Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), 178 episodes
Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is a spin-off of Star Trek (TOS), which ran from 1966-1969, and it takes place between 70 and 80 years after that series. It features an all-new crew on an all-new Enterprise
Where TOS had better leads (Kirk, Spock, McCoy), TNG has a better cast of characters. TOS never did a thing with Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and, to a lesser extent, Scotty, but TNG spends quality time with all its characters. This is facilitated by Picard, the ultimate delegator (he is, in fact, the anti-Kirk).
The primary cast’s acting (leaving out Wil Wheaton) is generally top-notch – Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner are particularly excellent (they also get the lion’s share of the good material), and the cast on the whole has great rapport. Marina Sirtis is usually fine but occasionally surprisingly terrible (although Troi consistently gets some of the corniest dialogue in the series). TNG also features some fantastic recurring characters – most notably John DeLancie’s Q, Majel Barrett’s Lwaxana Troi, and Dwight Schultz’s Barclay. They are fantastic because of the actors as much or more than how their characters are written.
The Enterprise-D is a warm, friendly place, and its crew is one big happy family. This is Gene Roddenberry’s triumph of secular humanism. It’s a double-edged sword: sure, the Enterprise is a great place – you’d want to live there, actually, and its crew makes a great team – but the complete lack of tension between the crewmembers gives you less opportunity for drama, and it by necessity creates some rather flat characters.
Take Dr. Pulaski. A lot of people hated her. Yes, she was McCoy-lite, but I liked her because she added a little bit of much-needed tension. Besides, the writers never figured out anything interesting to do with Dr. Crusher, who is always perfectly likeable yet terribly bland.
And then there’s the oft-reviled Wesley Crusher. He wasn’t very interesting – he was good for deus ex machina technobabble problem-solving, and that was about it. This made him redundant with Geordi once they made Geordi chief engineer (since Geordi really didn’t have anything going on before that and it boggles the mind that they didn’t think they needed a chief engineer when they put the show together), who was himself often hard-pressed for interesting things to do. While I didn’t find Wesley as annoying as a lot of people did, Picard was wrong – when Wesley left, he wasn’t missed.
What Star Trek: The Next Generation does very well is explore its characters and their relationships. The best characters – Picard, Data and Worf – are the ones who allow the writers to explore the Star Trek world more deeply (they’re also the only ones who have any real degree of struggle or conflict in their lives). Morality, culture, ethics, duty, honor – at its best, TNG delves into all of these in fascinating detail. And there are always a lot of very funny character moments sprinkled in; the reason they’re so great is because we know the characters so well, and it all feels natural.
There are some issues, of course. Just like TOS did, TNG often glosses over issues of language in situations where “Oh, we have a universal translator” just doesn’t get it done (“Who Watches the Watchers,” “Face of the Enemy,” and “Homeward,” most notably).
Saucer separation was much ballyhooed early in the series, and Picard seemed inclined to do it at the drop of a hat. But in later episodes, in logical situations, it was deemed unfeasible or neglected entirely by the writers. Why? Because it slows down the story and makes the Enterprise
There are a large number of costuming issues throughout the show. Characters often wear the wrong rank insignia; sometimes they wear the wrong uniform. And you can often spot the padded muscles in Worf’s suit in the first two seasons. In Season 3, the main characters got the high-collared sweatshirt-jackets – and the spandex jumpsuits got handed down to the extras. Then came the new high-collared jumpsuits that only women and extras wore. At least they did away with the skirt-for-men fairly quickly.
And then there’s O’Brien. In “Encounter at Farpoint” he was an ensign. Then he was a full lieutenant all the way up through Season 5. But for Season 6, when the writers figured out they were going to ship him off to be the repairman at Deep Space Nine, all of a sudden he’s not even a commissioned officer. No explanation of any kind was or has been offered – this one’s up there with old Klingons/new Klingons as far as unsatisfactorily explained discrepancies (the paltry attempts of Star Trek: Enterprise to explain the lack of forehead ridges in TOS being, well, paltry).
A couple of other irksome things: It always strained credibility that Riker could/would turn down numerous commands of his own to remain on the Enterprise as first officer, but in Season 4 and following, with Starfleet woefully shorthanded, it’s just ridiculous. Furthermore, characters frequently leave the holodeck with holographic dirt on their clothes, and even occasionally with holographic papers and such. And why is it always so easy to steal a shuttlecraft? Everybody and their mom has no trouble whatsoever leaving the ship without authorization. And then there’s “Contagion,” where hitting ctrl-alt-del and doing a system restore saves the Enterprise
Even so, TNG was reasonably consistent in quality throughout its run, and it had relatively few clunkers. As usual, Season 1, where the writers are still feeling out the characters and the world, is the worst. It rehashes quite a few things from TOS, and Wesley Crusher wears the sweaters that even Bill Cosby didn’t want. Early on, too, the series featured some truly bad guest actors. TNG really got going about midway through Season 3, and it never looked back until it started running out of steam in Season 7, which was up-and-down. And in spite of its flaws (“Anti-time flows backwards? No freaking way! Who would have thought?”), “All Good Things…” is about as good a series finale as it is possible to have.
Some of the poorer episodes suffer from too many writers (yes, plot holes, too). Too many cooks spoil the soup. One often feels that the series was held back by the writers’ lack of imagination, or at least by their refusal to take chances. In TNG, the possibilities were endless, but the show missed a number of wonderful opportunities. Take “The Inner Light,” for example – this was a perfect chance to do new and interesting things with Picard – the episode practically demanded it. But the writers left him as he was – in fact, they left everyone as they were, in comfortable tracks that eventually became a rut (this is partly a necessary symptom of having everyone be one big happy bland family). By contrast, “The Best of Both Worlds” had far-reaching ramifications that were fully explored, both by Picard throughout the series and in Star Trek: First Contact and by Sisko on Deep Space Nine.
The way the writers handled the season finales was surprising, in a rather disappointing way. In Season 1, we get a regular episode. In Season 2, we get a completely worthless clips episode. Then in Season 3 we get “The Best of Both Worlds,” which has one of the greatest cliffhangers in television history. And it was steadily downhill from there: “Redemption” was fine, “Time’s Arrow” was okay but totally unsuspenseful, and “Descent” was one of the least-compelling “cliffhangers” ever. It was like “The Best of Both Worlds” set the bar so impossibly high that they didn’t even bother after that (for the record, the same-season two-parter “Chain of Command” was substantially more interesting than some of these season-enders, especially “Descent”).
Before I get to my favorite episodes, let me say this: many people get excited for “Yesterday’s Enterprise Enterprise,
My favorite episodes:
1. “The Best of Both Worlds”
2. “Ménage à Troi”
3. “Déjà Q”
4. “Reunion ”
5. “Relics”
6. “Chain of Command”
7. “Parallels”
8. “All Good Things…”
9. “The Offspring”
10. “Tapestry”
11. “The Measure of a Man”
12. “Data’s Day”
13. “The Survivors”
14. “I Borg”
15. “Sins of the Father”
16. “The Defector”
17. “The Wounded”
18. “The Inner Light”
The worst episodes:
175. “Time Squared”
176. “Clues”
177. “Conundrum”
178. “Shades of Gray”
On the whole, Star Trek: The Next Generation offered top-notch, intelligent, personal science fiction on a regular basis. I give it an 8.
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