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I liked voyager and DS9 when they were broadcast but watch them again now and they are so boring.

Babylon 5, I didn't like initially, grew to like it part way through and now find it the best of the bunch.

Watching enterprise currently... I wish the crew would stop trying to have sex with random aliens.

 RossDas wrote:
I enjoyed the pilot episode of Voyager and thought it set things up nicely for a fresh Trek series, but all it took was one episode for the writers to revert to the nice, safe anomaly-of-the-week episodes that typified the TNG era and quietly shelved the interesting cards that Caretaker had put on the table. To me it was a retrograde step from DS9 in that it lacked the kind of story arc that was fast becoming the sine qua non for a quality modern series.

Each to their own of course, but I'll always see Voyager as a missed opportunity.

They spent most of the series trying to make it back to Earth from deep in the Delta quadrant, what more of a story arc could you ask for!? Let alone the 'sub-arcs' with the Borg related intrigues and Species 8472 (and to a much lesser extent the Hirogen). Then there were several long-term romances, etc. on ship, Seven rediscovering her humanity, the doctors Data-like quest to determine how 'alive' he was, etc. It was all there, and you didn't have to look very hard to see it... or maybe you did.

I enjoyed Enterprise a lot as well. We seem to be a minority.

For me it was all the temporal cold war and time travel nonsense. It was like Dr. WhoTrek or some nonsense like that, wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to enjoy it, it had a lot of interesting elements to it, etc. but the more they got sucked into time paradoxes and all that bs the more I hated it and wanted it to go away.

Eff the temporal cold war. My biggest beef with Star Trek post TNG was how whenever the writers seemed to feel lazy, they threw some time travel gak in there. It got real old.

Hallelujah brother. Preach!

It was funny on Red Dwarf. Unfortunately it was supposed to be serious (and exciting) on Voyager. The first time they took Voyager in for a landing on a planet's surface, Janeway called out, "Blue Alert!" and the lights went blue. It was a "did that just happen?" moment. The whole landing sequence was just too stupid to be believed. Giant, clunky landing gear didn't help, either. Fortunately, they never did the "Blue" alert again and I think some of the cast wish the DVDs were edited so it never happened the first time.

Huh, I must have self-edited that from my memory, because I don't remember... to be fair, things like "amber alert" and "silver alerts" are real things (in the civilian world) so its not completely out of the question... right?

Watching enterprise currently... I wish the crew would stop trying to have sex with random aliens.

You mean you wouldn't!??!? Too boldly go... where no (hu)man... has gone before....

 illuknisaa wrote:
I remember how picard melded with spock's dad and it was a big deal leaving picard psychologically messed up (and that was easy compared to borg assimilation).

Wasn't Spock's dad going senile at the time? He used the mind meld to basically transfer his senility to Picard so that he could fulfill some dignitary function or somesuch.

Somewhat of an extenuating circumstance for a mindmeld, not really par for the course.

Also B5 > DS9. Said it and I'm not taking it back.

 streamdragon wrote:

Also B5 > DS9. Said it and I'm not taking it back.

I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

 daedalus wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

Also B5 > DS9. Said it and I'm not taking it back.

I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from B5 and have a little too much fascination with large ears, head ridges, weird skin, and spots on ones temples, Deep Space 9 could be better.

Edit: In retrospect, I suppose the head ridges, weird skin, and spots on temples bits could conceivably be applied to B5 as well, but to clarify, I am referring to: Quark, Worf, Odo, and Dax (in that order), and in combination can apply to just about any species in Trek.

 streamdragon wrote:


Also lando and G'Kar > Odo and Quark. But not by much.

Fixed that for you

honestly I really liked both B5 and DS9. I mean come on when asked how fast the white star could go Straczynski said that it moves at the speed of plot and how true it was. And DS9 was the only trek to be halfway realistic. They were both great.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

Also B5 > DS9. Said it and I'm not taking it back.

