TOS or Next Generation?

[FSOneblin]

Hello. Before beginning, I am pleased to report I'm no longer an annoying little kid, and now I am annoying little young adult. I still feel bad for being so annoying here, but you guys helped me be who I am today. I think my yearly post always begins with a disclaimer like this.

I wish to watch Star Trek TNG. However, I have not watched TOS in it's entirety. Should I watch the entire TOS before tackling TNG or does it not really matter? This forum is the best place to get Scifi movie/TV show advice.

Thanks in advance, and Don't Panic!

[pagroove]

Annoying?

Not in my book.
Oh and welcome back.

But on to your question. IMO TNG is a good starting point.

I watched all seasons of TNG and then Deepspace 9 > Voyager > Enterprise.

Be aware that season 1 is a bit of a mixed bag. This was due to the fact that everybody had to get used to their roles. Also the special effects are really not quite good. However it is fun to see the series get better with each season.

I used http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Main to sometimes read more about a certain episode.

[CaptSolo]

Star Trek TOS and TNG are galaxies apart in many ways, so it is not really necessary to begin with the earlier series.

[Cody]

<chortles> I had to look TOS up, which ably demonstrates how 'with it' I am. So Wagon Train to the Stars has a retronym, eh - fascinating!

[Wildeblood]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if it doesn't have Cook and Banks in it, it isn't Star Trek, so only watch TOS, TAS and the first seven movies.

[ocz]

Nahhh, TNG all the way. One has to remind himself/herself how many years lie between the production years of both series and that the public view out on what would be an ideal society changes even in decades and the life experiences of a single man (Gene Roddenberry) does to fine tune his vision a bit. Also what the production companies want tend to play a role in the taste of a franchise. So TOS and TNG are different at points. (Women became doctors instead of staying nurses. Just talking about TOS not ST:I) The Ideas of cooperating with each other for the better of all (even of people one doesn't know) instead of just one selves and the people one cares of/knows, is the same in TOS and TNG.

Yeah, the first season of TNG. Growing the Beard.

So go and watch TNG. It's good for you. (Even though, it hurts to admit it, but as a SciFi show, it has aged.)

(Not so )Fun(ny)Fact: There is less time in between the first airdate of the last episode of TOS (1969) and the show premier of TNG (1987), than the airdate of the show finale of TNG (1994) and the current present (2015).

[Anonymissimus]

So go and watch TNG. It's good for you. (Even though, it hurts to admit it, but as a SciFi show, it has aged.)

As opposed to other SiFi, it has predicted some technical developments correctly though and still feels kind of modern. Especially flat touchscreens and tablet computers.

[ocz]

Yeah, I know, right? And than Apple came and took Pad(d) as part of a brandname. "Tablet" just doesn't feel right. Or was it paramount?

Edit: Okay screw what I wrote. I didn't find prove for what I claimed just now. I only have a slight memory of hearing somewhere, that Padd is somehow copyrighted. Maybe from the "WePad" renaming to "WeTab" back here in germany.

[Disembodied]

They are very different shows. The original series can be a lot of fun (well ... the first two seasons, anyway: the less said about season 3, the better), but you need to keep in mind when and where it came from. The same is true, of course, for TNG.

The worst thing about the whole Star Trek concept is that they wander the galaxy finding people they can teach (the answer is always "be more human", for which read "be more American"); they never seem to bump into anybody they can learn from. This reaches its peak in ST: Voyager (a bad, bad show, best avoided entirely) where even the superadvanced, omnipotent plot-crowbar Q have to come begging the Federation for help (the solution to the problems of gods? Be More American). The one honourable exception to this tedious trope is the original series episode "Errand of Mercy".

