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The series
- Many of the things Trekkies hate about Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were already very present in the much-lauded The Next Generation or even The Original Series. For example, the often criticized anomaly of the week was the center of some of TNG's most popular and acclaimed episodes ("Yesterday's Enterprise", "Cause And Effect", "Parallels", "All Good Things", to name just a few). Other things like the malfunctioning holodeck, the evil versions of regular characters, the shuttle crash plots, and the B-plots that feel like a soap opera were all things that TOS and TNG introduced, mostly to fan approval. But it wasn't until later in the franchise that they really started to grate on viewers, since it finally started to seem like the same thing over and over again regardless of quality.
- The holodeck deserves special mention. In the TNG days, holodeck episodes were often held in high regard; "The Big Goodbye" won the show one of its first Emmys. It worked because TNG was supposed to be a series about the promises and experiences of a post-scarcity future, and something as nutty and aspirational as a holodeck worked great there (and it was a more elegant way to do an Out-of-Genre Experience than TOS' coincidental gangster, Nazi, and Roman planets). In Voyager, though, which was supposed to be a show about a bunch of people living on the edge and eking their way home, it couldn't help but look bafflingly out-of-place. It even became the partial Trope Namer for Voodoo Shark with how stupid the explanation for why something as extravagant as a constantly-malfunctioning holodeck was kept running when the food replicators were being rationed turned out to be.
- The Cliffhanger ending of TNG's "The Best of Both Worlds" was written with no idea of how anything would be resolved, due to nobody being certain whether Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) would return the next season. It worked out amazingly well, but it unfortunately encouraged the crew to keep doing this across the whole franchise, with increasingly diminishing returns.
- One of the main reasons Dr. Pulaski rubbed fans the wrong way in TNG was her frequent verbal sniping at Data. But this had precedent in TOS; namely, the way Bones had a habit of trying to cut down Spock. What made fans enjoy (or at least tolerate) it coming from Bones but dislike it coming from Pulaski was the differences between their targets. Spock was hardly innocent of that kind of behavior himself and could and did give as good as he got; in contrast, not only did Data not retaliate against Pulaski's jabs, but he barely seemed to understand what she was doing, making their dynamic a lot more uncomfortable.note Not helping matters was the fact that while Spock was a somewhat frosty Jerk with a Heart of Gold who could be very condescending to many of his human crewmates, Data was a wide-eyed Nice Guy who wanted to become more human, so while Bones came across as an everyman trying to take a smug coworker down a peg, Pulaski seemed more like an unpleasant racist bullying someone who did nothing to warrant such treatment apparently just because he was different, and it contributed to the decision to write out Beverly Crusher in favor of her being undone.
- Voyager and Enterprise get a lot of flack for the fanservicey catsuits worn by Seven of Nine and T'Pol, respectively, and the characters are accused of only being there for the fanservice. Of course, the first such crew member to wear a sexy outfit instead of the expected uniform was one Deanna Troi from TNG — and her version showed a lot of cleavage to boot. Also, while Seven and T'Pol had a great deal of Character Development, A Day in the Limelight was once known as "Good Troi Episode," which is when forgotten or minor characters get the spotlight — Deanna mattering was such an exception to the rule that you name a trope after it and it's still joked by fans that her job was to state the obvious. This is a case where the original sin was greater before, but forgiven because First Installment Wins. note
- The Prime Directive is often criticized as a near-religious document that is usually used by the writers as a poor attempt at moral exploration, and simply allows the characters to act like jerkasses being completely insensitive to the plight of innocent beings. Fans often blame TNG for introducing this, and it's been ubiquitous with Trek ever since. However, not only did TOS originate the Prime Directive, it originated its use as a poor vehicle for moral and ethical dilemmas, and introduced the concept of the characters being willing to die simply to uphold it for often questionable reasons. But in TOS, the crew’s main priority was always placed upon protecting the endangered aliens, with them normally ignoring the Prime Directive to save the day. While the explanations as to why it didn’t apply here were often handwaved, the fact they were clearly trying to protect, save, or liberate innocent people made it easy to support them. In the rare events they did try to uphold the Prime Directive, it was generally when the only people in danger were themselves. While this was often only to prevent the plot being solved too quickly, having them willing to sacrifice themselves was still vaguely admirable (if morally dubious and often flimsy).
