Star Trek Favourite Series

Originally Posted by Soluzar

It ain't exactly too late, what with the show having been at least partly released on DVD. I don't know for sure if they released all of it yet, though. I'm sure that eventually they will, even if they didn't already.

Actually, SpikeTV shows 2 episodes a day, and I believe they're at the 2nd or 3rd season right now. Its on from 1-3pm Monday through Friday. Luckily for me, I work from 3-11 most days so I get to catch most of the 2nd episode before I'm out the door.

I voted DS9 since I felt a special bond towards it. I love ST and I always have. My family would always sit down to watch both TNG and DS9 when I was younger and it became something we did each episode. TNG was great, and it was the ST in which I was raised. You could say it really sparked my love for the Sci-Fi genre, as did seeing Star Wars ANH when I was around 5 on VHS but thats a different story.

DS9 had very deep relationships and each episode was quite polished. I really liked the whole storyline with Section 31 and Julian Brashir. I could go on and on about each of the main characters, but suffice to say they all were well drawn out in my opinion. Unfortunately, I only have the last season on DVD, but once I have a bit more money on my hands, I'd like to get some of the earlier seasons added to my collection.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Dayvon

I am aware that the later space battles were 'big' but it's also the feeling of a specific space ship that I missed with the whole series. Sitting in a space station made the series felt stuck to me. They never seemed to 'do' anything, only respond to what was happening to them.

This is interesting, because That is what I really liked about the series. The fact that every action they took had such a storng political following made it so interesting. In all the other series, it was the Prime Directive or Starfleet Command, and both seemed so easy to disregard. In DS9, their were so many political factions that made up the galactic community that everybody was affected by the actions of the station.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

DS9 is a Babylon 5 rip off (and not as good, anyway),

I've heard it said before. I don't really see it myself. Other than both of them being set on space stations, I really don't see the similarity. They came out at approximately the same time, so it seems unlikely that either one could be a "rip off" of the other.

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TNG for me. I think Season 3 of TNG is the peak of anything Star Trek. You had the morality and politics, but you also had the sense of exploration and well, "magic" that DS9 lacked for me. Episodes like The Defector are simply on another plateau. Not that DS9 is bad, but there's a bit too much angst there. Ooh, Sisco is so badass because he deals with Q differently than Picard did. The last few seasons of TNG did start to turn more towards the darker DS9-style (along with some utterly stupid plot devices like Riker having a twin and Diana having a little sister she didn't know about), but overall I definitely like it the most, and it managed to have a pretty good finale.

Oh, and Ron Jones > Dennis McCarthy > Jay Chattaway. That's part of why I prefer season three over four and five, which are also pretty good. (aside from Commander Sela, which I think was a lame way to bring Denise Crosby back into the series; I can't believe Gene Roddenberry actually approved that one - Yesterday's Enterprise was a fantastic episode that didn't need to be used for something so lame) Jay Chattaway had the one Inner Light theme and he hasn't done any exciting music since. (which unfortunately translates to DS9 having completely dull and unmemorable music) Ron Jones had the cool Romulan theme and for each episode he would create an original motif and work with it in various ways to great effect. Gotta love the feel of Booby Trap when they step onto that ancient ship. That sort of thing stopped existing in Star Trek once Rick Berman and Brannon Bragga took complete control. With them you have those ever so contrived science conflicts just to remind folks that Star Trek is still sci-fi. It's just not the same. Besides, their way of tying up loose ends and creating brilliant drama is by senselessly killing everything, as was demonstrated in the Generations movie.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I've heard it said before. I don't really see it myself. Other than both of them being set on space stations, I really don't see the similarity. They came out at approximately the same time, so it seems unlikely that either one could be a "rip off" of the other.

basic summation of the argument:

Spoiler:

Quote:

