i think it sort of hits the ‘why can’t i hold all these storylines’ plot-heavy lore-madness near the end of season 3. still really good tho
they never did a great job at replacing the original crew dynamic, they kept swapping in new characters who didn’t really stick because they didn’t balance the ‘peace on earth’ - ‘kill everyone’ - ‘fuck you got mine’ trinity which was such a creative dynamic with the original crew
also like… the fact that it’s about as grimdark a dystopia as anything else in this thread, but makes all the time to let its characters be funny as hell. tng can be very funny, ds9 is pretty buttoned up, farscape is fucking wacky, but of all the timelines i’d least like to be in farscape’s
I pondered this and I just think TNG does way cooler, weird shit more often, and I overall was more affected by various great one-offs than I was by the total arc of DS9. I love DS9 too, and I think it does a lot better characterizing its equally excellent cast, but I think TNG’s highs are higher.
Baseline of 1 point for having watched it
1 additional point for having finished it
1 additional point for having a character I want to see more of
1 additional point for having a core conceit I enjoyed
1 additional point for not making me groan about an entire season
1 additional point for not having at least one episode I never want to see again
1 additional point for having an episode I get emotional about
1 additional point for being “historically important” (whatever that means)
1 additional point for pleasant sights and sounds
1 additional point for novelty (this is the “I don’t want to give 10s to the shows everybody else wants to give 10s to” tax)
Or at least, that’s how I’d like to score it, but I’ve seen too many shows, so EVERYBODY LOSES A POINT, and then I award the leftovers to the shows I like the most:
I’m going to say that my list is only Seaquest, in the ranking of
Seaquest Season 1
Seaquest Season 2
Unratable. Seaquest Season 3
Farscape is objectively better, season to season, than Seaquest, but I love Seaquest, and I don’t love Farscape.
Am interested in seeing Blake’s 7 showing up so often. Never seen it, and was wondering if Blake’s 7 was a Star Trek or a (crap I’ve never needed to have a formalized segregation of ensemble cast on a space ship genre) a western, I guess?
Is there a Star Trek with a pirate ship in the age of discovery?
I refuse to define it, but am interested to hear others thoughts.
I think for me it’s more about being a space exploration show that is unforgiveably cheesy. I think The Orville understands that TNG was always a sitcom with room tone instead of laugh track.
Maybe it’s just because I like Roy Scheider and Jonathan Brandis. I guess I’d have to rewatch the whole series to make a decent argument, and I think I’d like to do that.
Oh I forgot (and forgot that I’d known this before and then forgot it again) that Seaquest had the same showrunner who’d go on to make Farscape (and Defiance. Hmm.)
I feel like I’m in an alien universe reading this thread because DS9, the Star Trek where they do honey I shrunk the kids and baseball in the middle of the grimdark space war, somehow didn’t do great comedy episodes or have stories with weird ideas according to what I’m seeing here.
Was recently rewatching Farscape with some friends and like, the quality is all over the map, where you’ll get two absolute bangers, then three back-to-back dull-as-dishwater nothings, then back to the good shit, then back into the pit, etc.
Great characters, particularly Zhaan, Rigel, and Scorpius, and when they get a good script they really shine.
Also, cannot think of any science fiction show that has better achieved the idea that they are in a completely alien part of the galaxy, where humanity is the minority, and almost every other species is wildly different than the last. That Jim Henson factor is very good.