ml241

1. Garak, but only in the first two or three seasons of DS9. After that, the writers started butchering his character. 2. Janeway 3. The Doctor

I'm surprised to hear anyone didn't like Similitude- that was one of my favorites. The worst episode?- that's a no-brainer. "Harbinger" wasn't just the worst episode of Enterprise- it's the worst episode of any Star Trek series.

I've noticed this too, but I don't think we are meant to infer from this that everything in the recap is canon. They have definitely used deleted scenes and even new (recorded for the recap itself) voice-overs, but that's just because the scenes that are canon don't say what needs to be said clearly enough for a viewer to understand fully from a two-second flashback. The recap is meant to bring new viewers up to speed, not give new information to regular viewers.

6x02- that was "Rocks and Shoals", wasn't it? The Defiant never crashed on that planet, they had taken the Jem'Hadar ship! Now that I think about it, the details of the ending are somewhat fuzzy to me, though I seem to remember that they were picked up by someone else. I could be wrong on this- that was hardly the focus of the episode, and it's hard to remember such peripheral details.

Voyager for me, because it had the best stories. No, actually, that's not quite right- it was the best even when the stories weren't amazing because the characters and the sense of family was so good. But with the great stories on top of that, no other Trek came close. No other Trek had episodes as good as Non Sequitur, The Chute, The Killing Game, Workforce, and Muse, just to rattle off a few names which spring to mind. Though really, it's almost all good (a few exceptions are there, like Shattered and Real Life) and quite a lot of it is great. Oh, look, I'm rambling now. Yeah, I love it.

Hmm. I think the single difference here is what each race was put into the show to do: Q was always intended to be above the characters, because he was put there to judge humanity. The prophets, on the other hand, are put in with a very clear purpose in the story, a connection to the Bajorans. When they're serving that purpose, it's only a matter of time until the writers stick in some character who can attack them to get at the main characters. So if we had compared the Q to the prophets based only on the first episode of DS9, before the writers started looking for stories, the competition would be very close. Likewise, if a Q had a connection to the cast, say, by being friends with one of the characters from the beginning of TNG, then I bet we would have found out about some Achilles' Heel by now because it's hard to tell stories about a character who can't be hurt.

Yeah, no question- Q. The Q can remake the universe with just a thought- the only reason they don't, I think, is that the task bores them. They prefer to have fun with the universe. The Prophets, on the other hand, have rarely shown any power at all. If they decided to go to war, the Q would eliminate them in less than an instant. What could the prophets do to stop them- possess a Q, and mate to make a savior? Their methods, as seen with Sisko's mother, are clumsy and inefficient.

Well, I don't think that's true, but since you're only speaking in vague generalizations it would be hard to argue.

Being relatively young, I certainly don't know what the majority of science fiction was like in the days of The Twilight Zone. With that said, the earliest science-fiction film I'm familiar with is Flash Gordon, and it's most certainly not intellectual. It's not a new development that we have so much science fiction that's not out to make a point. That kind of SF has been there all along, alongside the more provocative material. There is certainly change in the methods in intellectual sci-fi, though. Whereas once writers would stand on a soapbox and say "This is what is right", modern TV writers prefer to strive for objectivity, so that the viewer can make up his own mind.

Don't waste your time. After hearing how much online trekkies raved about it, I watched the entire series, from start to finish. I enjoyed very little of it, but kept going because I always assumed that whatever people loved about it was right around the corner. Well, I just finished the whole thing, and it stinks. Even the very best DS9 episode ("In the Pale Moonlight") isn't as good as the average Voyager episode. The "story arc" is pathetic. Lots of threads are built up and then never resolved- for example, at one point it is said that shape-shifters are "everywhere", but the show doesn't play up any of the paranoia and mistrust that that would naturally lead to. Or there's Kai Opaka, claiming she'll be back and then never returning. The new story progressions (plot twists, new threats, etc.) pop up out of nowhere, often contradicting and never supporting earlier parts of the story. If you're looking for a story arc, try Babylon 5, but certainly not DS9! The characters start out with a lot of potential and conflicted relationships, then one by one they are reduced to boring buddies. There's a character named Garak, for instance, who I loved at the beginning, because he is hinted to be very sinister but puts on a friendly face so that no one will suspect anything. By the end, he's the friendliest guy around, cheerfully helping Starfleet at every opportunity. Or there's Nog, at the beginning an interestingly messed-up kid, by the end a perfect Starfleet officer and the "token Ferengi" at all events. Or Odo, at the beginning an outsider, which gives him a distinct perspective, by the end exactly like everyone else- so much so, that he is even given a generic love story! Sisko goes from a person doing a job he isn't comfortable with to a religious believer with no conflict whatsoever- when the Prophets say anything, he does it without question. You see what I'm saying here?- Every single character in the show was completely and utterly ruined over the course of the seven years. Except for Jadzia Dax, that is. She was much more interesting dead than when she started. The style of the episodes is very very boring. Instead of actually forcing the characters to change with conflict, they have the characters sit around and reminisce about stories that happened to them decades back, which have never been brought up before and will never be brought up again. Near as I can tell, this is what the writers considered "character development". The stories generally go nowhere and are spread out too thin- these plots would probably have worked better were each episode only a half hour long. Now, I think the writers all knew, deep down, that what they had created was awful. I say this because they took every opportunity to have the actors play characters other than their own and make stories that have nothing to do with the overall story arc. There's this whole series of "mirror universe" episodes which runs parallel to the regular show, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I guess I could forgive all that if it were ever any good, but it's not. The whole point of those episodes, as far as I can tell, is to have the viewer laugh at the actors playing characters who are completely unlike their own. That novelty lasts, oh, around three minutes. But don't think the mirror universe episodes are the only offenders!- not by a long shot! The last two seasons claim to be about a giant war. But hardly any of the episodes actually show any small part of that war! More often, there are episodes about Quark dressing up as a lady, or the characters playing baseball, or little murder mysteries, or listening to cheesy music in the holosuite, etc. Why would the writers go so far out of their way to ignore the story and the characters they'd set up unless they realized how bad they were? And again, none of this would matter if any of the things I'd just mentioned weren't painful to watch. But they are. I've wasted too much time watching this series looking for some redeeming features which quite simply aren't there. I don't know what so many people see in this show; I don't think I'll ever understand it. Why they decided to repeat all of DS9's worst flaws in Enterprise is beyond me. But chances are, you'll ignore my warning, because so many people here disagree with me, and I'm not even a regular poster! So at the very least, let me name a few episodes which actually are worth watching, so you can watch those and skip the rest. In the Hands of the Prophets/Homecoming/The Circle/The Siege, The Wire, The Search parts I and II, Life Support, Prophet Motive, Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast, The Adversary, The Visitor, Homefront/Paradise Lost, Apocalypse Rising, ...Nor the Battle to the Strong, The Assignment, Trials and Tribble-ations, Rapture, For the Uniform, Blaze of Glory, In the Cards, Call to Arms/A Time to Stand/Rocks and Shoals/Behind the Lines (skip Sons and Daughters)/Favor the Bold/Sacrifice of Angels, Waltz, Far Beyond the Stars, Inquisition, In the Pale Moonlight, The Reckoning, Treachery Faith and the Great River, The Dogs of War (skip all the other surrounding episodes). If you watch these 36 episodes, you will have seen all DS9 has to offer. Just about everything but these 36 episodes is boring, cliched and painful. By no means should you watch the finale, because it leaves a very bitter aftertaste.