Why do people love Star Trek so much?

[SpaceXray]

Okay I wasn't born in the USA in the 70's but I watched some old Star Trek and honestly it doesn't impress me.

Especially what I don't like is the whole science jibberish like 'photon torpedoes'.

Seriously you fill torpedoes with.....light? Sounds pretty scary....

Also can't imagine us having warp drives by 2140...or even going to other galaxies by that time.

[Alewx]

Because the it was able to tell stories of a brighter future, where mankind has solved ist problems.

they are still nice series, but the new movies are trash.

The old movies lost step by step already the thing, that it was about telling stories of scientists, and not heroes that save the galaxy, leave that to marvel

Why they are called photon Torpedos is nothing I can remember, but the first contact was April 2063, and star trek itself was playing around 2280-2379.

So still some time left to learn the important things of the universe.

[KerikBalm]

Seriously you fill torpedoes with.....light? Sounds pretty scary....

Also can't imagine us having warp drives by 2140...or even going to other galaxies by that time.

Well,

1) I agree, over hyped, its just technobabble BS.

2) I think Photo torpedoes were supposed to be anti-matter torpedoes. Matter and Antimatter anhiliation yields: High energy Photons, and neutrinos (which for our purposes, can be ignored)

[ZedNova]

Okay I wasn't born in the USA in the 70's but I watched some old Star Trek and honestly it doesn't impress me.

Especially what I don't like is the whole science jibberish like 'photon torpedoes'.

Seriously you fill torpedoes with.....light? Sounds pretty scary....

Also can't imagine us having warp drives by 2140...or even going to other galaxies by that time.

Because the battles and technology is cool, even if it is mumbojumbo technobabble.

[Vanamonde]

As Alexw says, it is an optimistic future (at least in the early shows, not so much when other producers took over), and the original series often (not always) told intelligent stories about grownup subjects such as integrity and ethics. But most of all, I think, the original series had a superlative cast. Yes, including Shatner, though I agree his acting abilities declined as the series wore on. Shatner, Kelley, and Nimoy had the ability to lend gravitas to stories that might otherwise have not been so affecting. Additionally, the original series had good effects for its time, and was smarter about the science than a lot of the junk it was competing with. Last but not least, the episodes were written by old-pro, high-quality writers, and even some science fiction authors.

Next Generation perhaps concentrated even more on the ethical stories, though I do not think it was written anywhere as well, and the cast was much more uneven in their skills as actors. Still, it was about people trying to behave ethically.

After that, I can't really comment because I never warmed to the later shows. In my opinion, they range from bland (DS9) to awful (Enterprise).

[rtxoff]

Star Trek inspired many people of my generation. Star Trek was for many the reason to show interest in science at all. Star Trek helped to make a better world. I don't want to imagine a world without Star Trek. Please show some respect to Star Trek, especially if you did not achieve anything similar in your life.

[HafCoJoe]

Well, I'm 17. Star trek was way before my time, but I still enjoy the episode and the old movies (though I still think the idea of whales being aliens was dumb). Personal preference . As long as it means liking Star Trek xD

[Superfluous J]

TOS: Fantastic stories, likeable characters, quite literally helped change society.

TNG: Fantastic characters, two of the best actors of our age (Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner) who, if they're together in an episode a lot, make some of the best episodes of TV ever.

DS9: A full-series arc that builds slow and actually pays off in the end. The simple fact that this series wasn't strung along and/or canceled too soon is good enough to make it a must-watch.

VOY: I can't really recommend this one, though I do still enjoy it. Janeway could have been *so* *good* but they tried too hard to give her a soft side. She didn't need a soft side. She needed a second, harder side.

ENT: Season 3. That alone is worth watching the entire series.

[tater]

TOS: campy, but decent for the time period. Loved it as a kid. The addition of time travel on demand breaks everything, however. (sucks with some other time travel device like a portal, but far worse if they can do it at will)

TNG: Some good acting (among a lot of bad acting), but irredeemably awful, saccharine utopian plots filled with technobabble nonsense. Had the writers paid attention to virtually anything previously written even for their own version of the show, they could solve all storyline problems in the first few minutes just from the technobabble on the fly tech improvements from the previous handful of episodes, and that's without even resorting to time travel (which after TOS can be done at will, also breaking everything). TNG plot: awesome starship enterprise… breaks. Invent new technology to fix it and solve problems, forgetting another technology invented a previous episode makes them invulnerable, or whatever. Lazy writing.

DS9: saw a few, it sucked.

Never watched the others.

Edited August 27, 2014 by tater

[Boomerang]

There's nothing wrong with not enjoying something that's popular, but when you're questioning it's appeal, especially at the time it was new, it's important to consider what the world was like when the show came out.

It was right in the middle of the Cold War, conflicts abound and we were never too far from destroying ourselves as a species. Consider that sort of environment when you look at the composition of the crew and their interactions with everything they discover on their travels.

[Vanamonde]

The whales weren't aliens. It's just that whales were the only earth creatures the aliens were interested in talking to.

[HafCoJoe]

The whales weren't aliens. It's just that whales were the only earth creatures the aliens were interested in talking to.

Whatever XD. That movie was hilarious.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Why does everything need to be accurate?

Face it. Everything in real life is boring and dull. Fiction is better and always will be.

