ngl, the show picks up. At first you get those “MURRICA” vibes and recoil like “plz not in star trek”. But then… it gets so much better.
In fact, gonna piss off a few of you with this one, but Enterprise is much better than Discovery or even Picard once it picks up.
I find Discovery and Picard to be a departure from the daring production, direction and storytelling that made Star Trek… well, Star Trek. Some might say “that was the point”, but was the point also to do the paint-by-numbers Hollywood remake bullshit that’s been blasting out of cinemas the passed, oh I don’t know… DECADE?!?
Anyways, slow start, but it picks up and adds valiantly to the Star Trek canon…
I don’t think there’s anything to be angry about. Enjoying some Star Trek shows over others is a compliment to Star Trek. It means that all the shows aren’t just a copy/paste of each other. That there is variety, yet they are all Star Trek. We should not, do not, have to apologize for having favorites. Being pissed at someone for preferring a different Star Trek show than ones favorite(s) is silly, and should never happen. LLAP.
I haven’t rewatched any Enterprise except the mirror duology since first run, but I really never got the hate people had for it. I think I always thought it was pretty good. I don’t know if I’d say it was better than Voyager overall, I think my main ding was what I think is a stupid idea of a prequel. But take that out of it, and I’d think they were even. I used to think they were tied for the bottom two, but Discovery and Picard have really lowered my opinion of what bad Trek can be, so Voyager and Enterprise look a lot better by comparison lol.
Ngl, Voyager is a banger. Does it drag on here and there? Yes. But my gawd is it good. Like my favourites list is kind of borked to some people, but for me it’s:
DS9
Voyager
Next Generation, and
Enterprise.
Prodigy ends up as an honourable mention, and the rest of the modern shows end up as dishonourable finger pointing. Even “Lower Decks” had me thinking it was just another cash grab, which sucks, because I’m sure the writers and actors are trying their best.
But yet, I’m still counting the months until I’ve forgotten most of the shows so I can go back AND BINGE THAT SHIT AGAIN!! In fact, chronologically, based on the timeline.
Maybe we could have a schedule here on this community about when we’re going to watch which season of which show and have discussions about it, so we can stay in sync :D
I just started watching during covid. I mean I caught episodes my dad had on as a kid in syndication but never watched anything through because Netflix and the like didn’t exist.
Having gone through enterprise, ds9 and next gen and starting voyager now. So far my ranking is
SNW
Enterprise
Ds9
Next generation
Voyager
Somewhere down the list is Picard which just seems like a cocked up reunion series that made little sense.
Honestly 1-3 could almost be in any order, I really like SNW so far minus the doctors kid episode. Next generation is good for the competence porn and worf just being an idiot tho.
I understand that this is not really a majority opinion. Enterprise was awesome in that it seemed the most realistic. Replicators werent really a thing. They didnt trust those transport beams and used shuttles and actually had to wear pressure suits and helmets. Same with SNW.
Next Generation and the like was just crazy in that every dang away mission planet just so happened to have a gas mix of 70% N, 21% O2 and the rest CO2 and inert gases at like exctly 1atm (or at least a mixture within those norms)
Next Generation and the like was just crazy in that every dang away mission planet just so happened to have a gas mix of 70% N, 21% O2 and the rest CO2 and inert gases at like exctly 1atm (or at least a mixture within those norms)
That was just what TOS, TAS, the movies etc did - mostly for production cost reasons. It’s also why there were transporters, though I personally really like the idea and it’s not a Star Trek specific thing.
I don’t think Enterprise was more realistic per se, just set in a much lower tech level much closer to current day. Some parts of Sci Fi aren’t “realistic” in the way if you showed a 2023 cop show to someone from 1800, they’d say it was a bunch of flights of fancy in tech (modern cars, planes, smartphones, zoom meetings etc would probably seem as realistic to them as starships do to us).
Honestly, rankings have to be almost completely subjective at a certain point. IDK if you listen to any of the Star Trek review podcasts, but there’s always tension around how to rank a show. Do you try and be “objective” and take your personal enjoyment out of it as much as possible, and instead rank on production success (did the final show do what they were trying to do?), cultural impact?, Iconic level of an episode?, Number of Iconic episodes or well produced episodes or the average quality over a season or show?
Like, there are episodes that are a LOT of fun, say “Trials and Tribulations” from DS9, but it didn’t really have a strong unique plot or sci fi conceit or have anything to “say” in morals. It was Iconic solely to big existing fans, and the awesomeness of the production was entirely around the technical achievement of filming in the 90s using 60s techniques and near perfectly splicing together with existing footage. It’s one of the ?2? DS9 episodes I’m at all interested in re-watching frequently, and it’s really really fun for me as a huge Star Trek nerd. But is it a “great episode”?
