The Final Frontier
Before posting any additional inflammatory remarks about Gaza, I thought I would address the other controversy likely to provoke lengthy internet feuds — which of the “Star Trek” series is the worst? Yesterday afternoon while awaiting the beginning of the Texas-OSU game, I opined on my public Twitter feed that “truly ‘Voyager’ is the worst of the Star Treks.”
This provoked some dispute from my Twitter followers. The most popular contrary view was that “Enterprise” is worse. But a substantial number of people took the line that “Deep Space Nine” was the worst. That’s just crazy. It’s true that DS9 starts weak, but it actually becomes quite awesome once the Dominion plotline gets rolling. And beyond that, it’s actually a pretty innovative show — it was one of the pioneers in moving the hour-long television drama away from the pure serial mode and toward longer-running narrative arcs.
As for “Enterprise,” I dunno. The Temporal Cold War is stupid. But I think the explorations of the origins of the Federation and the Prime Directive are interesting. Not interesting to normal people, of course, but interesting to fans of the franchise. Whereas “Voyager” just gives me nothing. I appreciate the desire to set a show far, far away from the rest of the action in order to avoid being weighed down by too much existing canon, but an inability to rely on basic familiar pillars (Klingons, Romulans, the occasional emergency sub-space transmission from admiral so-and-so) winds up doing a lot of reinventing the wheel. Except it’s a kind of second-rate wheel.
121 Responses to “The Final Frontier”
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January 6th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Voyager: best theme song, worst show. By the end of the series, the guy that plays Chakoteh (in the spirit of this blog, I have no idea of sp) was openly complaining about how horrid the writing was. Enterprise, okay show, worst theme song.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:11 am
At its best, DS9 was superb. Not quite Babylon 5 quality, but remarkably good. Just my two cents.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:13 am
They’re 70 bajillion light years from their home turf and the ship gets shot to hell pretty much every other episode, but every week it has a fresh coat of paint and looks like they just drove it off the lot.
By the end of the show they had managed to bring in Klingons, Romulans, and a hotline to Starfleet. Lazy writers.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Why does there have to be a “worst”?
Can’t we just love each of them, in their own special way?
January 6th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I have to say DS9 was by far one of the best startrek series. Once season 5,6 and 7 rolled around made sure I didn’t miss one week. The show did a great job of mixing religion, politics and sci fi in a way few shows have been able to. Dont dis DS9!
January 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am
DS9
A Starship that didn’t move?
Never can make it past 10 minutes into one of its episodes.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Voyager was the worst show, hands down.
I can sort of understand fans’ hostility to Deep Space Nine. The idea of Star Trek taking place on a Space Station is kinda silly. However, DS9 was actually a pretty good show at times, even though I don’t think it was a particularly good take on Star Trek in that it didn’t really have a spirit of exploration to it.
Voyager, on the other hand, was just a terrible show. Some of the characters were mildly interesting, but most were annoying. The attempt to balance fan appeal with new grounds was a disaster.
And, just to be a pedantic Trekker, let me state my biggest issues with Voyager:
1. The whole storyline is implausible. I remember watching a two-episode storyline about an alternate timeline where the ship was barely surviving its journey through a dangerous part of the Delta Quadrant. That’s what the whole show should have been like. The idea of a single ship holding up as well as Voyager did with basically no access to the Federation at large is just absurd.
2. They completely ruined the Borg. The Borg were the coolest, scariest villains introduced to the Star Trek canon. The whole point is that they were basically an unstoppable force that the entire Federation just barely managed to hold back. Yet Janeway was basically able to run circles around them time after time. To quote Shatner (not as Kirk): “I can’t get behind that!”
Oh, and I never really got into Enterprise, but I didn’t really mind it either.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:25 am
“As for “Enterprise,” I dunno”! JEEBUS! Even Hamas and Likud agree: The epic suck of “Enterprise” cannot be gainsaid.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Four words: Rod Stewart theme song.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Voyager also gets a major black mark because, properly executed, it could have been good. The concept of exploring what happens when a group of people from a very advanced, enlightened society gets stuck in a primitive backwater was an interesting one.
Unforunately, the writing sucked, the characterization sucked, and what should have been the best Trek series became the worst.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
I will fucking murder anyone that says DS:9 is the worst. Straight up shiv your ass.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Seven of Nine.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am
I have to agree, Voyager was the worst. I had to stop watching after Seven of Nine came on board and suddenly it seemed like every other episode was Borg related. By that time they were clearly running out of steam.
I thought Enterprise wasn’t bad, but I had to stop watching that as well when they brought in the Ferengi. I mean, come on. That’s all the proof you need to know that they shouldn’t have created another Trek series, after Voyager had been going downhill and ended with such a whimper. The creative well had run dry.
And also what El Cid said: The Enterprise theme was painfully bad.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Didn’t Obama’s opponent for the Senate try to boink 7 of 9 in public…leading directly to Obama’s recent win?
January 6th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Enterprise was the worst, hands down… except for their “Mirror Universe” two-parter.
Voyager’s first 2-3 seasons were pretty bad, but by the time they got rid of kes, marginalized Neelix, and took advantage of a market for science fiction screenwriters crawling with the recently-laid-off talent from Crusade, Space: Above and Beyond, and Seaquest, the quality improved dramatically.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Star Trek fan but not a trekkie, so I can’t speak to every plotline.
Of the new ST’s, then, TNG I enjoyed most, then Enterprise, then Voyager, but DS9 was just painful to watch, particularly for the romances. They were drawn so poorly I felt like I was watching a particularly clueless junior high kid’s idea of what relationships were about.
Plus, it was a space station (the weakness of this is shown in the many ways the writers worked in ships that did move).
January 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I agree completely.
Moreover, I’d give B5 a lot more credit than DS9 for pushing TV drama in the direction of long-running story arcs.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:34 am
the worst one was Voyager, or as I referred to it: Star Trek: Oh Come On Now!. Unlikeable characters, unbelievable storylines, and piss-poor dialog. The only way it could have been worse if George Lucas directed.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Yeah, but Votager had Jery Ryan.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Voyager gave you Jeri Ryan in a cat suit. Everything else can be forgiven.
Really, I think DS9 was the best of the sequels, partly because keeping the characters stationary made it much easier to develop storylines across multiple episodes. If you don’t need to explain how a recurring character can follow your ship everywhere it goes, the stories seem to come much easier.
