It's missing, "Lock phasers. If they twitch, open fire!" "Belay that... use photon torpedoes!"
One of the "unsatisfying missing ingredients" is evil, or at least the clearly defined image of it. The Ferengi were introduced as the new contemptible wretches, but who were they mocking with it- mainstream America! And even they were "as gray as the Federation" in terms of a distinct delineation of good and evil.
TOS knew what evil was, despised it, fought it, and tried to establish good.
TNG thought that they were just too good and used their noses as gunsights by which to view everyone else. This much was made clear in the annoying mockings by Q: humans and thus, the Federation and Starfleet, WERE better than everyone else, possibly even than the Q, and hence, totally worthy of superbeings' attention.
It wasn't until their ratings began to languish that they had to shake things up to make things pleasurably viewable again (if it ever was in its earlier seasons), but by then Roddenberry had passed on. Along came the Borg. Not that in themselves, they were such a novel SF concept, but boy did they shake up sci-fi-dom for a little while.
And why was this? They were EVIL and unabashed about it, no apologies, no believing for real that they might be better or good, and gave no quarter... they were even ugly (though I'm sure it turned on lots of other people) and revolting, drilling eyeballs out for optical prostheses, cutting off legs and arms for mechanized lifeless versions, and completely invading a herd member's mind with the entire hive (membership in which was NOT voluntary)... no privacy, no individuality, no personality. And wait, they were dominated by a selfish, nasty, scary-looking woman to boot. All quite compelling, as they recovered part of that magic of TOS, and to their credit, in their own, original way.
We need to be able to discern good and evil, right and wrong, internally, and outwardly, in what we see.
Topic: Differences between TOS (Old Trek) and New Trek. (Read 8980 times)