[SessoSaidSo]

Star Trek to me was never about the future, it was never about spaceships or even aliens. Star Trek was about a brighter future, a better humanity. Humans and aliens living together not in perfect harmony but just better. Roddenburry could never completely ignore reality and so was born the Klingons and Romulans which were really metaphors for the nature of present day humanity (and the Soviet Union in the case of the former). All the techno mumbo jumbo was just fluff to boggle the imagination of the viewer and many times to act as a duex ex machina to propel the plot. If you simply look at the surface of the show as mere science fiction you will miss the actual substance of the show. Gene Roddenburry was showcasing some extremely deep stuff and masterfully disguising it as childrens entertainment. Star Trek was never about the stars...it was simply about striving to be better humans, and as Isaac Asimov once said,

"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today  but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."

[MartGonzo]

I can't really add anything to the many reasons posted already why Star Trek was not only a great show but an important cultural driver

except to say that if nothing else there's this:

[Seret]

Star Trek is generally pretty lame IMO. Especially in TOS and TNG a large proportion of episodes fall into the pattern of:

1. Encounter seemingly invincible alien entity
   
2. Some posing from Kirk/Picard/whoever
   
3. Instantly vanquish previously invincible entity through absurd Deus Ex Machina ("I'll just reverse the polarity of the tachyon matrix!")
   

I also don't really like how everything is so clean, the humans are all-powerful and beneficent, and every alien is just a human with a knobbly forehead. I tend to like my sci-fi grittier and more grown-up. I'll take Dune, Alien, Blade Runner or even Babylon Five over Trek any day.

Having said that I did watch all of Enterprise. I liked that the humans had no idea what they were doing, were usually outgunned, and were afraid of using the transporter because it had only just been approved for transporting humans and they were worried it would turn them into a jelly blob.

[Nibb31]

I grew up with TOS reruns, which was great as a kids show. I have a bit of fondness for its candidness and its likeable characters, which were great for the 60's and 70's, but the later shows sort of tried too hard when the naivete of the era was gone.

Agreeing with Seret here. It's annoying that every planet they visit has a perfectly breathable atmosphere and each time they run into an alien, they are some sort of human archetype with wierd patterns on their forehead. The holodeck thing was just an excuse to write whatever they wanted

As for science-fiction... well, there's fiction, that's for sure, but the science is closer to Lord of the Rings than anything else. The technobabble is just a replacement for magic.

I actually preferred the JJ Abrams movies, as they made the franchise less theatrical and more gritty.

[Canopus]

Aren't there many strange aliens in Star Trek too? From what i have seen it seems that only the main Characters races like Vulcans and Klingons look like humans.

[Capt.Joseph Kerbertson]

Okay I wasn't born in the USA in the 70's but I watched some old Star Trek and honestly it doesn't impress me.

Especially what I don't like is the whole science jibberish like 'photon torpedoes'.

Seriously you fill torpedoes with.....light? Sounds pretty scary....

Also can't imagine us having warp drives by 2140...or even going to other galaxies by that time.

You can thank Star trek for inspiring the folks who have given us new technology. Matter transporters (it's in it's infancy, but they have transported matter). Phasers (lasers, handheld, ship mounted) Cloaking devices (technologically feasible) Medical scanning equipment. Hypospray. Transparent aluminum... yeah it's real. Communicators... cellphones. Even tractor beams (works on a nano scale right now)

[SpaceXray]

Still though I have to agree Doctor who has a much wider variation of aliens(weaping angles, dolphin-like creatures, Midnight(still a mystery)) unlike ST.

I guess Star Trek just isn't for me, an overly optimist future where every single planet is terraformed is too much jibberish for me, especially all of the technobable that doesn't make sense(like some else mentioned before).

[Capt.Joseph Kerbertson]

People are in love with Star Trek because it is literally one of the longest running TV franchises to date. It attracts many people from all walks of life. Pretty much any sci-fi TV show you've ever seen was written by someone that was inspired by Star Trek. The show broke many boundaries in it's time (things you would find ludicrous) First interracial kiss on US TV. Uhura was depicted as a highly attractive and very intelligent woman, sort of a first in US film (rightfully so, she was a looker in her day). Oh and there are hundreds of Alien species depicted in the star trek universe. http://www.startrek.com/database_article_navigator

Mods if I'm in the wrong, please delete my post.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Vanamonde
We didn't delete your whole post, but we did remove the personal attack.

[Guest]

Still though I have to agree Doctor who has a much wider variation of aliens(weaping angles, dolphin-like creatures, Midnight(still a mystery)) unlike ST.

I guess Star Trek just isn't for me, an overly optimist future where every single planet is terraformed is too much jibberish for me, especially all of the technobable that doesn't make sense(like some else mentioned before).

Have you forgot about the fiction part of science fiction?

[Vanamonde]

There would have been many unusable planets in the ST universe, but they just didn't have much reason to go anything but the "class M" ones. And as for the aliens all looking like people with stuff glued to their foreheads, Roddenberry wanted all the aliens to be recognizable characters, and decreed that the actors' eyes and mouths should be visible. You are free to dislike it, but it wasn't due to laziness or lack of imagination. I agree that it got old, though.

[RogueMason]

Well, not everyone can like everything, and it certainly shows with this thread. I, on the other hand, like Star Trek. I grew up watching the films alongside some of TNG and Voyager, and I have a slight feeling that I wouldn't be who I am without it. Sure, the utopian society and the consistently-human-looking-aliens-beyond-the-classics irks me a bit, but they are minor issues in an otherwise brilliant science fiction series.