Unpopular Trek Opinions — What Are Yours?

[C.E. Evans]

Mine...

- Starfleet is best defined as a multipurpose space agency, not a military nor a exploration fleet or any one single thing.

- Starfleet consisted of less than 5000 ships by the 24th-Century, with most of them being small ships.

- There's nothing wrong with women in miniskirts aboard starships, especially if they're not in security or engineering.

- Insurrection was slightly better than First Contact.

- Final Frontier was better than Nemesis.

- Nemesis wasn't all that terribly bad on second viewing.

- Series V should have been a 24th-Century series about a non-Starfleet vessel with a former Starfleet officer as its captain.

- VOY's basic lost-in-space premise was terrible.

- Star Trek will return to TV sooner than some people expect (or even like) it to.

- We haven't seen the last of the Prime Universe.

- Canon and continuity are two separate things, but adhering to either is not necessarily a bad thing if done to tell new stories.

- Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman both have been unfairly given a lot of credit and a lot of blame for things they didn't do.

- The NX-class is a cool ship...for sometime after TOS.

- The sets for Star Trek XI, ENT, VOY, etc., are made out of the same "cardboard" that the TOS sets were made of. They're just bigger, more stylish, and use more video screens.

- Star Trek XI took place in an alternate universe from the very start and that the destruction of the Kelvin only really changed the life of the Kirk in that universe.

 

[T'Girl]

Mine...

- Star Trek XI took place in an alternate universe from the very start and that the destruction of the Kelvin only really changed the life of the Kirk in that universe.

THIS.

Much of ST eleven makes more sense if the universe shown was different before Nero came through time. Also if Spock and Nero came from a universe other than the prime universe, a universe were a single super nova COULD threaten the entire galaxy.

 

[Bill Morris]

Trek deserves better. (Read into that what you like.)

 

[Kai Winn]

troi is a pest. crusher is a catastrophe. i like kim, and neelix. treshold is a decent episode, and voyager the best of the series.

 

[Cheapjack]

The Q being is actually an advanced, superior, lifeform and we can all learn from him and advance past our savagery.

 

[plynch]

Patrick Stewart's accent makes Americans think he's a better actor than he is.

HA! Thank you.

How about: I like Ferengi episodes. Their dialog often sounds like how real people talk, especially Quark's delivery. And I like how the see through the Federation's pomposity.

 

[Anwar]

Ron Moore is a whiner when it comes to his complaints about other Trek shows, and he's not a good showrunner beyond one season. He can't write a REAL ending or REALLY explain show mysteries to save his life.

Berman and Braga aren't bad dudes, they're scapegoats by the fans who don't want to do their homework and find the people REALLY responsible for the stuff they don't like in Trek.

VOY and ENT weren't horrible series

DS9 and TOS are not the pinnacles of Trek

Dukat was always an evil bastard, and his storyline was logical all the way to the end

The Federation isn't worse than the antagonist empires of Trek.

 

[kes7]

Voyager is my favorite Trek series.

I'm still interested in the Borg.

I even liked the Borg kids.

The Federation has the potential to be the galaxy's worst nightmare.

I think the design of the Enterprise (all of them) is stupid -- mostly because of bridge placement. One good shot to the very visible bullseye, and your command staff is gone.

Klingons are boring.

Jean-Luc Picard is a pompous, self-righteous ass.

I loved TMP.

I also loved ST09.

 

[B.J.]

I hate TNG's The Inner Light.

 

[Shazam!]

25. The porn industry shouldn't be allowed to tarnish the image of Star Trek.

Yeah, that should be left to the Abrams' films.

 

[RandyS]

I liked Robin Curtis more than Kirstey Alley.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one.

Count me in. I don't hate Alley, just liked Curtis better. Of course I'm biased there because Robin is the only Trek actor I've ever met in person. Nice lady.

Here are other opinions I have that are unpopular:

1. City on the Edge of Forever is boring and stupid.
2. The Inner Light is boring and stupid
3. TATV is better than both of the above but still pretty bad
4. The Alternative Factor is one of TOS' best episodes
5. Trip is the worst character ever created for Star Trek. Even Luxwana (who I hate passionately and unconditionally) wasn't as annoying.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Star Trek: First Contact is mediocre.
Lwaxana Troi, Keiko O'Brien and Alexander Rozhenko were good characters.
Deep Space Nine peaked before the Dominion War.
The following episodes are overrated: The Menagerie, Starship Mine, The Way of the Warrior, In the Pale Moonlight, Distant Origin, Dark Frontier.

 

[Lor'Vela]

5. Trip is the worst character ever created for Star Trek. Even Luxwana (who I hate passionately and unconditionally) wasn't as annoying.

Excellent!

I find the character to be highly immature, and this "brilliant engineer" that is so often mentioned seems to stem more from the scriptwriters forcing him to be that way rather than getting a natural impression as you would with, say Scotty.