Once Roddenberry was deadnberried, TNG picked up a bit, and you began to see occasional glimpses of the idea that other cultures might have a point about the way they did things. Alien races still tend to be one-note creations - Romulans = sneaky; Vulcans = calm; Klingons = violent; Ferengi = greedy etc. - but now and then they might get a little bit extra and start to look a little less one-dimensional. But still, it's pretty clear that all of them really just need to pull their socks up and Be More American if they're going to get it right.

[Wildeblood]

The original Star Trek was almost good sci-fi, ruined only by the inclusion of teleportation. The later series were not sci-fi at all; they were just soap operas set in space.

For TNG, you were basically just watching to see whether Troi and the loathsome Riker were on again or off again this week. Bold and the Beautiful is a better prospect if you like that sort of thing. Only occasional guest appearances by Q made it worthwhile, and, as Disembodied noted, despite being a god even he fell under the spell of the American cargo cult.

DS9 & Voyager, incredibly, were even more focused on the characters romantic relationships. DS9 also had long story "arcs" involving Sisko's role in the theocratic politics of a planet we never actually saw. That was just atheist propaganda by rich Californians for the benefit of bible-belt Americans. It's unwatchable tripe to RoWians.

Voyager was just dumb, but was more watchable than DS9. But was dumb. There was another series after Voyager that no-one watched. None of them after the original series and the animated series rate as science fiction.

And that's Star Trek.

[Cmdr James]

I agree that TOS was a serious attempt at real SciFi and I think it did a good job. There were pragmatic things like teleporters and warp drive that arent proper hard science but frankly thats not the point and it didnt ruin it for me, it allowed them to do something other than just sit in space for thousands of years which whilst it might have made for interesting television it wasnt what TOS was about.

But I think you are too hard on TNG and voyager etc. They were often less serious science and more "reverse the polarity of the jeffries tubes to the same frequency as the warp core" or whatever silliness but they were still generally about investigating philosophical or moral questions. Yes there were soap opera features, and yes wesley was a mistake, and yes I cringed hard at lots of stuff especially with Data but it was far from unwatchable. It was slick, well made television, which made a serious if imperfect effort to envision a more or less believable future, investigated what post scarcity means, asked social quesitons and loads of other stuff which most other TV doesnt go near.

I think the other races being single facetted was kind of key to the storytelling. The idea was that different parts of the human persona are represented by different races, and we can investigate what happens if we approach a problem with brute force (klingon) or pure logic (vulcan), what does an anarchocapitalist society look like (ferengi), how can they work together to find an optimal solution.

[Disembodied]

It is being a bit hard to expect any great depth from any TV series, especially one pitched as "family-friendly". And all brands of Trek (with the possible exception of the infamous "He turned me into a newt! ... I got better" depths plumbed by Voyager) are considerably more intelligent and thought-provoking than the usual dribble.

All that said, a lot of the post-original series Trek could get very tiresome. Given that it was just bubblegum for the eyes, in a lot of episodes they really could have done with dumping the dialogue and getting stuck into the action ...

[Amah]

thanks for the inetersting discussion to all.

When I was really young I was allowed to watch TOS (along with the B&W Raumpatrouille Orion and things like Shado/UFO) which I enjoyed very much.

Later in my teens I watched TNG ( and after my TOS experiences kind of half expected Picard and Riker, being Redshirts to die on one of the away missions)
Although the magic wore off quite quickly (soap in space, the techno babble), I stuck to it for a season or so because of the CGIs, and some episodes weren't so bad.

I didn't follow DS9, and quit watching Voyager after two or three episodes.

So, If I should vote I'd go for the original series, but I guess it's all a matter of taste.

[Commander_X]

Quick answer to the main topic: whichever fits.
As many of the posts outlined, there is no connection between the storylines. It really depends if you wanted to be thorough with finishing one thing you started or not (considering you're a young adult now, as you mentioned)

[Anonymissimus]

I'd contrarily vote for Voyager as it is the series discussing ethical questions the most, which is the core of Star Trek. For instance, they (of course) decide against capital punishment as in the rest of the Federation - not quite American, is it ?