The future of Trek

Personally I feel going down the prequel route was the beginning of the end of Trek; at least for me.

I had no interest in Enterprise for the simple fact that it's what came before - and what I suspected would mess up canon with plotholes to beat the band. I would have liked Scott Bakula as a Captain in a post Nemesis Trek.

SNW and even Discovery would have worked in a post Nem Trek with some slight changes. Don't get me wrong; the writing for Disco is dreadful, especially for Burnham's character; but the likes of Jason Isaac, Michelle Yeoh and Anson Mount in the new era, during or post Picard - Would have been amazing.

Don't get me started on the 600 year thing in Disco - that was the 2nd worst alternative. The 1st being the prequel route.

Season 3 Picard shows live action Trek can be done well. It wouldn't even need the cameos - it just needs people who care to helm it.

Agree with this. I loved that while I was growing up trek was this persistent sci-fi universe being looked at from different angles. Once they announced Enterprise I struggled to care.

Voyager was a natural stopping point. The crew was home, most of the major adversaries in each quadrant had been dealt with, and just the format was running out of road, but 15 years out of that generation of Trek was some achievement.

Would have liked if they gave it a few years off at that point and then gave us a new crew 100 or so years into the future, with a new mission. Would be enough time where you could allow for radically different ship design and where you wouldn’t be expecting cameos every week from familiar faces.

It actually really annoys me that we still haven’t gotten a proper progression of Trek, and the direction they’ve taken with Discovery means we probably won’t get one. The writers decided it was best to skip over all of the stuff we had seen before which was really the temporal war stuff from Voyager - but that should have just been ignored. It was dumb in voyager(the temporal prime directive🙄) but at least it was about time travel so could have been easily retconned.

Hopefully once the dust settles on this latest round of trek the producers realise that all we need is a good crew being put into interesting situations, as SNW is clearly the best of the current batch(I do love lower decks too). But I’m not holding out too much hope!

In my youth I used to only dip in and out of Star Trek as I preferred other SciFi in my youth. One my kids though got me rewatching it. We've worked our way through much of it in recent years.

Have to agree about prequels. I think it's laziness to keep going back and mining prequels. It undermines the existing material and lore. I've yet to see a prequel that does anything other than diminish a franchise.

Discovery was awful. Its not star trek and neither were the first two seasons of Picard. Patrick Stewart is a great actor but is just too old for how it was written.

Strange new worlds though is a return to Star Trek as it's meant to be IMO.

Two things I've never loved is time travel and multiple dimensions or alternative universes. Too often it becomes over complicated and messed with previous storylines and diminishes them. The story becomes unmanageable very fast.

For me it only works in small does. But I don't watch SciFi to end up back in another genre like western, or gangster era. If its stays in genre like Voyager Krenim episode then maybe. There was one in TNG with Data worked ok.

Traveller's was pretty good too and I used to love Seven Days as a kid. They both had time travel as a central premise.

I trudged my way through I think 3 seasons of discovery then stopped.

So much wrong with it.

Lower Decks is great.

I enjoy a good timetravel story. BUT it has to make sense. I love the impact of time travel in stories. Twin Pines/Lone Pine in BTTF for example or the whole sequence with Carey Mulligan "talking" to The Doctor in the Doctor Who episode with the Weeping Angels.

But its "implementation" into Enterprise was poor at best. No real ramifications on the crew. They could have had a disposable character on the show. Somebody on the opening credits (Hell, the navigator who's name I can't remember). They are in the credits, have some scenes. Interact with the crew. Make them likeable. Entertaining. Then... Gone. Never existed. Only the time travel guy knows. Nobody else. Not even Archer. Just time traveller and us. That would have been impactful

The OP's statement of SNW being a TOS coverband, I thought initially was a bit harsh. I LOVE SNW. The entire season 1 knocked it out of the park and the cast are fantastic.... But I know what the OP means and can't say they are wrong. But hey, a good Cover Band can be great fun. I actually went to see the Bootleg Beatles at glasto the same time as the REAL Rolling Stones were on as I'd seen the Stones before they have phones it in since the 70s (I did hear they were fantastic after though)

I agree with the OP, first couple of seasons of Disco were pretty good. Mainly, admittedly, because, by that stage it was only around 85% Burnham. As opposed to 179.5% Burnham right now. Michelle Yeoh was great in first couple of episodes. Isaacs was Isaacs, The doctor and Engineer were very engaging without being creepy-possessive about a new adult character simply because they classified as non-binary. Voq was really interesting as Klingon and Human and well portrayed.

TOS was good fun but, y'know, dare I say it, not QUITE as good as people may remember. TNG was great and gave us some of the best episodes of Trek ever (Best of Both Worlds, Inner Light, too many to mention). DS9 was my favourite. Voyager was SUCH a step back after the daring DS9 and Enterprose was so bland I can barely remember it.

