Any Trekkies on here? I love TNG, I have all the season sets on DVD resting on my shelf. I polish the boxes weekly so they continue to shine with silvery magnifence. I nearly blinded myself once by staring at them for too long. Thats how shiny they are.

I love the weird aliens and techno-babble that Einstein himself would fail to comprehend.

Tachion emissions? Inter-plexing beacons? Who give an arse, really? Granted, it never got going until season 3 but from then on it was magnificent.

Cause and Effect and Yesterdays Enterprise have to be amongst the greatest Star Trek episodes ever devised.

Thoughts?

It had its moments, mostly post-clean-shaved-Riker-Borg introduction-Wesley-killed...

Haven't seen it in ages though.

The introduction of The Borg really amped things up. When they first started to draft season 1, the Ferengi were supposed to be the chief villains but it was apparent that this would never work after their first appearance.

The one thing I had a gripe with was that the Klingons were a little too hammy and became a parody of themselves. In the movies, they were rotten bastards intent on killing anyone they came across. In TNG they resemble nothing more than pantomime warriors who growl a lot.

I still think that Brent Spiner should have won an Emmy for 'The Offspring'.

Hard to believe that TNG started over 20 years ago. It seems more recent than that. Then again, I'm a lot older than I usually think I am.

I was into TNG it in college - it was standard for most males to watch it every night at 7 before commencing the evening's studies - but never got into the later series. I tried with Deep Space Nine for a while, but lost interest. Voyager just seemed like Gilligans Island in space - "will they get back to Earth this time? Er, No? Oh well, maybe next episode." I never saw a single episode of the most recent one. I heard bad things, however.

Having said all of that, I'm stoked for the next movie which is about the first voyages of the first Enterprise.

I count myself a massive Trekkie apart from the fact that I've watched only about ten episodes of Enterprise (it's bad - don't go near).

Agree that the introduction of the Borg really took the show to another level. They're heavily influenced by Doctor Who's Cybermen:

*** SUPREME GEEK/NERD MOMENT APPROACHING ***

To pay homage, in the episode where the Borg are first encountered, a computer screen on the Enterprise bridge temporarily reads the names of the first six actors to play The Doctor. And the name of the episode? Q Who ;-)

*** SUPREME GEEK/NERD MOMENT TERMINATED ***

DS9 started very slowly but got an unfair rap for being set in one place. The sophistication it displayed in later years was fantastic and you can easily view it as a pointer to Ronald D. Moore's next project Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica is a problem for any future Trek series because it has set the bar so high.

I don't recall why I didn't get into DS9. I guess I just didn't like the characters as much as TNG.

Can I take this moment to confess that I have never watched an entire episode of Dr. Who (any version)? I don't even really know what it's about other than somebody with an advanced degree with the last name of Who, who is called a "Time Lord" and travels through space and time in a phonebooth or somesuch that is much bigger on the inside.

I watched a lot of TNG as a kid, but even then I wouldn't have called myself a fan. And now I don't think I could bear watching it. It encapsulates everything I dislike about certain branches of SF, namely "the weird aliens and techno-babble".

" I don't even really know what it's about other than somebody with an advanced degree with the last name of Who..."

Time to don the asbestos suit.

Is his title not really doctor or his name not really Who or both?

It's a shame the old board still isn't accessible. The two big Who threads contained plenty of recommendations for which classic series DVDs too watch, Taylor's excellent clasic series primer and Jason's superb new series reviews.

Agree with CV that DS9 may be the best ever sci-fi series pre-Galactica. The first two or maybe three seasons were pretty crap. But then Babylon 5 came along (close rival for the title of best pre-Glactica series) and it's like a light went on over at DS9. All of a sudden, the idea that their might be bad guys within the good guys comes along, and you get the paranoiac angle (mysterious security agencies, coups, civil wars, etc.). And the politics are intrigingly dense - Klingons and Cardassians switching sides, etc. The relationship between the Dominion and the JemHadar is satisfyingly bizarre - even the resurrection angle of Galactica's cylons is anticipated through the Wayoun.

Avery Brooks is also a pretty good actor. That helped.

I think lots of people have a soft spot for TNG because it probably had the best secondary characters. And because the episode Yesterday's Enterprise is probably the best 45 minutes of Star trek ever shot.

And JLP is pretty cool, too, though - and I can't stress this enough - he does not hold a FUCKING CANDLE to Shatner.

And Reed raises a good point. Why is Doctor Who called Doctor Who?

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

QUOTE:
Why is Doctor Who called Doctor Who?

I always thought it was because the doctor introduces himself with variants of

"I'm The Doctor" upon which people reply "Doctor Who?"

For no other reason, other than because I can, here is my top ten trek episodes

1. Scorpion (Voyager): The one where Species 8472 kick Borg ass
2. The Die is Cast(DS9): The one where the Romulan and Cardassian secret police get destroyed
3. Family (TNG): The one where Picard deals with the consequences of his actions as Locutus
4. The Visitor (DS9): The one where Jake Sisko reminisces about his father's death when he was 18
5. The Trouble with Tribbles (TOS): The one with the fluffy hairballs
6. Devil in the Dark (TOS): The one with the "lava" monster aka the one where Spock hams it up during the Vulcan mind meld "the pain! The Pain!!!"
7. What You Leave Behind (DS9): The one where the Cardassians revolt against the Dominion
8. Message in a Bottle (Voyager): The one with the multi-vector assault ship
9. Mirror, Mirror (TOS): The one where everyone is evil
10. Trails and Tribalations (DS9) : The one where the crew of DS9 interact with the crew of TOS

Reed, have you heard of something called "Google", I use it a lot when I come across something I don't know about rather than, for example, post a pithy comment on a thread about Star Trek that you don't know what Dr Who is all about. <wink>

I could look it up and have, but that wouldn't change the fact that I, a geek of some standing, have never seen a complete episode. I was just taking this slim opportunity to confess. Reading up about it on wikipedia isn't a substitute for having watched the show.

Every time I've made an attempt to watch, I've felt like I couldn't understand what was going on because I haven't been watching it for 40 years.

Yesterday's Enterprise is the moment they started to get a sense of themselves, rather than as an attempt to reheat the Star Trek souffle. All the episodes were a bit hammy - I watched 'Conspiracy' (penultimate season 1) and it was just shite beyond belief.

Yesterday's Enterprise is truly magnificent though - measured, knowing, well scripted and acted and makes assumptions about the audience without needing to signpost everything.

It's a bit like the X-Files episode 'Triangle' which has many similar aspects - an ensemble piece featuring pretty much the entire cast - with very high production values.

Yesterdays Enterprise is one that I watch frequently as I have season 3 on DVD. My favourite part of that episode is when Picard is wrestling with the thought of sending the Enterprise C back into the rift, and has a conversation with Guinan about it.

Good performance from Whoopi Goldberg, understated yet very effective.

QUOTE:
Good performance from Whoopi Goldberg

There are five words I never thought I'd see together in a sentence.

I've always found TNG a bit hot and cold. The ones where they're kicking arse are excellent - especially the Borg episodes. And the Q eps are usually good for a laugh too. But the incessant moralising was just tiresome. Original Star Trek had a charm to its homily-style - perhaps because it was so of it's time. And anyone who comes up with the "Heisenberg Compensator" in the face of physical impossibility just rocks. But TNG was just annoying a lot of the time. Which is a shame becuase maybe 1 in 4 episodes were really really good.
DS9 started quite poorly, but by the time it got into the whole Dominion thing the storylines became much more interesting and nuanced.
And Voyager is just a huge running battle. No morals, no