On the other hand, if the later series writers had not been so weak then it probably wouldn’t have been a problem. After a single season of Firefly I was pretty mad about all the time I’d spent watching Voyager, DS9, most of TNG and all of Enterprise.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am
What, everyone else afraid to say it? THE ORIGINAL was the worst. Hands-down.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Ditto bcamarda and Pete. DS9 was, to some degree, aping B5. Which, in turn, was aping shows like Blake’s Seven, but that’s neither here nor there.
I agree that Voyager was the worst. I can buy that perhaps it got better in later seasons, or for certain story arcs, but too little, too late.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:41 am
B5 got around that somewhat (though they did throw in a lot of ships). The difference was that the station in B5 was miles long and they used that, whereas DS9 always seemed to be about the same size as one of JFK’s terminals.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:43 am
OK, so we’ve got some people who complain Star Trek got away from its familiar aspects, and some who complain it relied too heavily on them. This franchise can’t win.
Enterprise was just so uneven. The good episodes were pretty good, but the bad episodes were terrible. I do think they tried to get back to what made the franchise great — hope for the future, bizarre new worlds, a two-fisted captain, and green alien chicks.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:43 am
DS9 was just a poor man’s Next Generation until TNG went off the air. But once DS9 became the sole arbiter of the Trek universe it got really freaking good.
As for the worst, all I can say is that I was able to sit through entire episodes of Voyager. I can’t say the same for Enterprise. I tried- I thought the concept was neat and love Scott Bakula, but I could not for the life of me ever give a crap about any of the characters. Yes, Voyager was stupid. But Enterprise turned out to be unwatchable.
The best? TNG rulz 4 life!!!1!
January 6th, 2009 at 11:48 am
“it was one of the pioneers in moving the hour-long television drama away from the pure serial mode and toward longer-running narrative arcs.”
Which is only good if you think longer-running narrative arcs are better than pure serial mode, which I don’t. I think there’s just as much crap produced by this “arc fetish” as ever.
ENTERPRISE was clearly the worst show, in that it had everything bad about the previous spin offs and then added a whole bunch of its own flaws to the mix.
On the DS9 vs. VOYAGER debate, I come down in the middle. I actually prefer VOYAGER even though it was never much better than mediocre. That’s because it was relatively consistent in its mediocrity. Contrast that with DS9 which could be as good as anything in Trek, but then turn around and produce the worst crap in franchise history. I mean, Bashir is a genetic-augment? The destiny of the Emissary is to fly down to Bajor and knock Gul Dukat off a cliff? The universaly auwful romances? Seriously?
People slobber all over DS9 because it did actually do something different with Trek, while VOYAGER (which should have been Trek’s version of Blake’s 7) and ENTERPRISE were just the same old Trek stories in new wrapping. But DS9 fans often confuse different with good.
Mike
January 6th, 2009 at 11:49 am
It took us all the way to Ryan at #23 to speak the truth: the original Star Trek is the worst, no question.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:51 am
“Babylon 5 is shite!”
“Get Out!!”
(/Spaced)
January 6th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Enterprise was worse than bad, it was boring.
DS9 started slow but began to hit its stride right around the time Avery Brooks decided to shave his head for the part.
One thing I see no one commenting on regarding Voyager is the evolution of the Doctor from purely a stopgap emergency holographic program to an autonomous personality with his own set of emotions. His evolving friendship with 7of9 made for compelling TV. Oh, and yes, Jeri Ryan in a cat suit.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am
It would have been consistent with the Borg’s outlook to just let Voyager fly through their space — they don’t regard individuals at threats. Unfortunately, Voyager forgot about that. It would have been interesting to see Voyager flying through the shattered remnants of civilizations destroyed by the Borg, with the only requirement that they not demonstrate an attempt to organize the scattered parties — which would cause the Borg to destroy them.
Unfortunately, they didn’t go that way.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:56 am
DS9’s latter seasons were excellent anyone who says otherwise doesn’t remember how bad the first season of TNG was. Voyager was pretty annoying at times but had some good characters. Tuvok was probably the best vulcan after Spock and 7of9 was 7of9. Enterprise was just unwatchable. Hot vulcan was so un-vulcany I almost forgot about her hotness.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Nerds!
January 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Anyone who doesn’t like DS9, I would say, isn’t a real trek fan. Taken on the whole, Voyager was definitely the worst. There are definitely some high water episodes (the one with michael mckean playing the cyberspace devil — the thaw I think that one was called — stand out as fantastic. However, the show RUINED the Borg. They ceased being this terrifying force of nature and became, basically another faction on the show.
Enterprise was pretty bad for most of it’s run. At the end, when they brough in Manny Coto from the DS9 alums to run the last season, it had a quality that almost made me regret it’s cancellation. Low ratings and mostly uninspiring cast aside, I don’t think enterprise damaged the franchise quite as much as stv.
I would like to see a new tv incarnation sometime — post Berman and Braga *spit*.
I will also say that ds9 was WAY better than b5. Granted the arching plot of b5 was compelling, the scene to scene writing was hoorible. I still recall one episode where Sinclair was meeting an ex girlfriend and thinking it might be the worst 3 minutes of dialog ever filmed.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:59 am
TOS had “Spock’s Brain,” Shatner overacting, and weak special effects, but there are just so many classic and ground-breaking episodes, like “Devil in the Dark” or “City on the Edge of Forever” or “Metamorphosis.”
TNG had some real turkeys, oh my did it ever, like the cake episode or the clip show or the shows ruined by the writer’s strike of the late 80s, but it had excellent acting and it made Star Trek, more often than not, into serious drama.
DS9 did not have as good acting as TNG, and the lack of exploration was a real weakness (just not the same when the aliens come through the wormhole to visit YOU), but like everyone says, the long Dominion plot was just stunning, and that final season had some really great episodes.
Enterprise, hardly saw it. But what I saw didn’t seem too bad.
But why did I hardly see Enterprise? Because Voyager was so terrible that it put me off Star Trek for a long time. Awful acting, especially by Kate Mulgrew, but terrible writing too that had Janeway calling someone into her ready room every other episode with the “Come on, I NEED you” speech. I think it is accurate to say, as many others here have, that the premise was OK. The writers just failed.
Worst Star Trek ever, though, is the movie Nemesis. Star Trek is about many things, but none of its themes are advanced by stories about evil clones.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Didn’t Obama’s opponent for the Senate try to boink 7 of 9 in public…leading directly to Obama’s recent win?
Jack Ryan was married to the actress Jeri Ryan who portrayed two-by-four on Voyager. He was the moderate Republican candidate after Fitzgerald stepped down. The Ryans were divorced but the court papers were sealed – for the children! – and the Chicago Tribune got them unsealed during the campaign. It was then revealed that Jeri tearfully complained to the court that Jack would try to get her to go to sex clubs (and really who can blame him?)
