Were TNG’s First Two Seasons Really That Bad?
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Riker's beard is a good barometer for episode quality.
I always see the less Wesley Crusher screen time per episode works just as well.
@@jasperswarp Wesley had great potential. They wrote him as an annoying child through the first 2 seasons but he really started taking shape in season 3. That is until Berman screwed him over and he decided to leave the show. It's a shame really because I could see him and picard really having a close relationship through the duration of the show if he had stayed on.
@Grand Muff Twerkin -The less you see it the better the episode! That guy is cringier than Richard Simmons, Hasselhoff, and Steven Seagull guest starring in a non ironic nu-metal xmas video with Limp Bizkit. worst of the Eighties! I could never see how a lady could stand him and his godawful eyebrows within a parsec without needing to tear her skin off! Gross!!! ROFL
Egad, it just dawned on me where I've seen that muted dull rainbow swatch before thats on the current ovaried Dr. Who, its on Wesley's early years uniform.
@@jasperswarp Certainly young Wesley. He gets better as he grows up and becomes less of a "child prodigy".
I can totally do without the Pedo Traveler.
Season 1 had another great episode in "Heart of Glory" when those renegade Klingons tried to tempt Worf into joining them. They wanted to be legends in their own time, but Worf knew that duty, honor, and loyalty is also important. In the end, Worf was forced to kill Korris after he threatened to destroy the ship, thereby giving him the honorable death he wanted. He knew that simply turning Korris over to the Klingon Empire would've dishonored him. This was long before Ronald D. Moore started writing for the show. Plus, that little visual transmitter Geordi used to show the crew how his VISOR worked was cool. 🖖😎👍
And Worf just didn't look NEARLY as intimidating when they still had him wearing the 'gold' fabric 'Klingon' sash from TOS before changing to the cool METAL version in later seasons! Also, switching the entire cast from those one piece 'jumpsuits' to the two piece uniforms was a HUGE improvement to everyone's appearance. No more 'pajamas in space! lol
Although I was a fan of Troi's earlier costumes, which Marina Sirtis has referred to as the 'Space Cheer Leader' look. :)
@@StreetPreacherr Plus, the two-piecers gave rise to "The Picard Maneuver" (the real one). 🖖😎👍
"Heart of Glory" is an excellent episode and it is my favorite TNG episode.
@@junglemoose2164 And don't forget that awesome scene when Korris gives a kid back to Worf as Klingons do not take hostages as only cowards do.
Literally just watched that - and it was an excellent episode overall - great soundtrack too
The slight "TOS" kind of references in the first season of TNG in particular is actually what i always liked a lot because it helped to really bridge between both shows. Also the departure of Tasha Yar is what always left a huge impression on me for multiple reasons. Not only does it show us how fragile life can be and main characters in a show are never truly safe. It also made Denise's character even more interesting due to her later re-appearances like in "Yesterdays Enterprise" for example. And i also loved that she left the show in good terms and the producers gave her at least a very bittersweet good bye. And this episodes ending STILL touches me to tears. As a kid i had the biggest crush on Tasha (hey.... i like Tomboy girls) and i was heartbroken when Armus killed her in sheer pleasure. Data's talk with Picard after Tasha's funeral are such a kick in the guts. But in the right way. :')
Fun fact that has largely been white washed in the last 20 years:
Denise Crosby was indeed fired from TNG for having posed nude. In the modern era the story has been changed to say that Denise wanted to quit. Untrue. Though it probably is true that she left the show on good terms with Roddenberry et al. There was a great deal of pressure in society to axe her, as it was seen as a bad thing by a great many (including many fans of the show) that she did this.
Denise isn't the only person to have lost a job or opportunities in the late 80s due to having posed nude. Another example is Julie McCullough on Growing Pains. In the modern era it's all blamed on Kirk Cameron, however again, there were widespread calls to have her axed. The decisions of both of these terminations came from the top and had a good amount of public support. In the case of Denise, Roddenberry did not make the decision.
@@DRourk I think a similar thing was the reason Kirstie Alley was replaced by Robin Curtis as Saavik.
Agree with your views on that absolute classic episode. The eulogy scene has the same effect on me too ...beautifully poignant
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I always liked Robin Curtis more. Kirstie always looked like she was holding back laughter
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I heard Kirstie was holding out for more money.
S1 did give us a few good eps like “11001001”, and S2 gave us “Measure of a Man”. Regardless even the worst TNG ep is better than nuTrek.
I didn't know until long after the series ended that there was a Star Trek Phase 2 series that never happened and a lot of those plots were repurposed for TNG. No wonder it took some time for the series to find its own identity.
Part of the problem with S1 is that it was often written like 1970 TOS S4, only with 1980s special effects and a different crew. S2 suffered from a writer's strike and other writer's room issues. But as you mentioned, there are good episodes in both, and that was enough to get us through to S3.
Chuck with SFDebris mentioned that in one of his reviews. During S1, Roddenberry was very much in control of the writer's room, and he hadn't ran a weekly TV series since the original ended so he was "out of touch" with the way dramas were being done in the '80's. That's why we got episodes like "Code Of Honor", "Justice", and "Angel One", which always felt like they were leftover scripts from the TOS era. Maurice Hurley was the showrunner for S2, and from all the stories I heard, he was a complete a**hole on set. He did give us The Borg though, so I will always be grateful to him for that.
I heard many of the trek phase 2 scripts were used in s1-2 so that’s the reason it felt like a continuation of tos.
I don't always agree with this guy but I think he hit the nail on the head here. The first two seasons had some banger episodes, where you can still really feel Roddenberry's influence but the consistency was its downfall. Later seasons are more consistent but you also start to lose that Roddenberry influence which is now completely gone with new Trek making it not really Trek at all.
But in many ways, it was the loss of Roddenberry that made the later seasons of TNG and especially DS9 possible. I feel some of the lack of consistently good episodes was because of Roddenberry. He held the writers back from really exploring the characters and some themes.
