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I think the reorientation around conflict actually began with Rick Berman after he took over from Roddenberry back 90s or early 2000s or whenever it was. He ex

I think the reorientation around conflict actually began with Rick Berman after he took over from Roddenberry back 90s or early 2000s or whenever it was. He explicitly stated that he wanted more interpersonal conflict between the crew of the enterprise. His notion was that Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the way the crew worked together was just not realistic. Of course he missed the whole point, that it may not be realistic today, but it was an aspirational vision of a better future. I watched TNG religiously as a kid, but once Berman took over and began infusing pointless interpersonal conflict, I lost interest. That said, everything I’ve seen of Strange New Worlds so far is excellent, it’s like the old Roddenberry vision reincarnated.

morelisp 4y ago
"Star Trek got bad shortly after I grew up" is not the thoughtful take anyone seems to think it is.
- dendriti 4y ago
  Is that what OP actually said?
such12 4y ago
Can you give an example of the kind of conflict you thought was pointless? Early TNG seemed like a new age cult to me, and then it became more real without losing the positivity.
- liveoneggs 4y ago
  early TNG, literally, re-used TOS problems and solutions (aka plots). It was like a best-of playlist. Absolutely ridiculous as a television show.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    This isn't uncommon in TV series. How many I Love Lucy plots were recycled later on? All in the Family? I can go on, but great writing and plots are often reused later.
    - liveoneggs 4y ago
      Do they ask "What did Lucy do in this situation?" while the show was, blatantly, an extension of I Love Lucy?
- pencilguin 4y ago
  It really was a New Age cult. The writers tried what they were told to do, but it was obvious they were just going through the motions. Mostly they were glad to have work.
LesZedCB 4y ago
strange new worlds is the best new star trek since TNG. absolutely beautiful tv
- layer8 4y ago
  I’d say The Orville is the best Star Trek since TNG/DS9, and to some extent Lower Decks.
  - LesZedCB 4y ago
    completely agree about the Orville, it's extremely good!
- mrexroad 4y ago
  I say this a bit loosely, but Lower Decks is best new Star Trek since DS9. They not only capture Trek, but do it with a silly genre (yes, Orville proved this out first). My problem with Disco/etc is the extreme over indexing on a singular characters, great as they may be. Either way, SNW is fantastic and I agree with your comment.
magicalist 4y ago
> once Berman took over and began infusing pointless interpersonal conflict, I lost interest Berman took over basically near the end of season 2/beginning of season 3 when the original writers were slowly kicked out and Gene Roddenerry's health was in definite decline. This was also when the show got good. Berman had many faults he brought to TNG (and magnified in Voyager, and you can see was Star Trek but with a looser Berman hand is like on DS9), but this wasn't one of them. If anything he stuck up too much for Gene's vision which sometimes struggled fitting into actual scripts that were compelling and made sense.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Season 3 is when it started getting somewhat consistently good. Although that is difficult in a 26 episode per year show.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Season 3 was when TOS started to go all to hell. All of the very worst episodes were in Season 3. It was almost a relief when it was cancelled. Season 3 started right after the Apollo 11 moon landing, when people had got a hint of how difficult and terrifying space travel really was. Aliens with bumpy heads weren't inspiring anymore.
  - boxed 4y ago
    TOS != TNG.
parenthesis 4y ago
My main beef with Berman is that he fired composer Ron Jones who, in my opinion, did, by far, the best music on TNG.
- amiga-workbench 4y ago
  Absolutely, I still listen to the soundtrack from season 1 & 2, he brought a lot of variety and character to the score. Some of his musical choices certainly do date the show, but its part of the charm.
fuckstick 4y ago
> Of course he missed the whole point, that it may not be realistic today, but it was an aspirational vision of a better future. It’s not realistic because it’s fundamentally either autistic or straight up dehumanizing and authoritarian. People have deconstructed the Star Trek universe and themes ad infintum at this point, but I don’t think anybody is missing the point just because they find it distasteful.
- PhasmaFelis 4y ago
  > It’s not realistic because it’s fundamentally either autistic Say what, now?
  - fuckstick 4y ago
    The themes are hyperfixated on a few aspects of a utopia and human behavior with complete deafness to everything else. That’s the charitable take. The less charitable one is it is a type of willful indoctrination.
    - manmal 4y ago
      I fail to see how you’d make a scifi TV series that isn’t what you just described. What do you mean by “everything else”?
      - fuckstick 4y ago
        Yeah, no, not going down this rabbithole. If you’re already convinced STTOS and TNG were the pinnacle achievements of SciFi TV entertainment then we just have to agree to disagree.
        manmal 4y ago
        I never wrote that? Sheesh, why are you commenting at all if you don’t even want to clarify what you commented in the first place.
  - 4y ago
thaumasiotes 4y ago
>> Compare the old shows, TNG & DS9 with the new shows - Discovery and Picard. > I think the reorientation around conflict actually began with Rick Berman after he took over from Roddenberry back 90s or early 2000s or whenever it was. Well, I watched season 1 of Picard. So I can't do much with the comparison being requested. But DS9 is completely oriented around military conflict (between the Federation and Cardassia, or between the Federation and the Changelings), and it throws TNG's notion of a communist society with no money out the window. (Jake does once remark that, as a human, he has no money, but whenever Riker shows up he has plenty of it.)
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  I don't think you can relate TNG to communism. Communist society still had/has money, people still go to the store and buy things. They're more concerned with who owns the means of production. But TNG (and TOS to some extent) is a total post-scarcity society. Effectively infinite energy from anti-matter reactors combined with energy->matter conversion "replicators" solves scarcity totally. The only limit on what can be created is how complex it is, and how advanced the science and engineering of the reactors and replicators are. Hence TNG society is totally oriented around science and discovery, rather than production, economic growth, and financial gain.
  - samus 4y ago
    There's still remnants of scarcity in TNG. For example, technology and resources that can't be replicated and where trade is relevant still. And the amount of habitable planets suitable for colonization is also always somewhat limited. No clue how the Federation distributes "luxury" goods like naturally grown food or, famously, wine from Picard's family's vineyard.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >And the amount of habitable planets suitable for colonization is also always somewhat limited. This part of ST doesn't really make sense. They're shown as having the tech to build enormous starbases (and with domed artificial habitats like "Running Silent" in the latest SNW episodes), so they don't need planets to colonize: they can just build O'Neil cyilnders.
pessimizer 4y ago
Strange New Worlds is the Trek everybody (including me) was asking for - just give us a ship and a crew that does adventures rather than a soap opera. The actors are good and it looks good, but the writing is trash. The technology doesn't make any sense, there are plot holes that you could fly a 747 through, and endless impossible dilemmas solved by deus-ex-machina. Just low-quality.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Ironically, Strange New Worlds features an episode that seems heavily inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Whether that one includes massive plot holes, I cannot say.
midoridensha 4y ago
>I watched TNG religiously as a kid, but once Berman took over and began infusing pointless interpersonal conflict, I lost interest. Really? So you actually liked Season 1, and lost interest at the start of Season 3? You're a really rare person then. Most fans acknowledge that the first season was pretty bad (esp. the racist episode), and the second season was better but still rough (Pulaski was annoying), and that season 3 was when all the classic episodes started. You're the first person who's ever said they liked the first season the most.

