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Star Trek has had enormous potential to execute a magnificent, powerful story time and time again... only to squander it for some reason or another. This is what will always gnaw at me most when I watch anything produced after the 60's; the idea that there could have been something greater, if only someone else had been in charge.

Thurmont has mentioned the potential for the 2/3/4 movie trilogy to be a much more epic and powerful saga than it turned out to be. Star Trek 5 over-reached when seemingly every factor was working against it. TNG could have gone anywhere and instead chose to go nowhere. DS9 could have stuck with the premise of really exploring the aftermath of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, but instead got bored and ran off to play B5-lite. Voyager is one gigantic waste of potential from start to finish. Generations was the real TNG series finale, which in true form could have gone anywhere and mostly goes nowhere, and the rest of the TNG films were just action films with Starfleet props.

I may change my mind if I think of something better, but I honestly think that the biggest waste was Star Trek 5. I think the best follow-up to the 2/3/4 films as we got them should have been the most epic and powerful film of the entire franchise. Shatner may have had the wrong idea in terms of the plot, but I do think that 5 should have been the big finale where little (reasonable) expense was spared and the TOS series was sent off with a bang. Instead, we got a turd. A turd with noble intentions, but a turd nonetheless. Yeah, we got 6, and 6 was alright, but at the same time it still suffered from the TNG+ production environment.

And I think what leads me to think this - that 5 was the worst waste - is the entire aesthetic shift that occurs between 4 and 5. It's fucking Roddenberry's fault, thanks to TNG shitting up the sets and the aesthetics and bringing in those no-talent assclowns to do production. The movies, prior to 5, look gorgeous to me. They appeal very strongly to my idea of what Star Trek should look like, especially in terms of the bridge. It just plain looks better. Seriously, the fucking Motion Picture bridge - a set that was designed, built and filmed in the 70's - looks like better quality than the TNG+ film sets.

Now I'm just getting pissed off and rambling, but you get the idea. What was the worst waste of potential in Star Trek, in your view?

I don't know if you can call ST5 a true waste of potential. The term, to me, implies that there was a great idea but no-one decided to follow up on it; it can be argued that Shatner did try to make his movie as epic and gripping as possible, but he had the budget and lack of experience going against him. At least with ST5, someone tried to make the best of it.

DS9's abandonment of Bajor is something I don't agree with. The whole concept of DS9 was flawed from day one, but sticking with Bajor would argueably have been worse then the Dominion arc. The story potential of the Bajoran occupation aftermath is not that great, and several episodes dealing with this very theme proved that, while the idea was intriguing, there weren't really many places it could go.

Voyager is an obvious candidate for "biggest waste", since it decided to ignore it's own basic premise from day one, instead opting to emulate the worst of TNG on a higher budget. It's most apparent in the handful of episodes that do deal with the concept of a single ship lost in space - YOH comes to mind - and considering that the series really had nothing going against it (they had the money, the cast, and access to a decent pool of writers) I'd say this qualifies as the worst offender.

I'd agree with Bounty- Voyager was a colossal waste. They were handed everything they needed to do things differently from what had come before- and instead, they just really wanted to be TNG. And not the best of TNG either. We know from Ronald D. Moore that they even seriously considered bringing the ship back home before they intended to finish the series.

Deep Space 9 comes second, in that the first three seasons are pretty much a waste of space. Until the Dominion War arc started, that show was going nowhere fast. Bajor and the Gamma Quadrant couldn't sustain the plot in any meaningful way, and really, the only thing that ever came of Bajor was to serve as an every-few-episodes "oh God, not more bullshit about the Bajoran religion" distraction from what we really wanted to see. Even in the later seasons- 5, 6 and 7, the entire Bajoran arc is just incredibly dull and uninteresting.

I think Enterprise was the greatest waste. It took place in what should have been a very interesting time in the Star Trek chronology yet still managed to be dull.

Pax Britannia wrote:I think Enterprise was the greatest waste. It took place in what should have been a very interesting time in the Star Trek chronology yet still managed to be dull.

This hurts even more since the last 1.5 seasons proved you *could* do a decent prequel series that doesn't shit on continuity and actually has interesting characters and plots. That's the problem with all of late Trek : everything's there to make it work, but TPTB left it all in the hands of an incompetent producer team.

