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As much as I enjoy Lower Decks and Picard I do agree that the last really good really Trek Trek was DS9. Voyager was ok, but suffered because of multiple issues not least of which was trying to go too far back to "monster of the week" formulas after the super strong story work of DS9.

Enterprise got a really good start but I feel like they veered the story off the deep end going for the Temporal War. So instead of seeing the foundation of the Federation we all knew and loved in other series; we instead get a temporal war that isn't really mentioned outside of that season in any of the series of Trek that chronologically followed it.


The Reboot Films are just terrible writing. Kirk has none of the roguish charm or skill he's supposed to have and spends most of the early parts of the films bumbling around or being shielded by others until he has to do his final stand at the end; Spock is by far and away winning on all fronts and is honestly more of everything Kirk should be whilst McCoy doesn't even really do anything of note. You certainly don't get the sense of the 3 forming a strong bond not to mention the legion of other issues that scatter about the series.

Visually impressive but just not Trek


And then there's a series where someone decided that the turbolifts should be moving people through alternate dimensions or something that looked really cool in a CGI fight scene but make utterly no sense what so ever

Final season of Picard I found to be pretty superb, and kind of wish they’d lead with it.

A handing over the keys, ala Generations, letting us follow Seven and Picard Jnr on their continuing voyage, to seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no one has been before.

And you know? As I type that?

That is what current Trek has been missing for me. The exploration. The interesting moral quandaries when they went beyond “well of course your human side is the morally right side”. The sort of thing where it’s a civilisation with a totally different outlook they need to help make peace with.

DS9 left a lot of stuff to be resolved, post Dominion War. Voyager squandered that. Enterprise just….didn’t bother. Picard S3 at least gave it a try (successfully enough for me). Disco has done an Enterprise, but this time ignoring it from both ends.

Even the Treknobabble just isn’t there anymore for the most part. At least not in the same way. Sure we get some technical solutions, but they’re few and far between - and often a bit lame.

I wish I could get on with Lower Decks, but the animation and overall style is just so not for me. I can well do without the over exaggerated shrieks and arm waving.

Guess I’m down to hoping I can get to the end of this season of Discovery (S4 was a bust for me), and we get a Seven of Nine centric Generation After The Next Generation.

You know the whole massive super wormhole at the end of Picard Series 2 and the end of Series 3 with Seven a captain of her own ship. I'd love to see her go into the Wormhole to explore an alien galaxy or whatever is on the other side.


For me there's a few things that modern treks have lost
1) A sense of exploration and discovery

2) A sense of mature characters

3) Magic/Mystery. Go back and vulcans were freaking mysterious things; modern trek mostly just treats them as emotionally cold and useful for mindreading.


I feel like a lot of modern Trek has leaned into spacebattles and fights and really simple combat and conquest stuff. Which yes that did really well at the height of DS9, but we've lost the wonder, exploration, mystery, magic and all of exploring the unknown and space.

Heck they way they kept jumping into other subregions of the galaxy gave the feeling that the writers have no where left to explore. That everything has been done and dusted and now its just up to fight over the rest.

So go on let Seven captain her own ship and jump into that wormhole (ok its not its a transwahatist) and go exploring and adventuring

What worked for me about Picard is him being somewhat Fish Out Of Water.

The Federation and Alpha Quadrant moved on since his glory days, his star somewhat faded. Part retired, part put out to pasture.

It just wasn’t handled terribly well in the first season, with too much happening Off Screen. I know they wanted to make the timeline contemporary, where the time that’s past in the real world since TNG is what’s passed in Trek. And I do applaud that. But they fumbled it, for the most part.

I don't even remember what Qs lesson from S2 was.

Season 1 had a hard start as a LOT of things happened off-screen I agree. The whole setting had changed in big ways and there was a huge amount of ground to cover whilst also trying to cover Picard changing too over those years.

I think they did well with what was very ambitious but I felt in seasons 1 and 2 that both ended somewhat early and felt like they had to rush a little after very steady starts. Series 3 felt like it had hit its stride; but it was also VERY much a fanservice series as well. Honestly it also felt like it was the next film after First contact for the whole crew after a couple that kind of never felt all that special beyond a regular series episode bulked up a bit.

I’m still gonna mention Prodigy again as a pretty good Trek series, albeit with a few Kids Show Tropes.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.

Heavy swearing including f words, violence bordering on gore porn, sexual suggestiveness, and moral ambiguity bordering on flat out criminal behavior. You are right, I made a completely off base c.omparison...