1. Both series are named after a space station name with a single-digit number
2. Both series premiered in 1993, and were set aboard space stations that were hubs of interstellar trade and politics.
3. Both stations were located beside portals to distant places. (B5 guarded a hyperspace "jumpgate"; DS9 guarded the mouth of a wormhole.)
4. Both series originally featured a shapeshifter character; however, Babylon 5 dropped that element before filming, replacing it with occasional characters using various illusory and camouflage mechanisms.
5. Both stations started off being run by a man with the rank of "Commander" (Commander Sisko and Commander Sinclair) and ended with a man the rank of "Captian" (Sisko being promoted and Sinclair being replaced by Captain Sheridan)
6. Both started off with unmarried commanders haunted by a recent conflict.
7. Commanders of each station had lost their wives before the series started. (Sisko and Sheridan)
8. Both men's wives reappeared during the series under the control of a more powerful race. (Sheridan's wife returns in person under the control of the Shadows, while the Prophets speak through Sisko's wife in visions.)
9. Both commanders remarried during the shows run.
10. Both commanders had a girlfriend who was a freighter captain, Carolyn Sykes for Commander Sinclair and Kasidy Yates for Captain Sisko.
11. The commander of each station eventually became a religious figure who fulfilled a prophecy, advised by enigmatic aliens who were regarded as spiritual beings.
12. Both commanders (Sisko and Sheridan) "ascended" to become noncoporeal lifeforms in the series finale.
13. In both series the spiritual beings (the Vorlons, the Prophets) had an enemy (the Shadows, the Pah Wraiths) generally viewed as evil spirits by other races, with whom they had been at war for millennia.
14. Both series build up to a war between Humans and a militarily powerful, hard-to-detect enemy (the invisible Shadows, the shapeshifting Founders).
15. Both series had a sarcastic, cynical but dedicated head of security who started out as perceptive and extremely competent, but later succumbed to insecurity and compulsion (Garibaldi's drinking, Odo's link with the female Shapeshifter)
16. Both series had an idealistic young doctor with a hidden secret (Bashir's genetic enhancement, Franklin's involvement with the Underground). Both doctors also had strained relationships with their fathers.
17. Both series involved the use of genetically engineered diseases, designed to work against a specific group (Changelings, Markab, Human and Narn Telepaths, others) as a means of control or genocide.
18. The second-in-command of each station was a woman with a hot temper who had lost a family member in a war.
19. Central to each series were two alien races, one of which had until recently occupied and oppressed the home planet of the other. Furthermore:
1. The oppressed race was a deeply religious one.
2. The oppressors in both series were later manipulated by a powerful alien race to achieve its goals.
3. This manipulation occurred via a regular character in the series belonging to the oppressor race, who vacillated between 'good' and 'evil' through the course of the series, ultimately being taken over completely by powerful evil forces, which eventually led to their untimely deaths.
4. The plot of each series eventually centered around a war against the oppressors and those who manipulated them.
5. These wars resulted in the devastations of the former-oppressors' homeworlds.
20. Both series involved an alien race who had once been humanity's main enemies, but were now strong (but often troublesome) allies (Klingons, Minbari)
21. Both series involve a character who must deal with the conflict between their alien heritage, and their adopted human qualities (Worf, Delenn)
22. Each series added a small, tough starship, each the first of its kind, during the third season: DS9's Defiant and B5's White Star.
23. Each series includes a sinister organization working within the humans' government: DS9's Section 31 and B5's Bureau 13, not to mention Psi Corps and Nightwatch as well.
24. Each series had a male character named "Dukat" (though B5's is spelled "Dukhat") and each series had a female character named "Lyta" (although DS9's is spelled "Leeta").
25. Each Station was administered by an Earth based government (Earth Alliance in B5, the Federation in DS9) but was not in that government's territory.
26. While each stations was administered by Earth, that administration depended upon the sufferance of a second, deeply spiritual, race. (Minbari in B5, Bajorans in DS9)
27. In the first season finales of both series, the character frequently regarded as the "everyman" (Miles O'Brien on DS9, Michael Garibaldi on B5) is betrayed by his assistant in an assassination attempt.
28. Both series have a character who is the sidekick from an egocentric culture (Vir the Centauri and Rom the Ferengi). They both have values that are more "human" than those of their culture and are therefore seen as poor excuses for members of their race. Despite all this, they both end up as the leaders of their race by the end of the series.
29. Both series featured a six-episode story arc at the beginning of their penultimate seasons that chronicled a major turning point in their respective wars (the defeat of the Shadows and Vorlons in B5, and the retaking of the station from the Dominion in DS9).