I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from B5 and have a little too much fascination with large ears, head ridges, weird skin, and spots on ones temples, Deep Space 9 could be better.

Edit: In retrospect, I suppose the head ridges, weird skin, and spots on temples bits could conceivably be applied to B5 as well, but to clarify, I am referring to: Quark, Worf, Odo, and Dax (in that order), and in combination can apply to just about any species in Trek.

Regardless, you gotta admit that neither could hold a candle to Lex.

I feel that both DS9 and B5 were excellent shows and really the nadir of episodic sci-fi. Everything before was building to it and everything since is disappointing. Of course, these shows were both touchstones of my nerdtastic pubescence, so YMMV.

feeder wrote:
I feel that both DS9 and B5 were excellent shows and really the nadir of episodic sci-fi. Everything before was building to it and everything since is disappointing. Of course, these shows were both touchstones of my nerdtastic pubescence, so YMMV.

Zenith...


Anyhow.

B5 was head and shoulders above any Trek, for me, it's story matter, it's scale, it's willingness to tackle the darkest issues of daily life whilst threading together a 5 year story arc on a biblical level. Let's perhaps leave it on the sidelines for discussing Trek against Trek though, it's a different universe and a different show.

DS9 was my favorite Trek, very good characters, a reasonable story arc it's self and some very excellent episodes. 'Duet' and 'In the Pale Moonlight' stand out for me as exemplary. It was freed of Roddenberry's awful choke-hold and allowed to be a smart tv show, allowed to adapt to the new, cynical viewing public, Great characters, Great actors.

..Voyager wasn't, Voyager plodded for many series (the Kazon, whoever imagined these dickheads would be a credible threat in a galaxy of Dominion and Borg...?!?) with terrible stand alone stories and some remarkably bad cast, either characters (neelix, the man-fish-dog in the suit made from 90s hotel curtains and his 'comic relief'...) or actors (Garrett Wang as Harry Quim, should be fired into the nearest sun, the guy was fething awful).

Eventually Voyager fell into a comfortable holy trinity trope in the final series' with the captain, doctor and 7o9 as the trio of important characters and the rest acting as filler, which is more than many of them deserved (Paris, Quim and Chakotay) and less than others should have (Torres, Tuvok). But it lived and died 'playing it safe', even when it finally got better, it got better by adding 'safe' good elements: A great pair of tits and the borg, a familiar and viewer approved bad guy.

Again and again, I keep lamenting that instead of Enterprise, Paramount had had the balls to do the Section 31 show it had mulled over... again, it wimped out and played it safe by making Enterprise, played it safest of all by doing a prequel, trying to tie in as much nostalgia as possible and in doing all the safest things, killed the franchise.

If they'd made it, done the Section 31 show, dark, brooding stuff, the bad people making paradise possible... well, I think we'd still be watching it or it's successor now.

Eventually

feeder wrote:
I feel that both DS9 and B5 were excellent shows and really the ZENITH of episodic sci-fi. Everything before was building to it and everything since is disappointing. Of course, these shows were both touchstones of my nerdtastic pubescence, so YMMV.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I can't imagine what you are talking about?

 streamdragon wrote:

 illuknisaa wrote:
I remember how picard melded with spock's dad and it was a big deal leaving picard psychologically messed up (and that was easy compared to borg assimilation).

Wasn't Spock's dad going senile at the time? He used the mind meld to basically transfer his senility to Picard so that he could fulfill some dignitary function or somesuch.

Somewhat of an extenuating circumstance for a mindmeld, not really par for the course.

Sure the circumstances where a bit different but seriously Tuvok has pretty melded with everyone on voyger atleast twise (and seven three times), the borg (on 3 different occasions) and suffered from bunch on mind altering events (like being mindmelded into a mindmelding maquis agent who mindmelds 1/5-1/4 of voyger crew twise or how he gets literally melded together with neelix).

Didn't star trek: enterprice refer mindmelding as mind rape? Wouldn't that make whores tame compared to tuvok?

