My love of Star Trek is much like a hometown sports team: players and coaches come and go, and some are better than others, but I'm watching every game and cheering them on, hoping for the best.
My 3 favorite shows are TOS, TNG, and DS9, and I find it very hard to rank them against each other. Each are so different with their own particular strengths that it largely depends on my mood which I prefer at any given moment. I have a similar issue with the best of the TOS movies.
Generations was kind of a letdown, but Voyager was my first real disappointment with the franchise. I thought it started pretty strong but was boring me by the end of season 1. The show has a lot of good episodes, but it could have been so much better and I never found the characters that compelling.
Enterprise was largely ignored by me, I was ending high school when it premiered and I was definitely not making the time in college to keep up with it. 10 years after the show ended, I gave it a look on Netflix and was pleasantly surprised to enjoy almost all of it! It felt like a nice throwback to revisit that style of Trek after the Kelvin movies.
Speaking of which, I really enjoyed the first JJ Abrams movie. I loved it in a way that a lot of Star Wars fans loved TFA: "Wow that story was pretty uninspired and lame, but WE ARE SO BACK, baby!"
I feel about INTO DARKNESS the way a lot of other people feel about TLJ: "oh no". But I ended up quite liking Beyond, mostly for it's Trek spirit that was missing from the other movies.
The modern shows are a real mixed back for me. I liked Disco s1 and 2 well enough, frustrating as they could be, but I struggled to maintain interest in the rest of it. Strange New Worlds s1 was good, s2 was pretty bad, and I do not have high hopes for s3. The only modern shows I like without reservation are Lower Decks and Prodigy.
I have a lot of respect for Picard s1, warts and all. They tried, but the showrunner was clearly not suited for episodic tv on a schedule. S2 was a complete waste. Where I break from the general fandom is s3. I did not like it. I thought it was pandering nonsense. "Fan"dering.
As for the new Section 31 movie, I might watch it. But I am so so so sick of both the Mirror Universe and Section 31 and I will be happy to never revisit those ideas in Trek again. They are so played out and they exhaust me.
I just do not think Star Trek is suited for the trends of modern TV. It needs weekly stories, not weekly chapters. Trek used to be unique enough to inspire copycats, and now it is chasing every other trend out there trying to hook a new audience. I hope the next bosses will let Trek be it's own thing. Stand apart and the audience will come.
