What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I was home sick last week and watched Nemesis for the first time since seeing it in a theater 20 years ago (with smartasses being smartassy).

It's... not unwatchable. In fact, I think the first half is pretty decent. The TNG folks work as an ensemble and are fun & funny. Shinzon is charismatic and knows how to hold attention well in a scene (I think that Hardy guy might have a future). Mysteries are mysterious.

Then it all sort of... became an action movie with Picard and Data and a madman villain. BTDT.

I heard they left about 1/3 of the movie on the cutting room floor (and I can believe it) but it still seemed like 2 different movies.

The biggest thing I notice with all 4 TNG movies is they could (should?) have been better.

I'm glad I saw them again. I don't feel I wasted time or anything like that. But something McFadden said in a recent interview came back to me: this cast works best as a group (not as One or Two Stars and a Backup Cast). I truly hope Picard S3 gets that right.

 

I say publically accepted because that's what was on DSC, so presumably that's what the S31 series will be if it happens.

If they stuck to your blueprint here I'd be fine with that. I still think it makes more sense for them to never be officially acknowledged at all, but that would be a reasonable compromise.

As someone else said, Nechayev isn't a good example given the extreme nature and aggressiveness of the Borg as well as that fact that SF at that point had no other possible hope for defending themselves and not even the slightest indication that it was even at all possible to talk to the Borg.

And Ross fits what I'm talking about just fine, because his actions were never public. I'm not saying the Federation has no bad or questionable actors in its upper ranks. It clearly does and I have no objection to that being explored. The point is that the Federation is a symbol which is important to the story and needs to be preserved in that symbolism. So while such people can exist in the story, they need to face major backlash if their actions are clearly public. Not because every higher officer in Starfleet 'must' disagree with them but because the weight of opinion from the majority of Starfleet and the Federation wouldn't allow otherwise.

 

But there was no clear public acceptance in Discovery either. They were more open but their presentation was also treated as an intelligence division, not an "at all costs, morally dubious," organization. Which goes to my idea of they present in a possible legitimate way, but act out more suspect. But I don't see the public knowledge thing.

 

Pike didn't trust S31 from the very beginning. He must have heard stories.

 

You’d watch The Storyteller TEN times?!

 

That episode is not great, but it definitely isn't the bottom of the barrel. (My wife thought it was boring, though.)

I have already made my list of the worst 5 episodes..

5. "LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN..."
4. "THE RECKONING"
3. "PRODIGAL DAUGHTER"
2. "THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOAK"
1. "PROFIT AND LACE" (worst episode)

 

"Let He Who Is Without Sin..." is bad even by Religious Right entertainment standards.

 

It is a terrible episode. It's only good scene is Worf telling Dax about his childhood soccer scenario, which explains the why of Worf.

That's the reason I placed it 5th instead of 4th. (Ben's decision to potentially sacrifice his son does far greater damage to his character.)

 

This is true (Even though I think Profit and Lace is worse), but I also liked Vanessa Williams.

Maybe that in itself is a controversial opinion.

 

There are several religious movies I'd watch before it.

 

Indeed. Each and every one of them falls short somehow.

I think part of that is a lack of connection between them. TWoK, TSfS and TVH hang together as a trilogy. Events from one bleed into the next in a way that feels like it matters.

There’s no sense of continuity between any of the TNG movies, an egregious example being that they don’t know what to do with Data’s emotion chip beyond GEN.

I think they are a shitshow from start to finish. Even the much lauded FC leaves me feeling empty.

Maybe the lesson is, don’t let the TV people try to write your movies.

 

Oh! I got one! Generations is the best looking TNG movie. Never in seven years did the Enterprise D feel so real.

 

Or a good TV series doesn't necessarily translate well to the big screen?
For me STNG ends with 'All Good Things...'.

 

It may be the best looking Trek movie PERIOD.

 

For me that’s ST09. 14 years on and still looks stunning.

 

The amount of lens flares is another issue I have with it. It's so distracting.

Bruce Springsteen must have been to the future, saw this movie, went back in time, and wrote "Blinded By the Light" because of STAR TREK 09.

 

Same here. Love it from top to bottom. Most Trek movies have that one scene I skip, usually because it's overly long or distracting. This film doesn't have that.

 

The cinematography in Picard's Ready Room when Riker reports the findings aboard the Amargosa Observatory may be the most sumptuous set lighting I've seen in a Trek film.

 

Here's a controversial opinion: The extensive use of lens flares in ST09 was a good thing, because it helps firmly ground that film's visual language in a level of stylization that had previously been absent in Trek and that absence had been needlessly artistically prohibitive.

 

I never noticed it until I watched BTS footage and was told "This is bad!"