Yeah
I miss the constant attempts to put men in dresses.
@@koloth5139 Many shows have trouble finding its footing in first few seasons. TNG is not unique in this aspect at all. Also, I'm not saying adhering strictly to Roddenberry doesn't have its drawbacks, it certainly did. Like Lucas, he needed others to reel him in. A nice balance is what works, which mid series TNG really found. I'm just saying that later TNG is where the worm started to turn. It went to more of a balance and then started tipping the other way until the scale has just completely fallen over now.
@@Bow-to-the-absurd: I watched the whole series, and can find only skant examples of men in dresses.
Some of the worst elements of the first two seasons were pure Roddenberry. Especially the sexual elements -- like most of the sci-fi luminaries of his era, he was a total degenerate. Cf. Asimov, Clarke, Zimmer Bradley, etc.
Always liked "Conspiracy."
Should have been a two-parter, though.
Or, they could have gone back to that well later in the series, or in, say, Voyager.
The only think really 'hokey' about Conspiracy was those plastic looking, 'alien bugs', running across the floor... It looked they used some kind of 'Stop-Motion' photography, otherwise it was terrible. They even crawled up the actors' legs, and then they had to swallow them... ewww!
I wish Conspiracy was followed up on. It was very different from the rest of the series.
It kind of annoyed me when I was young. It was to much like later 80s trash TV and bad 80s B movies, and it didn't seem like Star Trek. I really hated how they went to Earth quickly. It undermined the concept of a large exploration ship with families onboard. I found it jarring (though entertaining) when I was young. I didn't know if I wanted to see more of the aliens. I didn't like the trashier media of the 80s.
@@tomcruisenukedmyaccount5388 What did you do to Tom Cruise? Call him short? Or gay? Or did you make fun of Scientology?
@@chainsawsubtlety9828 Right after I trashed him for being a loon and yelling at staff, my account was nuked. I lost a huge playlist of babes.
I've just started watching TNG again and I'm startled at how good it is, season 1 & 2 are a work in progress but are head and shoulders above anything released today.
there my favourite seasons of TNG
I agree with you on most of what you said. But I actually liked Man Hunt. I always liked when Lwaxana Troi (Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed) was in an episode. Seeing how the bridge crew reacted to her always made me laugh, especially Captain Picard running to the Holodeck to avoid becoming her husband since she was going through a phase that "quadrupled her sex drive. Or more."
She was Gene Roddenberry's wife. I wonder if he based it on his own marriage. 😄
"Mother, the Sacred Chalice of Rixx is an old clay pot with mold growing inside it."
@@whenthemusicsover6028 “Perhaps one day when you’re older and wiser, you’ll understand.”
"More? You didn't tell me that."
"I didn't want to frighten you."
I wouldn't call them "bad" though they weren't great, either. The biggest mistake (and I will die on this hill) was Wesley (and that was long before learning Wheaton was an insufferable pr*k, but I do endeavor to separate art from "artist"). I was tempted to just turn it off when they introduced the "genius boy wonder who is so much smarter than the smartest engineer" trope because it wasn't hard to see where that was heading, but I gave the show a fair chance since it was Roddenberry's _Trek_ and glad I did.
Just like any series (in my experience), the first season always has its fits and starts, trying to find its footing. S2 was better than S1 though not by much, but it was improving as the characters developed. As for the last 2 seasons, well... I think there were more misses than hits there.
I just recently watched Season 1 for the first time since reruns in the 90's. It was a tad bland, but most of the episodes were far from "bad." Code of Honor is probably the only episode I thought was pure trash. After season 1, I rolled right into Season 4 (dictated by what was on the shelf at the local used movie and game store), and it was definitely better.
To be fair the young genius who is smarter than all the experts is a thing that does happen in the real world, and just like Wesley they do also tend to be completely insufferable.
In "The Big Goodbye", I really love that they had a guest star get shot in the holodeck. If Picard, Data, or Crusher had been shot, we know they wouldn't have killed them off. But having a guest star get shot added tension because we genuinely didn't know if they'd resolve the story in time to save him. Also, "Where No One Has Gone Before" featured an early appearance by the late Stanley Kamel, who would portray Dr. Charles Kroger on Monk as Adrian Monk's therapist.
And I believe the 'Riker Clip Show' was filmed during the WRITER'S STRIKE which stretched from March 7, 1988 to August 7, 1988 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike), so they were forced to construct an episode mostly featuring existing footage just to fill out the season, since writers weren't working on fresh material...
Yes. They were pretty bad. Unless you compare with the first two seasons of Discovery, in which case... pretty good. OR you could compare them with the first two seasons of Picard in which case... GENIUS. All relative isn't it?
Yup, comparatively TNG seasons 1 and 2 were Shakespeare. Also one of the greatest episodes were in that time frame like "Measure of a Man.", of course "Who Watches the Watchers" wasn't until Season 3
Sad but true. But even the first two seasons of Enterprise are masterpieces compared to Sh*tcovery or Prickcard.
I'll take the Dr Crusher Ghost House episode anyday over ANY Disco or Picard episode. Really, no problem. I'll take ten consecutive views of the aformentioned episode actually. :D
Every 1st season has a few good ones. For me TNG’s opening seasons had a different hurdle to overcome. The cinematography altered. The first season is relatively darkly lit and the sound is on par with a sound stage. Trio’s “Farpoint station” line sounds like it’s coming from across the room.
