29 Days of Star Trek Meme: Day 1

[intrigueing]

Stolen from selenak , whose answer to the meme starts here.

Day 1 - Which Star Trek series is your favorite?

Hard to pick between TOS and TNG. I love them both more than DS9, and I do, in fact, think they are better than DS9, in a certain way. They are not better shows than DS9, but a better show has nothing to do with being a better thing. DS9 is a better show than TOS or TNG in terms of having less of the kinds of stuff that tends to make a show bad -- less ignored and flat and ill-used characters, less facepalmy and winceworthy material, less oversimplified black-and-white declarations, and less dated deviations from a number of narrow, ephemeral, value-neutral current-day storytelling features that people are impressed by in 2015. It is not, however, better than TOS or TNG in terms of the gross quantity of awesome that is contained within it, (though it does come very, very, very close.)

However, I love TOS and TNG in such completely different ways I can't really compare them. For example, I barely read any fanfic for TNG, and find a lot of the TNG fandom to be annoying or pointless. It's also not a show I enjoy critically. At all. My interest in analyzing TNG is so far below zero that my reaction to analysis of it makes my eyes glaze over and then I will eventually say "what is this shit you are talking about? Why would I care about it? Do you remember that time when the computer told Dr. Crusher that the universe was a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter?" I just love to absorb it and bask in it. My TNG love is for it as a show that I watched with my family completely oblivious to any hint of fandom when I was younger, and which introduced me to the concept of future-fantasizing in sci-fi. I can barely think of it as a show at all. It is more of a mental space.

TOS, on the other hand, I discovered completely on my own, watched on my own, and got into the fandom short after discovering it, and TOS was my introduction to fandom and fanfiction. My love for TOS, my experience of watching TOS, and my memories of TOS are completely entwined with the framework of fandom and fanfic, and my personal experiences of discovering fandom and fanfic, and the (highly enjoyable) exercise of mental dissonance and elaborate "authorial intent? what authorial intent?" explanations and cherry-picking what parts to train a microscope on and what parts to judiciously allow to fade out of focus (cough cough, sexism) that is involved in seriously delving into this show on a fandom analysis meta level. And, of course, the elaborate mockery that is irresistible to not indulge in when watching it. My approach to TOS is the diametric opposite of my approach to TNG -- it's entirely about sussing out deeper meanings and nuances and implications and theories and fanon and building it into a bigger and more detailed story than the show.

Apples and oranges, really.


Day 2 - Who is your favorite character?
Day 3 - Who is your least favorite character?
Day 4 - What was the first episode/movie you watched?
Day 5 - What was the first Star Trek series you watched?
Day 6 - Your favorite canon pairing? (Canon being the series and the movies, including the reboot.)
Day 7 - Your favorite non-canon pairing?
Day 8 - Your favorite actor/actress? (Not the same as character.)
Day 9 - What's your favorite episode?
Day 10 - What's your favorite species? (Humans are a species as well.)
Day 11 - What's your least favorite species? (See question 9 about species.)
Day 12 - What's your favorite funny moment?
Day 13 - What's your favorite dramatic moment?
Day 14 - What's your favorite Star Trek quote?
Day 15 - How did you get into Star Trek?
Day 16 - Are you involved with Star Trek fandom?
Day 17 - Have you read any of the books? If so, which ones?
Day 18 - If you could be any species in the Star Trek universe, what would you be?
Day 19 - How did the Star Trek reboot affect you?
Day 20 - Of the minor characters (one shots, not the recurring ones) who’s your favorite?
Day 21 - Which Star Trek food would you want to try at least once?
Day 22 - Which Star Trek world would you want to visit at least once?
Day 23 - Is there anything you'd want to change about Star Trek? Why?
Day 24 - Is there anything about Star Trek that has disappointed you?
Day 25 - How has Star Trek changed you?
Day 26 - Lots of Star Trek Parodies out there. Which do you dig?
Day 27 - What would you cross over with Star Trek?
Day 28 - Your favorite friendship in Star Trek?
Day 29 - If you could tell Gene Roddenberry one thing, Star Trek related or not, what would it be?

Comments

[senmut]

Oh this would be so hard to think through.

I adore TOS, it is probably my gut-favorite, but it does have a more simplistic way in trying to teach its lessons. However, it also gave me the novels that made the whole universe come alive for me.

TNG was a lot of COOL, with some good lessons, and some characters I adored.

