Welcome![]
You have arrived at the User Page of Captain MAJ=/\=|****. My name is Michael, but please call me Mike. I am a recent Electrical Engineering graduate of the University of New Haven in West Haven, Connecticut, USA. Currently, I am emplioyed as an Engineer for the state of Connecticut. I am an avid Star Trek fan, and my current personal project is to watch every episode of each series. I am moving through the episodes nicely, and Blockbuster and Netflix make this a lot easier. I am very pleased to be part of the Memory Alpha community, and I hope to make many useful contributions to our knowledge of the Star Trek Universe. Anyhow, welcome to my page, and enjoy. Please leave any questons or comments in my User Talk Section. Thanks!
Star Trek and I[]
It's hard for me to say exactly when I started watching Star Trek. For as long as I can remember it has been a part of my life. If I had to nail it down, I would say that the first bit of Star Trek I remember watching was the The Animated Series. I remember watching it in the mornings on Nickelodeon before afternoon kindergarten back in 1989. I probaly also caught some episodes of The Next Generation too. Seventeen years later, and I'm still as big a fan now as I was then, bigger even.
Series[]
I've always loved The Original Series. It's stories are by far the best. The intelligence of the writing and the morals of the stories are unmatched in any show on the air today. I've seen every episode of the series at least twice, and for the most part consider myself an expert on all things TOS. Starting 16 September 2006, TOS episodes will enter syndication again, and will be remastered, with new special effects. I can't wait! Look here(X) for more details.
I was very excited when The Animated Series was released on DVD. I remembered watching them as a child, but the memories were vague. I bought TAS as soon as it was released, and watched all 22 episodes right away. The animated episode stories were very intelligent, and constituted a superb addition to TOS. I'm looking forward with anticipation to any future animated series that may be in the works.
As far as the other series go, I think that TNG was the last truly exceptional series. I have seen every episode in the series at least once. I didn't follow DS9 for most of it's run, but I am watching it now and I'm well into Season 5. I enjoyed Voyager too, but not as much as TNG. I am currently watching Season 3 of VOY.
When I first saw Enterprise, I was fascinated by it. I was a bit disappointed by the apparent inconsistencies with TOS made early on. But as the series went on, I began to see how well it fit with the rest of Trek. The canon of TOS is flexible enough to allow for some variation. For instance, in "Day of the Dove", It was said that hostilities with the Klingon Empire began in 2218, not first contact. So placing first contact in "Broken Bow" in 2151 was perfectly valid. There are other examples, of course, and maybe I'll add a section listing them later.
However, I think that people who nitpick every thing wrong with the show aren't really fans of the show. They are so busy pointing out problems, they fail to remember that: (a) it's only a TV show, and (b) the message the episode is trying to get across is much more important than any so-called inconsistencies, which can really be explained away if you try hard enough. The purpose of Star Trek from the beginning was to be a social commentary on contemporary issues in a futurstic, sci-fi theme. If you watch Star Trek with this in mind, you will enjoy the show so much more, because suddenly you will notice things you never did before.
The thing that made Enterprise so endearing to me was the fact that everything was new and unexplored to them. This series, in many ways went back to the spirit of TOS and TNG, to show a bright and hopeful future for humankind. DS9 and VOY strayed away from this I think, and Enterprise was made better by sticking to this, at least for the first two seasons. All in all, I think Enterprise made a fine addition to the Star Trek universe, and added much to our knowledge of the pre-UFP galaxy. I have, to date, watched every episode of Enterprise at least once.
More to be added later, check back soon!