Some Babylon 5 fans contend that DS9 plagiarized elements of the premise and details of B5. J. Michael Straczynski approached Paramount Pictures, the studio which produced DS9, with the idea of producing B5 and had given them a copy of the series "bible" in 1989, several years before production on either series began. Straczynski has been quoted that DS9 was not developed until about 1991/1992 on the JMS message archive [1], and it is documented that DS9 was not announced by Paramount until nearly two months after the announcement of B5 by Warner Bros./PTEN in November 1991. Straczynski does not think that the producers of DS9 (Berman and Piller) borrowed the B5 concepts but the borrowing was done by the Paramount executives who had been given the series "bible" who directed the development of the series. ("Grand Theft, drama!" and "Re: DS9 vs B5 comments")

Babylon 5's pilot film was put into production first, in August 1992, while Deep Space Nine didn't begin filming until right after the B5 pilot production wrapped in September. However, the first DS9 episode was broadcast the month before the B5 pilot film in early 1993. The actual B5 series was not put into production until later that year. By the time B5's first season was produced and aired, DS9's entire first season had been televised and its second season had just started airing.

Many of the points listed above have caused much debate between fans of each franchise. In regard to the wormhole question, while some fans point out their existence in Star Trek before Babylon 5, wormholes had long been an established element of science fiction, pre-dating both shows.

Some Trek fans contend that since the Ivanova character, a hot-headed female, didn't appear until the first season of B5, one year after the DS9 premiere, that DS9 had the lead there; however, in the original Babylon 5 pitch material there is one Laurel Chang (later Takashima in the pilot), a "no-nonsense, but with a sly sense of humor" second-in-command.

Going the other way, however, it should be noted that in regard to the Defiant/White Star debate, DS9's third season began in the fall of 1994, while B5's third season began in the fall of 1995, thus the Defiant predates the White Star by a year. Furthermore, the two ships went in very different directions, with the White Star being the first ship of an entire fleet, while the Defiant was a troublesome prototype with only a handful of sister ships.

There were considerable differences between the oppressed races, also. Unlike the Bajorans, Babylon 5's Narn were a major power. Furthermore, the Bajorans and their story of oppression had already been established in a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

DS9 was the first Star Trek series to break with the traditional standalone-episode format and adopt serial storyline arcs across several episodes, a format central to the B5 series. There are allegations that it only adopted the arc format in the later seasons, however its producers later contended that the entire series was one long story arc. Given that arc-oriented television had existed well before either series, in the form of soap operas and television shows such as St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues, it could be argued that there was no need to copy B5's format, since it had been successfully established elsewhere. In the favor of both series, a program taking place in a static location is more conducive to arc-driven storytelling than a series involving a transient starship.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I guess I'm the only person that doesn't want Neelix drawn and quartered. I kinda liked him as an eccentric addition. He wasn't used to the officious life of the Federation, and yet he still managed to find a place as somewhat of a counselor and an envoy. He was obviously for the most part a comedy relief character, but I liked him just because he was the kind of oddball.

As to my favorite, well, it has to be TNG. I wasn't a big fan of the series when they still had the gold stripes along the uniforms, so basically the first couple of seasons or so, but once they got rid of Tasha Yar, it was all gravy.

I'd say second place belongs to Voyager, as well, because I liked the concept of being stranded, and encountering entirely new things with each episode. It might have been gimmicky, but I felt like they worked it in well enough to the framework of the show that it didn't feel tacked on or obvious.

FELIPE NO

The big space battles in DS9 were just alright. What got me ticked off was that they kept using the same boring ships.

The Federation only ever seemed to have 1 Defiant, maybe 2 Galaxys, and hundreds of Mirandas (Those crappy looking easy-to-blow up ships). I never watched TNG so where was the Enterprise? (Sovereign class) or atleast some other bigger ships like a Nebula class or Akira. Heck wasn't the Prometheus (Shown in Voyager) created during the Dominion war?