morelisp 4y ago

"Star Trek got bad shortly after I grew up" is not the thoughtful take anyone seems to think it is.

dendriti 4y ago
Is that what OP actually said?

such12 4y ago

Can you give an example of the kind of conflict you thought was pointless? Early TNG seemed like a new age cult to me, and then it became more real without losing the positivity.

liveoneggs 4y ago
early TNG, literally, re-used TOS problems and solutions (aka plots). It was like a best-of playlist. Absolutely ridiculous as a television show.
- Aloha 4y ago
  This isn't uncommon in TV series. How many I Love Lucy plots were recycled later on? All in the Family? I can go on, but great writing and plots are often reused later.
  - liveoneggs 4y ago
    Do they ask "What did Lucy do in this situation?" while the show was, blatantly, an extension of I Love Lucy?
pencilguin 4y ago
It really was a New Age cult. The writers tried what they were told to do, but it was obvious they were just going through the motions. Mostly they were glad to have work.

LesZedCB 4y ago

strange new worlds is the best new star trek since TNG. absolutely beautiful tv

layer8 4y ago
I’d say The Orville is the best Star Trek since TNG/DS9, and to some extent Lower Decks.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  completely agree about the Orville, it's extremely good!
mrexroad 4y ago
I say this a bit loosely, but Lower Decks is best new Star Trek since DS9. They not only capture Trek, but do it with a silly genre (yes, Orville proved this out first). My problem with Disco/etc is the extreme over indexing on a singular characters, great as they may be. Either way, SNW is fantastic and I agree with your comment.