The issue isn't that it is something you aren't comfortable showing your kids, that is your choice and perfectly reasonable, but it isn't remotely on par with a Quentin Tarantino film. That is just asinine.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bbb wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.

I watched 3 episodes of Lower Decks because I heard folks saying it was like a love letter to the originals. It most certainly is not for family viewing, unless you're a family of sociopaths.

I've maintained for the last twenty years that there isn't any good Star Trek being produced and I stand by that. Sure they've made a lot of content with Star Trek branding, but actual Star Trek they are not making.

See? This person gets it.

It kind of just sounds like none of you did even the basic level of research before watching LD.

It can be a love letter to Trek with its themes and stories and frankly, the fact that it makes sex jokes is perfectly on brand for Star Trek.

If it's not your brand of comedy then that's perfectly fine but if you watched 3 episodes then declared it Not Trek then you're in the same boat as everyone who said TNG wasn't Trek, or DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise, or Discovery.

Part if the issues are: actual technology, competency of creators, segmentation of society.

Actual technology - to make science-fiction used to involve a lot of creative ingenuity as well as audiences being actively willing to suspend their disbelief. Now it is relatively easy to make fancy-looking science fiction which requires less buy-in mentally from audiences.

Competency of creators - sci-fi creators had to LOVE sci-fi and be willing to hone their craft in order for studios to take a risk on sci-fi. Why spend time and money investing in hokey sci-fi when you can just slap together a cheap and profitable cop/lawyer/doctor show? Now there is SO MUCH sci-fi being created that you're not getting dedicated, passionate creators who have proven genre track records. Especially in the writers rooms.

Segmentation of society - it used to be that there were limited viewing options and everyone had the same options to choose from. Now the whole entertainment landscape is so fractured that you have to specifically seek out what you want. If there were only 3-6 channels, then you had limited options to choose from and you might land on something you didn't expect. Because of the limited options you had to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. So even if you're making a niche genre show, you'd try to have a variety of characters and stories that you could flesh out over the course of a 26 episode season. Now we have short seasons and narrowly focused shows that aren't geared towards mass attraction.

So, in closing, I would like: relatively cheap creative sci-fi made by seasoned professionals with a goal of making broadly appealing content.


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 Gert wrote:
It kind of just sounds like none of you did even the basic level of research before watching LD.

It can be a love letter to Trek with its themes and stories and frankly, the fact that it makes sex jokes is perfectly on brand for Star Trek.

If it's not your brand of comedy then that's perfectly fine but if you watched 3 episodes then declared it Not Trek then you're in the same boat as everyone who said TNG wasn't Trek, or DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise, or Discovery.

I watched it and hated it. The main character is a sociopath who can do no wrong. I understand that Rick and Morty popularized that trope, but I find that type of character and storytelling to be the opposite of entertainment. They filled the show with memberberries to make you think they care about the past, yet the whole show (or at least the 3 episodes I watched) totally is in polar opposite to what Star Trek was.

I'm not sure how doing research in advance would make me apreciate characters and storytelling that I found to be utterly repugnant.

If you like it, good for you. You are allowed to like it. I did not. I'm allowed to not like it.

Never said you weren't, all I did say was that to say LD isn't Star Trek because it's not your personal cup of tea is exactly what was done with all these other Star Trek shows, all of which have die-hard fans and are beloved entries into the franchise.

I think another issue is the arcing story that’s the modern preference.

TNG had elements of that, such as the ongoing Rite of Succession which left Gowron as Klingon Chancellor. But those more brought a sense of distinct continuity. DS9 really leaned into it, showing us Trek where they didn’t just warp away at the end of the episode and hope the solution stuck.

Voyager undid most of that, with nothing ever truly sticking. No running low on crew, never any lasting damage to the ship, a seemingly infinite number of shuttle craft.

Instead? They did the episode “situation of the week”. Even DS9, albeit to a continuing background of hostilities and “oh what now” stuff.

Discovery and Picard? All about that one story. Which in itself isn’t a criticism. There’s nothing wrong with a series or season long arc to tie everything together.

But Trek kind of needs its episodes. Each a different lens on the setting and the crew.

Disco is also missing an ensemble crew, and of course meetings to air opinions and options. Now I still don’t think it’s bad telly. But it’s not very interesting Trek. Spesh not when something as potentially interesting as The Burn turns out to be the result of one maladjusted kid throwing a strop.