In response to how casually what was supposed to be the most sacred law was ignored, the writers of TNG put a lot more emphasis on the importance of upholding the Prime Directive. Initially, this made sense with Captain Picard’s more by-the-book stance compared to Captain Kirk, and several episodes focused on the idea that interfering, even with the best intentions, could do more harm than good. However, over time, this argument degraded to the point it stopped making sense, with the heroes treating an entire species needlessly going extinct as being preferable to breaking the Prime Directive, even in cases where disaster was avoidable without anyone learning of the interference. As such, it became a lot harder to side with them. By the time of Star Trek: Voyager, this had become a serious problem, with the writers often portraying Janeway’s insistence on following the Prime Directive to the point of pseudo-fanaticism yet still acting like she was completely right, with them providing no arguments to justify this extreme (aside from many attempts to break it being ways that would have ended the show too early if it meant violating it to get out of being stranded). Likewise, the technique of using the Prime Directive to not resolve the conflict too quickly had become so overused that it was clearly being hammered into situations where it clearly didn’t apply or make any sense just to lengthen the conflict. These factors caused it to lose any impact whatsoever, and fans grew to hate it. The nadir came in the Enterprise episode "Dear Doctor", which showed the apparent origin of the Directive — in which the protagonists chose to withhold a cure that would save an entire species from a slow death, based on a mixture of barely-informed hunches and warped pseudo-Darwinian ideals. Star Trek: Discovery finally tossed this in favor of Gene L. Coon's original version, explicitly applying it only to prewarp societies and allowing covert interference to prevent the extinction of a species. - Star Trek's obsession with time travel is grating on quite a few fans, something that even J. J. Abrams embraced with his reboot franchise, but Star Trek has been using time travel casually since TOS. It helps that some of the franchise's most popular and acclaimed episodes ("The City on the Edge of Forever", "Yesterday’s Enterprise", "All Good Things", "The Visitor") and films (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek: First Contact were the most successful films before Star Trek (2009), itself also built around time travel) have centered on time travel, alternate timelines and universes, etc. Basically, after five different series having happily used time travel over and over again, it can’t help but feel a bit overused and repetitive, especially after Enterprise tried to use a time war as the basis for a Myth Arc, which was regarded as a convoluted failure and killed off in the premiere of season 4.
- TNG's Season 7 is widely thought to be the weakest post-Beard season since the producers were simultaneously working on Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Generations, as well as laying the groundwork for Voyager. In hindsight, this was probably the first sign of "franchise exhaustion" that became obvious in the early 2000s with the lukewarm reception of Enterprise and Star Trek: Nemesis, which would drag the Star Trek franchise to a standstill for several years until the reboot films.
- Deep Space Nine started the trend towards deconstruction of the Federation's post-scarcity utopia, but this was initially just a combination of war-induced grime and an acknowledgement of the differing conditions and local politics of the frontiers versus the core worlds (reference Ben Sisko's "saint in paradise" monologue in "The Maquis, Part II"). A particular case was the introduction of Section 31, which purported to be an agency that existed to do what Starfleet legally and morally couldn't. Later installments of the franchise would portray this attitude positively, seemingly forgetting that DS9 largely but subtly painted this as corruption, which wasn't helped by the fact that DS9 occasionally flubbed its own I Did What I Had to Do stories.note
- DS9 also started the Darker and Edgier trend that Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard's first two seasons got heavily criticized for from hardcore Trek fans who perceived such a shift as straying too far from Gene Roddenberry's more optimistic vision. In truth, DS9 got the same flak for it back in the day, but wound up being Vindicated by History for it in later years because fans could appreciate how its more morally grey settings offered a fairly rich ground for realistic characters and development (i.e. Sisko being a widower and being hailed as an emissary to the people he's trying to help, O'Brien's marriage struggles, Kira reconciling with the actions she took as a terrorist, Bashir secretly being an augment and having to hide that out of fear), and the show took plenty of opportunity to show how those struggles affected their choices when faced with a war that could destroy the very paradise they were trying to protect. Discovery and Picard weren't given as much leeway, as their explorations of a galaxy at war/struggling with the aftermath of war and disaster weren't given enough time to explore (little is discussed about the Federation's post Dominion War attitude and how it affected their decision to not help Romulus evacuate after a terrorist attack on Mars), some of their character conflicts or revelations come off as too silly or cartoonish (such as Spock's dislike of Burnham stemming from petty insults she hurled at him as a child as part of a misguided attempt to save himnote or Captain Lorca being an over-the-top wannabe dictator from the Mirror Universe), or strayed too far from how the characters were previously established without delving into why they suddenly were this way (chiefly The Federation refusing to help Romulus for their own pragmatic reasons, or Picard becoming an embittered old man waiting to die on his vineyard when he quit in disgust).