Wait though measure of a man is one of the best episodes
I was a kid when these seasons were new. My dad taped these 2 seasons on the VCR, and I watched them over and over again. I never hated Wesley or Dr. Pulaski. In season 1 I really enjoy 10110110 (I'm not sure those are the numbers, but you know what I mean.) The Big Goodbye, and I liked the one where they visit the planet Aldea. My dad didn't tape Conspiracy. In season 2 I enjoy the one where Dr. Pulaski gets old and the one where Riker goes aboard the Klingon ship. That episode is probably responsible for a lot of how the Klingon race shaped up for later seasons and series. I always skipped The Dauphin when I was a kid. The shape shifting was too scary. I also skipped Contagion quite often, but I never miss it now. I enjoy the Romulans and the look at the Iconians.
“11001001“, but, yes, we know what you mean.
Aldea is in "When the Bough Breaks". Radue goes on to meet the crew in the late 19th century.
Riker on the Klingon ship was a matter of honor... I mean, "A Matter of Honor".
I happened to kind of like "The Dauphin", due, in no small part, to Jamie Hubbard as Salia.
"The Neutral Zone would have been a better episode with a different B plot, or none at all.
Next Gen ruined the Romulans (and, to a lesser degree, The Klingons).
I really liked the idea in "Justice". The execution, however, was abysmal. For starters, it would have been better if it involved a different member of the crew, and that the crew member received their punishment.
Better still, involved the same member of the crew, and the crew member received their punishment.
As a young teen at the time it first aired, I was at least VERY satisfied with the costumes in that episode!
That ep was so bad I quit TNG for three months. I consider it even worse than “Code of Honor”
I remember cheering as Wesley was sentenced to death, and enraged when the crew flagrantly interfered with the planet's established justice system. 😏
Man, I never understood the Wesley hate (Will Wheaton is a cock though). "Justice" was probably one of those Roddenberry "I love sex" based stories. A planet where people get it in anytime they want, lol definitely sounds Roddenberryesque.
I think I would rather watch those two seasons than anything New Trek.
I wasn't aware of budget cuts for season 2 of TNG - I thought both the shortened season (only 17 episodes) and the final episode 'Shades of Gray' being essentially a clips show was down to there being a Hollywood writers strike at the time.
season 1 and 2 are my fave tng seasons, the 1980s syth music is great
Love "Q Who" from Season 2, where writers introduced us to an enemy who couldn't be defeated or reasoned with, combined with Q's impulsive decisions made for an interesting episode.
I always loved “Symbiosis” at the end of season 1. A great science-fiction story that was well executed, with a solution that was classic Captain Picard.
The score from Ron Jones alone makes the early seasons watchable. They’re not great as a whole, but the score really does elevate it to another level IMO.
It’s atmospheric and the obvious late 80’s filming style give it a charm.
When I watch the later seasons, I can’t help but think how amazing it would have been. Just watch & listen how the score picked up the Romulan’s first appearance… The generic TV show music when Jones left just didn’t cut it.
Personally i always LOVED the first 2 seasons a lot more than the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th. Because the whole vibe of the show felt eerie and uncertain. You never knew what would happen next and the more electronic Score also added to this vibe. I always loved that and this is why TNG, when i was a kid, always had this strange and alien look and feel and yet it was Star Trek through and through. Mostly because of the appearance of many veteran writers and actors of TOS. The seventh season of TNG again had a LOT of amazing, experimental and really eerie episodes that really makes the whole show feel like it comes full circle and it also has one of the most wholesome and well done closing of a show. I never understood why people didn't regard the first 2 seasons of TNG with the same love as they did for season 3 onwards. But then again i also never understood the hate for "Star Trek V the final frontier" or "Star Trek insurrection". Also DS9 had a rough start as well but that was mainly due to the stories that seemed like they held back a lot and nobody of the writers really knew what to do with the characters.
I completely agree as well, all my favorite epsiodes of TNG were in the first two seasons, there was a charm and tone that went away after. I never realized could be the score as well!
I concur with ecerything you wrote. I also love the 7th season of TNG.
@@juresaiyan - does that include Sub Rosa?
@@zaniq23 not Trek's finest hour, to be sure, but I liked the episode.
The first two seasons are more entertaining and edgy though trashy.
I forgave season one after the airing of, "Where No One Has Gone Before". Here was the science fiction television show of my dreams. Encountering the unknown, in an area of space that defies our understanding. The outstanding moment in "Where No One Has Gone Before" was the realization that the events which propelled the Enterprise outside the boundary of known space was an accident. If a reversal of that accident failed, even at maximum warp, the Enterprise was centuries away from the closest Starbase. The look on Deanna Troi's face, said it all.
If I recall, Season 2 occurred during a writer's strike, so at least one episode was taken from stories written for Star Trek Phase II back in the 70s.
Also, the actress that played Polaski was in a couple episodes of TOS.
Pulaski was a babe😂couldn't imagine until I watched a tos episode after the fact.
At least Pulaski developed as a character. From disdaining Data as a clever piece of gear to being his friend and seeing his personhood.
The writer's strike in season two is why we got the worst TNG episode which was simply a flashback episode.
They weren't THAT bad. Were they the weakest of the series, yes. But I would take seasons 1 and 2 of TNG over anything from Nu-Trek any day. I would take any season of Enterprise over Nu-Trek. Hell, I would take Star Trek fan fiction over Nu-Trek.
Some of my favorite episodes are the ones that younger people find cringey. I love "Up the Long Ladder".
I also like “Up the Long Ladder.” It strikes me as a kind of Heinleinian episode because of its farming society with large families and traditional gender roles.
I actually went out of my way to take a good look at this episode a couple of months back. I rather like it. And not just that, I just realised the Mariposans DID get Riker's DNA after he double-backed Brenna Odell, if you know what I mean.
@@RoboSantasRevenge "Women are amazing creatures-sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are."
― Robert A. Heinlein
@@loginregional
Do you want to learn more?
Roddenberry & Heinlein are kind of two sides of the same coin. One was the soft hearted [classical] liberal idealist; while the other was a harder hearted liberal realist.
I love "Up The Long Ladder." It's fine. The Mariposa did NOT try to clone Worf, though. You got that wrong.