So long story short, the Republicans forced Jack to withdraw and Obama was forced to face the epic awesomeness that is Alan Keyes.
Oh and The Enterprise show theme song made me want to poke my eyes out. I liked the Next Generation because Picard and Data and them had communism on Earth and they didn’t need money and had solved all social ills so they were free to explore.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
“Anyone who doesn’t like DS9, I would say, isn’t a real trek fan.”
Oh, please. The simple fact that they were constantly changing things around on the show (and no, they weren’t all part of some masterplan) demonstrated how many problems there were with DS9.
Mike
January 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Each of the Trek series, including the original, produced some amazing television drama and each produced some absolute waste-of-time drek. None of them are without misfires and I know the creative teams involved knew that.
However overall, I’d have to say Voyager was the biggest disappointment. Not only in the details of bad dialog and charcterizations but simply bad storytelling overall. Had they broken out of the technobabble box that Next Generation had painted for the franchise, they could have told an amazing story of survival, ingenuity and perhaps how the power of the Federation’s ideas could transform a section of space without the need for phasers and photons blasting every week. They could have made their eventual return home an epic story that built upon what had been established before. But they didn’t.
Enterprise awoke to its potential in the last season. DS9 was neck and neck with Babylon 5 in its pushing of the episodic structure of SF TV in the 1990s (and lets face it – as good as B5 was overall, it had its crap moments just as DS9 did). Voyager had a few enjoyable moments, but in the end, it was an epic fail.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Definitely the hottest crewmember was the Enterprise Vulcan T’Pol, who instead of laughing at jokes would arch an eyebrow in disapproval and she felt all the human crewmembers were beneath her.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You are correct, sir. Voyager is the worst.
Enterprise’s 4th season is what makes it better than Voyager. The 4th season actually tackled the premise of the show. Before that it was Voyager with different sets.
I’ll add this: Next Generation is aging much more poorly than any of the others. Though I think Voyager is worse, TNG doesn’t get a pass just because we’re all nostalgic about it. Some of those “make Picard proud” episodes were awful.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Oh yeah – DS9 also had the best Trek “villain” of all time: Weyoun. A complex character that could be genuinely charming, curious and perceptive while at the same time planning the destruction of worlds and the ruthless expansion of Dominon power. Khan was good, Christopher Lloyd’s Klingon from ST3 was good, but Weyoun was multi-faceted in ways that SF foes rarely get to be.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I had to keep watching “Enterprise” because Jolene Blalock (T’Pol) was so F-ing hot….much hotter than Jeri Ryan.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
A few thoughts:
DS9 might not have taken place on a ship, but it had by far the best ship of the series, the Defiant. Aside from looking awesome, it could totally own any other ship in the galaxy. And it could cloak. How awesome is that? As opposed to Voyager, which could do that thing where its engines turned 45 degrees when it went to warp? Yeah, right. And I never really cared that it was in a station, as the stories were good enough to keep me there. I’m willing to lose the formula if I get better stories.
I loved DS9, and I think that the “aping” between DS9 and B5 went both ways–B5 got a ship a year or two after DS9 did, after all. But B5 had its shortcomings, not the least of which was that it had crappy production values and was only good for about two and a half seasons, while DS9 had at least four really great seasons. The first season of B5 was worse than any season of any Star Trek, in my opinion, and B5 only ran for five years.
Oh, yeah, and the episodes of DS9 that focused on the changeling suicide bombing on Earth are so ahead of their time, it’s eerie.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Now, that’s grounds for a shivving right there. None of the series that followed stand up to the original and the biggest reason is that none of them had characters like Kirk, Spock, and Bones. And I don’t mean like them, but great characters that the audience could connect with. I enjoyed TNG and DS9, but neither had characters as awesome as the original series.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I gave up on “Voyager” after the second or third episode in which a sleep-deprived eight-year-old would have figured out how to get the ship home to Earth. (Remember the one where they wound up in Romulan space, only like 50 years too early? Oh noes! We’d have to invent some kind of “time dilation” or maybe “hibernation” to work that one out.) But I was getting tired of all flavors of Trek by then…I even checked out on DS9, because it just rubbed me the wrong way. Trek shouldn’t be primarily about militarism.
Enterprise, what I saw of it, was mind-bendingly awful, though. And I think the ultimate judgement was given by the producers themselves, when they brought back two Junior Varsity players from TNG (Frakes and Sirtis) to try to lend some kind of gravitas to the series finale. The Enterprise cast rightly took that as a slap in the face…but it was also a pretty accurate assessment of how little anyone cared for them.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
@ Ryan and Rich: TOS, I’ll admit unabashedly, was pretty crappy. But I recently started watching them again and can say without reservation that they have an entertainment value lacking from both Voyager and Enterprise. Plus, in context, it was a pretty groundbreaking show (I’m not sure which was more insane for the 60s- putting a black women on the bridge or a Russian at the Con).
@ sam: NOTHING was worse than Insurrection.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I will fucking murder anyone that says DS:9 is the worst. Straight up shiv your ass.
Too bad that threats of violence coming from a Trekkie are about as credible as an abstinence pledge from David Duchovny.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I will take this time to thank Jerri Ryan for giving us Barack Obama
If you want to see what Voyager should have been, just tune in to Battlestar Galatica.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Yeah, but if Voyager were Canada and Canada were Gaza then Israel would be the Dominion, so there!
January 6th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
@mkd: What about Nemesis? Featuring the Federation Dune Buggy, a “clone” of Picard that’s about as convincing as Mini-Me, Data can’t work out how to program a phaser with a time-delay, and the most fearsome weapon in all of space is the front end of a ship moving at about seventeen miles an hour.
Plus, we KNOW that it’s ridiculous how you have the bridge right up there on the outside of the ship and no-one wears seat belts. Please don’t call attention to it like that–it kills the illusion.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Stopped watching broadcast Treks mid way through Voyager’s 2nd season. I have most of the original and TNG on disk – collecting at resale shops is a bit hit and miss.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I once heard that the Federation Dune Buggy was Patrick Stewart’s fault; apparently he wanted to do some driving in his next film. When these Englishmen go California they go all the way, I guess.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
@ craig: I may not be able to go point for point on this, but I remember emerging from Insurrection believing it to be one of the worst movies I had ever paid money to see. I remember thinking Nemesis was just weak. (I will say this though, I watched some of the Nemesis commentary and Brent Spiner was talking about how important it was for Data to find his retarded half-brother in the sand because for the first time Data wasn’t alone in the universe. I was like “WTF Spiner? Ever heard of an evil-twin named Lore!? I mean c’mon…”
also, in case someone hasn’t caught this yet, they’re called inertial dampeners
January 6th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
I think the answer to this debate has a lot to do with what type of viewer/fan you are. For casual fans like me, long story arcs and details of the canon are not important, and can lose my interest quickly. Cheesy plots and fairly cute girls in tights will do a better job of holding my attention for an hour. And, call me crazy, I always liked Kess more than 7 of 9.
