The thing I noticed about TNG was that nothing seemed to be actually happening during the show. We knew there was some sort of history between Picard and Crusher, and between Riker and Troi, but it was all in the past. I didn’t want the show to be “Sex and the Starfleet”, but it seemed like the characters were all backstory and no story.
I had watched a few episodes when the series first aired and had stopped watching it.
Obviously the series succeeded without my support. So I figured I should give it another shot. I borrowed the first few episodes from the library and figured I would work my way through the series.
Sorry to say but I couldn’t make my way through the first episode. Horrible horrible writing. I’ve heard that it gets better later on but I don’t see myself getting that far.
The first 2 seasons and parts of the last season are tough to get through, but the rest of the show still holds up fine for me. It’s my second favorite series, behind DS9, of course.
The show took a couple of seasons to get its bearings; “The Measure of a Man” was where it finally figured out what it was about (The addition of Melinda Snodgress to the writing staff seems to be the precipitating event). It was good for a season or two, then trailed off into mediocrity.
I stopped complaining about Wesley Crusher when he commented on th SFRT on GEnie that the entire cast knew the stories sucked and the characters had no depth, but the actors were stuck/with what they were given.
I hated the uniforms from the first two seasons.
At first, I hated the way the starship “stretched” when it went into warp. Looked like a Looney Tunes effect.
Hey, credit where it’s due, I love the motif that Riker will eat anything. Plop alien food in front of him, and he’ll gobble it. It’s a tiny bit of characterization that is actually pretty nifty.
But I mostly hate that the characters never really triumph. Troi never stops an aggressive act; Dr. Crusher never seems to heal anyone; Worf never gets to clobber anyone; Data never figures out his own humanity; LaForge never gets to do jack shit.
Riker won’t eat anything
One time Data served them cat food and Riker was digusted by it when someone asked Data what it was
Only Worf continued to eat it when Data revealed what it was. A true warrior’s meal!
Couple things annoyed me, that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
Starfleet is “not a military organization”? Baloney. They wear uniforms, have ranks and chains of command, carry weapons, and fight.
The other one is one I’ve always had trouble expressing. Whatever your species is, that’s what you are, regardless of how you’re raised, and who raised you. Worf is a prime example. Raised as human on earth, yet he is a Klingon Warrior. A couple more examples exist, but are escaping me at the moment.
AH. tavalla has mentioned another one. Non-human cultures are suspiciously monolithic. All green bumpy heads worship X, are about the same colour, and DRESS ALIKE! Even when you’re on an alien world, walking regular streets with regular people, everyone looks about the same.
I just figured Roddenberry created Riker because of too many complaints/comments from real Navy people that the Captain, Exec, and Chief Engineer don’t go gallivanting off on dangerous missions leaving junior officers in charge. I mean, imagine TOS Sulu, Uhura, or Chekov as Captain of the Enterprise, because if Kirk, Spock, and Scotty died on some alien planet, they were it.
It seems it was/is difficult for some to separate their hatred of Wesley Crusher from Wil Wheaton. Especially when Roddenberry was to blame in the first place. Look, in TOS, he introduced the Chekov character to be his Davy Jones of the Monkees. He wanted a nice looking boyish looking character with a foreign accent that would make the covers of Tigerbeat and 16 magazines. And that’s what he got. I remember because at that time, my father had a store that sold those magazines and I remember a female customer a year or two older than me gushing over how cute Walter Koenig was. Wil Wheaton was intended to be TNG’s teen heart throb, to draw in the female teenybopper audience. Which wasn’t Wheaton’s fault, it was just a steady acting gig for him. Or at the beginning, anyway. I suspect for him it became a contractual obligation.
Just pretend the first two seasons don’t exist and it’s the best of the lot.
As a gay guy I too never understood the supposed sex appeal of Riker. He was attractive enough in Season 1, and then after that… well like another poster said he just bulked up (not in a particularly attractive way), and his personality just wasn’t that attractive.
The main problem I have with TNG (and I definitely don’t Hate it) is that it was just very inconsistent. Even in the supposedly “good” seasons, it was still very inconsistent. There was a LOT of garbage episodes throughout the show’s life. Even Voyager wasn’t as inconsistent as TNG (though it wasn’t nearly as good when it was good, either, I feel).
Grin! I don’t recall that’n, but I’ll just handwave it and call it inconsistent writing. Riker earned my respect when he ate the Gaak… And Jonathan Frakes when he ate a mealworm!
I was a child when the original series came out, and became a huge fan. Between the end of TOS and the start of Next Generation, there was this long dry spell of 18 years with no new Trek on TV. But TOS was constantly syndicated in those days, it built a huge fan following. When Next Generation was announced, the anticipation amongst us old die-hard TOS fans was huge. But… it was lame. It eventually got better, but the first dozen episodes or so were so bad the whole thing felt like a huge let down. I gave up watching it for years, finally returning to it in the last couple of seasons. I don’t think I ever really got over the disappointment of those terrible early episodes, though.
But by that time, DS9 had started … and was IMO waaay better than TNG. Sadly, though, DS9 has never done well in syndication; broadcasters hate the overarching story arcs that require the episodes to be viewed in order to make sense. Broadcasters always preferred the one-off structure of TOS and TNG where everything resets at the end of the episode, that allows them to broadcast episodes in more or less random order. But the stories you can tell that way simply aren’t as compelling.
