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What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I'm one of those odd Trekkies who prefers the first few season of TNG more than the later ones. Seasons 1-3 are my jam. I like season 4 too. But seasons 5-7 are hit or miss with me. 7 is filled with more stinkers than season one.

Oh, and I prefer the first two season uniforms over the season 3 onward. And I'm Team Pulaski.
 
Seasons 2-6 of TNG are an unbelievable run. There’s nuggets in 1 & 7 but 2-6 are great.

DS9 gets better every year, with the exception of its last two. Season 5 is ‘all cylinders’ DS9, for me, with season 6 just about equalling it. 7 falls somewhere between 4&6. Which is no small feat though.

I’d have to think for a while on Voyager. I’m one of those who thinks season one is actually an ok start and season 2 a let down in comparison but I don’t really remember the other seasons distinctly enough to compare them. Is season 5 the good one there and the rest varying degrees of meh with the odd gold episode here and there?
 
VOY started in amazing fashion but then limped through much of its first three seasons. Seasons 4, 5 and 6 are the best of the entire series. 7 has some very strong episodes and would almost rival the three earlier seasons.

ENT had a really good first season then went into a serious sophomore slump with Year 2 having more "meh" or disappointing episodes than good or great, but the good and great ones were REALLY terrific. 3 and 4 are the best seasons hands down.
 
DS9 gets better every year, with the exception of its last two. Season 5 is ‘all cylinders’ DS9, for me, with season 6 just about equalling it. 7 falls somewhere between 4&6. Which is no small feat though.

IMHO DS9 peaked in Season 4, where there were no bad episodes other than Rules of Engagement (the weird "Klingon law drama" episode). Season 5 was a slight step down. Season 6 was weird, in that the first 2/3rds were about the same as Season 5, and then once In The Pale Moonlight aired, everything thereafter (other than Valiant) was shit. Then it recovered a bit once again for Season, though it wasn't as strong as 4/5.
 
For me, honestly, TNG doesn't get any better than season 3. That's when Michael Piller took over, and we started seeing names like Ronald Moore, Renee Eccevaria and Ira Steven Behr in the credits and all their ideas for the franchise were fresh. The writing staff was at its strongest. The show finally had a direction and the characters just shined like no other season.
 
TNG S3-5 were peak TNG for me. It was starting to feel long in the tooth by S6 and in S7 you could tell they were running on fumes getting ready for the movie.

DS9 was great from S3-7. But S7 does suffer from the Dax problem. It gets too dragged down by having “Ezri episodes” to try and catch us up on her character. The quasi-downer ending for Ben, Kassidy and Jake is a thumbs down as well.

if there was a peak Voyager season for me it was 4. But every season from 2-7 had its moments.

I thought Enterprise got steadily better as it went along.
 
VOY started in amazing fashion but then limped through much of its first three seasons. Seasons 4, 5 and 6 are the best of the entire series. 7 has some very strong episodes and would almost rival the three earlier seasons.

ENT had a really good first season then went into a serious sophomore slump with Year 2 having more "meh" or disappointing episodes than good or great, but the good and great ones were REALLY terrific. 3 and 4 are the best seasons hands down.

I like Voyager from Season 4 onwards 'cause Seven brings some much needed antagonism onboard. I wish they had leaned into the Federation/Maquis dichotomy in the first few seasons through Chakotay and Janeway. On the bridge they are professional, but in the ready room we see the clash of ideologies through verbal fencing.

So many missed opportunities in that show.

I like Voyager though. I really like it a lot. Maybe my favourite of the Berman Treks.
 
I watched Scorpion 1/2 a few weeks ago and there is more conflict between Janeway and Chakotay in just one of those episodes then there is in the rest of the series. It was great and it felt natural. Like disagreements that a mishmashed crew would have.

the rest of the times Chakotay just seemed to fall in line or follow her around like a lovesick puppy.

it’s part of the reason I liked S4-5 of Voyager more than the others. The way Janeway and Seven butted heads created some good story opportunities. Sadly those seemed to go away the deeper the series went.
 
I like Voyager from Season 4 onwards 'cause Seven brings some much needed antagonism onboard. I wish they had leaned into the Federation/Maquis dichotomy in the first few seasons through Chakotay and Janeway. On the bridge they are professional, but in the ready room we see the clash of ideologies through verbal fencing.

So many missed opportunities in that show.

I like Voyager though. I really like it a lot. Maybe my favourite of the Berman Treks.

VOY has one of the strongest premieres of all the series. "Caretaker" is just awesome. But the Starfleet-Maquis tension was all but dropped by the early part of the first season so that the series would feel more like TNG in the Delta Quadrant, and therein lies VOY's biggest failing. It betrayed its own potential and avoided fights between Chakotay and the Maquis crewmembers and Janeway and her Starfleet crew.
 
At least ENT stuck with the no shields/no force fields/no tractor beam/can't go past Warp 5.2 thing for the entire series. VOY stopped feeling like a new thing we hadn't done before pretty early on.
 
VOY stopped feeling like a new thing we hadn't done before pretty early on.

And that was a deliberate decision on the showrunners' part, an effort to try to recapture the "lightning in a bottle" of TNG.

I can at least understand that much. What I have issues with is the sloppiness, and the utter disregard for the viewer's intelligence.
 
Yeah, it sounded awkward. I think the idea of channeling electromagnetic energy into the plating to strengthen it during moments of foreign impact was a decent-enough one but the dialogue often sounded little different from TNG Era babble about shield percentages and shields going down.
 
Okay, I'm a little bit late, but controversial opinions, VOY edition:

  1. I like Neelix. Well, I don't like him, but I think he adds a lot to the show. He's fucking weird, man. Contrasted with milquetoast Tuvok he actually really feels like a random alien they picked up on their journey. He's always cheerful in a way only someone who feels like "he made it" in his life with this crew cab be, even though he usually is in way over his head
  2. I like Kes. And I like "Fury", the episode. It didn't ruin the character for me. I liked that stuff didn't actually turn out as good as everyone hoped. But still not "edgy dark", it ended on quite a good note
  3. I never cared about the Maquis conflict. And I'm happy they dropped it early on. They should have just had two different crews come together, either from two Federation ships, or one Federation & one civilian, or from another organisation. That whole "rebellion" backstory feels like just another generic DS9 space war arc from the pile.
  4. The Janeway/Seven dynamic completely took over the show. And I'm mostly fine with that. I mean I wished for some more stories of the other characters later on. But Janeway/Seven is for me a pairing almost as good as Kirk/Spock
  5. VOY has the best two-parters of all the Trek shows. It has many, many boring, lackluster episodes that I watched only once and usually skip since. But god damn pretty much any VOY two-parter can be rewatched as often as you want, and is most likely better than many of the "real" Trek movies
 
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The MA article on "Polarized Hull Plating" states:
In Star Trek Monthly issue 87, according to André Bormanis: "To minimize potential damage from weapons fire and other space hazards, NX-01 incorporates a polarization matrix in its armored hull plating. Through the application of electromagnetic power, the metal hull of the ship can be made several orders of magnitude harder than it is in its non-polarized state."

I think Andre Bromanis was refering to MRF (MagnetoRheological Fluid). when he got the idea for "Polarized Hull Plating".
The U.S. Army Research Office is currently funding research into using MR fluid to enhance body armor. In 2003, researchers stated they were five to ten years away from making the fluid bullet resistant.[13] In addition, HMMWVs, and various other all-terrain vehicles employ dynamic MR shock absorbers and/or dampers.

But he probably used that kind of technology where an application of a magnetic field changed the properties of the material.
 
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