Plus what happened to that freaking huge Dominion Battleship that owned the Valiant?

Did the Klingons only ever use Birds of Prey and maybe an occassional Vorcha? What about their capital ships?

DS9's battle scenes just didn't hold that much of a 'Ahhh Star Trek ships" spectacle for me.

The above may sound totally geekish but it just peeved me

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Originally Posted by Skexis

I'd say second place belongs to Voyager, as well, because I liked the concept of being stranded, and encountering entirely new things with each episode. It might have been gimmicky, but I felt like they worked it in well enough to the framework of the show that it didn't feel tacked on or obvious.

People often criticise the quality of the acting in Voyager but aside from Harry Kim, I think it was pretty good. I thought that Kate Mulgrew who played Captain Janeway was fantastic and consistent from the start.

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Voyager ruined the Borg.
Okay. Truth be told, the "First Contact" movie ACTUALLY began ruining it.
Voyager just kicked the whole Borg concept down the drain.

I mean...
In TNG two Borg Cubes were a meneace beyond belief.
In Voyager they're outrun by a pimped shuttle.

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Originally Posted by Vivace119

People often criticise the quality of the acting in Voyager but aside from Harry Kim, I think it was pretty good. I thought that Kate Mulgrew who played Captain Janeway was fantastic and consistent from the start.

I always thought Kate Mulgrew never got the respect she deserved. I loved her in System Shock 2 (the videogame), and she did a great job of playing a hardened captain. I thought a lot of people discredited her for some of the scripts she was given to show her softer sides. I didn't like the scripts, but I don't hold it against Kate.

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Originally Posted by Denicalis

basic summation of the argument:

I'd have to say that I can see that the arguments presented aren't entirely fallacious. There are some good points made there, and some connections which I never actually made. I'm not sure why I didn't make some of those connections myself, now that you come to mention them.

I'm certainly not in agreement with the conclusion that either show is a wholesale rip-off from the other. I'd say that during the genesis of and the run of B5 and DS9 there was probably a little cross-pollination, but there were also a lot of differences, both in style and in content.

As a side-note, I used to be a pretty big fan of B5, but I've cooled off on that show a lot.

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Deep Space Nine is my favorite show ever. I have not seen Babylon 5, though.
DS9 is a very well written, elegant show with such powerful & articulate actors who play, and most notably, Dukat, Garak, Weyoun, the female founder, and more.

TNG is my 2nd favorite show ever made. The storyline ideas are generally stand-alone but are very solid and brilliant. What makes DS9 better is the conflict in some characters, whereas TNG has a cast of people that are goodie-goodie and all like each other.

The rest of the Trek's are no where near my top 10 ever, but:

ENT is the 3rd best Trek mainly because of season 3's intensity -- regardless that hard Trek fans like me have problems with how they did some things. I didn't care for the first two seasons, but the last one was solid up until the finale.

VOY is 4th.... only a few shiners. My favorite episode of that whole show is "Shattered". I recommend that.

TOS I don't watch too much but plan on it.

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Originally Posted by Soluzar

I'd have to say that I can see that the arguments presented aren't entirely fallacious. There are some good points made there, and some connections which I never actually made. I'm not sure why I didn't make some of those connections myself, now that you come to mention them.

I'm certainly not in agreement with the conclusion that either show is a wholesale rip-off from the other. I'd say that during the genesis of and the run of B5 and DS9 there was probably a little cross-pollination, but there were also a lot of differences, both in style and in content.

As a side-note, I used to be a pretty big fan of B5, but I've cooled off on that show a lot.

The biggest issue for the argument of DS9 playing off of B5 is that the studio had the "bible" for B5 in their hands for the year leading up to DS9's conception. It's just sort of odd that they'd suddenly spin away from the regular Trek concept of being episodic and incorporate that many elements that show up in B5. JMS doesn't blame the writers, he blames the studio that supplies notes. Wouldn't surprise me if they'd used some of his stuff.

