Warbler said:
Gaffer Tape said: The Federation in DS9 isn't bad or amoral.
it isn't?
what about deceiving the Romulans to get them involved in the War?
what about section 31?
what about how they dealt with the Maquis?
They wanted to get the Romulans into the war in order to bring a swifter end to the war and keep more people from dying. And the Maquis were a terrorist cell, staging raids on their allies. Now I'm certainly not defending those things, but I sure find those kinds of dilemmas much more interesting than only putting the Federation in easily-solved situations where they can always find a magic solution that makes everyone happy and never brings their morals and principles into question.
Warbler said:
Gaffer Tape said: All conflict comes from external, easily blown up or run away from, sources.
all conflicts in Next Gen were like that? What about "Measure of a Man", "DrumHead" and other episodes. I think you are selling Next Gen a little short.
Not at all. There are many awesome, awesome TNG episodes, but most of them came in the latter part of the series. Let me break down how I feel. The original Star Trek got much, much worse when Roddenberry was pushed aside. However, the movies got much, much better when Roddenberry was pushed aside. And TNG got better, unfortunately, when Roddenberry's declining health kept him from having such direct control over it. Like I said before, I think Roddenberry eventually got so obsessed with showing these paragons of humanity that he started to forget how to tell a good story.
Warbler said:
Gaffer Tape said:
Even in a Federation where everyone works for the betterment of humanity, it's a bit silly and scary to think that everyone is going to have the exact same opinions.
I never got the idea that every single person in Next Gen had the same exact opinions all the time
True, but it was one of Roddenberry's edicts that the main characters don't get into conflict with one another... even though Spock and McCoy sniped at each other all the time, and the show was better for it.
Warbler said:
You bring up great points, I guess I just don't like DS9. I prefer the ship going to the aliens and what not to the aliens and what not coming to the base. I also preferred the episodic style of TOS and Next Gen, to the multiple episode story arc style of DS9. I'm sure why, but DS9 just didn't feel like Star Trek to me. .
I can understand that, but I admit that's also the reason I do like DS9. It was the only show to do something different. This is not a statement on the quality of any of these shows, but TNG, Voyager, and Enterprise, when you get right down to it, are pretty much the exact same formula that the original series created: people in a Starship going on episodic adventures in space to random alien worlds. With TNG, that's right in the title. It's the same thing only further in the future. Enterprise is the same thing but further in the past. And Voyager is the same thing except that they're lost. Don't get me wrong, though. If that wasn't a formula I enjoyed, I wouldn't love the original series as much as I do. But after all that, it was nice to see a series that did something different in that world. That instead of episodic space exploration, I really got to see how the Federation worked, I really got to know a couple of those alien races in much better detail, and I got to see a main cast that was mostly made up of non-Starfleet personnel. And I liked focusing the story more on characters than on events. Really that's what the TOS movies did as well: focused more heavily on developing the characters in interesting ways (or at least three of them).
And I also do prefer story arcs over episodic television and was always annoyed that that was another thing that Roddenberry forbade (and you'll notice there were a lot more two-parters in TNG after Roddenberry died). Obviously that's just personal preference for me, and I can certainly understand why you'd feel that it isn't your kind of Trek.