In other words, when I’m really hungover, plopped on a couch trying to waste an afternoon and I stumble upon an episode of Voyager, I might just watch it. This is not true for DS9 or Enterprise. It doesn’t mean I think its the “better” show, but it serves my personal purposes better than the other two.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@ sam: NOTHING was worse than Insurrection.
@mkd YES. The awful corniness of the humor — Data as floatation device — was enough to sink Insurrection before you got to the stupid confrontation between ’60s idealism and late 20th century militarism.
As for worst series, I never watched Enterprise because Voyager was so thoroughly bad, disappointing, underachieving, unimaginative that it really drained me of any enthusiasm for Trek to this day, JJ’s upcoming turkey. Correction: I watched one episode where T’Pol went back in time to some rural ’50s American city. It was a fairly boilerplate story idea, and Jolene Blalock couldn’t act a bit, but I don’t think I cared too much on either count and it ended up being surprisingly watchable.
They completely ruined the Borg.
In fairness, First Contact did a lot of damage to the Borg when, it turns out, they had a Queen. I could suspend my dissatisfaction over the fact that the Borg suddenly became banally hierarchical for the duration of one movie, but it really lay the groundwork for declawing the Borg. (It did bring Susannah Thompson back for a few episodes, which can’t be bad in itself.)
it was one of the pioneers in moving the hour-long television drama away from the pure serial mode and toward longer-running narrative arcs.
I also have to point out that you’ve got your terms wrong. (Oh wow, pedantry on a Trek thread.) Serials are narratives spanning more than one episode. The contrasting narrative mode would be episodic storytelling, which is the one-and-done style that characterized most TNG. MBunge is right that it’s not an inherently better way to tell stories, but DS9 still is prescient at least on that count for being one of the first series to implement it in recent tv history.
Oh yeah – DS9 also had the best Trek “villain” of all time: Weyoun.
@TomP YES. His later incarnations were a little meh, but the longest tenured one were the awez. Such obvious, charming slime!
January 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
TNG used the same plot vehicle as the original, albeit with better writers, actors and special effects: boldly going hither, thither and yon with recurrent friends and foes in the mix. In theory a bottomless well but audiences can be fickle.
VOYAGER was a riff on the theme but basically more of the same. I always felt they made a mistake not emphasizing their scientific mission more, sort of a Jacques Cousteau Calypso space thingy.
ENTERPRISE was hamstrung from the beginning. As a historical vehicle many plot doors available to the other franchises were closed and locked. Historical dramas can’t create new facts at a whim so they tend to rely on fleshing-out characters and their relationships. Unfortunately that has never been a strength of episodic, cowboy sci-fi.
DS9 was a brilliant stroke. Rather than racking up frequent flyer miles all over the universe, why not sit in one place and let the fun come to you? This is especially interesting when you have a nearby worm hole belching up monstrosities on cue. Bajor added some nice primitive mysticism in the neighborhood and the Cardassians were a capable Klingon/Romulan stand-in that eventually became quite interesting. I especially enjoyed how Garak was developed. The commercial aspects of the station also made for some nice plot twists unavailable to the rest of the franchise.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Take a look at this clip–absolutely typical of the show–and THEN dare to tell me that DS9 isn’t the most boring of all the Star Trek series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmxWHZNFOgA
January 6th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
DS9 did have the best ST villain ever, but he was Gul Dukat, not Weyoun.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Jim in austin: The vast majority TNG was not written as well as TOS. No way. Too many clunkers. TOS is entertaining on multiple levels: 60’s kitsch, sci-fi, serious Science Fiction, swashbuckling adventure. TNG was sterile.
Enterprise wasn’t crap because it had to follow canon (would that have really stopped them?) or that the theme song was so awful (which it was), it was crap because the writing was so incredibly poor and the character relationships were ill-conceived. The early story of the Federation has been told in much more accomplished form in the novels (see especially “Enterprise” and “Final Frontier”). If they’d taken those as a starting point, they would have had something interesting. The only good thing about Enterprise was the casting. That cast deserved a lot better.
DS9 and Voyager: Meh.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Wow, Beets. That is, um, breathtaking. And agreed on Gul Dukat. The best part of DS9.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I found Bashir as a gene-aug totally believable. Nobody is that pretty. *pitter-pat*
January 6th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
So, should there be another Trek series? (I confess that I’d watch any of them)
January 6th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
From worst to best:
ST: VOY: It’s already been said. Wasted premise, terrible characters. If you had a ST All-Star Team, no one from this cast makes the cut. Maybe Seven of Nine as a reserve.
ST: TOS: Best captain, sure, but really hit or miss.
ST: ENT: I liked Bakula, and Trip was a great character. He’s your All-Star engineer.
ST: TNG: Data is your All-Star science officer, and Worf! Worf is arguably the best ST character evah! Worf = All-Star tactical officer. I would also take Dr. Crusher for All-Star medical officer (she’s not a caricature like Bones).
It’s been said–hasn’t aged that well.
ST: DS9: More Worf (the series really rocks once Worf is on board). Sisko was great, and Miles O’Brien. Garak. Not sure who the All-Stars are. Certainly not Dax, Kira, or Odo (Oh no!).
January 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I prefer Voyager.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Voyager was great. It didn’t take itself so ultra-seriously like DS9, which didn’t quite have the writing to pull it off (episode with Sisko on earth as a sci-fi writer excluded). DS9 had painful-to-watch romances, not enough action, and the ferengi. Half of DS9’s characters were awesome; the other half sucked harder than the vacuum of space. Whereas Voyager just accepted its role as a fun, episodic show.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I don’t think all the series had the same goal and they were done in different generations so I don’t think a blanket question of “who falixorz?1″ is the best way to frame it.
Better questions:
What was the weakest point of each series? Voyager and Enterprise were too premise heavy for me. Esp Voyager; that should should have a fixed arc, 3 seasons then end it.
