Star Trek: The Next Generation and Captain Jean Luc Pichard have been my type of Star Trek that I want to watch forever. It is almost a perfect Star Trek TV series combining great storytelling, memorable characters and special effects. Further Star Trek: The Next Generation crew was the only one that went to Day 1 of the “first contact”.
This will be the final installation of my 3 part review of the Star Trek TV series.
Read These First:-
- TV Shows 101: Reviewing Amazing Star Trek TV Series That I Have Watched – Part 1
- TV Shows 101: Reviewing Amazing Star Trek TV Series That I Have Watched – Part 2
This is an interesting video where the Star Trek TV series received the “Governors Award” for the Star Trek franchise.
Image source: IMDB
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Stardate 2364 – 2370)
It is said that this takes place some seventy years after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – which was the final movie with the Original TV Series starship crew. We have a few firsts compared to Original Series namely a Klingon and an Android as Starfleet officers.
No matter what others may say but as I mentioned, the STTNG is the best Star Trek TV series is the best that I have watched.
STTNG had the most diversified characters in a starship and the storyline has been fair to run through their stories and there are enough bad guys to last another 7 seasons (or 178 episodes) – from the immortal Q Continuum, Romulans, Ferengi, Cardassians, Data’s evil brother Lore, the Borg, rogue Klingon elements (still remember the Duras Sisters?) and rogue elements within Starfleet.
Instead of talking about, here are some of my favourite snippets related to STTNG (every episode has great moments):-
This one scene drives the right point of leadership and subordinates to follow orders once they have been given – a scenario that I have personally gone through hundreds of times. Here Data who is given the command of the Starship gives a stern warning to Mr Worf personally after he publicly shows his irritation to Data’s command decision.
An interesting episode where an alien tricks Riker to think that he has been firstly captured by the Romulan and Riker found out the truth.
This is probably one of the greatest leadership lessons that I learned in project management – a leader need to make hard and tough decisions (in some cases life or death situation) so that the mission gets done. Yes, at the end of the day, nothing matters except the mission. Same in projects where I had to make really tough decisions such as asking a team member to stay back for weeks for support even though it is time to go back to Malaysia.
Check out the comparison that I made between Star Trek The Next Generation and the next best thing, Star Trek Voyager here in Part 1 and Part 2.
Image source: IMDB
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Stardate 2369 – 2375)
This TV series started just before Star Trek The Next Generation about to end its 7 season run and the producers wanted a continuation of something good. So instead of creating another Starship voyage, they decided to create a whole new journey based on adventures in a space station.
Deep Space Nine ran the full course of 7 seasons with a total of 176 episodes which is a surprise because I was wondering how excited it going to be for adventure that does not fly anywhere. For this very reason, I put aside watching Deep Space Nine to the end after I had watched the other TV series. I mean there are only certain things that can be done within the 4 walls of a space station to last even 1 season.
I guess this is why they had no choice but to introduce a Starship element by having a smaller warp 9.5 USS Defiant which comes with 4 phaser cannons, 4 forward torpedoes, ablative armour and the very first cloaking technology from the Romulans. This helped to spread the story a bit outside the confines of a space station. Then I guess they ran out of storyline so they added a major dummy where the Sisko, a low Starfleet officer suddenly takes over the command of Starfleet and gets Klingons and Romulans to work together as a team against a common enemy.
Commander Sisko is a Starfleet down to the core, there is no doubt about it but once he moved on from Starfleet to some mambo-jumbo magic with Sisko ending up as the Emissary of the Prophets. The part of him going in and out of the encounter with Bajorian’s God is seriously sickening. You are a Starfleet officer for God sake!!
Taking a piece from other TV series where there is always one person who thinks of logic, this series also has one in form of Constable Odo who is the station’s chief of security. In addition, to keep his cool, he is a Changeling who can change into any shape. However, other than sticking him to security work, his romance with First Officer, Kira and his adventure to search for another Changeling, his character was never properly developed.
