Star Trek

Oh yes. That was the perfect response to canon questions. "Don't ask" wink wink.

My biggest gripe about ENT S4 is the canonisation of the forehead ridges. Don't give a stupid canon reason for something that everyone knows was just poor production values or just Klingon design before they randomly decided to redesign them in TMP. If you're going to explain that, then please go all the way and explain why they smeared brown paint in their faces. If you don't explain the brownfacing, I won't accept your headridge explanation either.

Wait, The Orville is on Disney +?? I can't check at work (stupid firewall). This is great news.

Also obligatory comment; "lower decks is great, and gets way better as it goes on".

It is if you’re in the UK and since I’m working from home I’ve done half a season today.

There is ten hour version on youtube...

Whoa, I’ll accept that TNG and Voyager were less consistent than DS9 but that’s a bit harsh on their crews, the characters are what keeps the 90s Treks going

I actually totally agree. I loved that more explicitly episodic format.

Serialised stories can be amazing, but having something more episodic feels like a breath of fresh air in this age.

It's something DS9 did fairly well too. Or (if you'll forgive another non-Trek reference) SG1.

Besides the doctor guy, there wasn't a single decent character in Voyager.

7of9 just seemed to be a result of someone asking "what if Hugh but sexy and and constantly stern?" Janeway was dull. Chakotay even more so. Tom Paris was irritating, Kim was pointless, the Vulcan guy was crap and let's not mention Neelix or fockin Kes.

I think the Voyager crew work as an ensemble and thats kind of what Star Trek needs. Although it does get a bit 7 heavy toward the end when they tried to sex it up, admittedly.

TNG has plenty middle-of-the-road characters like Geordi, Beverly and of course Deanna, but I don't think any of them are neglected as much as Chakotay and Kim. While I do think EMH and Seven are among the more interesting characters, the show just focusses too much on them in the second half of its run.

I also like Janeway but she's let down by inconsistent writing, in one episode she's all super-principled prime directive above all else, in the next she tries to murder a prisoner. My favourite character is actually B'Elanna, who also was most consistent in getting her share of attention throughout the series.

I agree about both TNG and VOY being hit and miss, albeit in different ways. TNG had a lot of good to great episodes starting with S3, but even in its best seasons there was a considerable amount of boring filler. S1 was mostly bad, I don't think any season of VOY was as bad as that. S2 is like the definition of "hit and miss", it has some great stuff (most notably Measure of a Man) but also a lot of utter trash like The Outrageous Okona or the one with the drunk Irish farmers.

VOY also has good and bad episodes, but it's rarely as good as TNG's great episodes and rarely as bad as TNG's lots of stinkers. I think most of VOY is just... ok. And I'd rather have two great and two terrible episodes than four ok ones.

Both series are very episodic, pretty static and show little character development. But I think it's a bigger issue in VOY for three reasons: A) it seems to deliberately set up arcs like the very premise of the long road of getting from there to here, or the whole Maquis thing. Both "arcs" are thrown out of the window almost instantly to make way for TNG lite with aliens of the week. B) The notion that the Voyager is alone without any Federation resources make its reset button even more jarring, the Voyager can suffer any damage it wants only to be in mint condition again in the next episode. And it somehow lost 17 shuttles over its seven years. C) The point of reference for TNG was mostly TOS which was purely episodic. VOY unfortunately had to suffer comparisons with DS9.

DS9 blew all these shows away in terms of serialisation/continuity/character development/political development. Not only that, almost all of its main cast were great characters and none of them were sidelined. The only exceptions I see are Bashir who was pretty weak early on but got a LOT of character growth over the course of the show, and Dax who is fine but is never developed or explored that much imo. On top of that, you have a wealth of outstanding recurring characters. And on top of that, throughout its entire run was most consistent in delivering high quality episodes.

In VOY, with its focus on Seven, it could at least have truly developed this character. Sadly she was a victim of the reset button as well, it feels like every lesson she learned towards figuring out her humanity is forgotten at the end of the episode and so she keeps relearning the same lessons. I think EMH shows more lasting development than Seven does.

I don’t think the reset button was ever hit harder than Janeway and Paris evolving into giant crocodile sized amphibians, shagging, producing offspring and still being back on the bridge never to mention it again by the time the credits rolled

It wasn't well liked by everyone, but Tuvix is a great example of Trek, with a great dilemma at the centre of it.
The actors who play Paris and Kim have a podcast, the Delta Flyers, where they are rewarding Voyager, and that episode is a good listen.

@aunt Alison

Not sure what the other one is, and my memory is too faint to recall if Chakotay actually thought they could populate the planet together in the other one. If he has any knowledge of evolutionary biology, he should know that generations of incest will not preserve themselves. You can't repopulate with just two people, you are a dead end. Simple as that, deal with it, make the best of it.

The other episode you're talking about was some sort of mirror Voyager made of silver molecules or whatever. They all died to give us a glimpse of what could have been, only for the real Voyager to show up and go "hm ok, nothing here, let's move on" and the entire thing being forgotten about the next week, as always on VOY.