- The apparent rule of "no inter-crew conflict outlasts its episode and everyone gets along with the captain" started in TOS and continued in TNG. It worked well in those shows because their casts were a basically agreeable bunch who largely shared similar ideals, and the heavily episodic structure allowed for a Status Quo Is God approach, even contributing to the chill, optimistic atmosphere. Its continuation in Voyager and Enterprise, though, is often cited as one of the worst aspects of those shows. Both attempted to do actual arcs and darker themes, but were largely hamstrung by the fact that the crew were never allowed to actually conflict. For instance, the Maquis crewmembers in Voyager quietly integrate with the crew just a few episodes into the first season, squelching potentially interesting storylines and removing the entire point of them being Maquis in the first place. This also resulted in issues that by all rights should have sparked firm moral debates and divided the crew instead receiving unanimous agreement, most infamously curing the Valakians in Enterprise and relocating the Ba'ku in Star Trek: Insurrection.note The result was a harmonious get-along-gang atmosphere that felt entirely at-odds with the intended grit or ambiguity, and themes that deserved real examination being sandblasted off in a single Rousing Speech.
- From TOS onward, the series went with the idea of "the captain is always right"—that is to say, the captain is generally assumed to be the show's moral center, and if they make a judgment while knowing all the facts, it's almost certainly the right one, if not outright the episode's moral. In the case of Kirk and Picard, this worked well because Kirk and Picard, for the most part, really were that good on average, and convincingly read as The Paragon in enough situations for the audience to trust their judgment (though they could sometimes screw up and get called out for it). Sisko and Janeway were more overtly flawed, and Voyager was infamous for Janeway's fluctuating morality, but they stayed likeable enough on average. However, Enterprise tipped things over the scale with Archer, who was the first captain to be written as not just flawed, but seriously and consistently flawed in a way that seemed to go against the franchise's core ethos, being racist, arrogant, reckless, distrustful, and intolerant. This wouldn't have been bad on its own, but since Archer had to be the show's moral center, that meant the characters he butted heads with (mostly Vulcans) had to be written as completely unlikable and unreasonable to make Archer's attitude seem justified. "A Night in Sickbay", often cited as the episode that forever put Enterprise's ratings into freefall, saw Archer spend the entire runtime putting the "Ass" in Ambassador and still being treated as the good guy because he apologized in the end for doing something he acknowledged he wasn't actually sorry for.
- Speaking of Janeway and Archer, much of the issues they suffered in their characterization could actually be traced back to Sisko, who's widely lauded as one of the franchise's most complex Captains—a Captain who also made a lot of morally dubious decisions, and made a fair amount of mistakes in his career. But despite that, Sisko's flaws worked for his character because the setting of the show called for it; he was stuck between his duty as a Starfleet Officer and being hailed by the very people he was trying to help as the Emissary to their gods, he was a single father with a growing boy and a grieving widower, and he was eventually put at the forefront of a war against a xenophobic empire threatening to wipe out everyone and everything he cared for just because they were in the way. For Sisko, those hard calls he made (as famously shown in "In The Pale Moonlight", the most lauded of Deep Space Nine's run) were precisely because he knew he had to sacrifice his moral conscious for the pragmatic reason of ending the wholesale slaughter of the Alpha Quadrant, and he always took that responsibility so his crew wouldn't have to. If they did something wrong, Sisko would chew them out in public, but he would sympathize with them in private. And if he did make a serious mistake, few would be afraid to call him out on it, and he knew how badly he messed up. But though Janeway and Archer got into a fair amount of conflict in their time, and their resepcitve circumstances of being lost in the Delta Quadrant with no quick way home and being the first space pioneers of humanity were certainly no cakewalk, it was a far cry from Sisko's tragic circumstances; any morally dubious action they took was always treated as the right one, no questions asked. If the crew objected, they were always treated as wrong, and if they did anything just as bad, it was a full-on punishment. If either Janeway or Archer had any failings that affected the crew or the ship (such as in "Equinox" or the aforementioned "A Night In Sickbay"), very rarely would they get called out for it. Between their inconsistent characterization and their attempting to copy Sisko's formula without the same ingredients, Janeway and Archer found themselves the more controversial of the two compared to "The Sisko".
