My kids want to get into Star Trek, and I had them at least sample The Original Series just so they had some idea of what the "Next" generation is. One of the handful we watched was the Naked Now, the original story in which the crew gets a disease that makes everyone like super drunk, which was followed on in the second episode of TNG. Even ignoring the planet exploding for no reason, and its mass wildly fluctuating (huh-what now?), the episode ends in the Enterprise restarting its engines in a tearing hurry by "imploding" them, which causes them to go so fast they go back in time three days. I had forgotten about that! Moreover, the only reason they go back in time three days is that's when they chose to stop; there is no reason to believe they couldn't have continued on much longer. Forget slingshotting around the sun in a dangerous manner, there's a TOS episode that establishes that Kirk can damn near simply radio down to Scotty and tell him to rig the engines to travel back in time again. They even rhapsodize at the end of the episode about how amazingly useful such a thing might be in the future!
(I run on the theory that if the Enterprise can accidentally do it, even if it is risky, surely you can build a thing to do it deliberately if you try.)
(TBH I don't love where Star Trek is right now, but they've got a long way to go before they run out.)
Hmmm maybe it's more of a Roddenberry era trek vs later trek kind of thing. That was an early episode of TNG from when he was still alive. Star trek kind of changed direction after that. I liked the later series, but they did lack something the original series and early TNG had.
>(TBH I don't love where Star Trek is right now, but they've got a long way to go before they run out.)
I just wish they'd continue the story after Voyager instead of going further and further back in time. It seems pointless to me. We already know what's going to happen. I never was a big fan of prequels in general, but it just seems worse with star trek.
(I run on the theory that if the Enterprise can accidentally do it, even if it is risky, surely you can build a thing to do it deliberately if you try.)
(TBH I don't love where Star Trek is right now, but they've got a long way to go before they run out.)