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Originally Posted by Denicalis

The biggest issue for the argument of DS9 playing off of B5 is that the studio had the "bible" for B5 in their hands for the year leading up to DS9's conception. It's just sort of odd that they'd suddenly spin away from the regular Trek concept of being episodic and incorporate that many elements that show up in B5. JMS doesn't blame the writers, he blames the studio that supplies notes. Wouldn't surprise me if they'd used some of his stuff.

Sure, I'm prepared to accept that. What I mean is that it seems like they took the concept in a direction which was diffent to Straczynsky's plan for B5. The concept is similar, as are certain elements, but the execution was different.

I found that B5 lost all sense of coherency towards the end of the Shadow War. It stayed good, but it was never as good as it promised to be. DS9 on the other hand, seemed to gain in strength as it went along. I enjoyed the denoument of the arc story immensely.

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Originally Posted by Soluzar

Sure, I'm prepared to accept that. What I mean is that it seems like they took the concept in a direction which was diffent to Straczynsky's plan for B5. The concept is similar, as are certain elements, but the execution was different.

I found that B5 lost all sense of coherency towards the end of the Shadow War. It stayed good, but it was never as good as it promised to be. DS9 on the other hand, seemed to gain in strength as it went along. I enjoyed the denoument of the arc story immensely.

Oh, there I won't argue with you. And the reason it fell apart at the end of the shadow war is that JMS thought he had another year to wrap it up, and then they tell him he's being cancelled, so he rushes it, does one of the WORST story arc endings in Sci Fi history just to get some closure, and then they tell him "oh wait, we'll renew you." It boned the whole series.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I found that B5 lost all sense of coherency towards the end of the Shadow War. It stayed good, but it was never as good as it promised to be. DS9 on the other hand, seemed to gain in strength as it went along. I enjoyed the denoument of the arc story immensely.

I completely agree with this, although I was very fond of the end of Season 4. It's ok for it to end in that quick, neat and tidy way because Sheridan pulls off some genius tactics.

The problem for me was Season 5 and those whiny annoying telepaths in their spoilt quest to bargain for their own planet. Season 5 was an anticlimax to say the least! However it wasn't all bad. The Drac storyline was quite well executed and kept me interested to the end.

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Originally Posted by Menzoberranzan

The big space battles in DS9 were just alright. What got me ticked off was that they kept using the same boring ships.

The Federation only ever seemed to have 1 Defiant, maybe 2 Galaxys, and hundreds of Mirandas (Those crappy looking easy-to-blow up ships). I never watched TNG so where was the Enterprise? (Sovereign class) or atleast some other bigger ships like a Nebula class or Akira. Heck wasn't the Prometheus (Shown in Voyager) created during the Dominion war?

I count 5 Galaxies, several Akira's, mulitple Excelsiors and a fair few Miranda's. Plus the Prometheus was an experiment, not a full ship-of-the-line vessel.

Originally Posted by Menzoberranzan

Plus what happened to that freaking huge Dominion Battleship that owned the Valiant?

It was only a prototype as I recall.

Originally Posted by Menzoberranzan

Did the Klingons only ever use Birds of Prey and maybe an occassional Vorcha? What about their capital ships?

Why would the Klingon's really need to use anything else? BOP's are strong, fast little ships. Vor'Cha's and those frikkin huge ones that beat the shit out of DS9 in 'The Way of the Warrior' were slow, ungainly things that were easy pickings for the nippier Dominion craft.

Originally Posted by Menzoberranzan

The above may sound totally geekish but it just peeved me

You think you sound geeky? After what I just typed I'm about ready to go live iin my mums basement.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Fatt

I always thought Kate Mulgrew never got the respect she deserved. I loved her in System Shock 2 (the videogame), and she did a great job of playing a hardened captain.

