Lets say contentious things about Star Trek! I’ll start!
The mirror universe sucks. It adds nothing to the franchise, and the episodes that involve it are some of the worst in every series
100% agreed. They should have forgotten about it after the one TOS episode. I like that episode a lot though.
Idunno. What about mirror Ezri and Intendent Kira?
Honestly? Queer representation by characters in a universe where everyone is evil is, in some ways, a step backward.
That shit’s on Berman. Mirror Kira was such a fun character, allowing Nana to chew up the scenery.
Mirror Kira was fun in that sense, but honestly, I don’t feel like the mirror universe stories added much to DS9 and there are other ways she can show her range.
Her episode where she’s supposed to evict a farmer from his land is one of the best examples of both Kira as a character and Nana’s ability as an actor.
I agree that she definitely had opportunities to show range in the character of Kira, but I was thinking of the many ‘alternate version of X character’ Star Trek plots that don’t involve the mirror universe they could have gone with if the goal was ‘this actor plays a totally different character.’ DS9 itself even did that, like with the Benny Russell episodes.
Big agree. I also want the option of having evil, edgy queers who aren’t from the mirror universe, but that would only make sense against a backdrop of more representation in general
I skip every mirror universe episode.
Is it a hot take to say the Shatnerverse mirror universe kicks ass?
I dunno. It does kick ass, though.
My guess is they had fun making these episodes, and that’s why they kept going
Strange New Worlds has painted itself somewhat into a corner by being a prequel.
It’s a great series, but if Spock and Uhura are in trouble, and the only way to save them is for that nice James Kirk fella to sacrifice himself, well, we know that there’s a twist coming.
This is always going to be the problem with series set before canon events and it’s long been an issue I had with them. I know it’s easier to write historical fiction in an established universe and you can dodge some of this by going back far enough (see: ENT); but, it is always going to feel hesitant and a bit uninspired.
My bigger issue with SNW Uhura is it’s taking way too long to become the super confident TOS Uhura.
And will we see any of that Uhura before the show’s end? The next season will likely be their last, the way Paramount’s going.
That’s what I’m worried about too.
Are we not counting Musical!Uhura as super confident?
No, because she was under the influence.
I think whoever wrote that episode was doing Ketracel White. Not that I’m complaining.
The OG Enterprise, NCC-1701, is ugly as sin, inside and out.
Outside of the garish stages and costumes (now in fabulous technicolor!), this guy is exhibit A in your case:
What’s the issue? He’s calibrating the duotronic plasma panel with a magnetic resonance adjuster.
Those uniform medals always bothered me. They look like someone left their pack of Jolly ranchers in the wash and they got hot water welded to the clothing.
Are they licking off the medals of a highly decorated North Korean general?
Demotions can take a while.
Do you not see the tool is his hands? It’s clear (which was a common thing in TOS, transparent aluminium I assume) so it’s easy to miss. If you can’t see the tool it does look kind of ridiculous.
See? Now that is the sort of hot take I’ve been hoping for!
I almost added that Voyager is the prettiest and there’s no contest. Glad I left that part unsaid. :)
Voyager has the best intro song too.
No, for sure. Voyager is such a sleek and beautiful ship. Never was a fan of the saucer design
Why though? You are absolutely right.
I did not want to detract from the statement that the OG Enterprise is ugly.
Are you saying it should be hauled away as garbage?
Making Sisko the Emissary added a lot of bad habits to Star Trek that went against a lot of the ideals of early Trek. Kirk and Picard were both supposed to be competent humans, but only that far. Sisko led to writers creating those whose paths were dictated by fate, like Archer and Pike.
I don’t know anything about Archer (what was his destiny thing?), but I like what they’ve done with Pike. His knowing how he’s going to die (more or less) doesn’t change his competency as a captain, imo, just gives him some pretty good personal issues to grapple with, in a pretty Trekkie way.
I tend to agree.
But I have always enjoyed the dual destiny - that time is irrelevant to the wormhole aliens, so Sisko is only destined to become the Emissary because of normal practical human choices that he was going to make anyway.
It’s fun to watch him wrestle with the way he was raised resulting in his actions turning into a kind of pillar of faith for an alien race.
Tuvok alone was worth killing Tuvix for. Resurrecting Neelix was a happy accident.
I loved Neelix, especially when it was revealed that pretty much all of his bowing and scraping and his jealousy could be explained by having extreme PTSD after seeing almost his entire species get wiped out, but it was always clear to me that Ethan Phillips played Neelix with a lot of sadness hidden behind his behavior.
After Kes left, he was also a much better character.
Yeah, I actually love the character, and Ethan’s portrayal.
I’m really just being spicy.
That said, only one half of Tuvix was capable of operating Trek’s famous science-magic-saves-the-ship interface(s).
You misspelled unhappy
Neelix and Kesssssss should have been shot out of a torpedo tube while still conscious before the end of Season 1.
Star Treck Disco was, is, and will always be a hot mess of spare parts boldly going nowhere.
Neelix and Kes should have been a father figure/orphaned little sister relationship. Neelix lost his sister in the metreon cascade. Kes lost her father not long before running away to the surface. Both should have played into those roles instead of the weird creepy relationship they went with. They wouldn’t have needed to be shot out of a torpedo tube without Neelix’s incessant jealously over every little thing.
Kes was a gross character whose entire appeal was fetishizing youth. Neelix and Kes was an even grosser relationship.
Kes having feelings for The Doctor put an end to any hope I had for her character.
When they brought Kes back later as the…dementia demon? Idk what to call that but it drove extra nails into the coffin. Using that episode to send Voyager that much closer to the Alpha Quadrant was the icing on the coffin.
