YMMV / Star Trek: Vanguard

• Broken Base: Whether or not you believe the setting is too Darker and Edgier to be considered Star Trek or if its better for the fact it's such a contrast to other works set in TOS era.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The name of Cervantes Quinn's starship? Rocinante.
  • A Darker and Edgier TOS-era series where characters drop the F-bomb? Talk about being ahead of the curve...
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This is arguably the darkest set of Star Trek stories ever done. Starfleet is shown to be corrupt, meddling with forces they don't understand, and full of Broken Ace characters that are willing to Shoot the Dog (or even Kick the Dog) in order to achieve their aims. Many of the characters are also deeply flawed on a personal level. It's quite the contrast to typical depictions of the organization.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Jeanine Vinueza. Jeanine is an arrogant and condescending colonial administrator who is every bit as convinced of her righteousness as a typical TNG officer. She wants to keep the Federation off her colony despite the presence of Klingons and doesn't head any of the warnings by her ex-husband Reyes. Reyes can't tell her specifics but she's so full of herself that she throws caution to the wind with horrific results. The fact she's an esper (psychic) makes her feel even more entitled to know people's secrets,
• The Woobie: Much of the cast.
  • T'Prynn is a lesbian Vulcan who was forced into a Arranged Marriage with the controlling abusive Sten. She managed to kill him in single combat but subjected her to semi-literal Mind Rape that put his katra in her mind. Sten proceeded to torment her for decades after. T'Prynn eventually finds love with a fellow intelligence agent but has to work her as an asset while engaged in their affair. Then she has to betray "Anna"/Lurqal and this gets the Klingon double agent killed.
  • Tim Pennington is a adulterous journalist who destroyed his marriage due to an affair with a Starfleet officer. After she's killed in the kline of duty, he attempts to expose the circumstances that led to her death but is framed by T'Prynn in order to protect the station's operational security. He ends up partnered with Lovable Rogue Cervantes Quinn and loses both his marriage as well as career.
  • Commodore Reyes is a starfleet officer who suffers from a failed marriage due to his wife hating the fact he kept secrets from her. This coming with being a Starfleet officer dealing with classified material. She proceeds to set up a colony on a world he knows to be dangerous but can't warn her without breaking operational security. She's killed along with all of her colonists and he proceeds to destroy his career by revealing he ordered the subsequent obliteration of the planet.
  • Cervantes Quinn starts as The Alcoholic and a Lovable Rogue before straightening up his life, working for Starfleet, and falling in love. He goes back to the bottle after the death of the woman he loves during a mission, resulting in him feeling it was All for Nothing.

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