I was a kid when ST: TNG came out, but just prior to that I remember watching TOS reruns. I didn’t like the dated look of the show but I thought Captain Kirk was cool. He was like the swashbuckler hero of the show and Spock was iconic even back then.
When TNG premiered I couldn’t understand why they had an old bald guy be the captain. The new show looked modern but I missed familiar characters like Captain Kirk and Spock.
I started watching it years later on Saturdays when there was nothing else our non-Cable endowed TV would get, reception-wise. I started to like the show more and more and really began to like the individual characters. Stories featuring Worf and the Klingon home world interesting, as well as Data’s quest to be human. The show turned out to be one of my favorites and the excitement of the series peaked with the “Locutus of Borg” two-parter. It’s probably one of my favorite television shows.
I tried to like DS9 but just couldn’t. The only episode I remember fondly was the one where Sisko is dreaming he’s a 1950s SF writer.
I liked Voyager less. I didn’t like how they were isolated from the Federation.
I’m finishing up watching all the TNG shows. TOS is far better, and with nearly equal technology Kirk could stick Picard’s bald head up his ass.
The special effects stand up pretty well, considering the time. Noting obviously as cheesy as the TOS ones. Some of the episodes were pretty good. Some sucked, but any show has crappy shows.
Weasley was the equivalent of Bobby (Bucky?) on Rocky Jones. Meant to attract the kiddies. Stupid, but maybe I would have liked him better if I had been a kiddie when it was on.
My number one complaint was Picard’s sanctimoniousness. “We are the moral superiors of everyone, including gods.” Admittedly once in a while a writer tried to knock the hot air out of him, but it came back.
Minor complaint - Roddenberry had a thing for earth-alien couplings, starting with Spock. By TNG it went wild. Nowhere are the biological implications mentioned. Troi was clearly the product of a test tube.
Yeah, kids on the ship were stupid. No one mentioned how many kids got wiped out by the Borg.
IMHO, this was a terrible show with many terrible characters and the more that time passes, the worse it seems. The most terrible characters were Troi, her mother, the doctor, the monster (Woof), Riker, Geordi and the Computer (which is most all of the other characters). Wow! That is all the characters except for two (the captain and Wesley).
I did watch every episode and I watched most of them several times. I haven’t watched any of them for many years now. But looking back, what did Riker ever command? Seems to me that he was pretty much a totally useless character!
Did you realize the Computer was listed in the IMDB list of chars as taking part in 104 episodes? Only the captain and doctor took part in more episodes.
Did you realize that some of these actors went on to play some very terrible characters in other productions? Brent Spiner played an addle-minded scientist in “Independence Day” and, IMHO, he was terrible.
Overall, I thought the series was awful - especially as compared to some of the other Star Trek TV series.
Sorry. I ran out of edit time. But I wanted to add the following:
I’m just guessing. But I think this was a case in which Hollywood money was the cause behind this series being made. All the other Star Trek TV programs and the movies had made lots of money. So, somewhere, someone got the bright idea that they would make money by slapping this POS together and I’m guessing that is all some Hollywood money people needed to hear to force this thing to happen.
I’m guessing the showrunners could not get the people they wanted and in the end, they just had to settle on people to make the thing go - to get it “green lit”. Maybe that is what it takes to get a green light for a production. If you can convince someone who controls the purse strings that your project will make money, they will give you a green light. If it turns out to lose money, one of you will suffer the consequences and that person will have a real hard time getting a green light again.
I can’t be certain that is how it happened. But with the passing years, I seem to have a jaded view of Hollywood and I can imagine that if someone believes they can make some money doing a project, that project will be done. It doesn’t matter if it seems like it will be a good show. That no longer means anything compared to whether they will make a profit. If a profit is there for the making, the project will happen. Talk about sad!
But, it seems to me that is a reasonable way to explain how many crappy shows seem to get forced together and made - despite whether they should get made or not.
Yes, this.
Marina Sirtis went on to play a Russian doctor in an episode of Stargate SG-1. It pretty much solidified my impression of her acting ability.
And I had always thought that Riker grew a beard to hide his chin. But he just let it grow during the writers’ strike at the time and when he came back to the show, Gene said “no, just go get it trimmed up. Looks very naval.” It is supposedly the time the show started to get better and “growing a beard” is now the opposite of “jumping the shark.”
Anyone notice Famke Jannsen (Jean Grey)'s makeup in her guest role turned into Jadzia Dax’s in DS9? The Trill eyebrow thing from TNG was gone.
Not to pick on you directly, you just supplied the handy quote to build off.
I will admit, there are a lot of problems with the show.
But what…selective memories you all have. All the characters mentioned had great episodes where they got to shine. Off the top of my head, LaForge got to solve the “flypaper” trap, Crusher was instrumental in solving several episode plots, Data, while admittedly never “figuring out” his humanity, had several episodes where the question itself created interesting conflict.
And poor slighted Worf. He won the batleth tournament, he killed Duras in hand-to-hand combat, and was likely in line to be the next Chancellor. He also adequately handled the rogue Klingons in Heart of Glory. His resolution to the situation in The Emissary was excellent, although he never had to actually fight.
Hate the show if you must - just hate it for the right reasons.