She was in System Shock 2? Because I'm staring at a VA list for the game right now, and she's not on it. She's been in some interesting things (she was in Gargoyles, just like a dozen other Star Trek actors were), but I don't think System Shock was one of them.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Oh, there I won't argue with you. And the reason it fell apart at the end of the shadow war is that JMS thought he had another year to wrap it up, and then they tell him he's being cancelled, so he rushes it, does one of the WORST story arc endings in Sci Fi history just to get some closure, and then they tell him "oh wait, we'll renew you." It boned the whole series.

Indeed. The original concept for the ending of B5 would certainly have been better than what was realised. As far as I'm concerned, we got something in the region of 3.7 excellent seasons, but I acknowledge that Straczynsky wasn't entirely to blame for the 1.3 seasons which followed.

In the end, the series as presented to us is all we have, though. So it remains a deeply flawed work of sci-fi genius. The greater the apparent potential, the higher the standard I hold a show to. This is why I can tolerate pulp sci-fi such as the early seasons of Stargate, or E:FC with pleasure, but criticise B5 for failing to fulfil the potential which was so richly in evidence during the second, third, and early fourth season.

Originally Posted by Vivace119

I completely agree with this, although I was very fond of the end of Season 4. It's ok for it to end in that quick, neat and tidy way because Sheridan pulls off some genius tactics.

I remain unhappy with the end of season four myself, but not to an extraordinary degree. I certainly don't agree with you that the end of that season was well executed. I maintain that while there were excellent individual episodes on offer, the pacing felt (as would be expected) wildly out of synch with that of the preceding seasons.

Pacing is an important matter to me, and poor pacing is often the reason why I eventually discontinue to watch a series. It affects my enjoyment immensely, although more so during the broadcast run of a series than when viewing it on DVD. I might add that if B5's pacing was a little fast, towards the end, there were times when the pacing of DS9 seemed a little too slow.

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Originally Posted by Soluzar

Indeed. The original concept for the ending of B5 would certainly have been better than what was realised. As far as I'm concerned, we got something in the region of 3.7 excellent seasons, but I acknowledge that Straczynsky wasn't entirely to blame for the 1.3 seasons which followed.

In the end, the series as presented to us is all we have, though. So it remains a deeply flawed work of sci-fi genius. The greater the apparent potential, the higher the standard I hold a show to. This is why I can tolerate pulp sci-fi such as the early seasons of Stargate, or E:FC with pleasure, but criticise B5 for failing to fulfil the potential which was so richly in evidence during the second, third, and early fourth season.


I remain unhappy with the end of season four myself, but not to an extraordinary degree. I certainly don't agree with you that the end of that season was well executed. I maintain that while there were excellent individual episodes on offer, the pacing felt (as would be expected) wildly out of synch with that of the preceding seasons.

Pacing is an important matter to me, and poor pacing is often the reason why I eventually discontinue to watch a series. It affects my enjoyment immensely, although more so during the broadcast run of a series than when viewing it on DVD. I might add that if B5's pacing was a little fast, towards the end, there were times when the pacing of DS9 seemed a little too slow.

It also suffered from Wesley syndrome, in that I wanted Sisko's son to just fucking die already. Children don't belong on space dramas.

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Originally Posted by Amanda

She was in System Shock 2? Because I'm staring at a VA list for the game right now, and she's not on it. She's been in some interesting things (she was in Gargoyles, just like a dozen other Star Trek actors were), but I don't think System Shock was one of them.

Ugh. I thought she played Delacroix, but now I remember Shodan used a voice adjuster/enhancer to disguise itself. It REALLY sounds like her, but I'm so busted. I'll still bet if anybody plays the game, they can not tell the difference.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Insert my bit of patheticness here. I've seen:

Original Series: ALL
Next Generation: ALL
DS9: ALL of the first 5 seasons, most of the last 2 (currently going through the DVDs)
Voyager: Probably about half
Enterprise: Only the frst season

Of the series, I find that I like TNG the most overall, although TOS still holds a special place in my heart when you consider that its closest competition was Lost In Space - it may not be amazing compared to modern Sci-Fi, but it was REVOLUTIONARY for its time. I hated DS9 for a long time until I started watching the DVDs and finding out that there was actually a point to how retarded half of the characters seemed. I've always liked Voyager, even though it seems like no one else does, and Enterprise never quite did it for me.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Fatt

Ugh. I thought she played Delacroix, but now I remember Shodan used a voice adjuster/enhancer to disguise itself. It REALLY sounds like her, but I'm so busted. I'll still bet if anybody plays the game, they can not tell the difference.