magicalist 4y ago

> once Berman took over and began infusing pointless interpersonal conflict, I lost interest Berman took over basically near the end of season 2/beginning of season 3 when the original writers were slowly kicked out and Gene Roddenerry's health was in definite decline. This was also when the show got good. Berman had many faults he brought to TNG (and magnified in Voyager, and you can see was Star Trek but with a looser Berman hand is like on DS9), but this wasn't one of them. If anything he stuck up too much for Gene's vision which sometimes struggled fitting into actual scripts that were compelling and made sense.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Season 3 is when it started getting somewhat consistently good. Although that is difficult in a 26 episode per year show.
pencilguin 4y ago
Season 3 was when TOS started to go all to hell. All of the very worst episodes were in Season 3. It was almost a relief when it was cancelled. Season 3 started right after the Apollo 11 moon landing, when people had got a hint of how difficult and terrifying space travel really was. Aliens with bumpy heads weren't inspiring anymore.
- boxed 4y ago
  TOS != TNG.

parenthesis 4y ago

My main beef with Berman is that he fired composer Ron Jones who, in my opinion, did, by far, the best music on TNG.

amiga-workbench 4y ago
Absolutely, I still listen to the soundtrack from season 1 & 2, he brought a lot of variety and character to the score. Some of his musical choices certainly do date the show, but its part of the charm.

fuckstick 4y ago

> Of course he missed the whole point, that it may not be realistic today, but it was an aspirational vision of a better future. It’s not realistic because it’s fundamentally either autistic or straight up dehumanizing and authoritarian. People have deconstructed the Star Trek universe and themes ad infintum at this point, but I don’t think anybody is missing the point just because they find it distasteful.

PhasmaFelis 4y ago
> It’s not realistic because it’s fundamentally either autistic Say what, now?
- fuckstick 4y ago
  The themes are hyperfixated on a few aspects of a utopia and human behavior with complete deafness to everything else. That’s the charitable take. The less charitable one is it is a type of willful indoctrination.
  - manmal 4y ago
    I fail to see how you’d make a scifi TV series that isn’t what you just described. What do you mean by “everything else”?
    - fuckstick 4y ago
      Yeah, no, not going down this rabbithole. If you’re already convinced STTOS and TNG were the pinnacle achievements of SciFi TV entertainment then we just have to agree to disagree.
      - manmal 4y ago
        I never wrote that? Sheesh, why are you commenting at all if you don’t even want to clarify what you commented in the first place.
- 4y ago

thaumasiotes 4y ago

>> Compare the old shows, TNG & DS9 with the new shows - Discovery and Picard. > I think the reorientation around conflict actually began with Rick Berman after he took over from Roddenberry back 90s or early 2000s or whenever it was. Well, I watched season 1 of Picard. So I can't do much with the comparison being requested. But DS9 is completely oriented around military conflict (between the Federation and Cardassia, or between the Federation and the Changelings), and it throws TNG's notion of a communist society with no money out the window. (Jake does once remark that, as a human, he has no money, but whenever Riker shows up he has plenty of it.)

SkyMarshal 4y ago
I don't think you can relate TNG to communism. Communist society still had/has money, people still go to the store and buy things. They're more concerned with who owns the means of production. But TNG (and TOS to some extent) is a total post-scarcity society. Effectively infinite energy from anti-matter reactors combined with energy->matter conversion "replicators" solves scarcity totally. The only limit on what can be created is how complex it is, and how advanced the science and engineering of the reactors and replicators are. Hence TNG society is totally oriented around science and discovery, rather than production, economic growth, and financial gain.
- samus 4y ago
  There's still remnants of scarcity in TNG. For example, technology and resources that can't be replicated and where trade is relevant still. And the amount of habitable planets suitable for colonization is also always somewhat limited. No clue how the Federation distributes "luxury" goods like naturally grown food or, famously, wine from Picard's family's vineyard.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >And the amount of habitable planets suitable for colonization is also always somewhat limited. This part of ST doesn't really make sense. They're shown as having the tech to build enormous starbases (and with domed artificial habitats like "Running Silent" in the latest SNW episodes), so they don't need planets to colonize: they can just build O'Neil cyilnders.

pessimizer 4y ago

Strange New Worlds is the Trek everybody (including me) was asking for - just give us a ship and a crew that does adventures rather than a soap opera. The actors are good and it looks good, but the writing is trash. The technology doesn't make any sense, there are plot holes that you could fly a 747 through, and endless impossible dilemmas solved by deus-ex-machina. Just low-quality.

shadowgovt 4y ago
Ironically, Strange New Worlds features an episode that seems heavily inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas." Whether that one includes massive plot holes, I cannot say.

midoridensha 4y ago

>I watched TNG religiously as a kid, but once Berman took over and began infusing pointless interpersonal conflict, I lost interest. Really? So you actually liked Season 1, and lost interest at the start of Season 3? You're a really rare person then. Most fans acknowledge that the first season was pretty bad (esp. the racist episode), and the second season was better but still rough (Pulaski was annoying), and that season 3 was when all the classic episodes started. You're the first person who's ever said they liked the first season the most.