What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

Turtletrekker seems to agree.

 

I think it's possible, but it has to feel organic, it has to feel unforced, and whoever's doing it has to fully commit to the idea. And it has to be a half-hour!

 

There is no strong reason it couldn’t work. A halfway house between SNW and LDS.

Yes.

Moving on. One not so controversial, the second, maybe.

Controversial Opinion 1

TNG Is Not A Dumpster Fire

The TNG crew and TNG itself are as much an important part of popular culture as TOS. It’s still possible to see TNG broadcast somewhere, every day, all over the world. It has endured.

As these things do, favour seems to have waned for it in recent years in fan circles. But on the whole, it’s a brilliant show. It may be of its time, but as far as TV sci-fi goes, it is the best of its time by far.

Controversial Opinion 2

Star Trek No Longer Sits On The TV Sci-fi Throne
(and it hasn’t done for quite some time).

Star Trek really struggles for relevancy in the present TV landscape. It has spent the last 20+ years adjusting to the idea of no longer being the biggest sci-fi game in town. Time was, TOS/TNG were the best in terms of spaceship-bound TV science fiction, but since… oooh… around the late Nineties onwards, TV sci-fi has blossomed.

In the 80s/90s, something like SNW would have been the science fiction show on TV. These days SNW is just one of many excellent science fiction shows on TV, but it’s far from being the most popular or even the best.

Same goes for the cinema. Not that many good space-movies in the 1980s. Less for something like say, TVH to compete with, so boom, profit! These days, Star Trek is a small fish in a big pond as far as the Box Office goes.

 

In the '00s, my go-to sci-fi series of the time were Farscape and Battlestar Galactica.

Until Discovery came along, I didn't really watch any new sci-fi series in the '10s. Picard finally prompted me to go back to watch The 12 Monkeys, which I'm working my way through right now and I'm enjoying it. The Expanse is another one I want to see. I've heard about how good it is from people who I'm more inclined to agree with.

The less I say about cinema, the better. Not much from the late-'00s right up until Barbenheimer really interested me. I'm really hoping Barbenheimer is the game-changer I'm hoping it'll be. Sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, comic book movies, and a non-stop onslaught of PG-13 movies turned me off from a good decade-and-a-half of movies. As far as I'm concerned, Streaming TV has been where it's at. TV has been better than movies for quite a while now.

Even with Trek. I preferred the Streaming Series to the Abrams Films. Though, once again, the bubble is bursting even there. The stuff I liked better is ending. The stuff I'm not that interested in is continuing. My time is just about up. At least for the Kurtzman Era. Even SFA, if it wasn't for the Disco connection, I probably wouldn't even be bothering with it.

 

I’ve been saying this for years now. TV offers long form storytelling opportunities that the cinema just can’t match. I’m interested to watch Oppenheimer, but I’d be more interested if it was a six part mini-series because I’d just get more out of it.

ETA - There have however been many good movies over the last 15 years. With respect, I think it’s a bit silly to say otherwise.

 

Didn't say there weren't any, just not many that interested me. Sticking in-genre: Interstellar was good, and I liked Prometheus. I also liked Ex Machina.

Blade Runner 2049 was a huge disappointment. Not a bad movie by any means but, whatever I was expecting, it wasn't that.

Comic Book Movies are a wash for me. With very few exceptions, I'm just not interested in them. But if I wanted to talk about those, I'll just go talk to my brother IRL. He loves all that stuff. And I don't. The End.

EDITED TO ADD: I also liked a genre movie called Beyond the Black Rainbow from 2010, that I'm dead-certain no one else has heard of. I saw it on Netflix. Pretty trippy and out-there. Definitely not a normal movie. That's why I like it.

DOUBLE-EDITED TO ADD: The new Dune is good too. That's a remake I can get behind, because I didn't think the 1984 version was very good at all. I can only really support remakes and reboots if the previous version wasn't good or didn't do the concept proper justice.

Driving it back to Trek: That's probably why I haven't been enthusiastic about the Kelvin Films or SNW. As far as I'm concerned, we already have TOS, which I think was done well. So, I have this unconscious tendency to look at them a bit slanty-eyed. My mind goes, "No. You're not TOS!" Can't help it. But, at the same time, they've added things that TOS itself didn't cover, and they're not covering the exact same ground as TOS, so I can't look at them completely slanty-eyed. So, it's more of a gray area, and not so cut-and-dried.

 

Completely agreed about TNG. It's why I became a science fiction fan to begin with. (Specifically, Data.) TNG made its mark well.

As for STAR TREK not being the top dog anymore, I am forced to agree. Hasn't been true since the turn of the millennium. My first love is STAR TREK (and it always will be), but my favorite series is FARSCAPE. FARSCAPE and BSG really broke ground in the 2000s, and we've had a number of really, really great shows since.

And it's nothing to be ashamed of. No one stays at the top forever. But STAR TREK should at least be respected for what it gave us for all these years.

There's really only two tv scifi franchises older than ST... DOCTOR WHO and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, though I hesitate to call it a franchise despite the number of revivals it's had. It's still a landmark series, and one I hold in the absolutely highest regard for shows.

But ST still has the ability to draw in the imaginations of many people and inspire them. Even after 57 years. That's not small potatoes.

 

Do people say that?

Because it's awesome.

That's pretty much conventional wisdom, isn't it?

 

From my perspective, I’ve seen a growing trend within fandom to dismiss it.

It may just be me.

 

Just one of the byproducts of the board having a Pro-TOS, Pro-DS9, Pro-SNW bend. That makes TNG "that other series!" in relation to TOS and DS9 for different reasons, and it makes PIC "that other series!" in relation to SNW.

I think VOY, ENT, and DSC have been treated worse.

 

I am skeptical that Star trek legacy will happen.

 

Well, for me, at the time when TNG had turned into a simple action-adventure and/or soap opera with little or no "actual science fiction," there was this fantastic TV series adaptation of Alien Nation that was giving us amazing "hard science fiction" stories that examined humanity from an outside point of view, humanity's reaction to alien ways and alien tech, etc. I really thought Alien Nation was the best sci fi on TV for the year it was on (the 1989-90 season).

 

Alien Nation was a good show.

YMMV on what is the best of course, but TNG is at least in the top-tier of it's time.

 

Did you watch Everything, Everywhere All At Once yet?

 

For me STNG is the best of any series ever made, not just from the era it was made.
Could it be that at least for me it doesn't look dated (season 3 onwards) because I was first introduced to it when it wasn't that old in the 90s.

 

I dunno...Voyager is up there. I do love watching me some Borg go boom.

 

I'm watching that right before I dive back into Discovery.

Right now I'm working my way through The 12 Monkeys. Then re-watching Picard Season 3 in one day (on a day off from work). Then Everything, Everywhere All At Once, then back into Discovery from the beginning in the lead-up to the fifth season. After Discovery Season 5 is done, it's onto The Expanse.

EDITED TO ADD: After The Expanse, I'm actually going to go all the way back to before TOS... and watch The Lieutenant.

So, I've got everything mapped out, for what I'm going to watch for the rest of 2023 and into 2024. I'll have no shortage of material, even with the Strikes.

 

I could see them doing a movie but not a full series.

 

How about a series of movies?