Starkist wrote:Next Generation was a reflection of Roddenberry's late life bland atheism.
Actually Roddenberry wasn't just a bland atheist, he was a secular humanist, which is a philosophy I heavily agree with. That's probably why I find the philosophy of Star Trek so intriguing.
I just watched two episodes of TNG actually yesterday. My brother and I both agreed that it had little to do with space and it was just a setting for the characters to interact in.
One of the reasons I didn't like DS9 was the spiritualism. For one thing it was rather poorly incorporated, poorly explained, and somewhat annoying. For another, whenever he donned the role of "Emmisary," Sisko, usually grim and badass, became a panzy. I always preffered him as Commander Sisko, C.O. of Deep Space Nine; than as Benjamin Sisko, emissary to the Prophets. Of course, DS9 did have one of my favorite Star Trek characters of all time: Dr. Julian Bashiir. Outdone only by Lt. Commander Data.
However, I'll give you that the combat was more impressive in DS9. But that's how it works. The Enterprise is a heavy cruiser and whenever it got into a fight it did what they do, slug it out. Unless it was fighting something weaker, which usually ran like hell. Anyway, the Defiant's combat scenes were nothing next to the Delta Flier's. That was a cool little ship.
And, hey, Star Trek did have mercenaries. Don't you remember the episode were Picard ended up undercover as a member of a mercenary group? That was one excellent episode. And there were the Maquis which, although not mercs, were deffinitely irregulars.
Enterprise had its good episodes. Most of them were in the first two seasons and had the major character conflicts. Travis faces the freighter crews who consider him a traitor, Archer faces moral dillemas about interfering in alien cultures, Malcom has to cope with Archer's less than regulation way of dealing with things, T'Pol faces her preconceptions of telepaths, Hoshi faces her fear of everything. They was all good. But some idiot at Paramount came up with that Xindi crapola....
BTW: Starkist, that was TV's first interracial kiss.