Graded on a self referential curve, how well did each series do? Voyager had to play inside their own little premise box but I thought they did quite well for a few years. The original Star Trek and Next Generation haven’t aged as nicely considering they had free range.
What should the next Star Trek series be? IMO, drop the premises and start using CGI hardcore. Do a TOS or TNG but a few more centuries in the future with lots of crazy CGI aliens. I can see a good series being a kind of American version of Doctor Who. In a good way. Hopefully the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie will give us some inkling.
But taken as a whole, DS9 was my personal fav. Had the highest highs.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
“Enterprise” was by far the worst. Not because it was bad TV, but because it was not true to the spirit of “Star Trek”. “Star Trek” is about the superiority of diplomacy over war. “Enterprise” was a space opra war story. It may have been set in the “Star Trek” universe, but it ignored the “Star Trek” ethos.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Um, no way. Enterprise fucking sucked, period. Just awful. Largely because Scott Backula was absolutely horrifying as Captain Archer. There has never been a worse performance in the history of Star Trek than Backula’s portrayal of Archer.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Enterprise was the worst, just a craven attempt to bring back the magic of the first series.
I liked the premise of Voyager, and could even suspend disbelief around the “how do they keep fixing up the ship after each round of damage” issue, but ultimately none of the supporting characters were remotely interesting. There were no Sulus or Worfs on that crew until it was far too late.
DS9 is awesome. I liked Avery Brooks as the captain from the first episode.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“Awful acting, especially by Kate Mulgrew”
Genevieve Bujold pulling out after she foudn the grind of a weekly TV show too taxing really f**ked up Voyager. Imagine TNG with a second-rate actor (like the one who played Ryker) instead of Patrick Stewart as Picard. We’d have pined for the days of Shatner.
But Voyager gave us Jerri Ryan, who in her way contributed to us having Pres. Obama now. Thank God Jack Ryan wasn’t just satisfied with other guys thinking “that lucky b**stard is boinking Jerri Ryan”, he had to see the envy on their faces more explicitly.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
@MikeF
How could you simultaneously bemoan DS9’s lack of humor and its inclusion of Ferengi in the principal cast? Hate the ueber-capitalist Space Jews if you must, but you do realize that they were often the comic relief, yes?
January 6th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Captain Noble @45 and Bob @61 say all that needs to be said, or almost. I would just add that another reason TNG pales in comparison to the original is because it was far too reliant on special effects and deus ex machina (or just plain mumbo-jumbo, “What if we reverse the polarity of the zapotronic particles?” That just might work . . .”) plot resolutions. I also hated the doofus who played the first officer. And, oh yeah, Data wasn’t fit to carry Spock’s tricorder.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The problem with Enterprise was that it started so well – the premiere episode was so exciting that I was left feeling that Star Trek was back! And then they pissed it all down the tubes by moving away from everything that made the permiere engaging. Voyager started mediocre, got better and ended horribly and never once flashed the potential of the premiere Enterprise episode.
January 6th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan Says:
January 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Oh really?
Official reason was she quit. Real reason was she was asked to leave because of this dribble:
Linky
She obviously had reservations about scifi, and it came through in her painful acting.
All seriousness, I never thought Voyager was that bad. Wasn’t as good as TNG, but was much better then the dreck that was every TNG movie.
How hard is it to write a “The Best of Both Worlds”, but make it bigger, and more epic?
January 6th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Two points, as an Illinois resident and Star Trek fan:
1. Jeri Ryan didn’t help get Obama elected. Even before Alan “I Jumped in Michael Moore’s Moshpit” Keyes entered the race, Obama was leading in the polls by 15-20 points. Keep in mind that in 2004, Gov. George Ryan was already under indictment, poisoning the local GOP brand in an already left-leaning state, not to mention the fact that at least a quarter of the population didn’t know that George and Jack Ryan weren’t related. Obama was always going to win that race (once he won the primary, which was admittedly a surprise), although you might be able to make a roundabout argument that the particulars of Obama’s Senate campaign helped him later on. But that’s more than a little bit of a stretch.
2. DS9 is definitely the best Star Trek, hands down. Even the first season had more great episodes than pretty much any other first season (which Season 1 TNG episode is better than “Duet” or “In the Hands of the Prophets?”) The amazing supporting cast is what carried the show to the next level, although it did make it tough to tie up all the loose ends. Alaimo, Combs, Biggs, Grodenchik, Eisenberg, etc. are all FANTASTIC character actors, all better than any recurring characters on any other Trek, except for Colm Meaney (which DS9 had plenty of) and Dwight Schultz.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
One of the pioneers? Um, sure, if you forget shows like Twin Peaks (1990) or even the original Battlestar Galactica (1978, 1980). And in fact, most soap operas are non-serial, like Dallas (1978) and the like. And I would say that the X-Files,, which ran contemporaneously with DS9, probably has a much bigger claim to bringing narrative arcs into television drama. So while I appreciate wanting to stand up for your show, don’t go all crazy on us.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
For those ranking TOS at or near the bottom of the pile, consider that its bad episodes are usually entertainingly bad — ridiculous, campy absurdity. (space hippies!) When any other Treks strike out, they’re usually dull and wooden.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
“Every prior series was relatively groundbreaking in terms of social inclusion on TV, but Enterprise threw it all away.”
What, you don’t appreciate the efforts that Enterprise (following the example of Voyager) to extend social inclusion to busty, non-human women?
“And I would say that the X-Files,, which ran contemporaneously with DS9, probably has a much bigger claim to bringing narrative arcs into television drama.”
Hill Street Blues originated the season (or longer)-long narrative arcs into hour-long prime-time dramas, combining the resolution of a small story within the hour with the continuation of the story arc. DS9 was the first time this was applied to Star Trek.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I had to keep watching “Enterprise” because Jolene Blalock (T’Pol) was so F-ing hot….much hotter than Jeri Ryan.
I always enjoyed watching Linda Park on Enterprise. Yummy.
January 6th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I agree with Doofman’s comments regarding 7-of-11 and Obama’s Senatorial campaign. Obama would have beat Jack Ryan, a tepid bland Mitt Romney businessman. Obama campaigned well with the whites downstate.
Regarding Alan Keyes, he did mosh in Michael Moore’s movie and he was in Borat.
Captain Noble @45 and Bob @61 say all that needs to be said, or almost. I would just add that another reason TNG pales in comparison to the original is because it was far too reliant on special effects and deus ex machina (or just plain mumbo-jumbo, “What if we reverse the polarity of the zapotronic particles?” That just might work . . .”) plot resolutions. I also hated the doofus who played the first officer. And, oh yeah, Data wasn’t fit to carry Spock’s tricorder.
