Pongo's review of Star Trek:
TOS: The usual. About a third of the episodes are great, two thirds are awful. I don't know what stands out more episodes I liked like "Amok Time," "Who Mourns for Adonais," or "The Trouble with Tribbles," or the episodes where McCoy is suddenly deeply southern and making out with Easter Bunnies, the Enterprise visits the mobster planet, or the episode the Enterprise visits the Native American planet to teach us all what assholes explorers/conquerors are. In the end, these "faux pas" of episodes are forgivable for taking TV science fiction where no show has gone before. The cast was great and undoubtedly the overall strongest part of the entire series.
TAS: Didn't watch it. Don't know if I ever will.
TNG: I'm not sure I can give an unbiased review; it's hard to see the series without looking through nostalgia-tinted glasses. However, I did re-watch the series about 4 years ago and here are some of my comments. I'm was glad when Denise Crosby's character Tasha Yar was killed off when the actor decided to leave the show. However, her character's death was awkward and they couldn't seem to go very long without finding a way to bring her back around. Gates McFadden, of The Labyrinth fame, was mysteriously missing in season 2. What's that about? The second half of the show's run-life was orders of immeasurable magnitudes better than the first half. Wesley Crusher became a warp-being and shows up again in the last TNG movie? Odd. All of the holodecks should have been recalled to whatever Mexican factory they were made in. All said and done, the series stands the test of time and is still very good.
DS9: Overall the best density of good episodes in any series and what I would probably say is my favorite. The casting wasn't as good as other shows, but many individual performances were just as great. I liked the long story arcs that was new to the franchise. Not many criticisms, the show stands on its own performance.
VOY: I always find it ponderous when someone says that Voyager was their favorite series. Sometimes I wonder if it's simply the series that they started on (the same way your first doctor is your favorite). More likely it's simply a matter of differing tastes. I found it strange that in the opening episodes they find a desert nomad that becomes a reoccurring villain. I thought you were traveling at warp speeds to the Alpha Quadrant? How does this guy keep showing up? With the exception of The Doctor's Herculean, nay, Atlantean performance, none of the cast was anything but bland. They may have well just named them Ensign The Asian One, Captain Woman, Tom Flyboy, Black Vulcan, Anachronistic Native American, or The Half Klingon of House Tension Ensues. Some of the characters, most notably Ethan Phillips's character Neelix, I found to be an actively grating presence on screen. Whats-more, the writers seemed to make an abundance of Neelix-heavy episodes, and they were all just terrible. I'll only re-watch when I'm re-watching the franchise (Which I'm sure will happen again one day).
ENT: I liked this one. The cast wasn't all that great, in fact I only liked Connor Trinneer's character Trip and John Billingsley's Dr, Phlox. After the first half of season one, the show really picked up. I liked the submarine-feel of the bridge and the darkness in the Xindi season. It seemed to miss the mark of "the first steps in exploring the galaxy", but with a better cast I believe this series could have been one of the greats.
Movies: All I can say about these is that they are what they are. I heard they green-lit the first movie after seeing the success of Star Wars. Without that, TNG may never have been made. Many of the movies just felt like long TV episodes with better special effects. Which I suppose is the problem with bringing a TV series to the big screen. The new ones are entertaining Sci-fi movies, but seem to have little to do with TOS other than names. They also seem to switch things just for the sake of switching it. Like the Uhura kiss, the death of Kirk/Spock, and so on. I also don't like the "different time line" thing. I've invested deeply with the character's plights from the standard line so this just feels like a dream episode (you know, at the end the character wakes up and you find out everything you just watched was pointless). If you're not contributing the standard timeline then it feels to me that you're just writing fan fiction. Still though, the new movies are entertaining.
How do you feel about the new Star Trek: Renegade trailer? I think it's neat. I'm glad they "cast" Corin Nemec. That guy can't lose.