Vympel wrote:I'd agree with Bounty- Voyager was a colossal waste. They were handed everything they needed to do things differently from what had come before- and instead, they just really wanted to be TNG. And not the best of TNG either. We know from Ronald D. Moore that they even seriously considered bringing the ship back home before they intended to finish the series.

At that point, I honestly don't think it would have been a bad idea. It was essentially what they were doing anyway, they just decided to make it even more implausible by having it halfway across the galaxy. To apply a similar take on Mike's commentary from the main site, they don't really think about the negative ramifications. A bit of the first season there was a little bit of this, but it seemed that for the most part being stranded far from home without a way to replenish supplies or visit loved ones or do necessary large-scale repairs and refits was treated throughout the series as a minor irritation rather than a life or death struggle.

I think about Apollo 13, which shows us what happens when you're stuck far from home and things go wrong. Tempers flare, stress can reach the breaking point, and that's among people who tend to be highly-disciplined, physically conditioned, and very intelligent who have spent years building up a camraderie with each other. Put Starfleet and Maquis on the same ship while they're stranded and most of the conflicts are superficial... the Maquis should have been plotting to kill Janeway from day one.

And one last thing. If they'd stopped trying to make Chakotay some kind of cartoonish stereotype and had him acting like has backstory said it could have done a lot. Chakotay is a leader among revolutionaries who once taught advanced tactics at Starfleet Academy, yet his behavior that doesn't revolve around being American Indian could just as easily have been done by Riker without any problems at all. If he would have been in constant conflict with Janeway and her divided crew (that's a rant for another time) it would have been something to suggest that the situation was serious.

Logically, I'd say Voyager was the biggest waste. However, seeing how badly they fucked up Nemesis was the waste that annoyed me the most, if only because I'm a big fan of the Romulans. It could've been TUC with the TNG. Instead it was a piece of shit with Picard wankage added just to make it suck even more.

As far as I remember caring, Voyager as announced actually sounded cool. It appeared they were going to ditch the legacy politics, put a new ship in a fucked up situation and fill it with dirty criminals. Instead we got 'reroute the scooby-dooby to the fluma-fluma', just like in all the OTHER shows. The ship even magically repaired, made new shuttles, fucking developed new technologies, instead of getting dusty and broken. Bah.

Voyager could have been the best series since TOS, but it was sunk by the abject cowardice and utter lack of imagination of its producers and writers. And in the process, it took Star Trek down with it. An utter, unmitigated waste.

Turning the Borg from a terrifying threat into fucking stereotypical space vampies (complete with a "Lost Boys"-style Achilles Heel and a penchant for "biting" people in the neck, with two fangs no less!) was a pretty big waste.

To be honest though, I think the greatest waste of potential occurred before TNG came to air, and coloured every piece of Star Trek after that. It was Roddenberry's decision to make all subsequent Star Trek series into "message TV" which took itself very seriously and made all kinds of pretentious claims to social responsibility, scientific accuracy, etc. as opposed to the "adventure story with a touch of campiness" approach of the original series.

Personally I'd have to go with Enterprise being the biggest waste. Hell it came off to me as an TNG extension to a time when the attitude of TNG shouldn't have existed. Rather then a good look at all the mistakes they had to learn from to become the Federation and all it's weird rules about contact and foreign policy.

Though Wong did bring up a nice point on the Borg, I didn't even think of their wasted potential.

I'd personally say DS9 as I really enjoyed the first few seasons with the Bajor interaction and politics. Unabashed backstabbing, political scheming, devious religious leaders, the lot. The Prophets didn't bother me that much as long as they were kept in the background and they were important as a background to the Bajorian religion

Once the changlings and various others started getting involved, the show went downhill.

ENT, assuming one actually considers that canon. A storyline set in the very beginnings of the UFP-before it, technically- could have been grand. Instead, they ruined it by having it center on a ship that shouldn't exist, completely ignoring canon,
That sort of includes the first point, Master Bruce.
(not to mention common sense and physics) and writing that was apparently aiming for the lowest common theoratically possible denominator.

Voyager.

Definitely Voyager. So much potential, so little done with it. It had the opportunity to set a new level for Trek, possibly even garner respect among non Trekkies. But instead they went and fucked it up, failing to develop characters and show the inevitable damage to the ship that would require patchwork repairs until Voyager looked like a giant pumpkin made of metal.

Kee-rist, you people are bitter. I liked Voyager. So there.

Biggest waste? In every series - the vomit-inducing 'Mirror Universe'. Still makes me shudder.