One saving grace is having Worf & Chief O’Brien from the Next Generation bring some sense of continuity and a sense of logic to the situation created by Sisko as the Emissary. The other welcome character is Jadzia Dax who is the station’s science officer, a Trill who shares a symbiotic existence with a “symbiont” named Dax, who has already experienced seven prior lives. Julian Bashir who is the station’s chief medical officer is a good addition to the series. He is as passionate and well skilled in medical situations.
In this series, we get to know the Cardassians a bit more closely with Dukat who is the former Cardassian prefect of Bajor and one that was in charge of the space station during the occupation. The other is Garak who is living in the space station as a tailor but has a secret background namely as a Cardassian spy who helped Sisko from sticky situations more than once.
However, the best character in the whole series must be the Ferengi, Quark who is the proprietor of a bar in the station with his brother who is an engineer and his nephew who would become the first Ferengi to enter Starfleet.
We now know more of the Rules of Acquisition thanks to him and know that whilst Ferenghis are driven by profit, not all of them are cold and merciless. Quark has a soft spot for Odo & Sisko and they often play the mouse & cat game when it comes to Quark shady dealings.
Image source: IMDB
Star Trek: Voyager (Stardate 2371 – 2378)
After Deep Space Nine, finally, we came back to a proper Star Trek storyline and starship with Star Trek: Voyager. The story takes in a different quadrant of the universe which is about 70,000 light-years away from Earth and in a smaller Starship that is a mixed batch of Starfleet and Maquis who now need to work together to come back home.
Whilst it is not up to the quality of the Next Generation, it was much better than Deep Space Nine and some of Voyager’s episodes are really good and one notch up against the Next Generation.
Captain Janeway is one badass leader that is tough enough to fight bad aliens and keep his crew intact on their long journey way back home. But she also has the sense of empathy, compassion and understanding that the crew is a long way from their loved ones. You don’t play poker with Captain Janeway in a crisis and expect to win.
As in the Next Generation, all the characters in Voyager were well balanced with finally a Vulcan coming aboard as the Security / Tactical Officer. Finally, we have one with the logic of Mr Spock who keeps his cool despite being far away and being surrounded by indisciplined Maquis. And this is evident when Captain Janeway hits a wall, she often turns to Tuvok to make sense of things.
Chakotay is a Maquis but ended up as Janeway’s No 1 so that there is a sense of control and command. His character is comparable with Commander Riker who is No 1 to Captain Picard. He and Janeway are the strongest characters in the whole series.
Then we have the Doctor.
Having the Doctor character was a brilliant move where he is not real thus be very cold when it comes to human relationships. And admit it, the Doctor has some of the best lines in the TV series:-
- “Why pretend we’re going home at all when all we’re really going to do is investigate every cubic millimetre of this quadrant, aren’t we?”
- “You’re on your way to being normal — although I’m not sure how normal applies to a species who suppress all their emotions”
- “Seems I’ve found myself on the voyage of the damned”
- “I’m a Doctor, not a battery.”
- “You can’t actually be considering this Vulcan mumbo – jumbo?!”
- “Please state the nature of the medical – oh, it’s you.”
- “Sticks and stones won’t break my bones, so you can imagine how I feel about being called names.”
Tom Paris and Harry Kim characters are basically a waste of time and space – other than be mischiefs, weak and sometimes going against the chain of command. Kes is another waste of time and space in the storyline other than keeping Neelix motivated.
Taking place of a ship counsellor, Neelix does his job perfectly as the ship’s Morale officer and also the main chef.
B’Elanna Torres is passable as the chief engineer but she is too emotional most of the time so we don’t see the brilliance of an engineer, unlike Geordi La Forge. Geordi La Forge is almost like Mr Scotty who thinks of the Starship more as their girlfriend than just a piece of metal. They will not hold back punches if anyone badmouths their Starship.
P.s there are other series namely Star Trek: Picard but it only starting season 2 so it is still too early to comment on it although it is good to see the good old captain back in action.