. The captains are a bit by the book, but still a pretty competent fleet. Followed by the 24th Century Starfleet, a lot more technical, diplomatic and starting to explore less, and Starfleet felt like a big fleet that’s starting to run out of things to do (because of the relative peace?) but shifted towards a military organization with threats like the Borg and Dominion. I am really not feeling it for the 25th and 32nd Starfleet. Maybe they have become less optimistic because of the times? FYI, the SNW Starfleet is growing on me.

 

Kelvin Universe 23rd. Or the Discovery S1-2/SNW version. I like that they have the guts to modernise everything.

 

The TOS films. I love the look everything has, like the 23rd century is just the 80s continued unabated for 300 years.

 

The 29th century. That way I could live in all eras.

 

Probably TOS films, specifially VI for the military look, but also TNG for their diplomacy/exploration.

 

Maybe a small ranking, from most-best to least-best:

3: The TOS films have a certain aesthetic that feels the most plausible - nothing garishly cluttered or littered, feels utilitarian. No replicators meant they had to keep food and other supplies on board. They never really did go into detail on the "food synthesizers", though STVI revealed a proper kitchen... and Kirk tells Charlie X that he has to sculpt synthetic meat loaf in the shape of turkeys and that simply isn't done on Scotty's hot engine, or - even less appropriately - Spock's console. The uniforms (save for TMP) look just like that - uniforms. No RGB spectacles, but subdivision hues separate to the main uniform do adorn where applicable. TMP's look like a special themed pajama party event at Studio 54. But every rule has its exception (even that one! Tell that to AI and see how it handles the resultant equivalent of a "divide by zero" or "false generalization" error with the adjective-overload verbiage, and requiring much more time to process and reply than any human could. But I digress (naaah, really?! ) )

Also, @Cmetz94 nailed it - the universe wasn't such a small place back then. In a different way, it wasn't as insanely big a one either.


4. The gripes of "space hotel" notwithstanding, there does feel like an evolutionary refinement - one that doesn't go over the top with the bulk of its concepts, though what the holodeck can or can't do every other week is borderline -- while we suspend disbelief for transporters, and replicators are now a claimed technology*, the inconsistency of holodeck use is grating, especially when its terms were largely defined in early-season 1. Of course, they didn't have script writing software and greater forms of networking back then so discontinuity and forgetting about the "Star Trek Bible" or whatever they called it is more likely to happen. There was also once a technical manual that once implied how any ship function function could be routed to any display's touch interface, even if that was rarely shown on screen. Which I agree with since:

(a) not only do our phones change interfaces between applications and home screen and they all share the same of tactile-nonresponsive glass**, it's not a big issue to generate a control panel from a centralized mainframe and push it out to any display node
(b) we've seen x-number of technological advances come about because some sci-fi script writer scribbled onto paper an idea recited by an actor who had to take what seemed to be asinine and play it with sincerity, so that the audience could buy into the "magic" as well.

Lastly, Q had to tell Picard how there were real terrors in the universe that made Klingons and Romulans seem like nothing by comparison. Which is sad, given all the weirdness that has already occurred in TNG by this point, especially in season 2 that reaffirmed this very core concept, and given how often characters in season 1 belched out comments about "the old Enterprise", it's amazing Data didn't say every week how comparatively dangerous it was when Charlie X was around or when the big space amoeba threatened to do what the giant space windsock was doing via another method a few weeks' earlier. At the same time, it's Q giving Picard another push, as finally confirmed in "All Good Things..." on how Q has been trying to help the guy in learning new perspectives all along and hoping Picard would get his head out of-- so anyway, anyone have a recipe for a stout chocolate milkshake? TNG season 2 is dreadfully underrated... TOS and early-TNG definitely had the biggest dangers to face and overcome, and didn't excess in proverbial navel-gazing until later on.


* Yay, it's footnote time! Current media hype and salivation over "3D printers" stretches credibility even worse than the TV show, since their script writers never watched the show. A show that at least kept consistent for the most part on one aspect: The replicators used energy and turned it into matter. It did not take matter and reconstitute it. The replicators shared the transporter's database, where patterns of said foodstuffs were saved. The 3d printers merely transform matter into another form using a directed thermal reaction (heat, to soften the thermoplastic filament*** with.)

** do your fingers and/or tootsies feel more sore after eight hours of typing on spring-loaded keys on on a big piece of glass with some piezo buzzer underneath vibrating for every tap?

*** this is derived from corn husks and is recyclable. Just don't tell that to anyone who's eaten dish detergent pods. Technically it is edible, unless the dyes used to create those lovely hues has incompatible if not outright toxic elements to one's biological body. But it's far, far cheaper to run out and buy a bag of corn husk leaves. They aren't any tastier. But, if nothing else, any critter that eats corn husk leaves can be fed that little plastic figurine once you're done with it. But if you really want tons of raccoons and deer roaming around every night at the same time, go right ahead with that award-losing idea.

 

TNG era. Find a nice uninhabited Class M planet close to the core worlds, not colonized due to....reasons, and do a long term backpacking.

 

TOS movie era, followed closely by TOS / SNW era.

 

TOS 23rd century.

 

Classic 23rd Century TOS/Movies...

 

Early TNG era, before Berman and Piller took over and the retcon with the Cardassian border wars.

Seemed to be a really fascinating and somehow less mundane setting.

 

First season TOS when space was vast with human expansion and exploration still relevant.

 

This one because it feels the most wide open.

 

While I don't like many of the episodes of Season 1 and 2, and I do think the tone was sometimes downright insane, I do think that early TNG had a certain exotic feel to it that was lost with later seasons when early 90s beige started to creep in.
I still wonder how TNG would have developed if they had been allowed to explore things like Wesley possibly being Picard and Beverly's love-child.

 

The 25th Century.

I like the 32nd Century better for the design aesthetic, but certainly not the tactical or exploratory situation.

Before someone asks me, "What about the late-23rd Century?" Way ahead of you. Unless you're on Kirk's ship, Starfleet sucks.

 

TOS era.

 

My favorite would be the 24th Century time period shown in the TNG series (not so much in the TNG films, but I tend to enjoy Trek TV series far more than the films anyway).

 

More literally the TOS movie era/ 2280s.

If I were to make a show it'd be exactly between kirk and picard.

So 2310s.