The only person Tuvok hasn't mindmelded with is the doctor and thats only because he didn't have the chance. (doctor could mind meld with seven and then tuvok could meld with seven/doctor, a (second) threeway so to speak).

daedalus wrote:I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

Are you insinuating that B5 was completely devoid of interesting characters? Or that physical alien effects for DS9 were somehow vastly superior to B5?

FirePainter wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:


Also lando and G'Kar > Odo and Quark. But not by much.

Fixed that for you

honestly I really liked both B5 and DS9. I mean come on when asked how fast the white star could go Straczynski said that it moves at the speed of plot and how true it was. And DS9 was the only trek to be halfway realistic. They were both great.

Lando/G'Kar is probably one of, if not THE, best bromance ever shown on television. The development of those two characters from bitter enemies, to grudging acquaintances, to close friends is incredibly well portrayed. The relationships eventual end is nothing short of amazing.

 streamdragon wrote:

daedalus wrote:I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

Are you insinuating that B5 was completely devoid of interesting characters? Or that physical alien effects for DS9 were somehow vastly superior to B5?

Not devoid necessarily. If would have asked me about characters on both shows having had me not watch both of them since their original airing, in spite of watching most of the episodes, I could probably have named almost all of the major DS9 characters. Can't say that about the B5 ones. And the sideways mohawks were just goofy.

Black vulcan

I thought the episode of Voyager with the descendants of dinosaurs was interesting. Especially if you imagined what would happen when they got to Earth.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I thought the episode of Voyager with the descendants of dinosaurs was interesting. Especially if you imagined what would happen when they got to Earth.

I found it to be very silly.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 RossDas wrote:
I enjoyed the pilot episode of Voyager and thought it set things up nicely for a fresh Trek series, but all it took was one episode for the writers to revert to the nice, safe anomaly-of-the-week episodes that typified the TNG era and quietly shelved the interesting cards that Caretaker had put on the table. To me it was a retrograde step from DS9 in that it lacked the kind of story arc that was fast becoming the sine qua non for a quality modern series.

Each to their own of course, but I'll always see Voyager as a missed opportunity.

They spent most of the series trying to make it back to Earth from deep in the Delta quadrant, what more of a story arc could you ask for!? Let alone the 'sub-arcs' with the Borg related intrigues and Species 8472 (and to a much lesser extent the Hirogen). Then there were several long-term romances, etc. on ship, Seven rediscovering her humanity, the doctors Data-like quest to determine how 'alive' he was, etc. It was all there, and you didn't have to look very hard to see it... or maybe you did.

The 'getting home' issue was more of a series premise than a plot arc, and there just wasn't enough meat and bones, too much filler over the course of seven series to make a series as compelling to me as DS9, B5 or even something like The X-Files. Making things harder was the fact that we'd already had around three Trek series worth of ideas and concepts and so it was harder to keeps things feeling fresh; it too often felt to me like the franchise was simply going through the motions. I liked the development of the doctor, but beyond that there's little there I wish to revisit other than the occasional great two-parters, such as Scorpion, and Year of Hell.

So not hard to see what's there, just hard to stay interested; my own view of course!

I found the Doctors seeming ability to cure everything, even the extreme "evolution" that Janeway and Paris went through when they turned into platypi and mated, just silly.

There was no medical challenge he could not overcome. If he was able to do all that just using the sum computing power of Voyager, then how has Starfleet as a whole not solved the death issue yet?

 djones520 wrote:
I found the Doctors seeming ability to cure everything, even the extreme "evolution" that Janeway and Paris went through when they turned into platypi and mated, just silly.

There was no medical challenge he could not overcome. If he was able to do all that just using the sum computing power of Voyager, then how has Starfleet as a whole not solved the death issue yet?

Given its the future, anything is possible.

Wesley: The star is exploding, Captain! Nova event in 30 seconds.

Picard: Divert all power to the warp core.