If one only watched the first three episodes of TNG, what would they think of that show?*

I haven’t seen LD yet, but I think I might try jumping in halfway through the season to see what the show is like once it starts hitting its stride, and then go back later if I like what I see there.



*I absolutely gave up on Picard after three episodes, so I’ll own the hypocrisy here. Still, I watched the RLM and Steve Shives reviews of the show far into the second season, so I feel my distaste for that show stands on steady ground.

Actually, Disco does have meetings.

It’s just…..Burnham is always off somewhere else when those she’s meant to be leading are getting the problem actually solved, especially problems caused by her sodding off on another jolly.

Like the worst sort of manager you can encounter.

Happy to take the credit, but never really being part of the finding of the solution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
If one only watched the first three episodes of TNG, what would they think of that show?*

I haven’t seen LD yet, but I think I might try jumping in halfway through the season to see what the show is like once it starts hitting its stride, and then go back later if I like what I see there.



*I absolutely gave up on Picard after three episodes, so I’ll own the hypocrisy here. Still, I watched the RLM and Steve Shives reviews of the show far into the second season, so I feel my distaste for that show stands on steady ground.

I’d genuinely suggest just watching Picard Season 3.

I will say that I think Lower Decks does come into its own once it gets going. To be fair you can honestly say that of a lot of TV series - many need a good half a first season to really establish themselves, their characters, stories and structures .

A rare few start out super strong and don't need that, others do and honestly I don't blame series for needing that breathing room.

Sometimes they are establishing a lore and setting; other times they might already have that or establish it quick, but the characters take a little longer to settle and for you to invest enough in them to care to see more.


I think Lower Decks fits into that, especially because its what I'd call a "casual serious" animation.

It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.

I don't think its quite so simple as I'd argue many series can start strong, but they evolve and change over time and how they end might not be how they began. DS9 is a great example of a series that I'd argue, started strong, but then evolved and changed considerably over its lifespan.

Stargate though is one I'd argue did the same, but once its primary story arc was mostly over, it lost its way. A few elements felt lazy in the latter seasons (every alien spoke American); and their story writing slipped into the whole "new bad must be even more powerful" until its 4 people fighting almost literal gods.


I think in the end it depends on the storytelling itself and on the actors and how they carry their characters.


I'd say there are many factors including one that both B5 and Stargate fall into which is learning when its time to end. When the spark and flare are a little bit gone and its time to let the story conclude.



The start can set things up but its how it evolves as a whole that's important and that gets complicated.

I watched it and hated it. The main character is a sociopath who can do no wrong. I understand that Rick and Morty popularized that trope, but I find that type of character and storytelling to be the opposite of entertainment. They filled the show with memberberries to make you think they care about the past, yet the whole show (or at least the 3 episodes I watched) totally is in polar opposite to what Star Trek was.

Which character on Lower Decks is portrayed as doing no wrong? They’re all shown to be quite flawed and work on their problems as time goes on.

 Just Tony wrote:
See? This person gets it.

No one has said you had to like it or that you had to show it to your kids; you keep going back to arguing against things people aren't saying. The only point of contention is in pretending that a PG-13 rated tv series is somehow the equivalent of hard R films.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.

Part of that I think are the writers trying different tones, and gauging audience reaction to each, as both sides suss each other out. And each will eventually find the right mix, which will influence the following sequels. Not just giving the customer what they want, but with good writers? Taking the show the way the writers want, but adapted to a way the audience will find palatable.

TNG was a risk because Picard, his crew and the show were going for a more…I guess serious and dramatic tone than TOS. Where Kirk was quite swashbuckling, Picard was much more reserved and statesmanly.

DS9 needed to root itself in Trek, but then became a wonderful study of the Federation, its foes and allies, not to mention third parties like the Ferengi. And it became one of the best sci-fi shows hands down, because it built itself on the strong foundation of TNG’s background without just being a copy. Whilst TNG continued being all shiny and hopeful, DS9 let us explore the grubbier side of things, where compromises are made out of necessity.

God I love DS9. Broken record but By The Pale Moonlight is absolutely Peak Star Trek. Especially because Garrack was 100% right, and even Sisko knew it, however much he hated that fact. Better than there only being four lights.

Perversely, Discovery’s extended sojourn to the Mirror Universe was pretty damned good too. Just a shame they went the way they did in the end.

 Gert wrote:
Never said you weren't, all I did say was that to say LD isn't Star Trek because it's not your personal cup of tea is exactly what was done with all these other Star Trek shows, all of which have die-hard fans and are beloved entries into the franchise.

