Star Trek is shit

So I used to be a massive fan of Star Trek. Not the original series, I'm not a moron, but TNG, Voyager and DS9 were all on my watch list, when I was still living with my parents. They had Sky TV.

Anyway, now I'm older and slightly less cynical about the world, I thought I'd return to these series and see if they're any good on the re-watch.

Sadly, no. None of them are.

Voyager is easily the best of the main three. It's hard to say whether I dislike DS9 or TNG more... I think I have to say DS9 because I still have a nostalgic soft spot for TNG which makes me more sympathetic to it's flaws.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What could have caused me to turn against Star Trek: The Next Generation...

It's important to point out which episodes I watched, as well. I watched the first two episodes ever (Encounter at Farpoint) and, supposedly, the best episodes ever, the borg ones (Best of Both Worlds).

So, what did I hate?


1) There aren't any characters.

This is the big one. In any decent show, you can pick any character and say a good number of things off the top of your head about his character. Take Parker from leverage. We know she's loyal, slightly psychotic, has a childish sense of humor, has no real understanding of relationships and somewhat paranoid.

Contrast this with TNG. Whilst Riker, Picard and (in the Borg eps) commander Shelby have *some* characterization... the rest of them really don't. What, for example, can you say about Geordi LaForge's character, other than the fact that he's blind?



2) If there were characters, you couldn't tell them apart.

In the Borg episodes, all the characters ever did was state facts. "The Borg are approaching." "Shields have dropped to 29%." "If we re-routed power through the deflector dish..." Any character could say any of those things and it wouldn't make any difference.

Supposedly, you've got a good script if you can remove the character names from the dialogue and still tell who's saying what lines. Star Trek does not have a good script.


3) They never shut up about the prime directive

Seriously, they don't.


4) A good third of the run time consists of reaction shots

They have an action, cut to (in TNG) Riker, Geordi, Worf, Picard, Crusher, Troi, Wesley, Data, Riker again, then change the scene. It wouldn't be so bad if the characters expressions were interesting but they all look like they're either concerned, concentrating or constipated.


5) The battles, when they do happen, are very dull

"Fire phasers" then a shot of a ship firing the phasers. This isn't exactly nail biting stuff.


I could go on but this is the problem - you can criticize just about everything in every series of Star Trek. This often isn't a problem. Often a show is terrible in many ways but it has a certain charisma or soul that keeps it alive for the viewer. Star Trek is not one of these shows.

Sadly.