Compare to “In the Pale Moon Light” or “Measure of a Man”, or “City on the Edge of Forever”. Those are Iconic for a reason, and most of them work pretty stand alone. They’re arguably “better” in context, but they have pretty good production - it seems to achieve what they set out to do, they have a message, they have a moral idea they’re playing with, and they throw in some Sci Fi too.
Then there’s the same thing but over an entire show. I think TOS and TNG and DS9 had very high highs, but also some pretty low lows throughout the run. “The Alternative Factor” or “Code of Honor” don’t exactly stand up as “better” than Picard. By Voyager, I think they still had a bunch of 3/10s but mostly avoided 1/10s, and honestly Enterprise seemed to hit that middle 4-6/10 range very consistently. I haven’t “done the math” but I’d be willing to believe if you averaged ratings of every episode, Enterprise might well rate higher on that average than TNG. It’s just that if you’re selective you can watch probably 30 episodes of TNG that are 8-10/10 and there might be 2 in Enterprise.
I will say - if you like reading, and you like SNW a lot - I’d suggest trying the novelizations of TOS and TAS by James Blish. They fix all the production limitations of 60s tech and budgets, but keep the good stories and characterizations. It’s actually how I got into TOS originally, back before streaming or releases of the show on DVD. I think in many ways I wouldn’t love TOS as much as I do if my main exposure was actually the episodes. Balance of Terror as a case in point basically bored me to death in the middle where for the 52 minute runtime they just linger in a countdown set of scenes for way to long. Similar for The Trouble with Tribbles - the reason they could slice it up for the DS9 inserts is there was like 8 minutes of a bar fight you can mostly cut and lose NOTHING. For on screen - the TOS Movies really cemented them IMHO.
Currently rewatching VOY and ENT and I like both of them a lot more now. When it comes to ENT, mostly for its latter two seasons but surprisingly there’s some real gems in its first two seasons as well, some good ol’ star trekky episodes.
It was night and day when he came in. The show went from mediocre and not what I wanted out of Trek prequel show to just outright bad with the Xindi arc, but then came back to be exactly the prequel I wanted. It even fixed earlier seasons with its 3 episode Kir’shara arc that explained why Enterprise Vulcans seemingly became antagonists that eschewed things like mind melds and other familiar aspects of their culture.
Then when they canceled it, they got rid of him and gave us a truly awful finalie that crapped on the show and everything Manno Coto built.
I still watch enterprise from time to time. Wished there was more. I'm not really getting into the new Trek, and I'm extremely not getting into paying for another streaming service, but that's a different story. Discovery and the constant crying was so annoying I decided to give up on the other stuff. It had really nice moments, but overall it was just meh.
It’s closer to Old Trek. But in the last episode of S1
spoilerwhere they take original TOS dialog for parts and mix it with modern dialog - man you really see the difference. Love it or hate it, the TOS dialog feels a lot more martial and IMO fits way better with having ranks on a ship.
There’s good stuff in it, but they also seem to really have a problem making any non-quippy character, to the extent that I actually think it affects characterization. To that end, Ortegas still
spoilerisn’t that well fleshed out IMHO even with the last episode being 1/3 about her. I think earlier Trek played tricks to make characters feel more different, but those worked.
Spock is certainly “in between” The Cage and TOS, but I think they’re going to have to re-do something like Kohlinar to explain his change in the last episode of SNW.
It’s reasonably good, but significantly different too.
I thought that point about the season finale was the whole point of the episode. Pike and his style weren’t right for the situation. He was like a caricature of Picard without the tactical superiority to back it up.
It also might be another reason Enterprise was the ship kept out of the Klingon war.
I don’t disagree, and I suppose captains get a LOT of leeway with how they run their ships. What I’m actually talking about is
spoilerthe part where Spock has the TOS lines being jarring.
I think in that case they let “easter eggs” for fans get in the way of coherently telling the story they wanted to tell. At least with your (and my) take -
spoilerhow do you get that Spock? It seems like the divergence would have left Spock more like he is now with Pikes leadership style, vs the apparent changes to TOS with Kirks style.
Your spoiler tags are not working correctly on my end, could be connect idk. But its just trying to resemble old trek. I don’t think it is trying to be a 1 for 1. I’ll take the delivery format over Discovery. We get episodes to focus on each character, we aren’t constantly drained by chasing some seasonal baddie. Its nice.
I also suggest Strange New Worlds. It’s the best Trek since TNG (imo). There are certainly some silly parts and some episodes do lean a little more towards comedy then I’d like in my Trek, but even still. It’s good Trek.
@GCanuck@startrekexplained going on the first four S2 episodes, they seem to be following a weird-solid-weird-solid pattern with S2. So, weird one this week.