- Many fans would argue that the franchise's decline in the 21st century was brought about (in part) by the creators' decision to put most of their time and effort into exploring the history of the Star Trek universe rather than actually moving said history forward, resulting in prequels (Star Trek: Enterprise, the reboot films, and Star Trek: Discovery) dominating the franchise's output at the expense of sequels (like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the original series' film continuation). Even Star Trek: Picard, the one notable exception to this rule, is more about wrapping up the story of one character than about exploring a new era in the history of the galaxy.
But exploring the history of the Star Trek universe—whether through time travel, flashbacks, or encounters with time-displaced historical figures—is also a time-honored franchise tradition that goes all the way back to the original series. Some of the most acclaimed stories in the franchise ("Space Seed", "Encounter at Farpoint", Star Trek: First Contact, and "Past Tense", among others) got considerable dramatic mileage out of delving into the history of the chaotic 21st century, resulting in the introduction of Khan Noonien Singh, the Eugenics Wars, the Third World War, Zephram Cochrane, and the Bell Riots—widely considered to be some of the franchise's best ideas. The thing is, those stories were really acclaimed because they used their world-building business as a vehicle for character development and thematic work, and they added depth and nuance to the franchise's iconic utopian vision of the future by showing audiences the many hardships that humanity had to overcome to earn its place in the stars. The same can't necessarily be said of Enterprise and Discovery—two shows that used world-building as their primary selling points, and mostly explored the history of the Star Trek universe for its own sake without having many interesting things to say about it.note - A common critique of Star Trek: Nemesis is that the film's finale is essentially predicated on everyone involved forgetting that the crew should have a lot of ways to get Data and Picard off the Scimitar and blow it up safely (most notably, using the transporters in one of the ship's shuttlecraft). But if you look over the course of the franchise, you'll find that this is hardly a flaw that started with Nemesis. Really, you could probably cut some shows down by a few seasons if you removed every episode that could have been resolved before the halfway mark if the good guys remembered that shuttlecraft have transporters in them (or, to a lesser extent, that phasers can be jury-rigged into explosives, or that one can beam things besides people on board enemy ships). The key difference was that this was the first time that forgetting these facts had directly led to the death of a main characternote , which meant people were thinking about it a hell of a lot more than the times where it merely led to the characters coming up with an alternative clever solution to save the day and everyone involved—it turned a Heroic Sacrifice into a Stupid Sacrifice.
- Into Darkness caught a good deal of flack for its reveal that Benedict Cumberbatch's "John Harrison" character was actually that universe's version of Khan, with many calling the casting of a white actor as an Indian man racist.note But the original Khan wasn't played by an Indian actor either; instead, he was played by the Mexican Ricardo Montalbán. However, not only was that sort of thing considered more acceptable in the 1960s,note but casting an "ethnic" actor as an "ethnic" character was considered a step forward back then, even if their ethnicities didn't match.
- In the DS9 episode "Take Me Out To The Holosuite", Sisko gets into a tiff with his old Starfleet Academy rival, Capt. Solok, an insufferably-smug Vulcan, which leads to them pitting their crews against one another in a game of baseball. One might point to this episode as a root to the extreme Jerkassery of Vulcans on Enterprise, which was among that show's biggest criticisms — although some might argue that a lot of Vulcans in TOS were jerks too. This is just one of the few times that the jerkass behavior was a plot point rather than a side note.
The films
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Although widely seen as saving the franchise, Star Trek II set some trends that were subjected to criticism in subsequent Trek productions.
