Jumpin said:
Yeah, the first three Star Wars prequels had that issue. But Rogue One seems like it nailed it correctly: Even though the special effects were a higher quality, they didn't make the weapons look higher tech.
And on another topic, to comment on the franchise as a whole: TOS - first season was almost ALL great, I would argue the best season of Star Trek ever. But season 2 and 3 was mostly weaker in all regards: worse acting, storylines were cheesier more formulaic feeling, but there were a few gems. There were some EXCELLENT episodes in this first season, which in my opinion, makes it absolutely essential to any fan. If you watched Stargate, one of the best episodes "The Nox" is based on Errand of Mercy. City on the Edge of Forever is often cited as the best episode, and I don't quite know why, it would be my pick for maybe 10th or 11th, and not just to be contrary either: I don't want to say it's bad, it's not, it's great, but it means there's A LOT of underrated episodes - especially when Balance of Terror and Space Seed fill out the top 3. It's kind of like pro-wrestling in a way, where some people decide "these are the top guys" even though many of the rest are far superior in other elements, and are unfairly ignored.
DS9 - was a mix of excellent episodes, but a whole lot of filler. The tail end of the series was horrendously bad, with Sisko being deus ex machina solution to everything, and one of the worst written war stories I have seen in a science fiction setting. It was like Babylon 5-lite, and without much in the way of science fiction stories. The worst part about it is that Ronald D. Moore, who did such an excellent job with season 1 & 2 of the BSG remake, was the head writer of that garbage. I'd say cherry pick episodes in this series, there's about 30 really good ones, usually the ones featuring Garek, Cardassians, and Quark. The Bajoran/religion, Dominion/shapeshifter, and mostly everything else (baseball, weird random aliens - done SO much worse than any other series, throwback stuff, etc...). There's some great episodes in DS9, probably more than other series; but it also has the largest number of bad episodes of the entire franchise... well, outside of season 2/3 of TOS. VOY - 4 and 5 of Voyager were my favourite seasons of Star Trek outside of TOS. It was a return to a much more science fiction approach. The first few seasons felt a little drawn out similar to DS9's later seasons; I would guess there was a push for long multi-season story arcs, and while great in theory, seem to fail much more often than they succeed. Not to mention the roles weren't very defined, the cast was more ensemble run. Then in the 4th season it began to get really good: The Doctor and Janeway became much bigger and better characters, and they added in 7 of 9 for a third - Tom Paris, Chakotay, Kim, and the others, took more of a back seat (ironically, their best episodes were in the later seasons) - although still got featured in a few episodes here and there. The episodes were largely a lot better from here forward, and season 4 and 5 were both excellent. This also coincided with the ending of DS9, so the staff moving over probably upped Voyager's quality. There were some interesting Asimovian stories in Voyager, the most popular one "Year from Hell" based on Asimov's the End of Eternity. While the first 3 seasons of Voyager were weak in concept, the second season actually had a lot of great stuff... but then it also had the infamous episode: Threshold, which is entertaining simply because of how bad it is. ENT - I have not seen it, ever. Despite the fact that it has Scott Bakula as Captain Sterling Archer. |
Great post. There's so much star trek there's always a fun episode to watch again. Almost all episodes with Q were awesome in TNG, I miss that kind of banter from the other series. Voyager felt like true star trek again, exploration with added survival. I always used to dislike the transport the diplomat episodes, Voyager is free of those :) I'm a bit more receptive to them now, but it still doesn't feel like to boldly go where no man has gone before. And STD sounds more like to stubbornly stay where we've all been before. Time travel/loops/anomalies are my favorite, next to holodeck (mis)adventures and exploring sentient AI. With STD the last 2 are out again :(
I recently finished watching Enterprise. It starts slow but it's definitely worth your time. I like it despite Scott Bakula, imo he's the weakest of the cast. I simply cannot unsee Dr. Sam Backet. Bring back Quantum leap! There's a lot of rehashed story lines in Enterprise but also plenty good stuff. It's like tos in that the captain gets to settle disputes by fist fight :/ It's like Voyager when they're stuck in the expanse in season 3. It tries to be everything in season 4. Season 2 is my favorite, keeps getting better as the season progresses. The temporal war was a nice development, too bad it fizzled out with nazis start of season 4.
I wonder if I'll lose interest in DS9 again which I'm watching now. At least with Netflix it's easy to skip to next episode if it gets too boring.