 

[plynch]

I like Voyager. I think that's a minority opinion.

 

[Lor'Vela]

^ It might be if you claim it as your favourite Trek series.

 

[Saito S]

I like Voyager. I think that's a minority opinion.

As Lor'Vela points out, I don't think liking Voyager, even marginally, is really all that rare, based on my own observations, anyway. But saying it's your favorite of all five, that would definitely be a "minority opinion."

I am seeing a lot of opinions in this thread that I don't think are "unpopular" or "minority", though. It'll be interesting to see if anyone looks at mine and thinks the same thing, that I think it's an uncommon viewpoint but maybe someone else encounters the same sentiment all the time.

-TOS is not a very good show. It has a small handful of really great eps, a large number of mediocre eps, and a HELL of a lot of stinkers. I respect it as the franchise starter, and it was great for its time and certainly groundbreaking, but it's my second least favorite behind Enterprise in terms of purely enjoying what I'm watching. And it's NOT because of the outdated visual effects.
-Starship officers + miniskirts (or catsuits! They are not exempt simply because they were from later Trek) = what the hell were you thinking. William Ware Theiss was a hack who wouldn't know good fashion sense or sex appeal if it walked up and kicked his ass.
-The original Enterprise is one of my least favorite ships in Trek. Like the show itself, I respect that it was unlike any other ship design of its time, and it laid the groundwork for all of Trek's later ships, but I find it pretty ugly. The refits (TMP and STXI) are both vast improvements, but neither are among my favorite Starfleet designs.
-TWOK is highly overrated. I give it a 5 out of 10.
-GEN is highly underrated. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.
-While I did feel Insurrection and Nemesis both overflowed with problems, I still enjoy them more than any TOS movie except TVH and TUC.
-All of that said, the movies (all of them - from TMP to STXI) are not as good as the best of the shows. Several of the movies are mediocre to bad, and even the good ones I view simply as side-story fluff pieces, just there to have a good, fun, big-screen romp. The best part of the TV shows are the real core of Trek's visual medium.
-Certain novels (specifically, books from the post-DS9/post-Nemesis/Destiny continuity) have matched and even slightly surpassed the very best of any of the shows as my favorite part of Trek, in terms of pure writing and character development.
-Klingons are cool. We got an overdose of them during TNG, but I still find them interesting. And the Klingons as shown in TNG and (especially) late DS9 are far more interesting than the "WE'RE ASSHOLES BECAUSE WE LIKE TO BE ASSHOLES BWAHAHA" Klingons from TOS.
-The Federation is not secretly some kind of evil, fascist, expansionist state, whose stated moral values are just a farce and a cover up, and whose citizens are cultural slaves and don't even realize it. Eddington made some decent points in concept, but only as they pertained to the Maquis, and he severely overstated his case. The Federation is not even close to being as bad as the Borg, let alone worse. The UFP and Starfleet do more good than harm, for their own citizens and for the galaxy around them.
-The Federation is not some kind of ultimate, holy, do-gooder state whose citizens will always do the right thing no matter what. Neither their population, nor their government are 100% free of corruption, dangerous ambition, greed, or plain bad judgement. Starfleet is not 100% free of those things, either.

(I've seen both sides of that Fed argument brought up many times on this board and other places over the years. I'm really not sure which one is more "unpopular", so I thought I'd cover both, since I don't buy either extreme, myself. )

 

[Finn]

The following episodes are overrated: The Menagerie, Starship Mine, The Way of the Warrior, In the Pale Moonlight, Distant Origin, Dark Frontier.

It is? I don't recall that one on the top ten lists for most posters.

 

[Withers]

You know what...

I don't care for the visual of TOS and since it is a television show that makes it hard for me to watch/enjoy it. I'm not even going to preface that with respect for it as the founding series or pad it with a statement about how I loved some of the TOS era movies because I don't want to feel like I'm trying to dodge a bullet. The visuals of TOS are a problem for me and I do not enjoy them.

-Withers-​

 

[muzzleflash]

You know what...

I don't care for the visual of TOS and since it is a television show that makes it hard for me to watch/enjoy it. I'm not even going to preface that with respect for it as the founding series or pad it with a statement about how I loved some of the TOS era movies because I don't want to feel like I'm trying to dodge a bullet. The visuals of TOS are a problem for me and I do not enjoy them.

-Withers-​

Agreed. The visual component of television and movies can be just as important as the writing and plot. Like, they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So 24 frames per second for 45 minutes is...a lot of words.

 

[Warped9]

You know what...

I don't care for the visual of TOS and since it is a television show that makes it hard for me to watch/enjoy it. I'm not even going to preface that with respect for it as the founding series or pad it with a statement about how I loved some of the TOS era movies because I don't want to feel like I'm trying to dodge a bullet. The visuals of TOS are a problem for me and I do not enjoy them.

-Withers-​

Wow. I'd never have guessed.