- This film started the trend of every Star Trek film being built around a confrontation with one particular villain, as it was the first in a very long line of Actionized Sequels.note For better or for worse, this was a necessary change of pace for the series after the lukewarm response to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which went for a more cerebral storyline but was roundly criticized for its slow pace. Two decades later, when Star Trek: Nemesis became a Box Office Bomb after being criticized for its one-dimensional villain and its gratuitous action (most infamously, the nonsensical car chase that comes out of nowhere), the producers finally realized that they couldn't keep milking the old Wrath of Khan formula indefinitely. The Star Trek reboot films avoided that pitfall by placing less emphasis on the big villain and more on the ensemble cast trying to deal with the villain's plot.
- The film was also the first installment to really introduce the Screen Shake and Explosive Instrumentation in battle as hallmarks of the franchise. The Original Series had fairly sedate cues that they were in battle, flashing lights and the bridge crew lurching to one side with the camera just doing a moving Dutch Angle. The Motion Picture featured a light rumble (with a video distortion effect) and just one console explodes on Chekhov as an apparently deliberate power surge from V'Ger. This film had actual explosions with collapsing walls and falling support structures, along with stunt work as people are flipping over banisters, giving the starship battles a sense of danger. However, these big explosions only happen as the result of serious damage, such as the bridge of the Reliant being struck by phaser fire from the Enterprise, or the Reliant having a warp nacelle blown off (and, more to the point, almost all combat is done shieldless for various reasons, to narratively make the combat far more dangerous and impactful; as a result, almost every attack both ships make is of major consequence and is believably portrayed as causing substantial damage, much like actual tall ship battles). As the revival television series took hold, these elements were retained, but were increasingly used in battles where it made no sense, particularly for vessels that were still at high shield strength.
- The Enterprise's interiors are noticeably darker than they they were in the previous film to emphasize the more militaristic atmosphere that director Nicholas Meyer wanted to show, only getting very dark after Khan's initial attack deprives them of primary power. As time went along, Starfleet ships and stations' interiors grew darker (excluding Star Trek (2009) and its sequels, which some would say was an over-correction) that by the time of Star Trek: Discovery and particularly Star Trek: Picard, they were so dark that they drew much mockery among fans
, to the point that when the final two episodes for Picard featured the rebuilt Enterprise-D, fans were thrilled to see a well-lit set again. - Just about every film after Star Trek: The Motion Picture's notorious budget overruns made use of Prop Recycling, reusing models of ships and Stock Footage like crazy. The need to recycle props also had major effects on storytelling—for instance, much of Wrath of Khan happened due to the fact that they only had money for one new spaceship, which became the Reliant. But it didn't get really bad until Star Trek: Generations, which happily reused both models and stock footage from the prior Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in its battle with the Enterprise-D and the Duras Sisters. The reuse became much more noticeable because this was the fourth time a Star Trek film had featured an Enterprise battling an identical Bird of Prey (and the third one in a row), and what was more, this was the battle that brought down the Enterprise-D, a ship almost a century more advanced than its predecessors. Not only was the concept recycled, but the battle itself also felt very similar, and had a weaker justification for why a Galaxy-class starship could be stymied by a tiny little scout ship. And while prior stock footage was mostly stuff like ships sitting in drydock or floating in space, Generations went so far as to recycle the climactic shot of the villain's ship exploding.
- Star Trek: Generations was responsible for destroying the Enterprise-D in the same manner as the original Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Unlike in that film, fans took a lot more umbrage to seeing the second-most famous holder to the Enterprise name go out the way it did, but that issue had its problems elsewhere.
