Not to draw attention away from the Discovery discussion, but let’s not forget this milestone - The Next Generation’s pilot episode, Encounter at Farpoint, premiered on September 28, 1987.
I’ve been pretty open about the problems I have with TNG, and I’ll not beat that dead horse. Instead I’ll reflect on the cool stuff. One of my all-time favorite episodes is a TNG one, Conspiracy. That’s the one where the parasites try to take over Starfleet from within (literally). Was always a little bummed they never showed up again. At least not until Star Trek Online.
And I did like Picard, who was a more thoughtful leader coming after the more brash Kirk. Picard seemed more inspirational, a scholarly sort of captain. Though he did get his action hero on now and then, like in First Contact.
Anyway if nothing else it kept the Trek fires burning for seven years, leading to other shows. Some better, some worse (no need to name names here). Hopefully Star Trek can keep on, you know, trekking.
Hahahah. As a kid in 1988, I loved that episode too! (I was 12 at the time).
However, when I watched all the Seasons on DVD in the early 2000s, they had an extra on the DVD where they were shaking their heads saying I don’t know what we were thinking with Conspiracy. They were trying to make the show more like The Original Series. And the writers from Season 1 were sacked I think, and they never went back to that.
I’ve enjoyed every Trek series thus far, some more, some less. I have a special place in my heart for TNG, though, since it aired during those formative high school and college years for me.
Ever since that Riker almost eats worms scene, I’ve never been able to look at a covered silver serving dish the same!
And it even ended with folks saying something like, “We defeated them today, but who knows what they may be plotting, out there, somewhere …” while casting suspicious eyes toward the stars. It was set up to be epic!
Oh, one other geek memory - I still remember how I flipped out during the pilot when they did the saucer separation. “IT CAN DO THAT?!” I think I said, while doing a triple back flip. I even called a friend and said “DID YOU SEE THAT”
I wore that shirt so much it eventually disintegrated.
Anyway, as DS9 has replaced it as my favorite Trek series, it still holds a special place in my heart for helping me get through some damned dark times.
Oh and Conspiracy is also a favorite of mine. I’m sad they never revisited it, but they eventually went with The Borg as a big bad.
Now, if you wanna keep the TNG love going, you have two amazing options:
I also have my fair share of problems with TNG (especially the first season or two), but my favorite Star Trek episode of the whole franchise is a TNG episode: “The Inner Light”. Which is in itself one of the reasons why Picard is my favorite Star Trek captain by far.
I think the first Star Trek I ever saw as a child was parts of an episode of TNG at a friend’s house. They had a satellite dish, and thus got SKY. I remember seeing Pulanski and a face in space, which means it must have been Where Silence Has Lease.
Yeah, the Borg. Second to the Ferengi for Trek missteps, in my opinion. Not that the Borg were a bad idea, just that everyone went a little nuts for them and I think they would have been much cooler if they could have stayed in the shadows a bit, kept their mystique. But they’ve been pretty much fully explained now, they’re pretty much just another race.
I respect Picard, he’s probably the captain I’d want to serve under. But Kirk is the kind of captain I’d want to be. Kicking ass, taking names, making out with green girls and outwitting supercomputers so hard they just fry.
The ferengi got more interesting, I’ll agree with that, but I’d give credit for that to DS9. The way they started out, as just greedy backstabbing traders, that was just embarrassing.
First Encounter with them via Q: Absolutely chilling.
Second Encounter that ended Season 3: So good.
3rd Borg Episode that started Season 4: Incredible, made me at peace with losing Picard and Riker being the new Captain.
I, Borg: Incredible episode. I loved it. We were also excited by the possibility of “infecting” the borg with Individuality.
Season Ender where the “individual” Borgs come back: Awesome episode.
Season Premier that continued that last episode: Lame, Ok, so this was pretty terrible.
And I think that’s all the Borg episodes in TNG right? Now, I know they messed up the Borg in the movie by giving them a Queen and all that bullshit, as well as what they did with the Borg in Voyager. But I don’t count that against TNG, the series.
No, I’d say that just like the Ferengi were “corrected” in another series, it’s probably fair to say that the Borg were screwed up by other series, and First Contact. They were an interesting idea that just got less interesting the more we saw of them, in my opinion.
“Conspiracy” may have been a good episode but it’s the reason why my parents briefly decided TNG was “too scary” for me, so I’ll always have a grudge against it.
The problem with the Borg is that each episode made them a lot more human than the last. They went from being truly alien to being only cosmetically different from humans in only six episodes. But it was probably better to use them up for a few great episodes than trying to keep them mysterious forever.
The one where Worf gets crippled is one of my favorites. There’s always been tension in Trek between respecting diversity and preaching to the whole galaxy what’s good for them, so I liked to see that fought out. It also means a lot to me personally because after I had a similar injury, I went years telling myself that I was only hurt physically. It took seeing that episode again and seeing a Klingon going through the same thing for me to realize I hadn’t gotten over it.
