With the overwhelming response to this week’s Major Spoilers Poll Of The Week (a 10 to 1 margin), Spoilerites far and wide dig themselves the future world of the final frontier. But, in the nearly fifty-year history of the franchise, there have been a LOT of Trek options, from Kirk to Picard and back to Kirk again, with stops in between including Sam Beckett, Hawk and Mrs. Columbo. Still, while my inner geek appreciates that Trek is overwhelmingly appreciated, there’s a part of me that isn’t happy without the proverbial nerd slap-fight, which forces me to try to pit us against one another again, like a fat Midwestern Organian. As a megafan of Captain Sisko and his crew’s multi-faceted adventures, I think that perhaps Deep Space Nine is the best of the Treks when taken as a whole, but I still wonder if I’m the only one, which leads us to today’s infinitively-split query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) figures that we have six options: Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Abrams, asking: Which Trek crew reigns supreme, boldly going the best?
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DS9 easily. Each crew has its growth character (Odo), its angry character (Kira, maybe Sisko), its wet blanket(s) (Dax, Bashir before his retcon), but no other crew has Quark.
Enterprise and Abrams Trek for a close second.
For me, it would be the crew of DS9, including the mixed crew of Starfleet, Bajoran and occasionally others (such as when the Klingons joined the fight against the Dominion), as well as the non-crew members like Quark and Garak. While I still cannot bring myself to watch most of the first season, the characters of the show have had the most impact on my Trek fandom.
However, I have a place in my heart for the crew of TOS for starting it all, as well as crews of the web series “Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II” (which is technically the TOS crew played by different actors, with past actors such as George Takei appearing once in a while for special stories) and the novel series “Star Trek: New Frontier”.
And, of course, the crews of the mostly female crews of the U.S.S. Free Dancer and the R.R.W. Swift Talon (my Federation and Romulan ships in Star Trek Online). They may not be important to anyone else, but they are to me (and to my young goddaughter who likes to help me make new uniforms in mismatched colors).
I’m going to follow the trend and go with Deep Space Nine it was really the most diverse in terms of characterization. They argued, which made them feel more real, and there is a clear character progression for pretty much everyone. Plus if I was going into space, Sisko may have made some decisions that would make me feel uneasy, but I would feel totally safe.
Well, for me it’s a tie between TOS and DS9. Even though I’ve enjoyed episodes from the other respective shows, I keep coming back to those two.
For the original series it’s the quality of the stories, the interactions between the actors, what they could do with their limited budget (the different behind the scenes stuff like Shatner, Nemoy & whoever playing kickball with starship parts gives me a smile whenever I see those metallic orbs in engineering), and since I’m color blind I’ve always had an appreciation for how they showed & used color, when something was red I could see it and blue and so on. I know this goes for a lot of other shows around that same time frame since color was something new to TV then, but it’s still something I can’t ignore.
For DS9 it’s also the quality of the stories and interactions between actors, as well as maintaining a continued feel of the Trek universe that came before it. With Sisko trying to come to terms with Picard for what he did as Locutus to his family, to bringing Worf & Obrian over and to come full circle by going back to TOS and seeing the joy in Sisko’s eye’s when he gets to meet Kirk face to face(while also being a “hey look at that” moment at the time).
More Trek needs to come back to Television. I’ve missed it for too long.
Deep Space Nine was by far my favorite. I actually wrote a whole article about why I think it was not only the best, but also really the shape of Science Fiction to come. The New Battlestar Galactica was probably the most directly related (Ron Moore came up on Star Trek and his whole reason for remaking BSG was specifically to do the opposite of the rules established by Star Trek), but Firefly, Farscape, Stargate and more all played with the new ideas and tropes of Space Opera that Deep Space Nine pioneered. I don’t think that all those series were necessarily inspired directly by Deep Space Nine, but they certainly were tapping into the same vein. Morally complex characters, much more realistic and fleshed-out alien societies (That were repeatedly focused on instead of created just to make a point), and the most naturalistic acting of any Trek series. I dare you to find a more fascinating Trek villain than Gul Dukat.
I think Voyager is a distant second; they really did explore some interesting concepts about transhumanism and artificial intelligence with the Doctor and Seven of Nine.
Even though DS9 is by far my favorite series, Voyager’s Doctor is probably my favorite character (one of three I’m torn between calling my favorite). It was really interesting to watch his growth from being just another bit of future technology to becoming a unique individual with his own likes and dislikes and hopes and goals.
Ohh man, TOS, no question about it!