I mean it certainly wasn’t the strongest or best Star Trek series and it only lasted 4 seasons, but the 4th season was particularly strong, especially the Vulcan episode arc, which was some of the best Trek that there has been so far of any series.

In many ways, I am. Kirk and McCoy without Spock might not have been as good. But I probably would have liked it more than I liked TNG, and probably only because Roddenberry would have been in a different state of mind about Star Trek than he was a decade later, and perhaps Dorothy Fontana (my favorite Trek writer) would have been a bigger participant than she was in TNG. If we had gotten ST: Phase II, we would not likely have enjoyed the glory days of the original movie era, at least not in the same form.

We’ll never really know what move was better for the franchise, since we only know the result of the road taken, but it is difficult to imagine that a series without my favorite Star Trek character could have ever been as good to me as what ended up–IMO–to be 4 very good films and 1 decent one with that character aboard.

But my passion for Star Trek slowly went to sleep with the 24th Century spinoffs, and it has only been awakened by the notion of a new Star Trek movie that features the iconic characters of old living in the 23rd Century.

And for the record, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I “couldn’t stand” TNG, otherwise I would never have taken any time to see the rest of it in syndication. I simply had no “passion” for it, primarily because I never cared for the characters (which I thought was the strength of TOS). There is a difference for sure.

Since you couldn’t stand TNG, you would have really hated Star Trek: Phase II, wouldn’t you?

I always enjoyed TNG knowing that Riker was not Decker, Picard was not Kirk-old, Data was not Xon, and Denise-Crosby-as-Troi was not Ilia. TNG was more the David Gerrold Let’s Have A Generation Ship approach: in that regard, kids onboard made sense… given that this was sold as an exploration vessel, where the ship would really never be in jeopardy. Of course the conceit that is Q immediately ruined that idea: which made me wonder why Picard’s first course after Farpoint was to return to Earth and disembark all families and children… especially including Wesley Eugene Crusher.

Just be glad we never got Phase II.

When it came, it had not lived up to my expectations. I found the characters merely a shadow of their predecessors. By the 3rd season, I’d stopped watching altogether. It was only years later that I saw the rest of the series in its own syndication run, but never with anything more than casual interest.

Holodecks, android pinnochios, caveman Klingons, ship’s counselors, children on the bridge, excessive technobabble, Earl Grey tea—-all set aboard the USS Hilton…It did nothing for me, except to amplify my longing for the more romantic TOS-era.

TOS was colorful, adventurous, sexy, and best of all—entertaining. I thought the characters in TNG were one big snoozefest.

There were some highpoints. To this day, I’ll go out of my way to watch “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, for example. That’s just good writing. Kudos to them for that.

DS9 did a little bit to reclaim the “frontier feeling” I always felt was lost on TNG, and the characters were at least a little bit more interesting to me, but it really never found its stride as a series until it had taken a far more dark turn. I thought it was okay on its own, but it still never felt like Star Trek to me.

VOY was awful. Just plain awful.

By the time ENT premiered, I had all but forgotten that they were still making Star Trek spinoffs. After it was cancelled, I caught a few episodes and eventually bought the dvd’s.

Go figure…I actually liked it (although the characters could still never so much as shine the boots of Kirk/Spock/McCoy), especially when it finally started to feel like a prequel to TOS…right up until a fat Riker and Troi showed up with a holodeck program!

Betrayed. I could have thrown up.

Enter Bo Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Bryan Burk, and yes…Mr. Abrams.

Finally… a return to the glory days of Star Trek—-the 23rd Century, under the flag of creative artists who might not be afraid to once again go boldly, and without the handcuffs.

Let’s have a captain who will gladly fistfight and fornicate his way to resolving a problem, a Southern doctor with a sarcastic yet undeniably humanistic approach to the Universe, and a half-Vulcan science officer who, although he’d never admit it, is more human than any of us (all of whom can reach but a fraction of their own potential without one another).

Throw in a two-fisted, occasionally hard drinking engineer with a penchant for making “miracles” happen, and you’ve got yourself some characters that audiences know and cannot help but love. You end up with the potential to entertain more than just some “geeks only” club, armed with their TNG technical manuals and overly-sterilized notions of the revisionist Roddenberry doctrine prevalent in the late 80’s and perpetuated throughout the 90’s within the extended Bermanverse.

You might just end up with Star Trek…the one I fell in love with some 30 years ago.

It’s time to remove the handcuffs, IMO.

I…
Don’t understand?!
Is that even, like, scientifically possible? Even non-trek fans love TNG..

MY UNIVERSE IS SHATTERED!

We TNG fans have the books! We do not need Abrams Trek 24th century.