I wouldn’t say it pales in comparison. It updated the franchise. My favorite thing about the original was when William Shatner would go mano-a-mano with some alien and he’d rip off his shirt and the fight music would come in DUM DUM DUM and oh yes IT WAS ON.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
No force in the universe can beat nostalgia, so I’ll always rank DS9 as the best Trek, since it was the first one I watched from episode 1 till the end. I was too young to watch much of TNG until years later and, like TOS, it feels mostly forgettable. I’ll grant that people could like them for the same reason I like DS9. As for Enterprise and Voyager they had their moments but those were few and far between. And they suffered from a complete lack of Garak.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Enterprise was the worst – the only one I quit seeing before it was cancelled. However, Voyager is a close second. I basically watched it the last three seasons or so just from inertia.
DS9 was good/very good when it concentrated on the Dominion plotline and any time it talked about Bajoran mythology. Whenever the “action” took place within the walls of DS9 it bored the hell out of me.
The Next Generation is, has been, and always will be the best.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I once worked with a very nice lady whose last name was Braga. One day, when I noticed a Star Trek Voyager calendar on her office wall, I mentioned that I had heard the latest series was not the fans’ favorite (actually, I may have said it sucked ass, or words to that effect). Then my nice co-worker politely told me that her son, Brannon Braga, was a producer and head writer on the show. Maybe he went on to work on Enterprise?
January 6th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Voyager was my first Star Trek series, so I can never hate, or even really dislike it. It doesn’t work if watched in sequence, week after week after week. But if you watch it as a series of TV movies, about the disconnected adventures of starships that just happen to feature similar archetypal characters, then it’s really quite enjoyable: lame jokes, passable special effects, and the EMH calmly blowing everyone else off the screen.
I agree with the general consensus about DS9, and I think there really is some truth to what Matt says above about it as a TV pioneer. It’s not just because of Ron D. Moore; you couldn’t have BSG without DS9. Also, it had the best villains.
(And why the hate for the romance? As distinct from, say, the sensitive and well-crafted depiction of romance in any other Trek show? These aren’t shows written for people with much hands-on experience in that area.)
The central problem with Enterprise, I think, and one of the things that blew its brain out from the beginning, was: why? Who cares about the origins of the Trek universe? It’s not a particularly INTERESTING universe. It’s not like ‘how did Vader come to be?’ or ‘why do the Cylons hate humans?’ or, uh, ‘how did Barack Obama come to realise his destiny’? It’s ‘how did the Klingons get their ridges?’ and ‘how were the elaborate political structures of the Federation developed through a process of consultation and reform?’
There is ROOM for a ‘more primitive’ generic Star Trek series, but not particularly much room. We’d had three series and 17 series of ’space, the final frontier’. There’s really not much left you can do.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I have been watching Star Trek since the 60s. I loved Voyager. One of my favorite episodes was the planet that was 100% water, that was a fantastic idea. 7 of 9 was a great addition also. As for DS9, I stopped watching it after the first couple years but it did get much better later on. The newest one, Enterprise, was very boring to me.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I liked Galaxy Quest the best.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
The thing about Enterprise is that it got a **lot** better in the final season. But those first two seasons were bad, bad, bad. (S3 was OK.)
January 6th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
DS9 had a few clunkers, but it developed very well, and it got major cred from the very pilot (”Emissary”, with the four-dimensional aliens that do not perceive time as linear) which is IMO one of the best hard SF stories ever broadcast on television.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Quoted for truth. DS9 stands out as the “different” series because it was station-based, but Voyager had the chance to be truly different–away from home, any familiar races, without the resources of Starfleet. If they had taken their setting seriously, and really dealt with what it means to be alone and stranded, the show could have been some of the most interesting science fiction on TV. If we are out here for 75 years, does the captain become de facto empress of her own little domain? Or do we insist on some kind of review board so she remains accountable to someone else. How do we plan for children and education on what it now, by necessity, a multi-generational ship. Where do we mine for resources we need? What can we offer in trade to get supplies? How do we train replacements who will be able to improvise fixes for seven decades’ worth of breakdowns and malfunctions?
Or do we just pick a suitable planet and start a colony?
Or both–leave some behind while others continue to Earth?
An ST:V that took it’s premise seriously could have been riveting. Instead, it settled for being a second rate TNG. Voyager is the worst series because it squandered its own potential most profoundly.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
One of the channels here in the UK is rerunning Voyager at the moment – and its actually pretty good. True, Neelix is annoying, and some stories are better than others (the early episodes being fairly sucky), but overall perfectly acceptable. And it has Jeri Ryan, in a catsuit. Nuff said.
In fact every Trek has sucked in some way – even TOS . Spocks Brain? Or the thing with the hippies?
DS9 also had some pretty lousy stories, especially in the early days (Bajoran religion – boring), but once the big Dominion story arcs started, some real classic moments, with the last couple of seasons really doing the business. Watch ‘The Magnificent Ferengi‘ for laughs, and ‘The Siege of AR-558‘ for emotion. Yes, Avery Brooks overacts, but Terry Farrell is yummy. Its just as good as B5, but in a different way. My wife cried when Sheridan died, so the bar is set kind of high.
TNG really looks ropy now in some of the early stuff, and although its a classic, even the cast can’t always save some of the more dodgy plots. Not as good as it thinks it is.
Worst – Enterprise. The theme sucked. The writing was boring, and the characters dull (on the whole). Just couldn’t be bothered. You’ve got the whole of the ST universe, and as Blackmage rightly puts it, they chose the really boring part.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that remaking TOS is going to work either – once you’ve seen the Shat, there is no substitute.
It seems that if you want to rack up the comments, then Trek, Mac v PC or why IE sucks really seems to work. None of us are nerds, oh no. On scienceblogs someone says he doesn’t get Buffy – go, go now!
January 6th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Based on the above comments, it’s fortunate that I only watched the original series and then most of Next Generation, but never saw the others.
