Your favourite Trek?

[Morrus]

The original 2-5 trilogy (Khan, Spock, Voyage) is the pinnacle of Trek for me. Nothing came close. The abysmal fall with ST5 was heartwrenching.

 

[trappedslider]

I don't have a favorite series,but more of favorite episodes from each series.

 

[MechaPilot]

I'm torn. I grew up on reruns of the original and new eps of TNG. Those two series will always be "classic Trek" to me. However, the others were all good in their own ways:

DS9's religious element was interesting, and it was nice to see TNG's tensions with Cardassia actually go somewhere. I also liked how setting the series around Bajor let them show off the darker side of the Trek universe, with the second in command being a former terrorist (against an evil, oppressive regime, but still), and having a holocaust/Japanese occupation of China type background between Cardassia and Bajor. Plus, DS9 really did for the Ferenghi what TNG did for the Klingons.

As a lady trek fan, Voyager's strong female crew was nice to see. The captain (Janeway), the chief engineer (Be'lana), the eventual defacto chief science officer (Seven of Nine), all were nice, strong characters. Even the villainous Seska was a strong character in her own right. I also liked how the Chakotay and Paris characters stemmed off from TNG. The actor who played Tom Paris also played Cadet Lacarno in the TNG episode with Wesley's court martial. Having him come back as Paris really worked for me. I also thought Chakotay was a tie-in to the native-peoples episode of TNG.

However, I have to be the outlier here and say that my favorite era is the Captain Archer Enterprise era. Era, not series. Trek has always been very clean, and I liked seeing the world get its hands dirty with grappling cables instead of tractor beams, a reliance on shuttles because people don't fully trust transporters, and a captain who brings his dog with him on the voyage. I also think T'pol is a nice, strong female character, and Hoshi is very competent and inquisitive, as one would expect from an explorer. I do think they screwed the pooch with the temporal cold war thing, but the Xindi storyline (if separated from the TCW) is quite good. I thought it was awesome to actually see the ship contain a compliment of special ops soldiers. I will say that I love what they did with the Andorian-Vulcan conflict, the episode with the 3-gendered race, the episode where Trip got pregnant, the episode with the hallucinogenic pollen, and I always enjoyed the Dr. Phlox character.

 

[ccs]

My favorite Trek is TOS, & then by extension the movies 1-6.
That's my favorite crew, & my favorite version of the Enterprise is the A.

Second place goes to Enterprise - if I can just ignore the season they wasted on the Temporal Cold War crap.
I like the ship, I like the crew, I like most of the episodes, & I like the Andorians.

I guess DS9 would be my 3rd. I like the station & I loved the Ferengi. The Ferengi kept me watching.

The new movies? I like some parts (the cast/crew except for Simon Pegg, that it's in an alternate time line, the possibility that the coming movies could be better) & just random bits/scenes/shots.
I know this doesn't sound like much, but it beats:

TNG.
Completely neutral for the series/ship design & disliked all of thier movies.
Wich still ranks TNG higher than....


Voyager
Bleh. I made it though most of season 1. I just didn't like the crew. And when you dont like the characters it makes it really hard to watch a show....

 

[delericho]

My favourite show was DS9, followed by TNG, followed by TOS. Voyager was terrible, and Enterprise little better.

But the OP did ask specifically about era rather than series, and I agree with Morrus - the look and feel of the movies from "Wrath of Khan" to "Undiscovered Country" is my favourite by a long way.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

DS9 is my favorite Trek. It has the best ensemble in my view, and a powerful story arc.
But regardless what series I watch, all of them have their flaws, including of course DS9. (I am in the middle of rewatching it now.)
I think in some ways it has however a very interesting and highly "current events" element: We talk about the War on Terror and all, but in DS9, we are actually siding with the terrorists. Of course, they have the "freedom fighter" appeal of being the obvious good guys fighting evil opressionist, and there is basically only one episode that really dwells on the full nastiness of their situation. I am not sure a show like this would be made today.
As both fan of DS9 and Battlestar Galactica I really wonder what those combined creative teams (I am well aware of the overlap in the teams) could have achieved if they had been given Voyager.