For the record, both the Shodan and Delacroix voices were done by Terri Brosius, a game designer at (the now dead) Looking Glass studios. Looking Glass had some fantastic voice talent kicking around the office, Terri among them, and they did a lot of the voice-acting themselves in their games. You'll also recognise Terri as Viktoria in Thief 1 and 2, Lauryl in Thief 3, and a bunch of the female extras. Maybe Kate Mulgrew inspired her Delacroix voice.

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Originally Posted by Amanda

Maybe Kate Mulgrew inspired her Delacroix voice.

That wouldn't surprise me. Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway always had that deep, respect demanding voice. I'm still trying to dig up some voice overs from the game to post up for comparison.

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I grew up with the original series (though not when it was originally airing; my uncle would show me episodes of that and other shows like the Outer Limits and the Twilight Zone when he would babysit) and the Next Generation, and I suppose as a result I'm more predisposed to like them. However, Deep Space Nine is probably my favorite, and if not then Next Gen just barely ties it.

Not only did I enjoy the ongoing story arcs (as previously mentioned, a lot of the time Next Gen felt far too episodic in nature) but the character development and interaction was unparalleled. The only things it lacked when held up beside TNG were Patrick Stewart (as much as I like Avery Brooks, he would not uncommonly go into melodrama mode and really ham up his motivational speeches) and John de Lancie. Q was the best recurring character any series of Star Trek ever had, and I wish DS9 used him as much as TNG did. His dialogues with Picard were AWESOME.

I don't think comparing any of the Star Treks to Babylon 5 is really fair in terms of the story arcs each used, because Babylon 5s entire story was written, start to finish, before the show even started being filmed. All of the Star Treks of course, while perhaps keeping a general idea of where they wanted things to go in mind, were written as the show was already underway. Take your favorite piece of fiction and consider how it might have been different if the author were still writing the ending when you were already halfway through.

Something I always enjoyed about DS9 was the ability of the writers, actors, and directors to go off on a wild tangent in the middle of a really heavy story arc with a ridiculous comedy episode. I'll never forget the episode about the baseball game against the Vulcan team the Logicians, and Worf instructing Nog to "find him and kill him" when asked what to do about a Vulcan who stole a base.

Even smaller scenes in otherwise serious episodes (like a certain discussion Quark and Odo have comparing root beer with Federation philosophy) could be side-splitting, and I always appreciated that willingness to work something like that it.

The characters, as I mentioned before, were very well written, and equally as well acted. Sisko's almost imperceptible grins when you could tell he was pleased with himself for strongarming someone into doing something they didn't want to do, Garak's repartees with Bashir, Odo's unspoken friendship with Quark, they were all great.

Next Gen had similar moments, but none as memorable to me, really. Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner totally ruled, though.

Voyager, on the other hand, I thought was terrible. It embarasses me that it was considered to be a show aimed at my age demographic, because I thought it was ridiculous. It was like the god damn Love Boat in space. Every five fucking minutes someone needed to talk about their relationship. Janeways voice didn't help matters either. God. The only saving grace of that catastrophe was the doctor, and shit did he ever kick ass. You could tell those involved with the show realized how much he owned too, 'cause near the end he started getting tons of episodes.

I watched a couple episodes of Enterprise and thought it sucked, so I can't really comment. The only cool thing I saw it do was come up with a sort of reasonable explanation for the deal with the Klingons changing between Next Gen and the original series. Though, I still appreciated Worf's insistence that they "do not speak of it with outsiders" as a perfect response.

And just reading what was written previously, Neelix could seriously fuck off from episode one. Garbage character. He can take that annoying bitch Kes with him, too.

Also, I agree with Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko needing to join Neelix in exiting their respective series before they ever began.

There's nowhere I can't reach.