DS9 episode A Man Alone: "Murdering your clone is still murder!"
Riker and Pulaski in Up the Long Ladder: 🙈 🙉🙊
One thing that bugs me about Measure of a Man is that Riker should not have been legally qualified to "represent" Maddox because of conflict of interest, but also a lawyer has to "genuinely" believe their clients are innocent to represent them. Even I've had lawyers say "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." in an absolutely serious way to me.
I’d also like to think there was more than 1 JAG officer per sector so that you wouldn’t need to assign officers just for contrived conflict.
I didn't mind Up the Long Ladder too much. You missed or forgot that in that episode, the Mariposans and Bringloidi were from the same colony ship. It broke up in flight. The section with only a few colonists, almost all of the manufacturing capability, and the data repositories became the Mariposans, and the section with almost no technology, most of the colonists, and basically all of the animals became the Bringloidi. So, the agreement to put them together was really just reuniting the descendents of the original crew. Kind of interesting in a way.
I didn't remember all those good episodes being on season 1, and 2.
What made season 1 bad in my opinion, was Riker's lack of beard. Other than that, I didn't have a problem with even the Justice episode. Who doesn't want to see Will Wheat phased, or beheaded, or whatever it was.
Which is worse?
S1: Code of Honour, set on planet African stereotypes.
Or
S7: Sub Rosa, set on planet Scotland, where Doctor Crusher gets nailed by a space ghost and fights her zombie grandmother.
Easy, space ghost.
Explains that Scottish family name.
@@StellarAudyssey that space ghost was SHAKAR !
That scene in Naked Now where Geordi walks into the room of frozen people is incredible production design. Was stunned when I rewatched the episode recently at how good it looked. What one might consider "bad" in the late 80s/early 90s is worlds better than most TV now
I liked season 1's The Neutral Zone because it showed how 20th century people coped with living centuries later and it introduced the Romulans in TNG.
I’m just researching TNG on Netflix now. I’ve never watched them straight through. But I think the quality is there. I’m enjoying it.
The inconsistency was mainly a reflection of the backstage problems they were having during production. It resulted in a lot of conflict over just what the show was going to be. Eventually, things settled down and they got their ideas and goals aligned. It's interesting that this is the opposite of TOS, which had very strong episodes in its first two seasons, while production troubles resulted in a weaker third season.
Things settled down when Roddenberry got too ill to micromanage every aspect of the show and when his hatchetman/lawyer Leonard Maizlish got finally boot from the set. That's when Berman hired Michael Piller to head the writing room which saved the show and probably the whole franchise.
A mixed bag is a good description. I hated how they went back to Earth quickly in Conspiracy. This undermined the concept of a long distance exploration ship with families. I thought this was very dumb.
"Up the Long Ladder" could have been fun if it turned out the 'irish' were aliens larping as what they thought were irish, and getting into difficulty. O'Brien could have torn a few strips off them.
"Your civilisation can only be saved by interbreeding with the space Irish."
"... ... Well, nothing lasts forever. I suppose we've had a good run."
up the long ladder is wierd as American shows dont usally show the irish as stupid or idiots, it felt out of place, i perefred the Irish parody on VOyagers Spirit filk and fair heaven as that was at least an irish 18th centuary village but at lest they werent potrayed asstupid just superstious
Damn.. no mention of ‘Contagion’? One of my favourites. Seeing another Galaxy class ship blow up (for the first time) really haunted me as a kid.
I think Season 2 had some great gems IMO. Q Who, A Matter of Honor, The Measure of a Man & The Emissary are fantastic.
Thank you for not shitting on "the Outrageous Okona," I know it's cheesy, but it's a great hammy episode and it's definitely worth a watch depending on your mood.
hes the closest to Han Solo we will ever get on Star Trek. i would have loved for him to cross paths with them again and helping them out with an alien treat he encountered
A good overview of the seasons. THe Nagilum episode I think is one of the freakiest and horror like episodes of Star Trek there is. The crew is essentially powerless against him and that, is the scariest part. Pen Pals is actually one of my highlights in Season 2. It's a cute episode and one that I pointed to about some SNW comparisons, though I forget what about. Another one I feel that was good for season 1 was "The Neutral Zone", for not only reintroducing the Romulans and possibly the Borg threat, but encountering the people from the 21st century and giving the audience a framework of what the 24th century is and what the people are like. Compare and contrast, if you will.
"Where Silence has Lease" (the Nagilum episode) is a perfect example of Star Trek storytelling right there.
Thank you very much for this overview of TNG seasons 1 and 2. Looking forward to more overviews.
TNG was my favorite show as a kid. Every season. I would learn new words at school in English class and then hear them on the show. It was my Dora the explorer.
There are some decent episodes in Season 1/2, but what really hurt the show was that it didn't know or understand its characters beyond Data who was clearly taking up a role similar to Spock and therefore had a blueprint and Picard who was clearly the Anti-Kirk. Riker was supposed to be a James T. Kirk clone, using a complete misunderstanding of what made Kirk, Kirk. Apart from a few episodes, Riker's entire personality for 2 seasons was to swagger, be brash, womanise and look stupid. Tasha Yar was so pointless that Denise Crosby asked to leave the show in a way that, while it might have been sad, made Yar look totally incompetent and useless and promoted way above her capabilities. LaForge was kicking his heels doing nothing while a bunch of faceless nobodies ran engineering. You had a massively built Klingon squashed into an easy chair at the conn who was simply there to get beaten up every time a threat arrived in order to show how powerful the threat was and Wesley Crusher who was there purely to appeal to kids and just pissed off everybody. Although they fixed most of those by season 3, it took until at least Season 5 and Lwaxana for Deanna Troi to have something resembling a personality and role on the ship and I'm not sure Beverley Crusher ever even managed that. Beverley starts Season 1 as a competent single mother Doctor with an unfulfilled crush on Picard and ends Nemesis as a competent single mother Doctor with an unfulfilled crush on Picard. Dr Pulaski was by far the best Ent-D Doctor in that she regularly challenged Picard, took risks and managed more growth in a single season than Crusher did in seven and four films. Pulaski is the reason that Season 2 has any merit at all.
