I’ve been watching a decent amount of Star Trek of late, both Voyager & Enterprise in various rerun forms. I had also recently been watching the original series as well on Joost, but not nearly as recently as the other two.
The interesting thing about Star Trek is not its rise or dominance in the past but its fall into obscurity in the present. The show never was that great, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as the trekkies make it out to be (it has a lot in common with Star Wars for this reason and the fans of both look equally silly because of it). Trekkies live and die Star Trek and because of this they can be dismissed as important opinions on whether Star Trek is actually good or not. Sorry to offend but it is truth. The Trekkies are to Star Trek what a mother is to her child, they will always praise their baby regardless of how stupid and ugly it might look.
Still, of recent years even the Trekkies have lost faith in their beloved one, and perhaps this is more important than anything else. The franchise has lived and breathed off giving bad product to devout followers, not unlike the zealotry we notice in the Christian denominations. To see the faith dwindle means there is real issues because if those who are blind begin to see, then what is a big business to do? Star Trek’s answer has been continuously to try to return to its roots, first with a TNG style series that went back to TOS style exploration in Voyager. And then going back the original time frame with Enterprise and trying to get back to basics. Now they are doing it again, going this time back to the original cast with a re-envisioning of the franchise. Again hoping that by going back they can somehow find their way back into the hearts and minds of those who exist now.
In fact, I don’t think the recent Star Treks are as bad as their fans make them out to be. Are they great? No. Are they even as good as Roddenberry’s versions? Probably not. But they aren’t that far off the quality of the original two. My biggest pet peeve with these series is that the people in charge of Star Trek have one thing and one thing going for them… their ideas for their shows are darn right brilliant.
DS9 was their least worthwhile attempt, out of this series they decided to just try a different aspect of Star Trek Universe and stick it in a space station. No exploration, increased politics… wasn’t as good as Babylon 5 which was the same time frame but managed to have far more intriguing politics and story lines. They felt that fans were getting sick of the Romulans & Klingons, and they were likely right and they were also probably out of viable story lines with those two anyway so they made the Cardassians and the Continuum. They started a whole new war with the Continuum which also made things interesting, though I think this was an afterthought when ratings dipped. Perhaps the best they came up with was the aspect of Greeed… bringing in a monetary system that didn’t really collide well with previous and future attempts of “no money” that the federation seemed to have, but also seemed to use at the same time. It was odd but it was a fresh new aspect to the show that I think was well worth it.
Voyager was one of my favorites of the Star Trek and really was the one that got the stride of what is wrong with the Star Trek franchise. It has strong ideas that don’t get followed through. By sticking the ship out in the delta quadrant they were able to explore entirely new places with great new ideas and species to look at. They did a great job at this, they did see new things never before seen… I loved the predator species the most but also liked the new Borg Killer. Still, despite this exciting new opportunity they did feel the need to return to the tried and true friends and foes of previous series… they had a moment with klingons, those big eared freaks from DS9, the Borg, and the Q. The work they did on Q, however, was downright amazing, and I think the best they did since their original appearance in the pilot of TNG. With the addition of the Maquee to the ship (I know I’m spelling that wrong) and later the borg, they had a great opportunity to really have real conflict on the ship where not everyone exactly liked each other. Unfortunately this was where the show really struggled, everyone got along fine after two or three episodes and it turned into another federation lovefest which had really plagued the series ever since TNG first started. By being out there they also forced the crew to scrounge as well… it really felt like what the original… and I liked the addition of a cook as well. The show really could have been far more gritty than previous too because of the struggle for resources, but that never surfaced. Despite being so far out and on their own, they never really did struggle much. Another problem with the series was the dullness which I really do think goes off the lovefest problem. No one had emotion or fun, and I’ve since read that this was done purposely by the directors to compensate for the lack of emotion that could be given through the masks of the aliens, but I think this has really been one of the major problems of the series, there just isn’t emotion in it at all. (I’d also like to note that the Vulcan in this series did in my opinion the best portrayal of a Vulcan ever in the series).
Enterprise was like a mix between Voyager and DS9. They wanted to get back to a more gritty exploration based show like Voyager, but wanted to bring in a big new enemy and war like DS9. The concept of going back to the beginning was great, the casting was great (my only complaint was an alien doctor), and the fact that they would finally go to a pre-federation time and get rid of that stigma was again great. Though they supposedly went to pre-federation time, they were still the mindless zombies that the federation was known for producing, and the writers thought it would be cute to continue to refer to the future federation which was eye rolling at best, laughable at worse. Again like Voyager with Q, this series did a great job with the blue guys which I found to be one of the more interesting races in the series in years and is unfortunate that they saw fit to make them extinct after the original series because they were great here. Besides the mindless drone thing that has plagued Trek for years, the real downfall of this particular series was what has become more and more problematic as the series goes on… and that is the increasing dimensional shift & time travel episodes. I think you can get away with these types of shows maybe one time each per series, but Enterprise turned it into a weekly affair and it was ridiculous in every respect. Heck I think Voyager had 3 episodes that never occurred (you know those time travel episodes where everything is righted in the end and the crew never even knew it existed because things went back to normal time/dimension), which is very specific type of this episode, and I think that was a ton, but was nothing compared to what we saw in Enterprise. I hope beyond all hope that the creators of Star Trek got it out of their system in Voyager, because I am getting sick to death of it and I hope to god I never see these story lines again in the Trek universe because it is retarded writing.