So regarding going forward... The doubling down on Burnham was a mistake. It is nothing to do with her gender or race or the actor (She can only work with what's given). But simply as has been said many many MANY times before, she is the least interesting character on the show. Anyone else interesting was moved on.

I have no problems with the overall style of the current shows. This season of Picard is definitely taking aesthetic from Discovery. I don't have a problem with that as such... It's a bit too dark for my liking but it's not the end of the world. But the over-reliance on a particular character needs to be addressed.

Look at the comments about the latest season of Picard: I am probably more negative about it than many butI LOVE Riker and Shaw in this season. It a show called Picard, they still give enough focus on other characters. To the betterment of the series. Sadly, from the trailers for Discovery, it seems this is NOT the case in Discovery. But, look at SNW. most of the characters got time to shine due to excellent writing, planning and direction.

So I think there is still space (No pun intended) for another show. It could be TNG/Picard era, could be a different era. I think it should still be a ship-based show. While Starfleet Academy set show could be good, I think producers/showrunners would panic after season one and switch from it being based in the Academy to having them all go on excursions-of-the-week and change the dynamic of the show.

Whatever they do though, they need to have likeable characters. And, not laser-focus on one.

Voyager had some good episodes and in a lot of ways better than discovery.

Yes it's way better than Discovery in every way. Discovery to me could be any sci-fi show. Voyager on the other hand is Star Trek but it could have been so much better too. There was so much potential with Voyager that was just wasted with a ship being so far away from the Federation all on it's own. It should have and could have been so much better.

True Back in the day you only had one show to watch at a time.

I feel you are conflating two different timelines. When the Borg were unknown, and thus no known weaknesses.

Then later both TNG and Voyager used new inside information from contact with the Borg to exploit weaknesses not previously known.

It's what I don't like about time travel, there's always and easy out, of an over complicated plot.

Never loved Q click of the fingers stuff. For me it's always a bad episode when Q appears. Some people love it though.

They nearly managed a smooth handover of the Borg with Voyager early on and if they simply hadn't fumbled later on with the majoy event episodes they could have maintained their edge.

I imagine that the chance to introduce the Borg the Voyager was a tempting chance to finally give the stuggling Trek show a hook for it's audience. Voyager could be "The Borg Show", giving Trekkies incentive to venture over from the far more interesting fare on DS9. They even swap out one of the weaker characters for some Borg-ified Eye-candy (That's right kids....Borg *& boobs* what more could you dweebs want from us anyway?!), such was their comitment to make Voyager; "Star Trek: Borg!" (And yes, I do know about the PC game of the same name starring Q)

But alas....it was Voyager, and despite them really putting it together mid-run, they weren't in the best shape to make the Borg a monolithic threat. If they were up for it, it could have been a combination of Year of Hell and the Enterprise of that alternat universe Riker who was haggered from years of running from the Borg. Dark as all hell, but would have been gripping. Alas, they eventually went to route of turning the Queen into a cartoonish arch-villianess who'd give Rita Repulsa a run for her money. An easier writing job...but also an awful waste of a chance.

Probably did generally for Voyager.

This was during a time when executives expected people would just miss an episode and didn’t want them feeling like they should stop watching because they couldn’t follow it, so everything pretty much had to be back to normal by the end of the episode.

I think if they did Voyager now it would be a lot different. The ship could continually evolve in how it looks due to the crew having to fix things with whatever they have to hand instead of being able to go to a star base for a replacement.

I feel the CGI is a little overboard on the trek interiors these day. Too much bling and luxury.

Firefly is a pretty famous example of the episodes being aired out of order. IIRC they showed the third one first followed by the first, the one that explains how the all got together and the setting, and then the rest.

That made sense to me, though! If you have an alien baby use the warp nacelles as some food thinking the enterprise was its mother then you’d definitely bring it to a starbase for a once over, at the very least just check and repair any external damage.

Just generally though it’s reason to assume starships need regular maintenance and upgrades.

In Voyager, the ship essentially fixed itself, and a crew of about 140 kept a starship is pristine working order by themselves for 7 years. How did they repair hull damage? You never saw them outside on the hull doing any repair work as far as I remember.

What I noticed with Star Trek - the first few series of Picard (Have not seen the reason ones gave up on it)

Oh your missing out then. Season 3 is really good and nothing like season 1 or 2. It's like a love letter to TNG.

Yes whats her name Raffi is unfortunately still there but that's about the only bad thing about it.

You never saw them outside on the hull doing any repair work as far as I remember.

Actually you do when they discover the Vaadwar on the dead planet. They land on it and you see the nacelles being stripped etc.

Even if I can't fast forward/skip that awful theme tune quick enough.

Awe it's not that bad. You just have to be in the right mood for it.

My kid reckons that was dates a lot of old shows the music. He can't take it at all. There a lunge for the skip intro when it starts.

I actually like the intro's. Especially voyagers.