I don't know if a fic rec is appropriate for this thread or not, but this Trek fic had me laughing with delight and sobbing at the same time. (Assume massive spoilers, of course.)

Weetabix:

I prefer DS9 to TNG

askye is me on this. I loved how complex the DS9-verse was. Plus, "Far Beyond the Stars" and "The Visitor" are two of the finest hours of television, ever.

The movie has made me want to watch more Trek stuff, so maybe I'll seek some classic episodes.

The classic Trek episodes are not exempt from badness. They just have their own particular flavor of badness. What you have to understand P-C is that when people complain about Trek, it's because they're a fan. If you hear someone complaining loudly and at length about something Trek, they are a fan. Nobody else cares enough to think about it that much.

I like the holideck ones...

Ha! There were some good ones, but the holodeck episodes were among the most egregious violators of the "it never happened" trick.

I stopped watching Voyager after the first couple of seasons, but between holodeck and time travel episodes, I'm pretty sure over half of Voyager never actually happened.

I guess there was once or twice that all power was diverted to the forward shields or something,

Yeah, but that cracked me up because When Pike ordered all the power to the forward shields, the very next thing they did was bank the Enterprise hard to starboard and got hit... you guessed it, in the side! That was an eye-roll moment for me.

Tasha's greatest moment was probably Yesterday's Enterprise.

I'm with Hec on this one.

As for TNG, we watched them by renting the videos as they were released on video before they were aired in the UK, unless you had the satellite channel which not many people did in those days. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to be able to have approximately 1 minute between the end of Best of Both Worlds part 1 & part 2. Waiting the entire summer for that cliffhanger's conclusion would have killed me.

And seasons 4 and later of DS9 rocked! I'm a big sucker for momentous spaceship battles and watching numerous Galaxy class starships hand the Cardassians their ass made me a very happy geek.

Waiting the entire summer for that cliffhanger's conclusion would have killed me.

WIMP! I had to wait a whole summer for it! UPHILL BOTH WAYS! IN THE SNOW!

As much as I like "Best of Both Worlds," I liked the film "First Contact" better for the Locutus residual.

There were a lot of things I liked about First Contact (James Cromwell among them), but it was still a long TV episode. IMNSHO, there's not a single actual Next Gen movie. They're all long TV episodes that I had to go to a movie theater and pay to see.

As for unforgiven Next Gen sins, my personal beef is what they did to Data in the movies. They spent seven long years carefully laying the ground work for Data to spontaneously develop genuine emotion, then they screwed it up once by fusing the emotion chip into his brain, and screwed it up a second time by giving him the ability to switch it on and off at will.

HATE!

There were a lot of things I liked about First Contact (James Cromwell among them), but it was still a long TV episode. IMNSHO, there's not a single actual Next Gen movie. They're all long TV episodes that I had to go to a movie theater and pay to see.

What is the distinction between a long TV episode and a movie? I have wondered about this. For instance, Serenity felt to me like a movie, whereas The X-Files: I Want to Believe felt to me like a long TV episode. I remember really liking First Contact as a movie, not a long TV episode (but I had never watched the series).

the feeling that nothing really terrible will happen because there will be a new episode next week? Epicness?

yes, "did I really have to leave the house for this?"

What is the distinction between a long TV episode and a movie?

For me, it's a little bit of what Juliebird said, but also it's about the timing of the dramatic beats. Now I'm not talking some formulaic, this-happens-by/on-this-page thing, but there is a fundamental difference in how you should approach the rhythm of your story when you're making a movie as opposed to a TV show.

I think First Contact was the most valiant effort the Next Gen crew put forth, but I can still pinpoint where the commercial breaks are supposed to fall. 100% pure, undiluted TV storytelling.

I never saw I Want to Believe, but I believe that it was TV movie making. Fight the Future had the same problem.

I do think Serenity suffered from it a little bit, but in a more residual, ghost-like fashion. As final arbiter on this matter, I thus deem Serenity an actual film.