i can't get past DS9 Season One which I liked. Individual later season episodes are OK but I don't know maybe the overall political the Federation is useless message is too depressing for me... Maybe I don't really like the characters...
There is only one series that has left me baffled, in cold bewilderment, and conclusively disappointed. The rest I love equally like Dr. Phlox loves his wives.
ENT : I actually liked Enterprise. Archer was all right with me. Sato, Mayweather and Reed were okay. Trip was jarring to me. T'Pol was shady as hell. DS9 : I dislike DS9. Sisko was overrated. My least liked and least watched star trek show. VOY : I don't understand the hate some trekkies have for VOY. It was a fun show. Janeway was the best Captain.The Doctor was easily my favorite character after Janeway of course. TOS: I think Kirk got to be Captain of the Enterprise because he was the only human around who applied for the job and the Federation had a quota of Human captains to fulfil. TNG : Picard was good but Riker should have been made Captain of Enterprise much earlier. Picard could have been a Federation Diplomat if he just took an early retirement from Starfleet. Discovery : I like Michael Burnham so far.
Well that's basically true, almost, about all series except TOS, which always has at least a little bit of something special in almost all episodes. DS9's distinction is that they kept the quality level up fairly high, considering how much filler there was. It needs to win an award for Best Filler. Enterprise, they forgot to do some non-filler. And the filler wasn't good filler. Next Gen, it looks amazing, if you whittle it down to three seasons, tops.
Like: (A little clichéd, I know, but still so true) The utopian view on humanity that encompasses the Star Trek universe without sacrificing the qualities that make us human beings, like our individuality and fallibility but willingness to do the right thing when we can. The equality presented in the show is inspiring, where petty things like racism and sexism are not only a thing of the past, they are viewed as detrimental to the success of the species, and are more relevant now in today's political climate than they were before in my relatively short life so far. Dystopian views are a dime a dozen, and it's not hard to see why when you see the things humanity is capable of doing today, but it is refreshing to see a future where we have progressed instead of regressed. I also love the thoughtful approach that Star Trek takes, as opposed to mindless action, as well as the focus on the characters, instead of just on the fantastic worlds and sci-fi storylines that were created around these characters. Even in the late 60s, there was always a subtle message that reflected some part of us without beating the audience over the head with it and never came off as preachy. Not that there's no room for action in Star Trek, (case in point: Star Trek: Beyond which I love) but it was almost more subdued than most sci-fi shows I have seen. On that point,the franchiset gave rise to some of my favorite movies of all time as well, including Galaxy Quest. Dislike: The ENT theme song and the squandered potential, the first two Kelvin timeline movies, Star Trek V, Star Trek:: Insurrection, the fact that Uhura, Chekov and Sulu were never used properly in TOS, characters that annoyed the hell out of me like Keiko O'Brien, Deanna Troi and Wesley Crusher, the first two seasons of TNG in general and the fact that Roddenberry was so opposed to some of my most beloved Star Trek media. Mainly though, I dislike how uninspired most of the aliens look, most of them look humans with some minor changes, eg: Vulcans, Romulans, Bajorans and many more. Hell, the first appearance of the Klingons were dudes with mud smeared on their faces and the Borg, a species that had supposedly assimilated thousands of species, but all looked like humans with machines stuck on them and you have something that doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. The very fact that we live on a planet with millions of species that look so little like humanoids except for a select few makes the fact that there is even one other species, on a completely different solar system no less, that evolved along similar lines so implausible, it sometimes drops my suspension of disbelief. I understand the practical reasons of why they chose to do this, especially with TOS and their tight budgets, but I have recently watched all of Farscape and the things they managed to do with the aid of Jim Henson's creature company are absolutely phenomenal. I don't know, the shows took different approaches, and maybe I'm old enough to view practical effects with a sense of nostalgia, but Voyager ran during the same time for it's later seasons and Enterprise premiered a couple of years after, but neither of those shows had the imagination that Farscape had in their designs, in my opinion.
That's a deliberate stylistic choice. Michael Westmore was the man behind the make-up from the TOS movies all the way to Enterprise, and he took a minimalist approach when it came to aliens. It's not that they couldn't do very elaborate alien designs, as seen in all the sci fi from the 80's and 90's, it's that he and others wanted the audience to be able to connect with the aliens. It allows the actors to act, to use their facial expressions and eyes. You can cover someone in heavy make-up and prosthtics, and animatronic masks, and make them look more and more alien, but you lose that connection to the person who's doing the acting. It makes Star Trek(and other shows who have also taken this approach) unique, and it better serves the stories they're trying to tell. That's not to say Star Trek hasn't done more alien, aliens. They are just used for a different purpose in the stories that they appear.
That's true, and I do understand what they were trying to do with their reflections on humanity. It's just a personal thing that's bugged me, didn't really expect many other fans to agree with the sentiment. I always did appreciate what they tried to say when they did that as they helped us relate to them, like when they had vulcan-human hybrids like Spock, two species that could not possibly have compatible genealogies but were no doubt meant to be an analogy for mixed races at the time, but still, it does take away some of the believability of Star Trek as a realistic view of our future, at least for me.