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What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

What was so bad about them, if we had genetic enhancements in our time many parents would use it

I'm sure they would. Though, the risks that came with it make that picture a lot more problematic - but I wasn't talking about the engineering, anyway. The characters just did not make a good impression on me at all. Their relationship with Bashir did not feel right at all and the way they acted around others did not sit well with me either. If I met them in real life I would not be particularly inclined to trust them.
 
I'd feel that way about a lot of characters on Trek, though... and not just Quark.

Though definitely Quark.
 
What was so bad about them, if we had genetic enhancements in our time many parents would use it

Other than "Star Trek says so" , nothing really. For a long time (until the Kelvin movies? Discovery? I'm not sure) Star Trek seemed very averse to most forms of transhumanism, be it genetic engineering, cloning or cybernetics. It seemed the cybernetics allowed was for handicapped people, like Geordie. I mean just remember everybody being cool with Riker murdering his clone in "Up the Long Ladder"
It's part of this whole "in the future everybody is happy with what/who they are, always, and also accepts that they will die" thing older Trek liked to push.
I was actually quite surprised to see

Rutherford being a cyborg and encountering absolutely no distrust or prejudice because of that in Lower Decks.

It reflected anxieties of the time, as far as I can tell; fear of a genetically enhanced super-race making us all redundant, "cybernetics eat your soul" stuff like that. Especially TOS still came out at a time when artificial insemination was still controversial, due to no natural conception taking place, and even during the 80s/90s/2000s eras GMOs were still hugely controversial, so of course a lot of people at the time wouldn't have reacted well to the idea that the main characters might be "enhanced" in one way or another.
And yeah, if misused genetic engineering of humans could lead to bad things, caste systems, people created for specific tasks, but when used with care it could also do good.

And I'm willing to bet they actually did use a lot of genetic enhacements in the TOS/TNG/90s Trek universes anyway. Things like engineering a immunity/resistance to cancer, filtering/ in-utero correction of birth defects, removal of genetic prepositions towards mental illness, addiction and hereditary diseases. Stuff like that. They just didn't like the idea of "enhancing" somebody beyond a level which they deemed "human".
Though this again brings back the issue...if Bashir really was mentally handicapped as a child (as the episode tries to paint it, imho) why wasn't that corrected before he was born? Or why didn't his enhancement fall under the same, acceptable, category as Geordie's visor?
 
And naturally Discovery season 1 Klingons are the coolest version followed closely by The Original Series, and that's the list. Worf and all the 90's Klingons I lump in with the Borg, in that, "I don't get it... "

The TNG Klingon look is the best for me! And i love how they acknowledged that the TOS klingons looked differently in DS9: Trials and Tribble-ations (we do not discuss this with outsiders!)
I wonder if we will ever see all three klingon looks in another time travel episode. That would be.... interesting :lol:
 
Ironically, one of the two most interesting characters in the mirror universe was Nazi Odo (the other being Kinky Kira). Sadly, he got bumped early on. Why couldn't they have snuffed Scruffy Bashir instead?
Because they probably didn't expect to ever do another Mirror Universe episode on DS9, so why not go for broke?
Speaking of Scruffy Bashir though, it's a safe bet there was no genetic enhancement services for enslaved Terrans. So why didn't Mr. Scruffy have the intelligence of a brick, like Jules Bashir did?
Bashir says something along the lines of "You never gave me a chance to see if I'd get smarter" to his parents in "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", so presumably Mirror-Bashir did overcome his early learning difficulties and get smarter with age. But I seem to remember Alexander Siddig describing Mirror-Bashir as everything regular Julian was not, and called him "stupid" (Although maybe he was only stupid relative to Dr. Bashir).

But of course the real reason is that when they did that Mirror Universe episode, the DS9 writers hadn't yet conceived the idea that Bashir had been genetically enhanced.
 
Controversial ST opinion: TNG's "The Inner Light", "I, Borg", and "The Drumhead" ain't all that. I found them all pretty clunky and obvious, frankly.
 