The bug episode in The Next Generation that they never, ever touched on again. I don't remember what it was called. The one where it sent out a homing signal at the end. That could have been a great enemy race.

Pick wrote:The bug episode in The Next Generation that they never, ever touched on again. I don't remember what it was called. The one where it sent out a homing signal at the end. That could have been a great enemy race.

Indeed, I was quite suprised that was never mentioned again. I would have much preferred something on that in favor of, say, the Dominion.

The biggest waste of Star trek potential is Voyager again. I think we could have had a Neo-BSG type show where the crew was stranded from no-where, had no contact with earth or their families or friends, no way to replenish technology, resources and energy and no way to replace crew. They could have been trading, using and stealing alien technology, resources and energy. Taking alien passengers and turning them into crew and having alliances with Alien cilivilizations. BUT NOOO..... We get a rehash of TNG with the self-righteous hypocritical clone of Katherine Hepburn with a Chief New-Age-Bullshit-I-Am-Indian-from-some-tribe-i-have-never-heard-of and put a "conflicted" bastard stepchild of K'lehr as a chief engineer, a stock black person as a vulcan and a hot-shot pilot badboy reject from 50's war movies.

Second i will say is Generations, The battle could have killed Kirk in a explosive and exciting way but NOOO...He falls off a bridge in a stunt that MacGuyver wou;d have survived.

Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 11:27 am Post subject:


To be honest though, I think the greatest waste of potential occurred before TNG came to air, and coloured every piece of Star Trek after that. It was Roddenberry's decision to make all subsequent Star Trek series into "message TV" which took itself very seriously and made all kinds of pretentious claims to social responsibility, scientific accuracy, etc. as opposed to the "adventure story with a touch of campiness" approach of the original series

Star trek was ALWAYS that way, thOriginal Series was a commentary of 60's racial, cultural and topical views.

Pick wrote:The bug episode in The Next Generation that they never, ever touched on again. I don't remember what it was called. The one where it sent out a homing signal at the end. That could have been a great enemy race.

"Conspiracy" season one. And I agree, that was an episode that begged for a follow up, and they threw it all away.

I kinda have to say having recurring Star Trek films with the progressively aging character cast still performing as if they were in their TOS days. Especially when it seems like the TNG cast is going kinda the same way.

The Greatest Waste? Making another show after the first one

STNG? The show would have been better if the Ship was called "The Pacific Princess". At least if would have been accurate.

DS9? Trying to be Bab5

Voyager? Should have been more like the Equinox crew/episode

Enterprise? "The hell with canon. No one cares right?"

The various massive wastes of Star Trek are so numerous that no single one, in my mind, presents itself as the most heinous. TOS and some of the better TOS films offered us a tantalizing glimpse into a world that if only they had had the courage to explore in greater detail, could have been fascinating. Instead, moronic plotlines and story development intended to appeal to the absolute lowest common denominator (see Star Trek III-IV) destroyed that potential avenue. A few more similiarly grandiose flops later and what we are left with is a dead franchise. Seriously, if just any of these missed opportunities had actually been taken up by Paramount, Star Trek would still be a healthy and vibrant science fiction franchise today, in my opinion.

Destructionator XIII wrote:Also going to say Conspiracy here. That ending was eerie, and I really want a sequel to that.

Then methinks the Deep Space Nine relaunch novels are in order for you. Without spoiling too much, guess who's stirring up trouble again?

For the movies, probably TVH or NEM, especially the former. After the epic events of II and III, time-traveling and humpback whales is the best conclusion Paramoutn can come up with?

For television, ENT. I thought that with everything that had happened with VGR, the studio would get is shit together. Now, "Broken Bow" had flaws to be sure. But it was also exciting and really captured the spirit of being out in space and the prequel setting. We were finally going to see the Earth-Romulan Wars and the formation of the UFP.

And what did we get? The following episode focused on a slug. Too bad Manny Cote wasn't on board from the start. And sympathies go out to Pocket Books for their planned ENT novel relaunch; imagine having to connect Season 4 with the POS of TATV...

Mybe it's just my poor memory, but I actually LIKED Voyager.

As far as biggest waste, I'm going to agree with Pick and say that Conspiracy would have been super awesome. In fact I wouldn't mind seeing a movie with that level of cloak and dagger. I would have preferred an unknown plot to gain control of the federation to, Insurrection.