@startrekexplained agree it hasn’t started as well as S1 but I’m still optimistic, especially if that second episode is anything to go by. Episode 4 was a good one for me too.
I watched enterprise for the first time last year and was surprised to have it grow on me so much because of some of the hate it gets. By the last season they really seemed to be getting their stride and it was a shame it got canceled then.
Currently (re)watching TNG S05E17 AKA the anti-Trans conversion therapy episode. From 1991. Starting to understand why I have the values I do, since I grew up with this crew.
There are always going to be people that are offended by diversity, but if anything we’ve witnessed from the fan response to these recent Star Trek shows like lower decks, STD, Picard, and strange new worlds, It’s that there’s different ways of using diversity in a story.
Diversity that seems natural to the plot and diversity that seems to be the plot are treated very differently by different kinds of fans. The former seems to be well received even by people that aren’t huge fans of diversity. The latter seems to be grating on a large number of fans.
What I think almost all of Star Trek except STD did very well is to use the infinitely diverse universe to tell stories about the human condition and the future of hope. Why I think STD failed at this is not for the inclusion or the diversity but because it made it the A plot repeatedly in a time when the society we are shown the universe through is supposed to take diversity=strength for granted.
Other treks wouldn’t care that you are gay, black, trans, or the descendant of a bad man, but there was still inter species conflict and an intense fear of genetic engineering that created a context for exploring various modes and motives for conflict.
Diversity that seems natural to the plot and diversity that seems to be the plot are treated very differently by different kinds of fans. The former seems to be well received even by people that aren’t huge fans of diversity. The latter seems to be grating on a large number of fans.
I actually really like social commentary, I don’t like tired, hamfisted, and insultingly performative puppet shows of social commentary. STD gave me vibes that a boardroom full of old white guys in expensive suits had a conference call with the writers that went something like “market research says progressive bullshit sells well to our target demographic, so I want 24 scripts about being ethnic or queer or something on my desk by morning. Make sure you really spell it out, too, the [slur]s are fucking stupid to get it otherwise.”
Oh, it felt more then that. After the pile of garbage was written, the editors and the showrunners were bypassed to the marketing department and senior execs who decided to cut continuity and plain “making sense” to “make sure we cram in more woke” (and not real “progress by a strong person that identifies as a certain way” but outright insubordination), poor decision making to make controversy at every level, or heroin induced flights of fancy… My favourite was that time some producer wanted a fight on top of a turbolift, so they showed that 90% of the interior of the ship is empty space where turbolift apparently just fly around. cbr.com/star-trek-discovery-turbolifts-season-3-f…
STD gave me vibes that a boardroom full of old white guys in expensive suits had a conference call with the writers that went something like…
I 100% believe that this ham-fisted diversity bullshit is what happens when a board room of old white guys are just checking boxes instead of anyone actually trying to tell a cohesive story.
I have to imagine a lot of this “I’m done with woke star trek” crap is perpetuated by bots and shills. Post histories on Reddit for accounts saying these right wing talking points were either days old in response to some new Trek show or episode, or years old accounts that haven’t posted in forever then suddenly posted a bunch of talking points in every thread they could find.
There were definitely legit accounts of people upset by new Trek for other reasons but far outnumbered by “anti wokester” puppet accounts. When it came to Twitter I wouldn’t bat a lash if one out of every hundred accounts were bots. After noticing their trends they get easier to spot. It’s the only thing that makes sense when the alternative is there are legions of trek fans that never noticed how progressive the shows were and suddenly decided to be angry in the past couple years.
There are real humans who have effectively been turned into “anti-woke” internet spammers who never watched Star Trek and are suddenly pretending to be very invested.
Just like all those man who thought women’s sports was a joke, but are suddenly incredibly personally invested in women’s sports whenever a trans women is involved.
I agree. Star Trek has always been woke. Comments that this is a new phenomena confound me. I have no idea what sort of mental gymnastics are required for such a stance. Star Trek’s IDIC happened right under their noses, yet they didn’t notice. TOS by today’s standards may not be considered as pushing boundaries. At the time it was broadcast, TOS put out some radical ideas. No more wars between countries on Earth. An end to racism. Uhura and Sulu as part of the command staff on the bridge. Dr. Richard Daystrom was portrayed by William Marshall, a Black actor. Majel Barrett’s Number One in TOS’s “The Cage” was no a damsel in distress. There are other examples in TOS, too. Subsequent Star Trek series continued and expanded on IDIC with the series stars, guest stars, and stories. But, still there are those who think Star Trek “suddenly” went woke?
Sometimes I think that referring to Star Trek as being suddenly woke is just a dog whistle. But then I’m back to what Star Trek any folks using that term were watching in the first place.
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