Wesley: But Captain, what would that sol-

Picard: Engage.

Wesley: Wait...what?

Picard: Engage.

Wesley: Are you okay, Captain?

Picard: Engage.

Wesley: So are we going to leave the area before the star explodes?

Picard: Disengage.

Wesley: So are you going to keep doing this until I divert all power to the warp core?

Picard: Engage.

Wesley: Okay, I'm doing it and.....the star stopped going nova?! How is that even possible???!?

Picard: Let that be a lesson to you Man Child Wesley. Don't ever Roddenberry me again.

*slap*

Except for Wesley Crusher existing.

 daedalus wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

daedalus wrote:I could see how, were one to ignore all the interesting characters from DS9 and have a little too much fascination with sideways mohawks, Babylon 5 could be better.

Are you insinuating that B5 was completely devoid of interesting characters? Or that physical alien effects for DS9 were somehow vastly superior to B5?

Not devoid necessarily. If would have asked me about characters on both shows having had me not watch both of them since their original airing, in spite of watching most of the episodes, I could probably have named almost all of the major DS9 characters. Can't say that about the B5 ones. And the sideways mohawks were just goofy.

Whereas the only characters beyond Cisko that I could name from DS9 were O'Brien and Worf, both of whom were cribbed from Next Generation. OTOH, I can still name Sheridan and Sinclair, Londo and G'Kar's bromance, Kosh's awesomeness, Ivanova, D'Len, and while I could keep going I think you get my point.

And while the sideways mohawks may have been goofy, they were not actually a species trait (like klingon head ridges), but rather a style of hair worn by the aristocracy. Centari women were bald, and Vir (Londo's servant) didn't sport one.

Besides, the Vorlon are probably one of the coolest races out of a sci-fi series of that decade.

I must say one of my favorite tv quotes was Kosh saying

"And so it begins..."

He said it in a way that only a semi-all knowing being can, with power and mystery.

While I agree with you streamdragon that Lando and G'kar were amazing. I still really liked the interaction between Odo and Quark as well. The way that DS9 ended with Quack saying

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Was also a very good finish and while ther was a lot of I'll say pain at the end of the series it still had the classic star trek feel good ending ever with the events of the war and its conclusion

My personal best trait of B5 was the originality of the spaceships and the realism that was portrayed in them. Rotating sections to generate grav. Space fish of the Minbari. I think that they did a very good job getting the aesthetics of each race portrayed in their ships.

And while the sideways mohawks may have been goofy, they were not actually a species trait (like klingon head ridges), but rather a style of hair worn by the aristocracy. Centari women were bald, and Vir (Londo's servant) didn't sport one.

I'm pretty sure Vir has a sidehawk.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

And while the sideways mohawks may have been goofy, they were not actually a species trait (like klingon head ridges), but rather a style of hair worn by the aristocracy. Centari women were bald, and Vir (Londo's servant) didn't sport one.

I'm pretty sure Vir has a sidehawk.

Sort of? He doesn't have the completely shaved front and back of his head that makes it a mohawk like Londo, but yes, he does have the hair fan thing.

 streamdragon wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:

And while the sideways mohawks may have been goofy, they were not actually a species trait (like klingon head ridges), but rather a style of hair worn by the aristocracy. Centari women were bald, and Vir (Londo's servant) didn't sport one.

I'm pretty sure Vir has a sidehawk.

Sort of? He doesn't have the completely shaved front and back of his head that makes it a mohawk like Londo, but yes, he does have the hair fan thing.

Londo's head isn't shaved at the back. It's receded at the front.

All Centauri males sport a 'fan', most fairly modestly but they get massive once they get up to senior ranks. It denotes rank and status and is a display in much the same way as a terran peacock, a display of virility, potency and a clear identifier on who gives way to whom . The dying Emperor refuses to don a gigantic fan wig on his visit, being past maintaining the illusion of covering up his baldness and the mad emperor, Cartagia, scandalizes the court by cutting his short in the manner of a low status man, that he might move about the populace and 'indulge' himself in various depraved acts in deprived places.