Now this is not really the same problem as in DS9, Voy and Enterprise. DS9, the characters come in more or less fully formed, but just do sod all interesting for two seasons. Voyager starts out with a lot of potentially strong characters and then decides that the only ones that matter are Janeway, Seven, the Doctor and Paris. Enterprise just spent two years coasting with no creative direction whatsoever, but even when it did get that, Archer, Trip and T'Pol were the sole focus so much that I struggle to even remember the names of the other characters.
Those are good points. Worf should have been more like a Klingon (and he and Yar should have been third in command, not Data). Troi should have been a social scientist with a peace worldview who conflicted with Worf and maybe Riker (and maybe communications with Riker), not an eye candy space gypsy.
Crusher should have been not lame. While Pulaski was a McCoy knock off, she did create a strong character dynamic. I liked her when I was young.
(Archer was awful in the first two or three seasons. He and Bakula are the main problem of Ent. Archer and early Riker remind me of Cage Pike.)
I hated the fact Data became stuck as a comic relief character, and I assumed he actually was human to some degree and would develop (without an emotion chip). Some characters (like Archie Bunker) developed over time in "old shows".
Re the Irish episode, I can't help but laugh out loud every time at the scene where Riker goes to talk to the "Mary Kate Danaher" character by doing his John Wayne walk out of the shot. 😄
Me and my brother used to mock that all the time. The head had to be tilted to one side every time one of us walked through a doorway.
@@jefff3886 😄👍🏻
Seeing STNG Episodes 1 thru 5 at the Sept 1987 Star Trek Convention in Pasadena with a bunch of Trekkies will always be special. There it was on the big screen. We cheered. We applauded. The best of times. Looking back , seasons 1 and 2 are very enjoyable because I was lucky enough to share it LIVE in its inception. The entire "new cast" were there including Gene Roddenberry to share with all of us. The best of times indeed.
"It took 2 years for each series to find their footing" -paraphrased.
there was a time I'd agree with this, but upon rewatching DS9 and the other treks, I've discovered something about the show that sets it apart from the others in the franchise. Dare I say I think it had some pretty damn good footing for its first two seasons. Right out of the gate it establishes it's characters. With the exception of Rom who comes off as the idiot brother that later becomes a brilliant engineer, but even then it is expertly crafted into what he needed to be by the third season. A kind of hidden genius, he doesn't just sudenly become the guy repairing the holodecks and everything else. They use this to help expand on Nog. The situation on Bajor to the Caradasians and even really establishing who Captain Sisko is all happens in the first season. Wen and Borial are also established early on. Now there might be some controversy over how DS9 got its start that could explain why this was so well thought out by comparison to the slap dash writing of seasons 1 & 2 of TNG. With it being tied with Babylon 5, a Show I'd like to see you cover at some point Dave.
In short yes TNG sucks for the first two seasons. A lot of that was do rodenberry's vision of child like adults in the future and clashing ideas. not to mention some seriously bad character writing. Every time Tasha Yar was on screen it was baffling why she was there in the first place. Her origin story and how she spoke about it was just awful. Part of that could be Denise Crosbys fault, but given how wonky Worf and the other characters behaved and spoke, I'm not so quick to make that judgement. The saving grace is Data. Even Picard is kind of a disposable character at the start of season 1 onto season 2. The stories themselves weren't that great either with too many call backs, like the Naked time which wasn't even a good enough story to continue onward in the first place in TNG's the naked now. A dad joke of a title if I ever heard one.
Voyager I agree on its first 2 seasons being bad, but they didn't do much to improve it beyond that. With me falling off with 7 of 9's introduction. The handling of the borg was cringe worthy, but I blame First Contact for that and being the starting point for when trek started to lose its way (perhaps sooner still with Generations given the continuity issues found there even without reflecting on Kirk's death).
Enterprise.... best cast of characters, I just think many of its good writers had left like Ron Moore by that point and the staff was left relying on some stupid ideas in the writing room.
Quark and Rom weren't even going to be main characters at the start.
@@floydlooney6837 I can see that with Rom. Not Quark. You don't put a character like Quark in the position he is in with the pilot and so much screen time in that episode and following episodes if you intend to just drop him in when you need him. Rom I very much believe wasn't meant to be a main character, but they needed someone to help contrast the Ferangi and develop Quark. So I very much believe that he was an after thought that very good writing staff had the sense to massage his presence into the story and what they wanted out of him. I also would not be surprised if Armin Shermin had some influence over how the Ferangi developed and did some course correcting. After all the Ferangi were a first season villain in tng and were intended to be from the start, we saw how well that went. Worst villains ever.
No matter how you shake it DS9 did a substantially better job even in its course correcting and not just its planning out its direction of character and story arc development. I think it owes some of that to TNG of course laying a solid foundation for what at the time would be considered modern Star Trek.... something nu modern star trek needs desperately.
I was born in 1983 and thus was 4 when TNG came out, but I watched it along with my parents and older brothers and absolutely loved it. Our sister is two years younger than me, but as she got older she loved TNG, too.
The first two seasons are my absolute favorites, flaws and all. They feel the most like classic Roddenberry TOS Trek, they feel more adventurous than season 3 onward. I grew up watching TOS reruns on my dad's knee.
I loved the extended cast, O'Brien, Barclay, Ro Laren, Ogawa and Guinan and how they'd pop up.
As a kid I had Star trek toys as well as ninja turtles, ghost busters, transformers, he-man, x-men, spider-man, power rangers, Legos and constructs.
