Atheist Ireland Forum

I've been re-watching Enterprise. I can't see why people hated it so much. Especially season 3 which was awesome.

Anyway, it prompted me to run a poll to see what people here think of the various series.

I watched the first 20 episodes of TNG and thought it was a bit corny and hard to get into. However, I enjoyed it somewhat and the reviews of the films on RedLetterMedia.com brought me enough enjoyment that I almost consider myself a Star Trek fan.

The films are substantially different from the tv series though. The series are cheesy but are usually much better written and directed than the films. [I'm also a fan of Red Letter Media by the way!]

As to which series I is my favourite, I'll have to go away & think about it. I loved the series so much right from TOS that it's a tough call.

Enterprise is definitely my least favourite though, although I will admit that I did something I never did with any of the others and stopped watching somewhere through Season 2. You're not the first person to say that it got much better in Season 3 so maybe I should try to catch up on what I missed.

I think what put me off the last series was a succession of very poor scripts at the outset with the main characters doing inane or outright objectionable things but unlike for example DS9, where characters also sometimes had to do questionable things, there is little reflection on what has been done, no remorse. Everything the captain does is justified by the end of the episode because he's 1) Star Fleet 2) Human 3) the Captain and 4) Human. The crew also regularly engage in one of two activities: staring at T'Pol's tits & arse or telling T'Pol that she's wrong (reason for being wrong - she's not human). She spends a lot of time being lectured by humans half her age and intelligence for using things like evidence & logic where she should have used things like gut feelings and intuition.

The series could have been awesome: they finally had the tech to do superb special effects, they had some great story arcs going, they could bring back nostalgia races such as the Andorians and they had some good characters & actors. Perhaps they got this right in the end, but I had long given up on the series.

Best reviewers on the internet, to be honest. I haven't even seen half of the films they've reviewed and I still like their reviews!

When the Episode III review came out it was probably the first time I've been more excited about criticism than I was about the movie being criticised (which was terrible but this is a Star Trek thread, not Wars...)

Not giving anything away here, but they introduced a much more continuous story line that pretty much started from the season 2 finale and ended at the season 3 finale. There were some stand alone episodes within the season that diverted fromt he main storyline, but not many. When season 3 first aired here on sky, I was glued to my seat every monday night.

This storyline changes the mission from being a banal exploratory mission and fumbling around through space trying to find friendly aliens, to a military mission with a goal to save humanity. It's very focused and fast paced.



I also found those things annoying. Especially the gratuitous scenes in the decompression chamber. There was one scene where Hoshi is crawling through a ventilation shaft and as she leaves the shaft her shirt comes off. It was comletely unnecessary and did nothing to progress the story.

I managed to turn a blind eye to it however, because I liked the way they had to deal with problems when they were alsmost universally outgunned and out-teched. I also liked the way they demonstrated how and why certain things, that you see later in the star trek universe, come about. Such as the prime directive, star fleet etc.

Something I despise is the way in which they use evolution. The writers seem to think that evolutionary change can happen over a period of hundreds of years and inevitably leads to a species becoming progressively more intelligent.



They did that exactly. They brought back the Andorians. They also brought back the tholians. But I understand where you're coming from, they invented an army of new species when they could have brought back some old ones.

TNG had it all. It had all of the best parts of the Star Trek universe that the other series sometimes struggled with. Some of the most memorable episodes dealt with what it means to be human and what identity is which was dealt superbly in the episodes when Picard is assimilated by the Borg and then when he's rescued and returned to "normal". The aftermath of this and Picard's struggle to come to terms with what had happened to him and what he had done as a Borg is some of the best sci-fi writing to ever grace our screens. The only series that compares to it is the remake of Battlestar Galactica.

Communication fail on my part! I meant that last paragraph I wrote to be praise for what I thought were good elements of the series.


Did you ever see Babylon 5? It is hard to watch as a series on TV because it was a long continual story for 5 years, so if you missed a few episodes you got lost. But watched from start to finish it is one of the most epic and intelligently written series ever. Also, the writer was fairly openly atheistic and avoided Battlestar's embarrassing final episode of Woo & Religious Overtones.

Enterprise Couldn't bear to watch, managed about 10 mins at most. I thought Scott Bakula (big fan of QL) was too confined and not given free range, lets say compared to Richard Dean Anderson who only agreed to do Stargate "if his character was allowed significantly more comedic leeway" maybe Scott in later episodes became more human-like.

TNG I have watched many times and only would skip a few episodes, The series brought ST back from the dead and set a hard to beat high standard. Basically had the same cast from start to finish no need for new characters to boost viewing figures, though Pulaski was far better as the doctor. No-alternative universes, they introduced holo-decks and gave us the Borg. But overall Picad-Patrick Stewart such a great actor.

DS9 had some good episodes but the whole prophecies and alternative realities story lines where -crap.

Voyager made up for DS9, apart from the first/second series with the Kazon. The only character I detested was captin Janeway, but overall back on track, the last episode was poor. Really enjoyed the Doctor even though he started as the tinman character wanting to be more human like Odo and Data before him, but his role changed, to him being content as a hologram, and 7of9 then took on the tinman role.

So I'm going for TNG with Voyager S3-S7 close behind

Well I guess I’m the only one that liked TOS

I didn’t see any of Enterprise though my husband followed it (but he’s more a Babylon 5 fan). Voyager was ok, DS9 - I liked the first couple of seasons but stopped following it when my son taped pokemon and power rangers over my pre-recorded tapes. I believe it got really good after that. Wednesdays use to be great TV for me - 6 o’clock on BBC2 Star Trek followed by 7 o’clock TNG on RTE2. After the” best of both worlds” on TNG (end of season 3 I think) I thought the whole TNG kicked it up a whole other notch. I really loved it after that. So TNG for #1 and TOS #2.

Nonetheless, it's still the best sci-fi show that was broadcast in years. I never bothered with Babylon 5 but I might do so over the summer holidays. : )

TNG by a country mile. Howver, that's probably to do with my age. I grew up with it. Before it came on I had been watching the original series which was played daily on Sky 1 and I enjoyed it, but nothing like TNG. It was probably because I watched it is it happened, waiting for the next weries to come out. In fact, my local video library (remember them??) used to get the next videos in (3 episodes per video) ahead of RTE and Sky. I remeber pestering the video library about when the next ones were due. It was great stuff.

The borg Locutus episodes were great. Later however I think the whole picard character got better following the episode where he was captured and tortured. Whatever happened in that episode Patrick Stewart really made the character his own and kept it for as long as the series continued from there on.

Maybe I was a bit harsh on DS9, so starting to watch again, I am missing 3 boxsets so I must go about getting them.

I was never a massive fan but you have to hand it to the franchise, we probably wouldn't have so much sci-fi on telly without it.

I kind of like Voyager, but NG pips it to the post if for no other reason than the character Q, who I frickin love!

There's far too many trekkies here for me to even get into it beyond casting my votes.

(But for the record, Farscape would top even Next Gen, in a frelling heartbeat!)