I grew up watching, among many other TV series, Star Trek the original series. I don’t think I had a choice but to be a fan of it – because all of my friends were fans of the series.

Many years later, when I first came to the US, the third season of Star Trek: The New Generation was already on and only one of my friends followed it and mentioned it a few times to me. I made excuses like:

• I like the Original Series better
• The Next Generation is sooooooo inferior to the Original
• Picard was nothing compared to Kirk
• TNG didn’t have Spock

Looking back, the last excuse was, and still is, actually the only legitimate argument. After I had finally broken my tie to the Original Series and started watching TNG I became a bigger fan of Picard and Data then I had ever been of Kirk. Most of the individual episodes of TNG were way more entertaining too than any of the Original Series episodes.

– manzoor