I had the main bridge crew, a romulan, klingon uniform worf, a borg, a ferengi, a romulan, commander Sela, TNG spock, TNG McCoy, TNG Scotty, cadet crusher, the enterprise, a romulan warbird, a klingon bird of prey, the bridge set and a transporter pad. I played with them for HOURS, making up my own scenarios as well as reenacting stuff from the show. I was crossing over star trek with the x-men before it ever happened in comics as I'm sure many other people did.
It hurts my heart to see the state Star Trek is in today. It's like seeing a captive in a hostage situation being made to read something talking about how good their situation is and how awful anyone is who says the situation is otherwise.
Seeing the things a lot of the TNG actors have said in the last several years about the fanbase based on politics has genuinely hurt. Marina Sirtis said in an interview once that a conservative does not equal a star trek fan, it just doesn't. I know they're actors, not the characters they played but it doesn't take the sting out of it. Potentially anyone from potentially any background can like/ enjoy star trek. Like the romulan commander said to Picard, "It would seem that we are not completely dissimilar after all, in our hopes or in our fears."
If anyone read this, thank you.
"Code of Honor" is a very, very important episode. It shows that wristwatches still exist in the 24th century.
While a couple of those S1 episodes were rightly described as horrible, I liked nearly all of S2 & found Pulaski a more likeable doctor than Dr Crusher. She's more downhome like Bones: treating the person, not just the injury.
I will admit that rewatching STNG in order when I bought it on DVD was a different experience than when I saw the episodes weekly when they first aired. Some aired out of order, and some character points didn't carry over as clearly in my 13/14 yo brain. "Justice" was teen boy fodder w the skanty costumes & body paint.
Season 1 and 2 were my favorite. There was a chaotic nature to the show that I really liked. The show seemed to become more predictable in later seasons. I also really liked Polaski. I wish they would have kept her. The relationship between her and Data had a lot of potential for comedy, and her character was just more interesting to me than Crusher.
I also preferred Pulaski and her and Data's relationship, coming from points of misunderstanding to conciliation and even friendship, is exactly what Star Trek is all about.
I remember watching "Conspiracy" as a 4 year old. I was so creeped out by that episode I wouldn't touch anything Star Trek again until I was 7.
You could see them trying out their character but I have to admit I could of made a nice dinning table out of some of the acting in the early episodes it was so wooden which was perhaps thrown into a some what harsher light by having such a skilled and seasoned actor like Patrick Stewart to compare it to. In the early stages the good episodes were good and the bad episodes were pretty below average. In later seasons the good were great and the bad merely Ok
"Conspiracy" was such a great episode. I really wish they would have addressed the fallout from that episode more especially since it was the only episode that actually had a setup episode beforehand. It was TNG's first real attempt at long-term storytelling other than establishing Worf's backstory of the Romulan attack on The Khitomer Outpost.
I agree. They could have kept The Borg, and still followed up on "Conspiracy".
Yes. The ending of that classic episode begged for a future follow up, but for some strange reason, it never happened.
@@DaystromDataConcepts all we ever got was a throwaway line about "Admiral Satie uncovering the alien conspiracy 3 years ago" it should have had a much better follow up and I actually hope it still does at some point.
@@JimmyNotes Ah yes ... the Drum Head, I'd forgotten that reference. I'm also suprised no novelists picked up on that hot potato.
The first series I can agree as even the music cues seemed a bit more of an 80's vibe, compared to the rest of the series. But Conspiracy is actually one of my favourite episodes, just a shame the creatures are never referenced again in star trek lore.
I own every season of TNG, as many of us do, and I do enjoy your serious commentary to all things Star Trek. In fact, you have made its utter thoughtless mangling somewhat tolerable if not laughable and for this I thank you.
That said, I lament the loss of our beloved Roddenberry, Michael Okuda Trek such It is as if those same miscreant malefactors Disney, JJ and Kurtsass got their dirty Shylock mits on Patrick O’Brien’s work and turning it into the love boat meets Gilligan's isle….unforgivable.
That is why I can’t handle even a little serious critiquing of TNG today regardless of truth. Thank you again for your hard work.
JJ Abrams & Kurtzman delenda est!
What I despised was that way of killing Tasha. I didn't care about the dynamics of the interactions among characters because they were a new crew in a new luxury ship🤓😁.
New concept, Patrick Stewart was so good, sil vous plais, ENGAGE! 🤣
Oh, forgot to mention I also enjoyed The Arsenal of Freedom and The Neutral Zone. For season two, Loud as a Whisper was brilliantly written. A Matter of Honour, Contagion and The Emissary were good.
One of my favourite Dataisms is in The Neutral Zone "a low milage pitwolfy?"
I've never agreed with the two-season curse theory, and I would encourage you, and anyone else, to re-examine the first two seasons of DS9 and ENT. Voyager never got going, but the first two seasons of Enterprise where the last time we saw exploration in Star Trek, and DS9's first two seasons had superb episodes like Blood Oath, which brought back the iconic TOS trio of Klingons. Yeah there's some stinkers in both, but the overall quality is far in excess of what the narrative surrounding them would have yo believe.
Actually some of my favorite episodes are in Season 1 and 2! Where No One Has Gone Before, Datalore, Conspiracy, Where Silence has lease, The Measure of a Man, and my top 3 favorites of all; Time Squared, Q Who and Contagion!
A detail in "Up the Long Ladder" which a friend (with spina bifida) noted is that the Mariposans clearly decided NOT to clone Geordi, undoubtedly due to his congenital blindness. I personally got a "my body, my choice" vibe from Riker and Pulaski deciding to disintegrate their clones.
