Compared to what was out there at the time, it was genius plus it was hopeful, in that humanity had a future.
People didn't expect to watch Shakespeare. They wanted some entertainment and Star Trek gave them that.
TNG are atrocious,
That's because Gene Roddenberry tried to make the future too much of a utopia.
People boldly declare that JJ ruined Trek.
Yes, because he's incestuous when it comes to story telling. ( He's not alone in this and not the worst offender but it gets annoying. ) Try something different, outside of what has already been written. Don't destroy what was good in the process of making something new. I think people who reboot must have limited imagination and want a quick buck. In a universe of infinite possibilities, why are they stuck playing with the same old stuff?
What was good about the old series was how the characters developed, especially in the movies of 2, 3 and 4. Today's movies suck because they are so quick to tell the story, too much action and not enough good dialog. Movies today don't want to build up the characters or their relationships. They only want explosion after explosion then a sex scene.
“I am your father Luke” which in and of itself wasn’t bad but it put the series on a bad path
Here is where I agree with you on that. I was like, ok Darth is Luke's father but then Timothy Zahn went on to write more books on Star Wars series and he used Palpatine as the bad guy again, although it was his clone but still.. A whole galaxy of evil and he had to recycle palpatine?
Then Zahn used the Jedi "twins" of Han and Leia. It's like really? Are all the descendants of Anakin going to be twins? No triplets just to shake things up?
I dunno, I guess that's why I'm off science fiction... It's not as fun as it use to be.
Understand with all my criticism I still love Trek, but as a QA person I look at warts, it’s my job and I’m good at it.
The primary problem TOS had is that it was really two different shows. There’s the show that built the legend, it really could tell very good thought provoking SF when they took the time to actually write it, and there’s even good less thought provoking episodes. Then there’s the other show, the cheeseball SF show that cranked out some really dumb SF poorly. I will often sing the praises of Gene Coon (aka “the other Gene”) for being the guy that gave us a lot of what makes Trek great (he gave us Khan and Klingons, nuff said). But it’s often times telling that his previous gig was Wild Wild West, a show I also love but people from the show admit there was an onset rule “if the story is thin have Bob take his shirt off”. You can see a lot of that mentality in Trek, Bill takes his shirt in most of the worst eps.
TNG was held back by a lot of things, Roddenberry killed the writers room with his “no conflict” edict. And appeasing the obsessive fans was a major mistake, that really began the canon problems that shackled 3 more shows and a bunch of movies.
Reboots are primarily to free the writers from the obligations of an unmanageable canon. It re-opens the universe of infinite possibility. There’s a reason why in the old days Hollywood didn’t do canon, it’s limiting, it winds up being a list of reason you can’t do that. All the writers that worked on late era Trek talk about that, canon constantly cutting off stories. It’s a much freer Trek world if Phase 2 had gotten off the ground, part of Phase 2 was the revelation that TOS was a TV show in the Trek universe, that’s a reboot. Should have been another reboot after Voyager for Enterprise, leave that 21 seasons behind and go forth with a more open universe. I find it interesting, and creative, that JJ did his reboot on camera, most of the time when that decision is made they just punt it, put out word that it’s a new world all that old stuff doesn’t apply and just tell their story.
I never saw much character development in 3 and 4. 2 had quite a bit, but 3 and 4 were just bad.
Too many movies are made these days for blanket statements. Yeah Michael Bay has never met dialog he wouldn’t replace with an explosion. But there’s a lot of character development in JJs first Trek, Kirk evolves dramatically, and I really love the conflict between him and Spock. Things still get blown up, but it’s no Bay movie. I think JJ brings a lot fun in, his Trek is a fun movie, with stuff. Trek had become very not fun.