I can totally see the movie appeal in the TOS movies. I love First Contact, but I don't care much about the other TNG movies. (Nemesis redeeming feature is a cool space battle). But the "TOS" movies had a nice aesthetic. Undisocvered Country there was always my favorite. And I loved IV's comedy. I know that among fans, Wrath of Khan is deemed the best, but I don't agree - it's just among the good ones.

And I must admit the Constitution Refit in the TNG movies is one of the best "classic" looking Enterprises. I like the Sovereign and Galaxy, too, but the Constitution is the one ship that manages to basically modernize the ship while retaining the overall shape. Angled but straight pylons, 2 nacelles, thin neck, and a saucer.


I stopped reading Star Trek novels a long time ago (overal, my book reading frequency has gone down as has my free time), but my favorite novels where interestlingy TOS, even though at the time I preferred TNG as a series.
I recently picked up "Neverending Sacrifice" and a "Stitch in Time" and really liked those (I particularly recommend Neverending Sacrifice), but I have no real intention of following the current novel lines for Star Trek.

 

[MarkB]

I stopped reading Star Trek novels a long time ago (overal, my book reading frequency has gone down as has my free time), but my favorite novels where interestlingy TOS, even though at the time I preferred TNG as a series.
I recently picked up "Neverending Sacrifice" and a "Stitch in Time" and really liked those (I particularly recommend Neverending Sacrifice), but I have no real intention of following the current novel lines for Star Trek.

My favourite ever Star Trek novel was a TOS-era one, My Enemy My Ally by Diane Duane. It's basically Star Trek without the budgetary restrictions - a truly widely-varied-species crew, including my favourite character Ensign Neraht, the first Horta in Starfleet, a great investigation of Romulan society and culture, an epic rescue behind enemy lines, some of the best ship-to-ship combat I've read, and excellent characterisations of both the established crew and new characters. Oh, and a Doctor Who reference snuck in there too.

Other than that, most of Peter David's novels were worth checking out, and I particularly enjoyed Vendetta, an epic Borg novel written in the wake of the Best of Both Worlds two-parter, before later series diluted the Borgs' threat.

 

[Mallus]

My favorite Trek is the Trek of my early syndicated childhood, so TOS all the way.

Followed by DS9, TNG, and Voyager (which is better than I remembered - the lows are some of the lowest, but the their are great episodes in the series). One of these days I'll revisit Enterprise, but it just didn't do much for me, except demonstrate that Scott Bakula can play a character I don't find charming or interesting.

Favorite novel? The Final Refection by John M. Ford.

 

[Ryujin]

My favorite Trek is the Trek of my early syndicated childhood, so TOS all the way.

Followed by DS9, TNG, and Voyager (which is better than I remembered - the lows are some of the lowest, but the their are great episodes in the series). One of these days I'll revisit Enterprise, but it just didn't do much for me, except demonstrate that Scott Bakula can play a character I don't find charming or interesting.

Favorite novel? The Final Refection by John M. Ford.

I don't think that any of my issues with Enterprise stemmed from the characters. In fact I think that they might have (subjectively) done better at introducing the characters in it than they did with any of the other post-OS series. I knew what they were all about pretty quickly, rather than having to wait a dozen episodes to understand them. Pity they didn't give them an arc worth mentioning.

 

[Orius]

My favorite is consistently TOS, and I'm including the movies. The look of the films was good, but one can't count out some of the solid storytelling that was in TOS.

DS9 comes in a close second. It really dug into exploring the established Trek verse, rather than just giving us a planet of the week we'd never return to (though DS9 had its share of that), and was a pretty good deconstruction of the franchise as a whole. ENT wasn't bad but stumbled too many times, a shame really because the stuff it did well, showing us the beginnings of the Federation were strong. The Temporal Cold War stuff was poorly done, and the series would have been better served by making all that stuff a growing Romulan threat. TNG is okay, and it's good episodes are still great, but its weak episodes are less entertaining than TOs's bad stuff. VOY was the nadir of Trek, it had occasional good moments, but it still ends up the weakest of the series.

Of course, TOS started that "crap". "The Naked Time", "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Assignment: Earth", "All Our Yesterdays", and "City on the Edge of Forever" all included time travel. And then Trek IV, as well, before Next Generation came along.

Of course, "The City on the Edge of Forever" is one of Trek's best episodes of all time for any of the series, and is a far cry from some of the bad time travel episodes that appeared in later series.