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.