are now up on Netflix Streaming yesssssssssss

Great, maybe now I can give DS9 another chance. After watching Enterprise again.

well looks like DS( is the only series that isnt available for streaming

It's always been fascinating to me the wildly different opinions fans have about the different Trek series. Some are hardcore fans of ST:TOS while they hate all of the newer stuff while other fans love the newer shows but dont care for ST:TOS.

I don't think I've met any Trek fans who said that they felt Voyager was the best one ever though. A couple have said Enterprise is their favorite but the vast majority definitely seem to think either TOS, DS9 or TNG was the best one.

Well that figures (about DS9).
I used to like TOS, without it none of the others would be around. Really like the characters. Just hard to watch these days, it was a lot more fun 30 years ago.
TNG starting at Best of Both Worlds was probably the best, but Ent was really good and was far better from the very start than even TNG was, with several good actors instead of 2.

The Original series was my favorite and the standard by which all sci-fi was measured for me for years.

Leaving aside the movies for now; TNG took a while to catch on for me because it was a new crew. After the first show I did not watch the first season. I got into it during the summer re-runs when I could watch an episode every day for a week and got to know the new characters.

Soon TNG became the new standard, basically because of Picard-- one of the best Captains Starfleet has ever produced.

Next was Deep Space 9. I was looking forward to it based on the character Avery Brooks played "Hawk" in Spencer for hire. Captain Hawk would have rocked. But being an actor he had to do something different of course. So DS9 took some getting used to.

However, I think DS9 has the best cast and the best written of all the Start Trek series shows.

Why is it hard to watch now?

I used to think that seeing the outdated SFX and the cheap sets would bother me when I re-watched ST:TOS last year but it didn't bother me at all. The stories and the characters are so good to me that it greatly outweighed the cheap production values. Of course it also helped that I watched the updated versions which sometimes had CGI and some other SFX enhancements as well as being in high def.

+1


added I still like TOS as well

Sure, we all like the characters, but they didn't get any depth until the movies. I prefer the others that involve more space combat, character development, better storylines and are at least a little more obvious that they're in space. The ship in Enterprise looked like a ship inside and out. TNG at least showed the exterior a lot, and although inside it was like a flying village resort, you had constant window views into space keeping you in the right environment. TOS...seemed more like just a building. Don't care for the sets and not many storylines stand the test of time.

Yeah, that does bother me about the Enterprise in TNG. It looks more like a cruise ship than a Federation combat ship of the line.

Except the Ent-D wasn't a warship, it was an (armed) explorer vessel.

Of course TOS got me hooked and is a well-written show with many good episodes, and by getting the ball rolling it has to rate at or near the top for me. It's kind of hard for me to rate it compared to the others because of its age and history.

TNG was pretty painful for me to watch at the beginning, because it was just too darned touchy-feely (an on-board therapist? Really?), plus the whole cruise-ship look, the families being on board with all the kids, etc., and it just didn't work for me. Later they downplayed a lot of that, and it got better, and had some great episodes ("Yesterday's Enterprise," for example).

DS9 is the best non-TOS series, maybe after the first season or two. It wasn't all "let's talk about how that made you feel" like TNG, but still had good writing and acting, and the characters really seemed to important to the events that took place. A lot of TNG episodes seemed to have the crew along for the ride, and they frequently didn't really have much impact on the outcome of events.

Ok, you've got me there. Still, it was silly for me to see an Enterprise with a child care center and a fricking shopping mall. LOL

BSG has spoiled me for life.

Technically, that's not any different than the TOS Enterprise:

"These are the voyages of the starship...Enterprise. It's five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life, and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before..."

Yeah, a raw purpose built ship is a lot of fun in these shows and adds some authenticity. Easier to relate to almost.
The ships in the recent BSG were some of the best. The Enterprise NX-01(?)....all of the ships in Space Above and Beyond seemed "authentic" military. Especially that APC-like ship that just carried all purpose cargo containers. The carrier was good too. That's part of what made Firefly so good. All of the ships were rough looking, not sleek smooth ships like in some shows/movies. Except for the Alliance ship that was perfectly in character as an intimidating, space faring set of green glowing skyscrapers. LOL

Most ships in any ST series are a little too aesthetically pleasing. Think about how unique the Borg cube was for ST compared to what you usually saw. It stood out just for *not* being sleek looking.

I've watched all series at one point or another. TOS is great just for starting it all. However inconsistencies between TOS and the subsequent series are sometimes annoying, even if they fix it in a later series (the Klingons).

TNG was good, but took quite a while to get up to steam. At first they tried to recreate the exploration of TOS, later on, it took its own path and became better.

DS9 is my favourite, though. I liked it because it wasn't more exploration but instead it focused on the politics of the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation. Also the characters where more flawed. The line between good and evil wasn't so clear. "In the Pale Moonlight" was probably the best episode of all Star Trek series. Of course the space battles that where never seen before in Star Trek where a nice plus.

VOY and ENT where good, although VOY wasn't that original and at some point Voyager beating the invincible Borg again and again became hard to believe.



For me the biggest issue was that they almost never evacuated the families before going into battle or when patrolling the Neutral Zone.

Jaz

Even worse were the uniforms of the Alliance personnel. Completely atrocious.

Well, we can all thank Star Wars for the worn out, used, utilitarian looking ships since it was really the first major sci-fi movie to really break the trend of clean, sterile, perfect looking ships.

I was thinking the same thing. In particular the rebel ships and the MF. I've been enjoying those in SW: Empire at War lately.

