thanks for that.
Are there any good Star Trek books? I’ve read one with Picard as captain, and it was just meh.
The one with the pie fight.
Is Star Trek Continues the one with the Mythbusters guy in it?
So does that web series have the blessing of CBS/paramount? Just remember the recent legal woes of that other company that was trying to make a “fan” ST movie and got sued away for it.
Those other guys were literally trying to make money off of Star Trek. And we’re not talked about donations to recoup their costs; they were thinking of licensing and putting their own show on television. Of course CBS/Paramount shut them down, and I can’t blame them.
Oh, wow, slightly off-topic, but Trek-related. But I used to always read Tim Lynch’s stuff on USENET back int he day.
Star Trek Continues got permission to wrap up the series after Paramount laid down the new rules designed to kill fan films/shows. And yeah, it’s the one with Grant Imahara.
On Star Trek books, I used to read them all as a kid. Spock Must Die was the first, and it posits an interesting theory about the Transporter. (Does it transport you, or does it kill you and create an exact duplicate that thinks it’s you?) There were many, many mediocre ones, including the embarassing Markshak/Culbreath books which were full of Spock workship and border on Paramount-approved K/S slash fiction.
I remember liking some of the early books about the Klingons, and pretty much any of the books Peter David wrote.
Oh hell yeah! That was a trip. Still have it, somewhere.
Okay, the original poll is long-gone, but I was thinking of what my order is nowadays for favorite Trek series, and how, oddly, Lower Decks revised it.
Denny’s Best Star Trek Series in Order
- Star Trek: The Original Series (I was in college by the time TNG appeared, so this was my Trek)
- Deep Space 9
- Lower Decks
- TNG
- Discovery
- Picard
- The Animated Series
- Enterprise
- Voyager
While you can argue whether Lower Decks really belongs in a taxonomy with the rest of the series, it sticks to canon better than any Trek since Voyager. And it’s really, really fun, entertaining, and it sticks to the spirit of Star Trek more than Picard or Discovery have. So yeah, it’s really my number 3.
And while I’m at it, Denny’s favorite movies order:
- Wrath of Khan
- The Undiscovered Country
- The Voyage Home
- The Motion Picture (not for the story or pacing, but the spectacle was awesome in its day)
- First Contact
- Star Trek (2009)
- Beyond
- The Search for Spock
- Insurrection
- Generations
- The Final Frontier
- Nemesis
- Into Darkness
Almost exactly how I would rank them, except TMP down one and TSfS up one.
OMG, Nemesis is not better than Into Darkness! Please!
I basically agree with that order except for me TMP is much lower and everything chronologically after First Contact, including all the new ones, is simply filed under “unwatchable dreck” and left unranked. Final Frontier is crap but at least the characters are still fun. There’s nothing redeeming in the late TNG or reboot movies.
Nemesis’s script was dumb but it at least had internal consistency and Tom Hardy chewing scenery.
Into Dumbness had so many issues. The magic transporter, the supermen frozen in photon torpedoes, the giant surprise superstarship that had just been done two movies ago just as badly in Nemesis, the fact that they had to get Khan’s blood to resurrect Kirk even though they had dozens of supermen with the same kind of blood frozen in photon torpedoes, and so much more. The writing was abysmal. Even Star Trek V’s script had less stupidity in it. It’s a wonderful example of Hollywood focusing on action and not giving a single sh*t about plots making sense. It’s the Transformers movie of Star Trek movies, but less entertaining.
I enjoyed this article, I think it does a good job of capturing what’s unique and what’s valuable about Trek.
Khan keeping his real name secret, and then revealing it mid-movie, only to encounter sheer puzzlement. “His name’s Khan? Who’s dat?” Its only purpose was to try to surprise the audience, not the characters. But it sucked, because Jar Jar Abrams sucks, and he’s only capable of ripping off superior filmmakers, down to the stories and plotlines.
Ouch. Still … probably true.