Here we can see both the back of Londo's hair and Vir's smaller fan, denoting his reduced status.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

feeder wrote:
I feel that both DS9 and B5 were excellent shows and really the nadir of episodic sci-fi. Everything before was building to it and everything since is disappointing. Of course, these shows were both touchstones of my nerdtastic pubescence, so YMMV.

Zenith...


Anyhow.

B5 was head and shoulders above any Trek, for me, it's story matter, it's scale, it's willingness to tackle the darkest issues of daily life whilst threading together a 5 year story arc on a biblical level. Let's perhaps leave it on the sidelines for discussing Trek against Trek though, it's a different universe and a different show.

DS9 was my favorite Trek, very good characters, a reasonable story arc it's self and some very excellent episodes. 'Duet' and 'In the Pale Moonlight' stand out for me as exemplary. It was freed of Roddenberry's awful choke-hold and allowed to be a smart tv show, allowed to adapt to the new, cynical viewing public, Great characters, Great actors.

..Voyager wasn't, Voyager plodded for many series (the Kazon, whoever imagined these dickheads would be a credible threat in a galaxy of Dominion and Borg...?!?) with terrible stand alone stories and some remarkably bad cast, either characters (neelix, the man-fish-dog in the suit made from 90s hotel curtains and his 'comic relief'...) or actors (Garrett Wang as Harry Quim, should be fired into the nearest sun, the guy was fething awful).

Eventually Voyager fell into a comfortable holy trinity trope in the final series' with the captain, doctor and 7o9 as the trio of important characters and the rest acting as filler, which is more than many of them deserved (Paris, Quim and Chakotay) and less than others should have (Torres, Tuvok). But it lived and died 'playing it safe', even when it finally got better, it got better by adding 'safe' good elements: A great pair of tits and the borg, a familiar and viewer approved bad guy.

Again and again, I keep lamenting that instead of Enterprise, Paramount had had the balls to do the Section 31 show it had mulled over... again, it wimped out and played it safe by making Enterprise, played it safest of all by doing a prequel, trying to tie in as much nostalgia as possible and in doing all the safest things, killed the franchise.

If they'd made it, done the Section 31 show, dark, brooding stuff, the bad people making paradise possible... well, I think we'd still be watching it or it's successor now.

Eventually

Neelix and Harry Kim (and Chakotay) were two of my favorite characters on that show -__-

Lando/G'Kar is probably one of, if not THE, best bromance ever shown on television. The development of those two characters from bitter enemies, to grudging acquaintances, to close friends is incredibly well portrayed. The relationships eventual end is nothing short of amazing.

and probably the most emotional and tearjerking moment in television...

Neelix is bested only by Jarjar as Most Annoying Alien (Any Universe). Every episode I rooted for his messy death.

YOU BASTARD!!! I cried when he left the ship!!!

chaos0xomega wrote:
YOU BASTARD!!! I cried when he left the ship!!!

I cried too. From joy that I'd never see him again... except on reruns.

As unpopular as it may have been, Stargate Universe did a much better job of the ship stranded out in the middle of nowhere concept.

Much more "we're screwed" and cast member deaths going on and a realistic (if not very watchable) mental breakdown of almost everyone.

It even represented aliens quite well, with them being genuinely incomprehensible.. if I recall, one race was held in stasis and no-one could understand them, another was a silicon-based swarm race and the most interesting one was simply a weaponized galactic scale super-AI that had been created to win an ancient war and succeeded in killing off everything in the galaxy.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I'll always like The Next Generation, but if I was to go out and actually buy or download a Trek series to watch it again, it would be DS9. It was Star Trek written like Babylon Five.

Probably because thats where they stole the idea for it...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Breotan wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Archer actually had the guts to kill a man himself, not ordering it.

So did Kirk.

Kirk never ever lost a fight one on one and slept his way through half the galaxy...