While I love TNG (even though the cast can’t shut up) and that was the first Star Trek I was familiar with since I was 6 and a fan of reading rainbow when it came out I would say that the original series is my favorite (can happily watch Trek through Enterprise). My dad watched Original Series reruns since as long as I can remember.
The sendoff for the original crew always gets to to me and it just contrast that with writers today who live to crap on or deconstruct the works of better writers. I saw they are making a new blade runner with a delusional man, Disney is making a new Neverending Story, and Netflix is butchering… I mean remaking the Chronicles of Narnia.
One good thing about Star Trek is that I have a lot of books to read. I was at a convention once and a guy had a bunch of Star Trek books for a quarter a piece so I left with a bunch.
Star Trek, despite having watched two of their series from start to finish, is never something I really developed much genuine appreciation for. It doesn't manage to be grounded hard sci fi or space fantasy(or something that blurs the two like the original Mass Effect), but rather it seems to be a drama show or soap opera only coincidentally set in space.
Plus the fan base for the show, yikes. Even as far back as the 90s most of them were the kind of effort averse communists who deserve to be sealed alive in oil drums.
But I can certainly think of worse things to read to eat up spare time. Scalzi for example.
I'll admit, at least some of the tech-side of things (IE transporters) definitely feel a little silly as I've matured and developed a more grounded perspective on science and technology.
Even so, I think the political and ethics angle was well established and well executed, especially for its time. Even if a little overly idealistic.
I also think TNG era managed to create some legitimately fun, interesting, and thematic alien cultures, even if they occasionally adopted a few bits and pieces from historical Earth cultures.
I've never been able to get into most of the books though, largely because of how often it carried a similar kind of episodic approach, which doesn't make it very easy to narrow down a selection to read. I'm also not sure how well managed the book canon was compared to the Star Wars EU.
The transporter should work by physically sending a transporter pad then sending the people. It'd be scientifically rationalizable, practically reasonable by 'landing' much faster than a manned shuttle, and provide interesting limitations. edit: like Galaxy Quest pods, another reason why it's the best Trek.
TNG is the best of times and the blurst of times. They invented the Borg, then a 37? dimensional shape that kills the Borg. Lore and then killed him because Spiner had spine problems. Troi as the goddess of empathy, then a bridge officer.
Half of the TNG writer's room must have been geniuses and the other half fools.
Oh, for sure. That transporter idea you mention reminds me of Galaxy Quest actually, which was a much neater idea (the little goop-pod thing around the start of the movie).
Probably my biggest gripe with transporters is the barely addressed existential conundrum, where for all intents and purposes, they're creating a "duplicate" of a person, and destroying the excess copy.
Yet somehow, this same technology is hardly ever used to heal someone of serious injuries, or to prolong someone's life beyond the natural limits. Save for the odd episode where they may touch on such questions, but shoo it away as inconsequential, and never bothering to visit it again.
Back to the main writing, I probably skip about 1/10 of TNG and DS9 episodes I recognize as cringe or rather dull.Then with Voyager it's about 1/4-1/3, and that's assuming I'm feeling bored enough to actively watch it.
The transporter isn't a xerox. It's more like shipping ikea furniture. Your matter is broken down, then moved along an energy beam to the destination, where the same matter is reassembled in the same pattern.
That's what it's supposed to be, at least. Different writers all handle tech slightly differently. It shouldn't be possible to get a transporter clone, like what happened with Riker. The tech doesn't work that way, unless it does this week.