Star Trek has certainly been a roller-coaster of ups and downs over the years. I have mixed opinions on some things but I'm a big fan overall, especially trek from the TNG-DS9-VOY era.
TOS (The original series) - I thought it was okay. I can see how it was groundbreaking for it's time. I grew up watching TNG/DS9/Voyager though, as well as the TOS movies, but I didn't actually watch the three seasons of TOS until later. I think this show is probably better if you watched it during it's prime and you have some built-up nostalgia. Watching it for the first time in the 21st century though, I thought that there were many parts where it had not aged very well, and were almost painful to watch. Still, I have a deep appreciation for the example that it set, and the fact that it's continuity was continued unbroken into the TNG/DS9/VOY era.
TNG - Probably my favorite Star Trek series. Season 1 was a little rough. Great cast, great charisma between cast members, and good writing overall. Also, I love all the fantastic guest stars they had over the years, with many people including Bob Gunton, Ronny Cox, and even Kelsey Grammer having the chance to play captains at certain points. Biggest downside of TNG, IMO, is that it is the series that created the "mirror universe". I simply hate the entire "mirror universe" concept and pretty much every single "mirror universe" episode is absolutely terrible. Also, while I liked the character of Data a lot, I think there was a bit too much focus on that character, at the expense of others.
Mirror universe- This was only one episode thankfully, but one too many. I hate the entire mirror universe concept, particularly the way they shoe-horn in "mirror-universe" things from the regular universe regardless of any logic. The mirror-universe certainly is not unique to season 7, but it is another wasted episode that should have been used to help wrap up the series.
Voyager - I liked this show a lot overall. I thought it was slightly annoying when they introduced 7 of 9 as the token "borg babe", but they actually did a good job writing for her character and she did a good job acting (unlike Jolene "botox-lips" Blalock). I thought Janeway was a good captain, and Kate Mulgrew did a good job acting. Chakotay's character was a bit shallow. Kes was annoying and I was glad when she was gone.
My biggest gripe with Voyager was how it ended. The show spent 7 years setting the stage for what would happen when they get home. Yet instead of getting any resolution whatsoever to any of those questions, the show literally ends instantly once they get home.
There are countless more examples.
I would have liked to see Voyager get home maybe 1-3 episodes before the series ended. Have the last few episodes take place in the Alpha quadrant. Maybe the Borg followed them home and then they have to work with Starfleet to stop them. Or maybe an episode like "Family" which came right after "Best of Both Worlds" on TNG. Really any ending would be better than what we got. The show was about the crew, not the Delta quadrant. In it's current incarnation it feels like reading a book with the last few pages torn out.
Discovery - I have not watched any of this yet. Frankly, the entire concept of an animated Star Trek series seems extremely dumb and so far I have not been able to get over that hump. Maybe some day I will force myself to watch it.
Picard - I have very mixed feelings about this, but more negative than positive. First and foremost, it just really does not have the "feel" of a star-trek series.
-The show is way too serialized, to the point where it feels more like one long movie that was simply chopped into hour-long segments. I'm glad that I binge-watched the entire first season at once, because I don't think I could have handled waiting a week between episodes with that level of obnoxious serialization. I remember people criticizing DS9 for becoming semi-serialized during the Dominion-war arc, but they at least still made an effort to give each individual episode it's own little sub-plot. "Picard" doesn't even try.
-What Genre is this supposed to even be? "Picard" felt like it was trying to be some kind of weird action/horror/thriller instead of a Sci-Fi show. They repeatedly brought back old characters simply to turn around and kill them off. They seriously brought back the character of Icheb (one of the borg kids from Voyager) JUST so that we could watch a 5-second video of him getting his eyeball graphically ripped out of his skull?!? VERY lame. The character of Hugh was probably the best part of the entire first season. The actor did a fantasic job of portraying hugh and I think even portrayed it better than he did in TNG. But then, of course, they kill Hugh off...
. And then we get the mandatory ninja-fighting scenes, characters cussing and doing drugs, etc, as opposed to actual compelling story.
Roddenberry-era Star Trek was about showing what humanity could achieve, and maintained a largely optimistic and positive view of the future. "Picard" on the other hand goes out of it's way to depict a very dark and dystopian future where the flaws of society and the flaws of every individual character take front stage. Even when they brought back Riker and Troi, they couldn't allow that happy nostalgic moment to exist without shoe-horning in some depressing back-story about them having had a kid that died
What happened to Dr. Crusher? By the end of TNG they had practically set Picard and Crusher up to eventually become a couple, and in the last episode, "All Good Things", when they depicted the future, they were actually married. Then in "Picard", we get no mention of her whatsoever.... umm ok.
-Why did they obsessively need to re-design everything? Every computer interface apparently has to be some cheesy holographic interface now. Aside from the 1701-D flashbacks, we don't see a single "old" federation starship in the entire series. Are we to believe that every ship that existing during the TNG/DS9/Voyager time has now been retired? In the scene near the end where Riker and the fleet show up, every ship in the fleet was exactly the same, some boring new ship design.
The whole premise of a "rag-tag" bunch of losers on some small crusty little ship just makes the show feel like it's trying to be some kind of firefly knock-off.
Hopefully the new seasons take a different direction that is more like what you would expect from Star Trek and less like a bad Robocop sequel.
