I've never watched Babylon 5, so I can't comment on it's qualities. I was not, however, impressed with ST:TNG, but to be fair, it's possible I missed something, as I only watched regularly for the first, oh, year and a half before tuing out, and some say it did get better. I though it (a) was derivative, sometimes to the point of plagiarism, (b) was too PC, (c) was more poorly acted than old Trek (with the exception of Patrick Stewart, who is terrific, and LeVar Burton, who is quite good also), (d) had worse FX than the original show, the lame CGI actually looking worse than the old models/blue screen technology, (e) suffered too much from anything-goes-itis, what with the Q and the Borg, the souped-up replicators, the souped-up holodeck, etc., (f) implicitly disrespected the old show by instantiating the Gerrold critique, which was wrong to begin with, and perhaps worst of all, (g) traded on the worst anti-semitic caricatures to bash capitalism in the form of the avaricious, money-grubbing, deceitful jews, I mean Ferengi. Even if I'm off-base on points a-f above, no lover of Jews or capitalism should tolerate a show that is so blatanly anti-semitic and anti-capitalism.
by Aeon J. Skoble on August 30, 2004 at 9:01 AM