(Not including the reboot trilogy as that’s a different altogether topic)
I was recently in a mood to binge the first ten Star Trek films as I hadn’t seen any of them in several years, and I notice that the TOS films are better than the TNG films. Which is weird because when it comes to the tv series, I far prefer TNG and its spin-offs over TOS but when it came to the films, it’s the opposite. I love First Contact, and like Generations but Insurrection and Nemesis are pretty bad IMO, whereas the only TOS film I truly dislike is V. (My favorites are IV and VI) Was wondering what others here thought, I think this may be the standard opinion in fact.
As for why they’re better, I think for whatever reason the TOS movies feel more cinematic, whereas the TNG films were mostly trying to capture the TNG feeling and not as much be cinematic?
Reminding me of how much the TNG movies sucked actually makes me a bit less critical of the Picard series.
The first two seasons of Picard are far worse IMO
Let’s face it, apart from nostalgia, season 3 was also pretty bad. I couldn’t believe they did the long-lost son thing for the third time (Kirk, then Picard, then Picard again), then did a bait-and-switch Borg thing which still doesn’t make sense. It was nice to see some of the Enterprise D crew reunite and give the fans some closure, even if the writers ignored years of character development, in some cases.
Season 3 wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the surreal painful experience the first two seasons were. I’m not a fan of the series in general though
Season two was the pits. Just a low budget fever dream. Also, Rios and the actor who played him got screwed.
Yeah it was a really really bad season of television. Best forgotten
It was the season that convinced me Kurtzman era trek is inherently problematic. Despite not enjoying Discovery I never really considered the era bad or anything, it was just stumbling blocks and such. Somewhere in that second season, as the credits rolled on an episode, it all hit me: I don’t like Kurtzman Trek and it’s all been a somewhat deeply felt disappointment to me.
That being said, I think Kurtzman era has the opposite curse from Burman … the first seasons are the best.
I think, apart from the spore drive stuff (seriously, I tried a rewatch and couldn’t get passed it’s proper introduction) Disco S1 kicks ass.
And Picard S1, or at least its premise and first few episodes, is the best new-Trek that’s been made, by a long shot. Unfortunately the season faltered because it tried to do too much and made some unfortunate mistakes (British Romulan seduction plot, evil British romulan sister, romulan spy as admiral, more Raffi and less Laris, unfortunately I think Raffi is at the heart of the shoe going wrong … she and laris should have been folded into a single character). But otherwise, it brought Trek forward into a new direction with enough nostalgia to get us oldies into it.
SNW is great, but ultimately, since S1, it’s becoming a TOS prequel verging on reboot now. For that reason, however good S2 was, I feel like on rewatch I’m not going to be able to ignore the amount of Kirk in it. And even apart from that, and I’m saying this as someone who loves it, it’s ultimately more nostalgic than Picard. Returning to the tried and true vibe isn’t a good sign IMO. Think of DS9 and even TNG and what they did relative to what came before.
I didn’t like Discovery or Picard right from the beginning I admit, I’ve never been a huge fan of NuTrek, but SNW, Lower Decks and Prodigy are decent shows, but nowhere near TOS and TNG era Trek IMO
Oh lower decks is a different beast all together. It’s great, and not coincidentally Kurtzman doesn’t have anything to do with it, AFAICT. Haven’t seen prodigy apart from first couple of episodes. But I can see it being good in ways different from the rest of Kurtzman trek.
SNW is leagues better than other nuTrek, but I still find myself wishing that it would dial back the quirky millennial dialog.
When somebody in Star Trek says “cool” they’d better be talking about a temperature.
I found it really weird in the Lower Decks crossover episode how the LD characters lampshaded how slowly everyone in the SNW era talks, because the SNW characters don’t have that slower stage acting delivery that’s been throughout the rest of Trek.
Otherwise, I do appreciate mostly SNW’s design choices. I like M’Benga being an actual character (even if I think the details are sometimes mishandled) and I like the complete re-imagining of Nurse Chapel.
Number Two openly being an augment in Starfleet so early in the timeline feels really weird. I know it was supposed to be uplifting, but it makes Bashir’s problems in DS9 so strange.
Season 1 was tolerable, 2 forgettable. 3 was fun for nostalgia and I liked they mostly retconned 2.