I’ll stick with “Terminator”, despite my frequent criticisms of that show.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
DS9 was my least favorite series. The religious theme was a direct repudiation of Roddenberry’s vision. In the two Roddenberry series religious themes were often introduced, but always with naturalistic explanations which emphasized the need for people to find their own solutions to problems. DS9 gave us an entire planet of religious morons whose belief that cosmic beings will magically save them turns out to be true.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
The reason most people hate DS9 (and why I love it, though I didn’t know until recently) is that it wasn’t an exploration/science/sociology lovefest. It was politics. Dirty, seedy, slow, and delicious politics.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Indeed DS9 did give you a planet of religious believers BUT it also gave you the naturalistic explanation of who the wormhole are, and explored the tension between the federation chracters’ scientific explanations and the religious beliefs of the bajoran ones (kira, among others). this purported weakness is no weakness at all, but one that overcomes one of the main weaknesses in roddenberry’s “vision” — naive, unrealistic idealism.. and instead considers a more plausible, and tension-filled narrative that was thankfully removed from some of the more preachy, pedantic aspects of the original star trek.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I always thought Hoshi was hotter than T’pol…
January 6th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Farscape- the SciFi that was what Voyager should have been. Stranger(s) in an unknown area fighting for survival while making allies and enemies.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
The only thing good about Voyager were the Kim/Paris slash stories it inspired. The only thing good about Enterprise was Connor Trinneer’s ass. I’ll never forget the tight-blue-hot-pants ep.
B5 and DS9 I both enjoyed. Yeah sure they had their cringeworthy moments. TNG, meh, esp as the series aged and Frakes got fatter and fatter.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I’m afraid I don’t see the same distinction you do. Naive, unrealistic, and idealistic I think describe nearly every popular entertainment in history, including DS9. I don’t see DS9 as being less so than the other Star Trek shows, it just used a different platform.
I also don’t think the word plausible belongs anywhere in this discussion. Really, is a stable wormhole filled with incorporeal beings who communicate with a race of religious fanatics through a Federation emissary any more plausible than anything Roddenberry pumped out? And did you ever doubt for a second that the good guys would win in the end?
January 6th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Steve, what makes a lot of science fiction bad is not when the scientific/technological scenario is too implausible. What makes a lot of science fiction bad is when the people do not act like human beings. And in that sense, Roddenberry’s naive, unrealistic idealism about human nature made for much weaker, more implausible story telling than space stations next to worm holes.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Lean and Hungry is spot on – the worst thing about Voyager is that it just threw away its potential. It started with this wonderful clashing of two factions – the rebels and the Federation crew, hating each other, but forced together in a ship in unknown space.
All that potential for prickly, interesting characters – actual mocking of the Federation! Could have been used to do what the original series (and much good scifi) did best – looking at our own society from a different viewpoint.
But NO – soon everybody’s getting along, all the edges disappear, and it just got dull and unbelievable.
DS9 was by far the best. It fairly consistently tried to do interesting things, even if the actors, writing and characters didn’t always meet the goal.
The space station was way more interesting than the Voyager ship; I think big space habitats/way stations have great potential for stories. And Avery Brooks – best captain.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Voyager tops the worst list.
Mostly because of Captain Janeway. She was the most Captain of all time. First, she says her priority is to get the crew home but she stops and ingratiates herself in every situation in the Quadrant. Then, she lectures everybody in sight about the Prime Directive and then abandons it whenever it becomes a problem for her.
Second, Voyager is most guilty of the last second technobabble solution. ‘Reverse the polarity’ or ’send out a Tachyon Pulse’ seemed to be the answer to every problem in the last 2 minutes.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Sorry.
It should read – She was the most inconsistent Captain of all time.
January 7th, 2009 at 1:35 am
I absolutely agree that Janeway was THE worst captain in the franchise. Not only in dramatic terms (bad acting – even Shatner was better) but she was simply written horribly. Disregard for the Prime Directive or even simple logic and common sense, terrible management skills, on and on. I like to think that Janeway’s appearance as an admiral in Nemesis is a sign that Starfleet realized just how unsuited to starship command she was and kicker her upstairs, even though she could easily have been court-martialed for all the crap she pulled as CO of Voyager.
Re: Gul Dukat vs. Weyoun – I’m sticking with Weyoun, but Dukat was a really good foil for Sisko and Kira most of the time. Sadly the writers never seemed quite sure just what they wanted to do with him – was he a bad guy, an antihero, an actual hero, a psycho, or what? Weyoun was consistant and quite believable as someone who could be intelligent and pleasant and perceptive, but manipulative and slimy and deeply devoted to the Founders’ paranoid worldview. Weyoun seemed real, whereas Dukat jumped into melodrama quite often.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:27 am
“Could have been used to do what the original series (and much good scifi) did best – looking at our own society from a different viewpoint.”
That’s one reason the “Terminator” series is good. It’s more about the characters and their interaction with society than about robots from the future. Most of the problems comes from each other and other humans, not the machines. The machines end up being the logical ones – they end up being the “Mr. Spocks” of the series, the almost human ones who can speak to the human condition from outside it.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Enterprise was by far the worst by virtue of coming after Voyager and thus with the producers knowing full well what people disliked about the way the franchise was headed. Its license with canon heavily affects its credibility too, considering the number of times holodecks or quantum torpedoes or whatever were used as a deux ex machina.
Plus, its chief engineer was George W. Bush. I can’t believe this hasn’t been pointed out already!
Another oddity is that many people have opined on the hottest Trek women, and yet none have mentioned the DS9 mirror episodes…
– Chris
January 7th, 2009 at 8:25 am
We’re calling a series most of us have watched seven full seasons of “the worst”. I wont call any Star Trek series “the worst”. Star Trek 5 is the worst. Generations wasn’t very good either.
TOS: Great characters and comaraderie with Kirk, Spock, and Bones. TERRIBLE production values. The same styrofoam rocks in almost every episode. As mentioned, space hippies taking over the ship, more than once. Spock’s Brain. But also some great stories, like City on the Edge of Forever.
TNG: Updated special effects really helped. Picard a very different captain, but he made older bald men sexy for a time, showing he had quite an impact back then. Worf was a great character. Yummy Crusher. But then there was Wesley, and the Klingon kid episodes, and other assorted misses. Other great hits though like Yesterday’s Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds.
DS9: The space station was more boring than being on a ship out exploring. But there were plenty of good episodes, and I liked the synergy between most of the characters. Lot of character growth. My biggest regret of that show though was that the ending seemed too abrupt after a long war it should have led up to the finale better. How a series ends has a lot of impact on my future views of the show.
ST:V: Janeway was the worst captain. But there were a lot of good episodes, and after a rocky first couple seasons it got better. Jeri Ryan in a catsuit was pretty awesome. The chracter arc of the EMH was very well done I thought as well. The series ended well I thought too.