- The Search For Spock destroying the Constitution class Enterprise is widely hailed as one of the franchise's most emotionally devastating and powerful moments, and was considered a bold mold for killing off a major character like that. But the circumstances behind that ship's death made more sense—she was already damaged in the last movie, she was stolen and being operated by a skeleton crew of just five, she was outgunned and outnumbered by Klingons on the hunt, and though it hurt him more than anything, Captain Kirk willingly sacrificed the ship that was like a wife to him to have even the slightest chance of rescuing the man he considered a brother. But when it came time for the Galaxy class Enterprise-D to take her bow, the circumstances were seen as the biggest moment of the crew holding the Idiot Ball up to that point—the much more advanced Enterprise was taken out by an aging Klingon Bird-Of-Prey with far less powerful weapons due to the fact that they hacked Geordi's visor to steal the ship's shield frequency, and no one on the ship either suspected something was up or bothered to adjust the shield frequency. This lead to the ship having a rather unceremonious demise as the saucer separated, but crashed on Veridian III when the shockwave of the stardrive section blowing up sent her plummeting to the planet—and left many fans with a sour taste at seeing the flagship of Starfleet go out like a chump. Fortunately, this wasn't the end for her; unlike the 1701, on Star Trek: Picard, the D would be resurrected many years later, and given one last chance to save the galaxy before being retired to the Fleet Museum.
- Likewise, the idea of the Enterprise-D being subject to The Worf Effect occurred almost every week on The Next Generation, where the crew would firmly grasp the Idiot Ball and land the ship in danger from hostile takeover or threat of destruction because they either lost their competency and pulled something dangerous, or ignored Worf's suggestions to take precautions. It was annoying to be sure that the supposedly most competent crew in Starfleet would keep getting their rears handed to them, but the TV series gave both the crew and the ship Plot Armor that protected them from any permanent harm, and ensured they'd get out of the scrape so they could continue their adventures every week. Come the movies though, that armor was gone, since now anyone on the writing staff and production crew had the willingness to kill off any of the characters if they so felt like it—and the Enterprise-D wound up on the chopping block because they hated the top-heavy filming model and wanted to create a sleeker new Enterprise-E. Picard undid this with the D's final adventure, though ironically, it implied that the very ship that replaced it was somehow unusable thanks to Worf.
- Decades later, this issue would plague the destruction of the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise when she was taken out in Star Trek Beyond—and the emotional impact wasn't there whatsoever. Infamously, the Kelvin films had often been accused of not treating the Enterprise like a proper character and more as just another generic ship, which both TOS and TNG went out of their way to avoid with their respective Enterprises by having the crews treat her like one of their own. And when the 1701 and the D both went out, those losses were treated with a lot more solemnity and mourning (or in the case of the D, undone decades later) because she had meant so much to them. But because the Kelvin crew never formed that strong an attachment to their Enterprise, her being taken out by Krall lacked much of the impact that losing the face of the franchise would normally entail.
- Star Trek: First Contact is still regarded as the best of the TNG films, but it started a number of trends that would hit both the other films and the series surrounding it, to very mixed results.
- First Contact codified the "movie Picard" interpretation of the character, where instead of being the calm and collected logical thinker who tries to find a peaceful solution, Picard came across as much more aggressive, reckless, and unwilling to compromise, partaking in several action scenes. Much of what made it work in First Contact, though, was that it suggested his sudden bouts of violent rage were meant to be out-of-character for him, and he seemed to be having a psychotic break due to unresolved trauma from his time as Locutus, ultimately realizing that he’s letting his emotions cloud his judgement. While it contradicted the series somewhat (Picard seemed to have moved on in post-Locutus episodes), it made enough sense on its face for casual audiences to roll with it and it’s plausible enough that, despite his past insistence to the contrary, he hasn’t fully overcome his past trauma. By the time of Nemesis, you have Picard taking part in offroad dune buggy chases and gunning down a bunch of guys like he's John McClain, and without the wider context, it just became his apparent standard mode of behavior. Not helping was that his feats became a whole lot more over-the-top (and at times sillier), which showed even further that a now-in-his-60s Patrick Stewart didn't exactly make for a credible action hero.
- Related to the point above, this was partially inspired by Patrick Stewart himself. People tend to forget that part of what attracted him to doing a Star Trek series in the first place was that he had spent years in the RSC delivering Shakespearean monologues and actually WANTED a change of pace and to play an action hero. However, an even casual viewer of TNG will tell you that Picard did very little in the way of action scenes, that Riker did most of them (this was referenced in the Star Trek episode of A&E Biography where Stewart said “I want Picard to do the two f words more.”), so naturally, when First Contact made the character a tough guy, he went with it, and continued with the character evolution. It's worth pointing out that this wasn't strictly started by the movies either, several episodes of the show were intended to cater to Patrick Stewart's demand for Picard to have more action scenes. "Starship Mine" is probably the most famous (and most well received) of the "Action Picard" episodes.
