I know it's an overused question in a lot of places, but it hasn't been asked here in quite a while. I'm curious to see what the preferred Star Trek shows are in the group here. Whether you want to just list your favorite show, do a complete ranking of all the shows, or something in between, I'm interested to know!
This is my current top five show list:
- Deep Space Nine
- Star Trek
- Strange New Worlds
- The Next Generation
- Lower Decks
It gets difficult for me to rank past that point, so I usually stop there.
You're right, if you haven't watched all of the Trek shows you're definitely not going to get nearly as much enjoyment from Lower Decks! There are even references to things that weren't previously canon, like the Star Trek helmet, so even then you won't get all the jokes.
I really enjoy SNW, it's always pretty high on my list. It's been especially great since this is the first time I've had a Trek show I really like that I'm watching while it's still in production! I have some annoyances with it here and there, mostly due to the fact that it's a prequel, but I can more easily overlook that because most of the rest of it is good.
I really think Enterprise and Voyager both were missed opportunities. Enterprise for a lot of the reasons you mention, and Voyager I felt could have had a lot more continuity. It was the perfect place to have a lot of recurring characters and DS9 style arcs, but they never really committed.
I'm with you on Voyager. A big problem with the story was it's premise: it's kind of hard to run into the same people more than once when you're bee-lining for home every chance you get. So they should have focused more on every last stinking crew member onboard that little ship. Or start a small fleet and do it BSG style. Lots of options, but they're all outside the usual Trek box.
Exactly, I always imagined it focusing on recurring characters within various factions on the ship. They could have had various Maquis characters working on their own agendas and struggling more with being on a Starfleet ship, or maybe they picked up some aliens along the way and are trying to integrate them into life on the ship. They did the second thing to some degree with Seven, but having a group of actual aliens would have been interesting too. Especially if some of the aliens turned out to be planted there to cause trouble.
Lower Decks gives you more if you're a Treckie, but it stands on it's own, as I've witnessed watching it with my non-treckie spouse!
Interesting! I'm glad to hear it can.