The 24th century series featured different stories.

TNG had a flagship of UFP on diplomatic and exploring missions though even Enterprise D was not immune on spy games and politics.
Chain of Command, Face of the Enemy, Redemption…

DS9 was an outpost in turmoiled part of Alpha quadrant and certainly could not follow the suite of TNG. That show had such episodes like Visitor, In the Pale Moonlight and had great reccuring roles that other Trek series were unable to match.

VOY had an excellent start point but it soon dissolved. For a ship lost in unknown part of galaxy, with limited resources and no friends or allies they have acted way too PC. Not to mention the reset button – the characters and the ship in every new episode looked like they’ve just left the Earth spacedock. For example, the hull Galactica in third season looks battered all over – Voyager had fights with Kazon, Krenim, Borg, 8472 and always looked like crew went out in spacesuits and polished her regularly.
Too bad how VOY turned out because this show had a good premise. In the hands of DS9 team it would over shine others.

Now that I’ve had a while to absorb all that is good and bad from the series’, I’d have to say it’s a mixup between TNG, DS9 and VOY for different reasons.

TNG was some of the first Star Trek I ever watched, and has some truly classic episodes (Best of Both Worlds, Parallels, Yesterday’s Enterprise). The characters are all classic and lovable (except maybe Wesley).

I like DS9 (despite some of my family’s absolute loathing of it) because of the very real war-like environment of the last few seasons (although the whole prophets and Bajorans thing was a little stale). Their sombre and depressing stories make a nice change (The Visitor got my mum crying, and In The Pale Moonlight was a far-throw from most Star Trek episodes), and the BEST part is when Avery Brooks is angry (almost every episode) and starts moving his mouth really fast.

I like Voyager because of its humour and its wonderful use of special effects (i.e. Voyager crashing into that snowy planet in Timeless). The interpersonal episodes (Someone to Watch Over Me, for example) are lovely, and the actors are all very good.

TOS has some wonderful episodes, but I haven’t really seen most of them. The lack of interpersonal relationships and the abundance of “oh look we’re caught by an intelligent being” stories knocks it down a little, because I like a variety in my stories.

ENT, from what I’ve seen, is a lick of paint away from being every other crime drama on TV these days. It’s too American, which pains me. I’m sure if I could look past that, the bad acting and the horrible discontinuity (The NX looks like the Akira class of 200 years in the future) it’d be a wonderful show, but I can’t fathom watching things like CSI, NCIS or this.

So it’s a toss up between TNG, DS9 and VOY. Maybe because they intermix so wonderfully, yet are so different. I don’t know. I hope the next time they make a Star Trek spin-off, they don’t look for a “modern” show, and instead take their conventions from these three series instead.

As for anyone saying Voyager is the superior product, oy! Season 2 had some nice moments (the best of which was ditching the Kazon permanently) and seasons 3-5 managed some interesting storylines but overall the characters and execution were just weak (need I reference the appearance of ‘The Rock’???). It seemed the two-parters were where the show fared best (Year of Hell, The Killing Game, Equinox).

The thing with DS9 was, every character had their purpose. They were like a human house of cards, where the removal of one player would cause the whole thing to collapse. Everyone got a story and everyone had a chance to shine.

Captain Sisko, I salute you.

And then there’s Voyager’s End Game. What a pitiful mistake. Future Janeway goes back in time to fight the Borg? And then Voyager ends up home in the end? That’s ridiculous. Using the Borg transwarp conduits to get back to Earth makes sense. Not Janeway’s plot line though. I thought the inclusion of the Borg in End Game was a bad idea when I saw the episode. The Borg had been reduced to Kazon-like status because of how bad the Borg episodes were after the episode Scorpion. Meanwhile, according to Star Trek VIII and the last episode of Voyager years after Trek VIII, the Borg should be dead finally. How many times does it take to kill the Borg Queen?

IMHO: They wasted the opportunity to do Captain Sulu movies.

Face it, nearly every time the ST crew met an alien species it had a richer culture, or was physically stronger, or mentally superior or technologically more advanced. Yet somehow, those dumb, weak, limited humans whupped their ass.

The dumbest thing was how they worked out “put the Borg to sleep” after first pointing out their weakness was their need to be a collective. They had the fact that they communicated over a carrier like a transporter frequency, yet rather than disrupt that (and thus render them unable to communicate) they did the dumb “put them to sleep, Data” thing.

TNG was over-reliant on the Holodeck, the transporter and Data to get them out of problems. And through both TNG and VOY they were always “reconfiguring” the damned “front deflector.” I guess in it’s normal state it was usless since they would always use it for something else.

The true joy of the series is that every crisis involved a decision to be resolved. This is a model that is very Star Trek and wasn’t embraced very often by Voyager –a lot of Voyager was (to quote Beltran): “Captain, our bullshit shields are down to bullshit percent! Harry, do we have our bullshit super weapon ready?!” “I’m this close, Commander, I need bullshit seconds!” “Okay, but hurry!” “Hurrying!” “Are we there yet?” “Wait for it!” “Harry, we need that bullshit now!’ “Okay! Fire bullshit weapon!” Weapon fires. Whew. End of episode. Next we repeat formula.

Not a lot of human decision making.

I’ve seen some words for Enterprise out here. I believe that Enterprise had a strong first season. I thought the show was very brave. We meet a Captain who has no experience, but has the Gene Roddenberry philosophy up and running… his crew will eventually catch up to him. Poetic. Very cool. Unfortunately, I feel the fanbase didn’t have the patience to watch that story unfold, so Enterprise quickly became “throw something out and see what sticks.” By the time we got to season four (one of the greatest Seasons of Star Trek in history)… Archer had been pulled in so many directions, poor Manny Coto had to try and truly define him… and he did. And the Trip T’pol romance suddenly felt earned… it started to rock. And then it was killed.

Sadly, if Berman and Braga had taken the time to analyze Trek’s rich cannon, Enterprise could have been the ship wielding Atomic weapons, real bullets, etc and Battlestar Galactica wouldn’t have seemed so incredibly realistic –that could have been a Trek banner.

And ST: TMP is the best!