- Fans of the Borg tend to bemoan how Star Trek: Voyager completely deflated the threat of the race, but really, most of the seeds for their decreased threat level were planted in First Contact. The most significant of these was introducing the Queen, which not only put a humanoid face on the Collective (something that was supposed to be Locutus's job) but also made them a Keystone Army, when prior to that, the lack of a centralized weak point was one of their most commonly-stated strengths. The Borg tendency towards assimilating outsiders was turned from something they did on occasion out of necessity, to their sole defining motivation, effectively turning them from inscrutable transhumanist beings to zombies with robot parts. And where once a single Cube posed an existential threat to the whole Federation and a single drone was at least a Monster of the Week, First Contact opens with a Cube being engaged and ultimately destroyed by a small fleet, and features drones being cut down by the score. The thing was, the Borg in First Contact were still scary, and while their unstoppability was nerfed, it was clear they were still leagues above the good guys, with a small gang of them managing to nearly lay the Enterprise-E low and eliminate the Federation before it even existed. Meanwhile, Voyager was featuring the Borg on their home turf on an episodic basis, which handily deflated all that menace—even more new weaknesses kept cropping up, the Queen was practically a cartoon supervillain, and by the time of "Scorpion", they were getting their asses handed to them and displaying the tactical knowhow of a broken Roomba.
- In their recap of Star Trek: Enterprise's "A Night in Sickbay", The Agony Booth thought this film hurt the franchise overall by depicting Humans as Naive Newcomers and Vulcans as their "big brothers". This was barely acknowledged at the time, though, as the film is about... well, the First Contact, and therefore the Vulcans and humanity only appear together for a single, largely silent scene."TOS showed humans and alien races venturing into the unknown as equals, while Enterprise, on the other hand, was less about 'where no man has gone before' and more about 'where everybody besides mankind has gone before'."
- The reboot itself contained a lot of aspects that people harp on Star Trek Into Darkness for, along with many other modern projects: being even more actionized than Nemesis, silly or lore-breaking Worldbuilding elements (not helped by the creators' constant flip-flopping between claiming it was a full-on reboot or a continuation of the past installments)note , recycling plot threads from other shows and doing them worse, and considerably less focus on the more thoughtful or socially progressive themes the franchise was known for. At the time, though, these elements were largely accepted as nitpicks or a Necessary Evil, since Star Trek as a franchise had been dead in the water for years, and if this was what it took to get general audiences interested, so be it. When Into Darkness kept up these problems and added some more, fan reception was a lot colder, and the collapse of the "Kelvin Timeline" part of the franchise after Star Trek Beyond underperformed (which, ironically, was seen as a Win Back the Crowd moment in that area) and its sequel vanished into Development Hell left people even less willing to forgive them.
- One particularly criticized aspect of the Kelvin Timeline was the drastic redesign of the Enterprise, looking far different (at least aesthetic wise) to the version from TOS. Granted, the idea of translating '60's sets and graphics to film probably would have looked too goofy for a big-budget feature, but the futuristic appearance felt too clean and modern looking for audiences to appreciate (especially on the bridge). In truth, the Enterprise had already been redesign back in the 1970s, when it was given a refit look for the canceled Phase II tv series, and got further refined for The Motion Picture—and the bridge doesn't look all that dissimilar to the Kelvin iteration. But it was a lot more tolerable back then due to the decade long absence of live-action Trek since The Original Series was cancelled, and the movie itself treated the Enterprise as having undergone numerous upgrades to keep her in exploratory shape—a natural evolution of Matt Jefferies' original design. The Kelvin Enterprise wasn't so lucky; though it kept the same basic shape and configuration, the external and internal appearance was too futuristic and far too removed from the original design that fans had little tolerance for this particular appearance of the iconic ship. Fortunately, Star Trek: Discovery was able to redesign the original Enterprise for that particular show, keeping it closer to the original design while still modernizing it enough that it could plausibly be refit to how it appeared in TOS, both inside and out, and Picard would also present a modern CGI variation of the classic Constitution with the New Jersey in the Fleet Museum.
