Less is more. Too many trips to the well. They really should try to do something fresh instead of digging up the body over and over again.

Shatner and company own the roles--they created them--its dumb to try and replace them.
My assessment of the shows:

TOS: cheap sets, some hokey costumes--however they tackled controversial subjects and had a good dynamic cast of characters that you cared about. I didnt feel any of the OS movies captured the spirit of the series. The only ones to delve into any sort of political content were the Voyage Home and the Undiscovered Country. Although funny enough, Star Trek 5 had elements that reminded me the most of the old show(the alien horses, the God figure, the cocktail party ending). The OS was like classical theatre with a sci-fi setting.

TNG: sets were better..-but they didnt delve into the controversial subjects of the original(no thinly disguised parables about the Gulf War for example) and because they wanted to show a better vision of the future--they made the human characters be nice with each other all the time--which killed the dramatic opportunities. Cast wise--they just didnt have the charisma of Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley--which is one reason why they couldnt carry the NG movies. The best remembered episode remains the season 3 cliffhanger Borg one because of the villains--not Picard and crew, and the same is true for the NG movies. Worst thing about NG was that they often used technology cop out endings to solve problems--especially those created by technology--which was almost never criticized or seen as a fault. You can only emit a tachion field so many times! The OS wasnt like that--they used human interaction to solve problems most of the time. The science fiction was a backdrop metaphor on the OS--but on the newer shows it was taken too seriously.

DS9--a stronger cast--more dynamic characters to care about(with flaws--although the aliens were the ones with the most conflict). I liked the show until they made Odo get romantic and it ended poorly(Odo mindmelds with the Founders' leader and everyone was lovey dovey as he descends wearing a tuxedo into the slime lake).

Voyager--too much of a copy of the other shows(another vulcan?)--plus they killed the tension they had set up with the Starfleet-Maquis crew--Chakotay became a completely wasted character.
They did have a couple of neat scary villains--the Vidians(organ stealers who got cured rather abruptly) and Species 8472--had a great intro-but screwed up when they had Chakotay get romantic with a human one(and they said Kirk was having all the affairs).

I bailed out of Enterprise early(another vulcan?).

The post-OS shows eventually became like soap operas--but unlike Babylon 5, they didnt have it clearly planned out from start to finish.

I say let Star Trek rest.

He's dead Jim.

DS9 was the best of the Berman-era series.

Probably mostly because Berman (and Braga) had little to do with it.

Trek blew from the very beginning. Without Nimoy they would've had nothing. The movies weren't much better, although, again, the one directed by Nimoy about the whale was pretty good for its time.

I've never understood this obsession with Trek anymore than I've understood the obsession with Star Wars.

So. . .not a big fan of sci-fi, then?

Actually, I'm a huge fan of sci-fi. Which is why I think Star Trek blows.

Good to know.

The best sci-fi is found in books. :-)

Can I assume you like a different type of Sci-fi than what trek offers, namely, a type more based on real science rather than "fantasy set in space?"

I don't really care for real science. I dig outlandishness over a story about two guys stranded 'cause their moon rover broke an axle, or something.

Authors I dig---

Robert J. Sawyer, Alistair Reynolds. . .well crap, I guess that's it for novels.

I've read any number of anthologies of stuff from the 30's til now. I gotta say, the 80s, in my opinion, took a real downturn in quality. I don't know if, in the short form world, it's "recovered".

There's a whole bunch of good sci-fi books I read, just can't remember their titles. There were some good sci-fi movies too, can't remember their titles either---and they never seem to reappear on basic cable.

Examples, please?

My first foray into sci-fi books was the Halo series with the Reach Prologue to the game.

These scifi authors have provided me with great entertainment over the years:

Kim Stanley Robinson
Neal Stephenson
Dan Simmons
China Mieville
Iain M. Banks

Older generation but still producing:
Robert Silverberg
William Gibson
Gene Wolfe
C.J. Cherryh
Fred Saberhagen
Joe Haldeman

What i dont like is the "science as religion" approach to sci-fi where supposedly it only works if the science is real or possible--kind of pointless for a fiction story. Just using the term "sci-fi" is supposedly un-pc. You are supposed to say "SF" when talking about "respectable" science fiction.

1968 had the two sides of the coin for movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey..visually striking--but not exactly an accessible film. I still dont understand the point of it.

The other is Planet of the Apes. Both have philosophical content but go in completely different directions.

I love it when the gorilla guard is blasting Heston with the water hose and says: shut up you freak!!!

It's a madhouse. A madhoooooouse!

I like the term "speculative fiction". That would cover a lot of ground from magical realism to hard science.

<<1968 had the two sides of the coin for movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey..visually striking--but not exactly an accessible film. I still dont understand the point of it<<

It was about the ascension of man into a purely spiritual being (aka pure energy). BTW in the actual book(s) the monoliths name is Lucifer. Clarke is virulantly antiChristian and makes no bones about it in his books. Even in Childhoods End the aliens witnessing the transformation look like our traditional pictures of Satan, horns and tails included.

If you can get by that, he has written some great SF and was the one who first conceived of a sattlelite staying at a fixed point in space above earth(geosynchronous). All modern communication birds as based on his theories.

<It was about the ascension of man into a purely spiritual being (aka pure energy).>

**
that is the most succinct breakdown of it I have ever read.