The TNG Klingon look is the best for me! And i love how they acknowledged that the TOS klingons looked differently in DS9: Trials and Tribble-ations (we do not discuss this with outsiders!)
I wonder if we will ever see all three klingon looks in another time travel episode. That would be.... interesting :lol:
I agree, "normal" Klingon appearance is pre-ENT and TNG+. The Klingons are apparently embarrassed that their race was "reduced" to a human-looking form during ENT, followed by another embarrassing and overly-aggressive mutation to Kling-Orc tossed in before DSC, then to repeating the embarrassment of regression back to human-looking before TOS. Thank goodness the Klingons were able to start fixing the genetic flaws in time for the TOS movies and stabilize their race to original Klingon by TNG. :klingon:

This experience should be a warning to any race of the dangers of eugenics. Humans and Klingons both learned these lessons the hard way, with the Klingons suffering most from the experience.
 
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I agree, "normal" Klingon appearance is pre-ENT and TNG+. The Klingons are apparently embarrassed that their race was "reduced" to a human-looking form during ENT, followed by another embarrassing and overly-aggressive mutation to Kling-Orc tossed in before DSC, then to repeating the embarrassment of regression back to human-looking before TOS. Thank goodness the Klingons were able to start fixing the genetic flaws in time for the TOS movies and stabilize their race to original Klingon by TNG. :klingon:
I think the DSC Klingons were the early attempt to correct the Augment Virus that backfired and went too far. I think there were still TOS Klingons and TNG Klingons around during the first two seasons of DSC and we just didn't see them. Once they figured out how to get back to being TNG Klingons, they treated all the TOS and DSC Klingons.

Klingons in TMP were close and in TSFS they were virtually all the way there.
 
But of course the real reason is that when they did that Mirror Universe episode, the DS9 writers hadn't yet conceived the idea that Bashir had been genetically enhanced.

Good point... I call that a "world under construction" inconsistency. My favorite non-Trek example is that for two long years, Harry Potter never once noticed that all his older classmates periodically disappeared from Hogwarts a few times each term. JK Rowling had not yet added Hogsmeade to her world.
 
Though this again brings back the issue...if Bashir really was mentally handicapped as a child (as the episode tries to paint it, imho) why wasn't that corrected before he was born? Or why didn't his enhancement fall under the same, acceptable, category as Geordie's visor?
Visors and cybernetic eyes won't turn a human into a meglomaniac but genetic enhancements will. Yeah I know the idea behind that concept is utterly stupid. Star Trek needs to retcon the 'genetic enhancements is a bad idea', its nonsense.
There was/is nothing enhanced about the megalomaniacs we dealt with in real history. Who says people with superior intellect want to run the world, the folks with that tendency are the complete opposite of 'superior intellect'
 
Visors and cybernetic eyes won't turn a human into a meglomaniac but genetic enhancements will. Yeah I know the idea behind that concept is utterly stupid. Star Trek needs to retcon the 'genetic enhancements is a bad idea', its nonsense.
There was/is nothing enhanced about the megalomaniacs we dealt with in real history. Who says people with superior intellect want to run the world, the folks with that tendency are the complete opposite of 'superior intellect'
It's the legacy of Star Trek's World War II roots. All that talk of the Übermensch.
 
Controversial ST opinion: TNG's "The Inner Light", "I, Borg", and "The Drumhead" ain't all that. I found them all pretty clunky and obvious, frankly.
Subtle isn't Star Trek strong suite, but it's a wonder the audience didn't get concussions the way The Drumhead was hammering us all over the heads with it's obviousness.

It's a witch-hunt, okay we get it already.
 
Subtle isn't Star Trek strong suite, but it's a wonder the audience didn't get concussions the way The Drumhead was hammering us all over the heads with it's obviousness.

It's a witch-hunt, okay we get it already.
It's right there in the title. ;)
 
Ok, I have one that's unpopular and controversial.

I actually liked TNG season 2 finale, "Shades of Grey". Now unlike the film Nemesis, which I never really understood the amount of hate that movie gets, I can understand why "Shades of Grey" is not liked.

I actually agree with the criticisms, but for whatever reason I still like it. Sort of like how I like "Spock's Brain". The criticisms are valid but I still like it :nyah:
 
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It's not horrible and the minimalist sets add to the atmosphere. Katheryn Hays' performance is good, too.

Yeah, I liked the unusual sets and lighting effects as well.

I always liked "Spectre of the Gun" as well. The sets there were similarly minimalistic, by design in that case. I liked how Chekov even went through a door, instead of around the wall at one point.

And that was my first exposure to the Gunfight of the OK Corral and for years because of that episode I thought the Clantons were the good guys and the Earps the bad guys.
 
It's not horrible and the minimalist sets add to the atmosphere. Katheryn Hays' performance is good, too.

And the background music and soundtrack are beautiful.

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