For you guys that are concerned, DS9 is slated to appear on streaming starting on October 1st I believe. I have TOS in my Netflix queue, but haven't started watching yet since I want to get through all of the Stargate series and made for DVD films first before they leave the stream.

Well, I think you have to take into consideration that in the 60s, battleship grey interiors with exposed piping weren't what the future would bring. As far as stories not standing the test of time, do you think TNG will still be relevant in 15-20 years? People will think Data is as believable as the Gorn or Abe Lincoln in space.

"The Savage Curtain" is a classic episode from season 3! Where else can you see Abe Lincoln kick some alien ass?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708477/

Actually the timeframe has already passed.
Felt this way about TOS not even 20 years after it was out, after watching it whenever it was on since the mid 70's. 15-20 years after release, it was just too dated for me. TNG...came out in '87...best episodes started in about '90. They've already held up FAR better than TOS for my taste, stayed in my favor for a longer period of time of regular watching--many more viewings than TOS ever lasted with me.

Similarly, B5...if it weren't for the great story, characters and what I consider to be easily acceptable CGI, it would be hard to stomach with the reused sets.

Not saying that there are no good episodes, just that it didn't have the staying power TNG does. It's hard to believe it's been almost 25 years since TNG started.
It's not that I don't like classic sci fi, I think Forbidden Planet is one of the best sci fi movies out there. Grew up watching Lost in Space on a weekly basis. TOS had good characters but they didn't blossom until the movies, and the most storylines (not all) are just not that great IMO.

This topic of longevity and which sci-fi shows are still remembered and have staying power is quite a fascinating one to me. Regardless of how some of us may feel about ST:TOS, there is no refuting the fact that even after it has been off the air for 42 years it's still a show that is very much alive and remembered today.

It even got Amok Time a cameo in Transformers 3.

In the Pale Moonlight was an excellent DS9 episode, certainly.


The Jedi Master

Regarding TOS today, it is doing very well considering how much time has passed.

In 1966, what kind of longevity and watchability would a 1921 sci-fi film have? 45 years is a damn long time.

We are living in the future and it is sometimes odd; TV and film, re-runs and re-masters have a time machine affect.
Events have caught up with some of Star Treks technology: cell phones, iPads, LCD TVs and MRIs. "Enterprise" started to look dated by season 2.

That's for sure. I still get a smirk on my face whenever I watch 2001 or Blade Runner and see the ads for Pan Am.


I guess Pam Am was one of those iconic companies that no one ever forsaw going away.

Apparently not even the management of Pan Am...

"Eastern Airlines: We're out of business, and it shows."



The Jedi Master

almost finished with first season of Enterprise man what a get show. really enjoy the crew interactions. only person i cant stand is hoeshie however her name is spelled.

She was sorta annoying. The one that annoyed me most was Mayweather. He was supposed to ahve grown up in space and yet he was all "gee-whiz golly" about things, sort of Gomer Pyle-ish I thought.

Agreed on both. I liked the idea of Mayweather, but that's a good description. A missed opportunity. Hoshi got better, and I like the growing pains they have with language in this series. It's not all perfectly convenient. No Federation and no Prime Directive is nice too, they show the reasoning behind the PD several times.

The only thing that got me about the show is, like other prequels before it, it attempts to introduce many staples of the previous (sequel) series all at once.
So we're to believe that the ability to reach warp 5, use phasers, photon torpedos, universal translators, and the transporter all occurred in a 2-3 year period on Archer's watch??
It's like the writers wanted to write for Voyager, DS9, or TNG, didn't want to have to work "in the past", and quickly brought all the ST conventions in so they could use them like they had for the past 15 years on the other 3 series.

The 9/11-inspired season 3 was refreshingly different for ST, but wasn't fleshed out enough as an arc to last the whole season. If it had ended at the season mid-point I think people would still be talking about how great those dozen eps were. Instead, it's remembered as an improvement over the 1st 2 seasons but not enough (as evidenced by the continuing decline in ratings as each season went on).



The Jedi Master

I agree, I can hardly watch the others now, Enterprise is okay once in a while but I will sit and watch the old series even if I missed half of it while flipping channels.

True, but none of those things worked as well as they did in later series.

I found Enterprise to be much more believable/entertaining than the recent Star Trek re-boot movie with huge water lines running through engineering and the bridge looking like something out of a Vegas casino. And I'm supposed to believe that Spock would time travel to save Earth in STIV, but when Vulcan is obliterated he just shrugs his shoulders?

Well, the whole issue of when they consider it ok to time travel and when it's not is answered by "needs of the plot".

As for engineering, that's what happens when you shoot in a brewery! I don't know why they did that.

The bridge, well, watch the Star Trek films and you'll see the same ship gets a different bridge almost every film. They finally made up a ST-reason saying the bridges were detachable modules allowing them to be replaced in spacedock when needed...like that would really be needed every 2 years or so!
The fact that the Bird of Prey's bridge changes from ST3 to ST4 so drastically is just not explained at all (the old set was lost for some reason and they decided the new one would be done totally differently, for whatever reason).


The Jedi Master

Yeah, as much as I enjoy the stories that revolve around time traveling episodes (STIV was great fun, and the STNG episode set in old San Fransisco with Mark Twain was cool, and do I even have to mention the TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"?) you really have to suspend disbelief when watching them. If the federation good guys go back 100 years to set things straight why wouldn't the alien bad guys then go back 101 years to screw things up again? Then the federation good guys would have to go back 102 years to fix it again and the alien bad guys go back 103 years... you get my point. Time travel is probably the most far fetched idea in all of Star Trek, but it is fun.