That episode is so forgettable I forgot all about that plot. A much better episode to do with cloning is "The Masterpiece Society", and Geordi has a frank discussion with one of the clones about how he would not have been allowed to live but would have been aborted as an embryo due to his blindness (which I'm sure you know). The thing is, I do work in bioethics and follow academic discussions and there is a lot of discussion over cloning, whether or not clones count as persons, and whether or not we have a right to genetic privacy. I don't know how the conversation was back when this episode aired but being reminded of it is surprising. At any rate, considering episodes where Troi was impregnated against her will and still chose to keep and raise the child, an episode where Picard fought for Data's rights, and an episode where Geordi condemns a society for killing genetically deformed people, this is an unfortunate misstep and comes across as hypocritical that they would kill a clone just because their DNA was stolen against their will.
TNG was an ealry example of woke story telling
@@DaraGaming42 No, TNG wasn't woke. TNG had intelligent plots and never insulted its fanbase by calling them idiots like Kurtzman Trek. The people having the issues, like racism, were always an alien species so that those the show was trying to communicate to could see the effects on other people and extrapolate that to their situation. "Wokeness" is not interested in good storytelling but diversity for diversity's sake, and it's not interested in making a point, it's just obsessed with insulting Trump supporters. TNG was actually more libertarian; it wasn't "woke".
Way back in 1987, the only reference point was the original show, the animated series, and the 4 movies. To be fair, I think that, between a writers strike, Roddenberry pulling one way and the production team the other, and a host of other issues, it was remarkable that the number of good episodes vastly outweighed the stinkers. Credit must be given to all the professionals who pulled it off and got the show to a third season. From a shaky base, the high production values finally melded together and engaged us all for the next 15 years, with some of the best, if not the best, television ever created. Thank God for Michael Piller - he was the manna from heaven that molded the writing style, and turned it around story and character wise. He was the Gene Coon of the TNG era.
SNAP! You release this just as I'm watching TNG's s06e21 'Frame of Mind' for the first time in 29 years ... seeking to understand whether it's as horrid as I thought it was in 1993!!
I can’t wait to hear your reviews of seasons 3 & 4!
I agree there's something about the first 2 Seasons with very interesting and strange stories that make them the best seasons for me, maybe its because Roddenberry still had his hands in the pot but most of my favorites epsiodes are in Season 1 and 2.
Roddenberry was holding the show back. He deserves all the respect in the world for bringing Star Trek to us, but by this point he was being way too idealistic with it. He wouldn’t allow any kind of conflict between crew members, because he wanted to portray The Federation as a perfect society. And honestly, perfect is boring.
I loved the officer exchange program episode with Riker commanding a Klingon BoP.
Great Vid. Thank you!
Please do more seasons!!
To be honest, TNG suffered from having too large of a cast. There were only so many minutes, so many lines, to be shared by too many people. This is one reason Denise Crosby wanted off, she wasn't being used, and Worf was (and would turn out to be) more interesting. The secondary characters were vaguely defined. In hindsight, it would have been better if some of them weren't on the pilot whatsoever. Introducing them 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 episodes into it. Let the main characters get established, then build.
But Hollywood is full of egos, and directors and producers are no exception. I personally cringe whenever I hear buzz phrases like "The show will be character driven." or "We want to explore the interaction between all these characters." Ugh! (Stargate Universe anyone????) TNG was forged with these cringe enducing ideas. They finally stripped it down, and gave the characters something to do.
The biggest problem I see is the poor conception and development of some of the characters, especially Troi and Crusher. They should have had Troi be a social scientist with a peace view which contrasts with Riker (who was kind of a hard man character at first) and Worf. Instead, she was a lame space gypsy and eye candy.
Also, Worf should have been more like a Klingon (and third in command not Data). A good side effect of this set up would have been Picard being less idealized and more open to Worf. (I liked Yar, and I was mad when they ended her.)
People forget Next Gen is an "old show". It's not very different from Gunsmoke for example. It had poor character dynamics though. It didn't have anything like the trio in the OS.
@@tomcruisenukedmyaccount5388 fortunately this edit. Last and it got better
It's all relative. Star Trek: The Next Generation started off clearly inferior to what it had the potential to be, and a lot of fans could see that, but it was still good compared to other television shows at the time.
And it was cinematic genius compared to what passes for Star Trek in 2022.
What passes for Star Trek in 2022 is not ever Star Trek, save it's name.
I preferred Voyager's first 3 seasons as a whole, but later seasons had some of the strongest episodes, usually involving the Doctor.
season 3 had the great Futures End two parter and such great eps with the Doctor like Living witness.
"I'm not a Merry Man!" is still among my most favorite lines in STNG.
I think the clipshow episode had more to do with the writers strike that year than anything else.
Yeah, I don't think most people remember there was an extremely contentious strike of all SAG writers where no new shows were being written for nearly a year in 1988, shortly after TNG started...
I liked the one with the Irish guys and the clones. Lots of funny moments.
I love when Trek does"the space Irish" hope you do a very special episode about it with a little of Roddy dolye Star Trek. The alien parasite taking over conspiracy was a missed opportunity.should have done more episodes while adding in more conflict and shades of grey for the federation. eg spying against the Romulans being blamed on the ailens but was actually The federation up to no good and not knowing what level of threat they presented
They brought those parasites back for STO. They have their own "dugeoun" & story arc.
From what I heard is that towards the end of season 1 the writers strike happened so TNG was mining the completed scripts of Star Trek Phase II and modifying them for TNG. Also there was a lot of head butting with Roddenberry on multiple issues because of vision of 24th Century humanity.
The thing is love about Star Trek pre 2009 movies is that they all start out ok and then gain momentum. But I prefer it. Watching this made me feel joy that I grew up first of all watching TOS on Sundays on Channel 4 and then as a teen watching TNG, DS9 and Voyager and the movies (original ones). Such great times, great stories and amazing characters I have emotional connections to. Fiona I know word for word.
I was hoping to hear some sort of a theory as to why the first couple of seasons of each incarnation of Star Trek was "wanting." A little meta-analysis would have been appreciated! A little discussion of backstage problems and changing production budgets would have been illuminating! A mention of real-world events like the writers' strike would have been enlightening!
