[Locke]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

I've never understood why people hold Star Trek to such a high standard in the first place. In my opinion the "heart" of Star Trek is TNG, because I think we can all agree that the best actor to ever appear in Star Trek is Patrick Stewart and its not even close. We could argue for eternity on who the second best is, but they would be light-years behind Stewart. Only a talent like that can take sometimes outright terrible dialogue and make it sound glorious. The fact he always took the role seriously elevated the game of everyone around him. Aside from Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden is an awful actor) every single other character shined the brightest when working a scene with Stewart.

Unless you can find another actor of his quality Star Trek will seldom rise above "good" which I'm actually fine with, because I don't think it was ever meant to be so serious. It's just TNG was a show that punched so far above it's weight that anything new will be a let down compared to it. Avery Brooks was awesome, I had no issue with Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, and I actually liked Enterprise very much. The NX01 is my favorite Enterprise. The thing is that I didn't go into the other Treks outside of TNG expecting them to measure up. Its just not going to happen.

On a fun sidenote, if you watch the documentary 'The Captains' it turns out that Avery Brooks is genuinely batcrap insane.

The guy is a certifiable lunatic.