I resented DS9 for moving away from the Bright-Shiny that I love about TOS (things get better, really!), but at the same time I LOVE the cast/crew. And it is a great look at what happens when an Idyllistic society gets slammed with multiple stressors on their Good and Shiny.

I can't talk about Voyager; I couldn't get into it after the pilot, thought I've seen a few eps here and there.

I tried, so hard, to like Enterprise, but again, I just couldn't come to care enough with the way the grim-dark seemed to invade it.

ETA: I would have loved the concept of Mercy Point (I think that's the name) which was Star Trek's medical drama they had entertained thought of. And I loved the Animated series with the same provisionals that TOS itself has.

[lunabee34]

My favorite is DS9 followed by Voyager, TOS, and TNG. I have not seen Enterprise. I need to rectify that at some point.

TNG is the Trek I grew up on, and I loved it as a kid, but it doesn't hold up for me. There's a handful of episodes, maybe around twenty, that I think sit comfortably among the finest episodes of all TV, I don't think it has a very compelling and cohesive narrative arc over all ten seasons.

[intrigueing]

This is what I mean by value-neutral 2015-specific measures tbh - for me, the question of whether or not a show has a cohesive narrative arc has about as much to do with its quality as the question of where the commercial breaks are situated in a theatrical movie, or how good the studio audience's laughter is in an HBO drama -- i.e. completely and totally inapplicable to the situation. I wouldn't even WANT an arc in TNG (imo, the show would've been improved with even less arc-ness, except for the borg stuff) - episodic is how some shows work best. Which is why I find it so hard to compare DS9 to other Trek shows - they just don't operate with the same baseline assumptions about what a story qualifies as.

[intrigueing]

I still haven't seen any of the animated series! I am a bad fan.

I always found it head-scratching that everyone got into that DS9 vs the rest of the Trekverse snit over the idealistic and optimistic stuff "versus" the dark and cynical stuff, like one is bad and the other is good and objective goodness or badness can be measured by where on the spectrum between the two something falls. I was just like:

[lunabee34]

Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.

I think I've always preferred the story arc over the episodic, but I can understand the opposite perspective. :)

Did you watch Enterprise? I heard the theme song and just couldn't watch it, but I hear that it's actually pretty good.

[intrigueing]

Well I don't prefer episodic over story-arc -- I think both are good, just different. I think introducing arc-ness into an episodic show can be fantastic, but also risky because then the writers might alter the viewer's expectations in ways that the writers don't intend to follow up on, which just leads to disappointment, or alter some viewers' expectations and not others, leading to a broken viewerbase.

IMO most of the attempts to create arc-ness in TNG fell kind of flat. Like the "hey from now on, no more going above Warp 5 because it's bad for the environment space!" and then after that you can almost see the writers going "shit, why did we think that was a good idea???"

Hee, I just skip the Enterprise's theme song, I don't know what they were smoking. I watched some Enterprise, and didn't like it mostly because it retconned things in TOS, which is a totally biased and personal peeve, but one that I can't look past to judge the show objectively on its own merits.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

I definitely think a show needs to start with arcness rather than having it introduced later.

Mostly what I wanted from TNG beyond an over-arching story arc was more character development. I think Data, Picard, Wesley, and Troi a smidgen develop and change over the course of the series but Geordi, Crusher, Riker, Guinan (who arguably probably shouldn't change any as the Wise Alien figure), Worf (who even though he becomes a father in TNG, I don't think really develops as a character until DS9) are all pretty much exactly the same at the beginning of the show as they are ten years later. I like who they are; I love Crusher and what a good mom she is and how empathetic Geordi is and how silly Riker is underneath the Number One persona. They're good characters. IDK

I do love TNG, and I'm making it sound like I don't. LOL

[intrigueing]

Oh you're definitely right about the character development -- I agree that they could have used more of that. They did it well with Picard and could've done it better with the others too.

I technically have a lot of criticisms of TNG, but it's one of those shows where I just don't care about any of the criticisms enough to have any interest in writing about them, if that makes any sense?

[darjeeling]

Ooof, yeah, I think I'd have to split down the middle on that question myself! I love DS9, it is my fav Trek, but it's not the same show FORMAT as the other series, and it was never meant to be, so I always consider it separate.

[lunabee34]

That makes a lot of sense.

I feel the same way about Game of Thrones, largely. I know it's problematic, but I just love it anyway.