I do think "Q Who" could have been done better. For one, not such a long build up to send the Enterprise to system J-25.
Also, Guinan should not be as vague about warning Picard and the crew about the Borg, making it clear to them that the Borg are more advanced and that they will take over the Enterprise D given the opportunity in order to study its technology.
The Borg should also not be so slow to act after they send drones on board, immediately taking hold of the Enterprise in a tractor beam.
After the crew has disabled the cube an away team beams on board because they can't determine if there are Borg survivors. Once they found out they should immediately go back to the Enterprise and Picard orders the Enterprise D to immediately retreat after which the Borg start pursuing. Not several conference breaks with a Guinan who barely gives any information.
From this point the episode would become a chase as the Borg manage to deal with any conventional tactics of the crew as they try to escape the cube, making them realize that they really are over their head with this new foe.
In the existing episode at least fifteen to twenty minutes could be cut so it might be better to rewrite the entire episode instead.
There's some really great Trek in those first two seasons such as "Conspiracy", "Where Silence has Lease", and "Q Who?" so I've never been too hard on those seasons.
I waited until the end of the series to see if there would be a follow up on the threat from the Season 1 finale, Conspiracy. Part of me was disappointed that they didn't and part of me thought it was genius to leave an "unknown threat in the dark" forever looming over the Federation.
They reappear in some of the later books. For reasons unknown, they don't affect Cardassians.
My favorite episode was Conspiracy for a long time with Where Silence Was Lease at #2, The Neutral Zone at #3, and at #4, The Child. I thought TNG really got it until Elementary, Dear Data and The Outrageous, huh, i forgot the name, well never mind.
To be honest: I liked Pulaski more then Crusher. I think Pulaski had a lot more persona then Crusher. She understood Worf, tried to understand Data and in case of being the Chief medical Officer, she even stood up to Picard sometimes.
i think today we can all agree that we would be very happy if star trek today would have the quality of the bad episodes of the first two seasons of TNG
My favorite Star Trek is DS9. The domino effect of events were crazy. Instead of a ship the space station was the focal point. Even before the Dominion, the Bajoran and Cadassian conflict was interesting.
The binary episode is one of my favorites. Skin of evil I have learned to like. The sudden death hurt me. But not all death is good. And the fact that date mentions it when he is on trial was brilliant.
Didn't realise people didn't like them, I'm watching TNG for first time at the minute, nearly at end of S1, and loving it
“The Child” is a FANTASTIC episode. I guess everyone has their own tastes. But its unusual, even creepy at times, and the Troi/Riker relationship sees some development. I feel so sad for her at the end. To me, The Child is an emotional episode thats written very well.?
I also can't help but like the Moriarty episodes.
"What are you staring at? You've never seen a woman before?"
"I thought I had."
The first two seasons of TNG had their ups and downs but at least their was good will between the fans and the creative staff. The same can't be said for Nu-Trek.
Up the long ladder has one of the best lines ever. "I thought I had."
Of course you feel that way about the Irish, hackney, episode.
Great vid, mate.
I agree with most of this. Especially the comment about the second episode of season 1--worst placing of an episode, ever. We don't know these people, so we don't know what is "out of character" when they get drunk. Season 2 had a lot of clunkers or just boring episodes, but I think "Measure of a Man" was really a game changer, because it showed that you don't have to have fighting to make for an amazing episode. We see a lot more talking but substantial episodes moving forward, and I wonder if there was a realization that happened between S2 and S3.
What? I love "Pen Pals"! It has several standout scenes, including a classic "ethical debate" around a sofa and Data hijinks gallore. Total winner in my book.
I actually find whenever I do a rewatch that I hit up a fair amount of season 1 episodes & I don't think it's purely out of nostalgic value as there definitely are a fair share of clunkers I avoid. In contrast, I could run through season 2 in an afternoon! One important thing to remember is season 2 began with a writer's strike & IIRC recycles a number of draft scripts from the cancelled "phase 2" series of the 70's. The show itself beyond the writing evolved over those 2 seasons where the cast became comfortable with "working" the ship and props, sets were finalised so sickbay didn't double as the lounge for example, the look and colour tones changed, etc. There was really no actual "how to" for the cast & production on how to really set the tone of the show whereas DS9 VOY and to a lesser extent, ENT built on what TNG developed.
Kudos for pointing out what a piece of garbage Up the Long Ladder was, always find it odd that Code of Honor is called out for being *racist* but UtLL never shares the dishonorable mention
There were some bad episodes and the characters were strange. Sometimes they had Geordi at the helm, sometimes Data.. what was Worf's job in the first season, they were all over the place.
Yeah, they definitely had too many people on the bridge and they didn’t know what to do with all of them. It’s like they knew they wanted all these characters in the show, and they didn’t want to have them scattered elsewhere in the ship or something (like Engineering), so they stuffed them all on the bridge.
Love TNG season 1 & 2. Finally got me to start watching all the original films. The TNGs I find ‘Generations’ to be the very best , very engaging film.
Justice and Code of Honor originally aired one week apart which made it even worse.
I'd agree that the first two seasons are a bit of a mixed bag, but in some of the bad episodes had an enjoyable Star Trek V quality to them. I actually do like the Irish farmers/Dying Clones episode.
Seasons 3-6 were definitely improvement over the first two seasons, especially since those seasons actually experimented with season storyarcs a little more mixed with the stand alone stories, something that DS9 would strive with. I'd argue season 7 is mixed bag as the creative team seemed to run out of ideas, resorting to near TOS-season 3 stories, only managing to stick the landing by the finale...until the TNG Movies sh*t the Bed.
One of the problems with season 2 is a writers strike at the time. It lead to a shorter season and some of the scripts for Star Trek Phase 2 been use but I still have a fondness as I saw them all on VHS form a Video store before it was on Australian TV.