Trek your pick

OK, we all know that Star Trek is just about #1 on the list of "shows that geeks watch." Take your pick, any show in the series is basically a soap opera for us geeky sci fi fans, just like professional wrestling is a soap opera for rednecks. Everybody has their pick of which series they like best, and it can be because of the characters, the story line, or whatever else you look for in a show. I have also found that Star Trek likes to have a formula for their shows, and while it is a fairly loose formula, we see it pop up in some way every time.

One of the main ingredients of this is the way they emulate cultural biases, but in this case it is not just humans that have differences, but alien species as a whole. In fact, race never comes up as far as humans go, but there are many conflicts that arise out of cultural misunderstandings and ways the characters have to deal with them. This is where the formula I was talking about comes in. Now I don't have much experience with the original series (shame on me) every series since TNG has had the outcast, the character that doesn't fit in with everyone else but wants to. In TNG it was Data, DS9 had Odo, Voyager had the doctor, and Enterprise had T'Pol. Each one of these characters were basically one of a kind on their respective ships, and until we met Lore, Data was the only one in the galaxy. These characters were always struggling with trying to be more human (or in Odo's case more like a "solid") and even through all their efforts, the moral of the story was always that while they want to change, they find out they can be happy just the way they are.

Switching topics abruptly, my favorite of the series' would have to be DS9. It isn't quite as cut and dry as the rest of the shows. A Federation controlled space station which not only contains military officers, but is mostly inhabited by civilians of various different worlds and sits in front of the most strategically important wormholes known to the quadrant. The problems that arise aren't the same as on a normal ship like in the other shows. There is a lot of history with the station and the area of space near it that is revealed throughout the show, and eventually they all face a new enemy in the Dominion and have to go so far as to join forces with the Romulans to fend them off. I find it the most interesting of the series', with a great variety of characters, and it leaves the show open to much more with military interaction, with civilians, diplomatic situations with allied governments, as well as many religious and spiritual conflicts. I love the other series' as well, but I just feel DS9 has more to offer than the others and after watching it all the way through I found I miss it the most.

Anybody else like a different series better? Why? No wrong answer here, but I'd like to find out some other views on the show.