User:Harry Doddema

Welcome to my user page
Hello there. I'm Harry, and together with Dan, I founded Memory Alpha way back in 2003. Dan's written a pretty good history, so I won't bore you with the story again.

I'm obviously a Star Trek fan, and I grew up with TNG. I became a Trekkie when I got a proper Internet connection and learned how incredibly consistent and popular the Trek universe actually was. Since then, I've thoroughly enjoyed DS9, and learned to love TOS.

In fact, (early) TOS has become my favorite. The vision of Roddenberry, Jefferies, etc. during the early days of TOS are difficult to match.

My second favorite probably has to be DS9. It was the first series to break with the strictly serial format, and it really got the chance to expand the Star Trek universe. Somehow, it feels closely related to TOS. TNG was not bad either, although parts of it have aged quite badly, especially the extreme political correctness.

Then we come to the Other Two series. I can't do anything with Voyager. It doesn't really take place in the known Star Trek universe. Who cares about all those unknown aliens-of-the-week? Who even cares about one single lost starship? There never was an urgency to get home, and Voyager was doing just fine. If the ship had exploded in episode 2, the Trek universe wouldn't have noticed, really.

Enterprise has a different problem. As a prequel series, not only did it blatantly intrude on what had long been the realm of fan fiction, it also failed to be truely different from the other series. There were some entertaining moments, and Manny Coto's stories were truely a lot of fun and very enjoyable to watch, but the series never was convincing enough as a true prequel to TOS and the other series.

The problem with both ENT and VOY was that they failed to break away from the typical Star Trek plots, and were smothered by the millions of minute details of continuity. For a new series (or movie), if there will ever be such a thing, I think it's producers seriously have to consider 'cleaning up' the Star Trek universe.

Sub-pages

 * Styles
 * /monobook.css
 * /monaco.css
 * /Sandbox
 * /Donation page - A piece of MA history
 * /Federation members