Enterprise. Horrible writing the first two seasons, yet I still got attached to Backula and Trinnear, and of course Jolene Blalock was eye candy for days. Season 3 picked up considerably, and by season 4 it was good enough that it should have gotten a season 5. I didn’t even mind the theme song, though it was definitely not comparable to the wonderful orchestral scores of the other series. Maybe they should have used the song once or at the end credits instead of as a theme song and it would have worn better.
I’ve watched worse series than the worst Star Trek series, heck I’ve done it within the last year.
Oh and Chris, Nana Visitor in those tight leather pants caught my attention from those mirror episodes for sure.
Eclectic
January 7th, 2009 at 8:28 am
It started with this wonderful clashing of two factions – the rebels and the Federation crew, hating each other, but forced together in a ship in unknown space. All that potential for prickly, interesting characters – actual mocking of the Federation! Could have been used to do what the original series (and much good scifi) did best – looking at our own society from a different viewpoint.
Well, this points out the biggest weakness of Voyager: in the minds of the writers, the characters did hate each other. TOS and TNG had strict rules that there could never be any significant tension and squabbles between the main characters. That there was any sort of tension at all on Voyager was considered “breaking the mold” in a big way.
This, mostly, was a weakness of the first few seasons, in part because the writers didn’t know which characters were worth developing and in part because expectations were higher. Voyager is best ignored for the first few years, and then if you tune in for the last 2-3 seasons or so, there are actually some good science fiction stories to be seen.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Sisko = Best. Captain. Ever.
Seriously, the first three seasons of DS9 were up-and-down for me, but once Avery Brooks started growing his beard toward the end of Season 3 (and went all Hawk-style in Season 4), the show was golden for me.
Also, “Far Beyond the Stars” is one of the greatest hours in the history of television.
And I can’t believe no one mentioned James Darren yet! Vic Fontaine FTW! (Full geek disclosure, my wife and I danced at our wedding to James Darren’s and Avery Brooks’ version of “The Best is Yet to Come” from “Badda Bing Badda Bang.”)
January 7th, 2009 at 11:54 am
I’m with Eclectic – some good, some not so good, but overall even the worse Trek is better than a lot of the drek around. And don’t worry, Chris – Nana Visitor in the DS9 mirror episodes is very much in all our minds!
Personally, I’m waiting to hate the new film – whatever happened to originality?
January 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
I’m sorry, but DS9 is overrated and VOY is underrated. Just how it is.
I’m not saying DS9 is a bad show, mind you. Just that I think its promoters overstate its virtues and understate its flaws. Quite the reverse happens with Voyager.
I’d first note that Voyager very much puts someone on the Star Trek All-Star team. The Doctor is frankly the clear winner as best medical officer in the Star Trek cannon. Bones is a fun character and all and Crusher had her moments, but The Doctor was not only the most well developed character on Voyager, but also the most fully-realized doctor in the history of Star Trek. Easily the best executed full-series arc in the Star Trek cannon, too.
I will say that Voyager’s biggest problem is its unfufilled potential. I won’t argue that it could have and should have been a lot better. For a premise heavy show, it didn’t take much opportunity to explore that premise. I think it had a lot of nice stories and is much better than its reputation suggests, but it had the potential to be a LOT better. They could have done a lot more with the Maquis as a concept. They just trotted it out when needed, but I think the assimilation of the two crews was portrayed as much smoother than it should have been in what seemed like an effort to just get everything settled in time for stand-alone episodes. I don’t think they got that you can do episodic TV with ongoing character conflicts that are slow to resolve.
Still, they had some of the best episodes in Trek. “Year of Hell” is perhaps the best time travel episode Trek has even done. It has has the neat trick of a villain who is unarguably the most grotesque war criminal in the history of Star Trek, but also genuinely sympathetic. Also, while they could have been better, there was some impressive follow-up stories building upon the show’s history. There were some neat call-backs, including some which crafted interesting consequences for the characters past actions.
Anyhow, the series in order are…
TNG
VOY
DS9
(big drop)
TOS
ENT
I’m sympathetic to the argument that TOS is worse than Enterprise, but I think Enterprise just had an aura of pointlessness in the end which for all of its silliness, “Star Trek” never had.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Right. So the argument, I guess, is which show has the most plausible characters and stories?
Yeah, I keep reading this gross generalization. Can anybody actually point to substantial ways that this is true? Is it that the “will Kira get it on with a shape-shifter” story arc is less naive and unrealistic than the “will Kirk get laid this episode” story arc?
Frankly, what annoyed me about ALL of the various series was the damned story arcs. On TNG I could live with it, since they by no means dominated an otherwise interesting episode, and most of them basically boiled down to, “will every male on the Enterprise eventually get a crack at Troi.” But DS9 devovled into a bunch of uninteresting ones. Will annoying characters from different quadrants figure out a way to match genitalia? Which faction of religious nutjobs will win out on Bajor? Will Quark ever win the lottery and move on up to the east side? Is Sisko REALLY a demigod? And don’t get me started on the Paris/Torres crap from Voyager. While I liked Voyager better than DS9 by a microscopic amount, that was truly an abomination. You might as well watch “Friends” as care what Paris and Torres were doing.
Really, I don’t see how the characters and stories of DS9 were in the slightest bit more interesting or sophisticated than those of TOS or TNG. So Odo agonizes over his identity? Well, Kirk and Picard did too, you know, and in ways as profound as any character, they just didn’t do it for half an episode every damned week. After a while I just wanted to slap Odo and tell him to snap out of it.
All that said, I did stick with DS9 to the end. Though a bastard stepchild, it was still Star Trek.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
So you prefer your plots neatly contained within the hour, Steve? I’m not really taking away why you found the DS9 plots more boring than others.
January 7th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
What I prefer is that I not be subjected to the evolving romance of characters X and Y. I don’t care about Kira and Odo’s feelings for one another. I. Don’t. Care. That’s the same dreck that’s on every other goddamned dramatic television show. Will Mulder and Scully ever get in the sack together????? I DON’T CARE. How much more “been there done that” can you get than a couple of continuing characters making googly eyes at one another? Sure, Kirk got a little coochie every second or third episode, and that was silly, but you could always count on him, after a brief liaison, to warp out of orbit. Odo/Kira and Paris/Torres were like bad cases of Rigelian clap that wouldn’t go away.
TNG got it just about right. They used recurring storylines, but generally didn’t beat them into the ground until you were roundly sick of them. Have Q pop up about once a season and stir the pot, fine. But please don’t have him join the crew and fall in love with somebody.
DS9 was not overall a bad show, but it was my least favorite of the Star Trek franchise because of some of the storylines I mentioned. Voyager and Enterprise were only a tiny notch better in my book.
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