The effects? After the first season they are pretty good, I forget what they switched to then but there was a marked improvement. I think a bigger drawback is the aesthetics of the set design and costuming. The aliens are generally good but the clothing and uniforms of the human characters? Terrible and have aged poorly. The interiors of the space station are also visually dull. That being said I think the stories are well told and have a consistent logic - the same cannot be said for, say, Voyager or Enterprise.
One thing that puts a bit of a cloud over the pre-Abramverse Star Trek for me, in terms of its Utopian credentials, is their treatment of holograms. In the epilogue of a last season episode of Voyager, copies of the Doctor are shown to be used as slave labour on an asteroid mining dilithium crystals. WTF! The rest of the episode is also provocative, if poorly thought through, Voyagerâs hologram Doctor writes a potboiler novel based on his experiences and has it published. His publisher uses his status as a hologram to exploit him and take the rights away from him. It doesnât help that his take on his crew mates is less than generous. It is a terrific idea but the Voyager writers were not up to the task of fully fleshing it out. I donât know if this was ever looked at in the expanded universe but I remember watching that and thinking WTF!
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Examples please? What do you consider âbarmyâ?
The photonic story arc destroyed utopia. The Federation is a slave economy.
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I think that the idea was to make something like TNGâs âMeasure of a Manâ but not to match it beat-for-beat.
The way I read the ending of that episode was that the ruling was a wedge-in-the-door, and when the other photonics saw the holonovel, they would be inspired to push things further.
ETA:
That is not to say that the episode measures up in any way to Measure of a Man, but I get that thatâs what they were going for.
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Having watched Voyager recently, a very consistent problem is that they often have a kernel of a great concept in an episode but whether it is because of trepidation, low skill or rushed scripts they are never able to fully go where they need to go. I really donât think they understood what they did in that episode. It really comes off as a throwaway bit. As skr1 comments, with that story arc the Federation is a slave economy and because the next series was Enterprise that idea was never explored in the televised Trek universe. Maybe a Trekpert can fill me in if it has but otherwise it really put a shadow over Trek for me.
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Itâs a rather socialist novel, as I recall, so no.
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Heinlein was the most significant SF writer of the Twentieth century and hence worth critiquing. Grapple the big dog or play with the puppies.
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Which makes it all the more interesting that his filmed works have been mostly terrible, and PK Dick has had far and away the most successful SF film adaptations. Iâm not fond of his work, Stopped reading him after getting to the end of Ubik.
Well, to be fair to the filmmakers, most of his written work is terrible as well.
Heinlein ranges from âflawed but interestingâ to âbloody hell, what is this shite?â. He was influential, yes; he was also a massively overrated hack and a generally horrible human being.
BTW, both fans and non-fans of RH should find some interesting reading at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/reviews/contributor/548
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How many copies of his work were in print? âThe wisdom of the crowdâ suggests he was a very good writer.
âŚand the same reasoning would suggest that McDonalds serves excellent food.
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The cocktails of Star Trek?
Who died and made you final arbiter of the best sci-fi?
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One manâs opinion, among the many other ones here. Iâd welcome any suggestions for a more significant writer in the field, for the time.
How about Hubbard? His work has the most devoted sci-fi fandom Iâve ever seen!
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You didnât exactly say, In my opinion, you stated he was the âmost significant,â bar none.
You mean across most of the 20th century? Asimov, Clarke, and Dick are all fine choices. What about Tiptree, Le Guin, or Butler? Bradbury? Ellison? Wells? They pretty much all of them had a profound impact of the genre and shaped it. They werenât all responding to Heinlein only.
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Perhaps The Houseplants of Star Trek. Thereâs material there, apparently.
http://the-toast.net/2015/04/16/roving-plants-of-the-starship-enterprise/
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