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derefr | on: Patrick Stewart has died
I have to hand it to Roddenberry, though; even though having no infighting produces a somewhat-unrealistic show, I think there's a solid justification to have the rule anyway. It prevented TOS and TNG scripts from being caught in tension between trying to "say something", vs. entertaining the audience with "low" soap-opera drama (of the kind you see increasingly in the later series.)

I have a feeling this might be no small part in why TOS and TNG are the two ST series that contain 90% of the "only comes up once" sci-fi plots / concepts / worldbuilding that people ever make reference to when talking about "things from Star Trek" rather than when talking about Star Trek. TOS and TNG, while definitely soft sci-fi, were to some degree trying to create 22-minute-long works of literary Speculative Fiction, modelled after the sort of things you'd read in serial SF magazines of the 1950s. Later ST series are emphatically not that, and nor do they try to be.

hnlmorg | parent | next
Yeah. I’ve heard the writers hated it because they had to work so much harder to create drama.

But as you said, I think it ends up with a higher quality show.

WalterBright | parent | next
Some TOS episodes were based on classic scifi stories, like "Voyage of the Space Beagle". Also, Roddenberry employed established scifi authors like David Gerrold to script episodes.

An annoying facet of ST episodes is the morality lessons they push, like on every episode of The Brady Bunch.

hnlmorg | root | parent | next
For me, that’s the best part of the TOS era.

It’s nice to watch something that highlights the best of humanity in a future setting.

Almost everything else in SciFi is dystopian. But ST is a rarity. And it’s all the more beautiful for it.

alittlebee | root | parent
Yeah, I agree.. I still rewatch it every so often, when I'm feeling down or uninspired.
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kstenerud | parent | next
I actually found DS9 to be the best of all of them. Aside from the terrible Dr Bashir character, they felt believable, and like any real environment had personality clashes, personal issues, baggage, and of course interpersonal conflicts.

The difference was that rather than turn it into soap opera porn, the characters actually tried to behave professionally (most of the time).

derefr | root | parent | next
Thus "increasingly" :)

• DS9 only had a little soap-opera drama, serving as almost a kind of fanservice sprinkled judiciously into otherwise-thematic B-plots.

• VOY had more, with entire B-plots of episodes now being character-focused, including a few arcs that would have worked just as well if transplanted into some modern-age military drama with no SF elements.

• Drama-as-the-A-plot episodes were appearing by ENT.

(After that I stopped watching, but I've heard the trend has just continued from there.)

AngryData | root | parent | next
The Lower Decks was good as a love letter to older fans, I do recommend that. But both Discovery and Academy were horrendous and I regret the time spent. Picard had a few good episodes and it was nice to see the old crew but was not great. Stranger New Worlds had some good things and wasn't a butcher job but not anything to write home about in my opinion.
hnlmorg | root | parent
Strange New Worlds started strong. But the last couple of series was so bad for the drama. In fact one episode was a literal soap opera.
outworlder | root | parent
I would have ZERO issues with the wacky episodes if and only if we were back to the 20-ish episodes per season format. Then sure, do a puppet show. Musical episodes (for how much I HATE musicals, it was decently enjoyable, Klingon boy band was super unexpected).

But when you only have half a dozen-ish episodes per season, you can't afford filler.

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1potato | root | parent
Agree. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they gave Captain Sisko's character -- not to mention Worf, O'Brien and others -- a lot more room to develop and grow.

I really enjoyed TNG as well, and DS9 probably wouldn't have even happened if not for TNG's excellence. I never really felt like the writers gave Picard's character a lot of room to change, though. A lot of the time, he was almost like the sitcom dad who was mainly there to teach the kids a lesson at the end of the episode. That's not a knock on Stewart's acting ability; I'd say he was almost certainly the best actor on the show.

Also agree about Bashir.

hnlmorg | root | parent | next
Though in defence to Bashir, without him you wouldn’t have Garak, who is possibly one of the best written characters in all of SciFi.

And some of O'Brien‘s best performances were counterpointing Bashir too.

I think as a solo character, he’s a little shallow. But he works exceptionally well at being an anchor for other characters to play off.

outworlder | root | parent
The Inner Light begs to disagree. Plus his Borg summer camp.

But yes, those instances were a bit rare.

yyyk | parent | next
TOS and TNG were sci-fi, even if many scripts varied. Given its time, you could have the classic and interesting tech and society questions there, even if they avoided a lot of the implications. But over time the franchise lost this key part, and so it's much worse for the wear. We could use an actually relevant sci-fi series given current tech.
ahazred8ta | parent
Unfortunately the 1970s ST animated series gave us the 'trapped in the holodeck' story format. The TNG writers leaned a little too heavily on it.
rpmisms | root | parent
I think maybe 5 total episodes meet that description.