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Absolutely astounded that SNW had as good a first season as it did. I mean, it IS a Star Trek show. I’m very excited for season 2, though I’m hoping that they made the ship seem more alive, as season 1 was shot with covid rules in place. I admit I’m a fan of bustling ships.
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Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi were designed to resemble their actors, so it doesn’t surprise me that they went this way. It’d be a laugh to have a 2-way crossover and have the SNW cast show up in Lower Decks animated.
But also, a Trials and Tribble-ations type deal where they put animated Mariner and Boimler into the background of a SNW episode would be great.
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Catching up on this thread, so apologies for the time travelling reply…
If your primary interest is older treks, Netflix has you covered. They have TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Quality is a little spotty in some cases. The first couple seasons of DS9, for example are a really shitty rip with bad compression. Fans have told Netflix about it repeatedly but they seem unconcerned about fixing data issues in their archive. Also some seasons of some shows are the 4:3 SDTV versions, even though they were shot 16:9 and were available as such on DVD.
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Thanks! It’s good to know that Netflix is still an option for TNG, too, when I eventually switch back to catch up on other Netflix exclusives. I haven’t been disappointed with Paramount Plus so far.The ad-supported version is pretty cheap, and I don’t get ads when I watch through a web browser. I need to get back to using it, though. I’ve been off of watching Star Trek and spending my entertainment time living in space in Elite: Dangerous. It’s fun, but not nearly so optimistic a future for humanity as that in the ST universe.
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If you’re located in the United States, all the Trek goodness might not be available on Netflix. Pretty sure it was all removed a while back. (Which is why I cherish my bluray/DVD collection.)
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Good to know! I’m so close to Canada, too. Just one little lake between us.
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Glad to find this thread! I just started a rewatch of Voyager. I’ll be doing Enterprise next. I’m rewatching the Treks that I didn’t care for originally but that I haven’t seen since. Generally they have held up very well. I enjoy them way more now than I did as a teenager.
DS9 was my first experiment with this, and it was a revelation. I was clearly too young and stupid to appreciate it at the time, because it’s frankly amazing. Maybe the story telling style was ahead of its time. People weren’t ready for grimdark epic space opera until the post-Battlestar-Galactica world.
So far I am enjoying Voyager, though the plots are a little samey. It’s a lot of the “weird thing is actually a life form and everyone knows it immediately except the characters on screen” tropes that Trek loves so much. I think five of the first 13 episodes are that exact plot. Still, I love Janeway and Neelix, and the Doctor is hilarious so I’m still watching.
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If that’s the case, get yourselves a VPN, American friends! They are great. I often want to watch something that is only on US Netflix, and NordVPN says “hold my beer”. Then Netflix says, “HELLO TRUE PATRIOT FROM EXACT CENTRE OF GREATEST NATION ON EARTH. HERE IS YOUR AMERICAN CONTENT”.
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One thing I liked about voyager was that it allowed them to introduce new people, since it’s so far away from the Alpha quadrant. You got some of that with DS9, due to the wormhole, but not as much as with Voyager…
Also, I love B’elanna!
Oh! And even with the catsuit, I love Seven of Nine… She has some of the best stories on the show…
Oh! one more thing! If you do watch newer trek shows and discuss them, please spoiler tag stuff (as I’m sure you’ve seen others do for Picard, etc). Not necessary for any of the old shows, of course!
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Yes! She’s awesome.
One thing that strikes me is that they kinda have too many main characters? Like in the first couple episodes it seems like Harry and Tom are going to be central, but then they both disappear for ten episodes. Same thing happens for several others. I guess that format is much easier on the actors’ work schedules, but it’s a little weird sometimes as a viewer when key people just aren’t around for long periods. Then suddenly there’s a Tom Paris episode and you’re jarred into remembering he exists.
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I had no problem with grimdark epic space opera at the time, being a fan of Babylon 5. Its just DS9 turned me off in the first season (the stories, the sets) so I didn’t tune in for the Dominion War stories until it was rerun (thank you H&I Channel’s “All Star Trek”). Frankly I think B5 did it better. It didn’t have to overcome the utopianism of the Trek milieu and also developed a decent “enemy within/civil war” arc.
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Yah, Treks will do that. I regularly rewatch TNG but I honestly skip most of season one because it’s so cringey. Encounter at Farpoint is goddam unwatchable.
I recently learned a term for Treks- you have to let them “grow the beard”. Meaning, stick with them until they get sorted out and find their rhythm (which also happens to correlate with major characters growing facial hair 
)
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I suppose that they sort of did that for DS9 and made it work… it wasn’t always about Sisko, but everyone got some character building attention across the seven seasons, even Worf when he showed up at the beginning of season 3. Even the minor characters like Garak, Gul Dukat, Kai Winn, and Nog!!! DS9 was a masterclass in having a show with great character development for a large cast…
I think for Voyager, pacing was a problem in general. There were lots of episodes where I remember thinking it would have benefited from being a 2 parter (can’t think of any specifically off the top of my head, but I remember thinking that a good bit). Probably that’s the same problem with the character development being uneven - trying to shove too much into each episode rather than letting the stories breath a bit…
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Strong agree! They kinda had an entire cast of medium-level characters, if that makes sense. They could throw any five of them together and make a great story out of it and it always worked. Maybe because every character was so good that you were always thrilled to see them. I mean, Gul Dukat chewed up the goddam scenery in every second he’s in front of the lens so you were so glad to see him you never wondered where he’s been all this time. 
Honestly, I can’t think of a single mediocre character in the whole show. Dr Bashir was probably my least favourite, but I still liked him.
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It was a strong cast… Although, I was not a big fan of the second Dax… I’m still a little salty that they killed off Jadzia when she asked for a raise… She was so great…
He was pretty new to acting at that point, I think? He’d only been in a couple of other things in Britain prior to getting cast as Bashir…
Also, fun fact I didn’t now about him - he’s the Great great grandson of Muhammad Ahmad, who led a successful revolt against British-Egyptian rule in Sudan and established an independent state!
And Malcolm McDowell is his uncle!
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As seen in the following films
Khartoum, where Laurence Oliver plays his Great Great Grandfather
and Four Feathers (The 1939 version is the only one worth seeing)
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Meh… I know that Olivier was a great actor, but I can do without a bunch of brown face… I’ll pass, thanks!
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I didn’t say Khartoum was any good, just that Siddig’s relation was portrayed in it. Frankly it is one of Charton Heston’s worst historical dramas. So its understandable.
Four Feathers is a classic, provided one has a thick skin about imperialist narratives.
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