Also, Roddenberry wanted orgies in the background on Risa in TNG.

Free and easy sex has always been in the DNA of Star Trek.

I'm pretty sure somewhere in the Prime Directive and the Starfleet Manual there's something like a "Kirk Directive" which reads "no matter how hot aliens look, do NOT engage in romantic relations on first contact"

Because darn he had a relationship with almost every single race they met!

na, that was Riker

Riker was a Randy bugger, no dispute there. But he didn’t knob everything in sight.


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On reflection?

DS9 perhaps hamstrung the other shows to some degree.

Pre DS9, the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant was pretty set. Yes there were plays to shift that now and again.

The Dominion War fundamentally shifted that though. Having fought together, relations between the Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires are inherently changed, arguably for the better. At the very least diplomatic relations may very well have eased. Not to mention not a single major power didn’t get some kind of a kicking during that war, reducing ability if not necessarily appetite for further conflict.

And with the then ongoing threat of The Borg? One can easily see how skilled diplomats and politicians on all sides might want to keep things fairly friendly, as there’s at least one known threat where such a previously unprecedented alliance could well be needed again.

And so….where’s the big threat now? What’s the interesting and evolving situation with emerging powers?

The Borg were always an odd threat if just because they clearly consider the Federation to be a huge risk to them and yet they only ever send one Cube*.

We regularly see them with extensive fleets of cubes and that a single Cube can bring the might of the Federation Fleet almost to its knees.

Yet they never send two or three or four.

They are strangely willing to put their queen at risk whilst for some reason holding almost all their forces on one quadrant and not moving them out.

Story wise I also feel like we never get the feeling of a long drawn out war with the Borg like we do with the Dominion during DS9. During DS9 we know that there's a warn on; we know there are front lines with ships being lost on both sides all the time even if they aren't the primary focus of an episode.

With the Borg on the other hand, we don't really get that feeling of a sense of a long war. Picard series touches on it I think the best of any series; but in general Borg are an "Alien of the week/film" type deal. Once their weekly ship or film ship is defeated that's basically it for the threat for a while. You don't get that sense that there's a far flung corner of Federation space that's constantly under threat of invasion.



It's strange because the storylines do cold war and boundaries really well. There are several boarders and neutral zones and the like in effect that we do get a sense of the constant threat of the Romulans; or Carsassians. Of the boarder wars with the Marquis and of the risk that one day the Klingon Empire might want to stretch its wings again and push out.



*In fact Picard series 3 is one of the few times where them sending a single cube with the Queen actually makes logical tactical sense because its a last-ditch assault. Yes you could argue that she might have done better to slink off to a corner of space to hide and attempt recovery; but you can see the logic in one last major assault against their greatest foe.
The other times though its, strange how they act.

My guess is the Borg have ultimately finite resources. And in their logic, it’s better to spread those out, because every assimilation of person and technology is potentially the key to the next major assimilation.

If we look at The Federation? Assimilate say, the Enterprise D or E? And you now have an expert level knowledge, and cutting edge examples of, that culture’s technology.

From there you can nick off back to Borg Space to properly analyse and consider the new haul, and how you might marry Unique Technology A from Species Y to all the other examples, creating useful new hybrid technologies.

And so, when you next return? You’re already better adapted. And maybe that is when go mob handed.

After all, if a species can defeat one Cube, you could assume they can do it again, potentially in rapid succession. Send them one at a time? It’s finite resource expenditure, and at the very least you gain new knowledge on how it was defeated, and how you can avoid it.

It’s also assuming the likes of Species 8472 are rare, and the overall collective isn’t engaged in really tricky conflicts elsewhere, with the Cubes sent to the Alpha quadrant there more to try to create new sources of Drones, without reducing the forces committed to all out war.

The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.

Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.

All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.




The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.

Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.




Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Hopefully Lower Decks S5 comes to our streaming screens this summer. Don't know if we've gotten an official release date yet.

I’m hoping Lower Decks is deleted from reality entirely.

Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.

I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.

Disco S4 (the one I couldn’t stomach) might be Bloody Awful. But at least those involve have some kind of emotional range. And some sod has put in something approaching effort.

Wow. My reation could not possible be any more diametrally opposite to this one.

I don't begrudge anyone liking Discovery, though, so it'd be nice if people would not hope for stuff other people enjoy to be deleted from reality, though.

Honestly, I think this is a good thing. Shows should end at some point and keeping them going forever leads to good shows turning terrible.
5 seasons is strong as hell and it's pretty great that LD went past 1 let alone 4.