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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
I avidly watched TOS in syndication when I was a kid. Watched the first season of TNG when I was in high school, and while I liked it, I caught only the occasional episode during its subsequent run.
So when I began a Star Trek re-watch with my kids a year ago, I thought I'd be looking at TOS with rose-tinted glasses. Turns out that the better episodes still hold up. The productions are vivid, in a pulpy way. The music is iconic - eerie, exotic, or bombastic as necessary. The sets may look flimsy, but the lighting, with dramatic purples and greens, gives TOS an appealingly weird feel. Of course the character dynamics of the leads still hold up.
While I enjoyed going through the 7 seasons of TNG, especially once it hit its stride in seasons 3 to 5, it's missing some of the lurid charm of TOS. TNG enterprise looks like the first class lounge at Phoenix airport circa 1985. I find the score (aside from the opening theme) sleep-inducing. Burton, Gates and Sirtis have the charisma of potted plants. Even when TNG is strong, it's struggling through a morass of beige blandness. One gets the impression of an audience nestled in afghans, cats padding by, pots of chamomile tea on side tables.
I was expecting my kids to dislike TOS, but they far preferred it to TNG. Loved the characters. The sense of strange exploration. When we got into TNG the kids started getting bored. My daughter said the characters liked each other too much - a pretty astute observation for a nine year old.
I enjoy both shows. Both have their classic episodes, their terrible episodes, and a lot in-between. If I were to list my top 10 episodes, it would probably have 5 from TOS and 5 from TNG
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this is what really hits me and maybe its nitpicking. But it takes away from any sense of danger or striving.
the Enterprise looks like this immense floating hotel. every crew member has their own luxury quarters, even during a battle you don't sense danger because aside from some chair shaking you don't get conduits exploding or going dark on the bridge, you don't see battle damage on the ship at all, and next week everything is pristine again.
Even the bridge looks too soft.
I get that everything is probably auto fixed by robots that come out of the wall at night and vacuum the carpets and touch up the paint, but you just never ever sense that there's danger.
Voyager for all of its faults did a tremendous job of this especially in the year from hell story line where the ship was a train wreck by the end.
In the movies they did a better job of it especially in generations and I was glad to see the D go away because I thought it looked like the love boat in space. The E looked like a ship of war.
the other thing that always blew my mind is that they needed to have a three man command station, one for the XO and one for the third officer who was also a ships Councillor. Even in modern navy terms there's one command station for the Captain or the officer of the watch.
Deep Space 9 was great for the realism of a station in space for a long period of time, everything was patchwork, and towards the end of the war the station started taken on a beaten and weary look.
So what would I change if I was a Star Trek creator
1) Major ship redesign. I would love to see a bridge and a CIC even if the CIC is at the back of the bridge. Enterprise tried this and I kind of liked it. Then you could have the XO steering the ship and the Captain fighting the ship.
2) Every ship should have a contingent of marines who are on away missions, and you can't have the whole senior staff going on an away mission together. Enterprise did a great job of having MACO's that went on away missions to provide security and assault.
3) Take away the luxury crew quarters. Even on a modern carrier very few people get their own cabins. You could set up some great side story lines with room mates. You could even have barracks for the enlisted men.
4) Speaking of which, every body serving in Star Fleet seems to be commissioned, the command structure has to be a nightmare. In TNG there were only a handful of chiefs. But you never saw Seamen, or spacemen or whatever the lower rank structures would be.
5) Battle damage. Even with shields a ship is going to take some damage as energy overloads them or leaks through. Have conduits go dead, have more then the transporters or the warp core containment unit fail. Add to the captains problems with sensors or weapons, or even dampeners going down at key points. and show battle damage on the hull of the ship. I still remember in Undiscovered country when a torpedo blew through the saucer, or In the Search for Spock when the Enterprise pulled into space dock with the long scars down its side.
I'm not saying that I didn't like TNG, I think that they followed Roddenberry's vision too closely and it removed a lot of the tension from the show. And yeah, Burton and the others eventually became background characters because they were just dry characters with nothing to really add.