Pretty sure that’s been established as the concensus by now.
My contribution is that Harry Kim deserved to stay an ensign. Considering how often his impulse or libido resulted in disaster (or his own death), he would have been kicked out of Starfleet entirely. Lucky for him, they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant and Janeway needed bodies.
Also, IIRC the few times he was in command, he wasn’t any good at it.
The ship in distress he decided to help. Turns out they were smuggling a cloak prototype to defend against a warring faction. Look at our little Ensign Kim, breaking the Prime Directive for the first time. They grow up so quick.
I skip that episode on rewatches. Way too much second hand embarrassment
I literally just watched that one last week, and had zero memory of it. I don’t think that’s happened w any other voyager ep for me
I think Harry picks up too many strays. If Voyager wasn’t in the Delta quadrant, he would have gotten happily promoted up to Lt. Commander of some Miranda or California and retired as a mildly interesting officer who never did anything of note (or gets got in the cold open of some other more interesting ship’s episode). In fact, that so many randos who just happened to be on Voyager can hang with the level of bullshit that ship got up to would be a statistical anomaly if it wasn’t 100% certain that some Future Janeway stacked the deck during assignments for that mission to the badlands.
I didn’t actually have a problem with the way Enterprise ended. Setting aside the actual quality of the episode, I think the framing device connecting the beginning and ending of this era of Star Trek was fitting given that this was the end of Star Trek for the foreseeable future.
Yeah. The ending was foreshadowed plenty. The part that hurts is we got 45 minutes instead of the full season that they clearly planned on.
Oh yeah. I guess it’s kind of a shame that we didn’t get to see a longer story for the founding of the Federation.
Pulaski > Crusher
I am so with you on that.
I’ve only seen a few episodes of TNG, but mine is Q is lame and unenjoyable. Maybe he gets better as the show goes on, but having the first episode involve him was a bad decision.
The pilot episode script was for a single episode about Farpoint, the suits decided it should be a 2 parter pretty late in the game. The writers tacked on the Q plot in a bit of a rush. I’m not a fan of the next Qpisode either, that one is just classic season 1 TNG badness, riffing too hard on classic trek before they found their own voice. His appearances get better and better.
The love the mythos of Q and I love John de Lancie’s portrayal of it.
And yet I hated every Q episode I ever watched and I’ll never watch them again.
Maybe it just works better as a thought experiment than sci-fi drama. 🤷
Q Civil War on Voy has always been my favorite. Suzie Plakson (and her hair) just overshadow everyone and everything else in that episode.
Au Contraire Mon Captian!
TNG is one of my favorite shows of all time since I was a kid. I hate Q and Q episodes. And I hate that he is so important to the series.
My 2nd hot take in this comment section: I actually enjoy Star Trek V - The Final Frontier an awful lot. Roasting Marshmelons, singing Row Row Row Your Boat, being one with the horse, killing “God”… What’s not to like?
What’s not to like?
“I know this ship like the back of my hand.” bonk
i never got where people thinking burnham is a mary sue comes from. the whole concept of her character is that she’s a cowboy loose cannon without the competence to back it up. it’s specifically a subversion of every time our hero breaks the rules and steals The Ship and it ends up being ok because they saved the day or stopped the big war or whatever. the series starts with her trying to do just that, bringing about what she wanted to prevent, and getting arrested for it!
Ahem…
I’m okay with the candle
Neelix is the greatest character on Voyager.
I will not tolerate this sort of Neelix slander.
I love Neelix, with his toxic positivity and being a perfect foil for Tuvok. Mostly been looking for an excuse to use that gif.
That’s fair, I’m always amazed about how you come up with the most bonkers GIFs in almost every Star Trek thread.
They’re not mine. I just have a knack for sourcing. Do a gif search for swear trek and enjoy losing a lot of productivity.
It’s only page one … the other 27 pages are in my room
Neelix is basically the only character on Voyager, the writing is so wildly inconsistent or not present at all for the human characters other than maybe B’ellanna. The writers so clearly did not give a shit on VOY.
ETA I guess it does become the Seven of Nine show eventually, hardly an improvement, but she is technically a character (mean Data with T&A and PTSD).
Tsundere Data
My wife stopped watching with me because she couldn’t stand Neelix as the comedy relief in the early seasons.
If time travel is said to be impossible yet it is so easily achieved in so many story lines in Star Trek than why didn’t they just invent a safe way to travel between periods.
And if there is an eventual temporal war than everything gets destroyed and all life is wiped out in the galaxy. There would have eventually been an extremist group that would have taken the technology to it’s fullest limits and traveled back to a period when the galaxy was very young. They would have severely altered everything to the point of not making any future possible.
It always annoyed me that engineers, scientists and technicians could always find a way to travel back and forth through time “just this once because of this reason” … yet no one takes up the science to recreate the event and bake technology to purposely travel back and forth through time.
I think the shows have actually fielded this issue rather well. Temporal investigations was the start, then the timecops in Voyager and SNW. The Trek timeline is in a constant state of flux to the point that the TOS bridge and the SNW bridge are supposed to be the same place, and the fact that time travel is so easy is a great explanation for how everything in the ‘past’ and future keeps changing on the whims of producers at Paramount.
True and yet, somehow…
How else do you explain Temporal Anomalies steering clear of Janeway (future/present/whenever) getting away with whatever? With exception to that incident with Sarah Silverman.
just as long as we get to kill schopenhauer I’m in
Well, you had me until Nietzsche. If only for the association of his rhetoric with the slog that was “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky. As to the ongoing debate relating to each person’s influence may not be proven, I find it hard not to disassociate such a blathering tale with their mutual misguided ideals.
