The bigger the theme, the harder to live up to it. LOTR does a great job of integrating the theme and delivering a deep and and enjoyable ruleset, so I tend to look at other big themes to see if they live up to that, and note often then not, they don't. There are clearly pins designed before a theme is selected and those invariably disappoint. Often when I look at a really crappy theme implementation I wonder if that was the case. Seems that Stern goes into some pins with the plan to take the time to hopefully make it a great game, others are wham, bam thank you ma'am -- lets get it on the line
The new star trek was disappointing, since it seemed more like an updated version of STTNG rather than something new and innovative. Considering that 20 years have past since STTNG I was expecting more. The dots seemed more like a step back from the original.
I think the two Pin2K games are disappointments, but given they were the first on that platform, not a surprise. The playfield were just way, way too vanilla. Would have been interesting to see where they would have taken that platform as they got more comfortable with the technology.