What are the best seasons of Star Trek The Next Generation ?

And the holodeck episode with Moriarty.
And at least ten others

 

If Riker has no beard, turn it off.
If Troi's mother turns up, turn it off.
If the Ferengi turn up, turn it off. (Does not apply to DS9.)
If Reg Barclay turns up, turn it off.

I watched it all, and now the occasional episode on the tv. Seems to be two episodes a day on some channel. Series 3 at the moment so I can happily not bother too much for a couple of weeks. I see Voyager is appropriately on the Horror channel.

 

I like Voyager a lot. I like all Star Trek series in fact

 

There are maybe 5 decent to halfway-decent episodes from the first season of TNG, and 5 more that are watchable. The rest of them are only of interest if you're a fan and want to see how the show evolved from unwatchable garbage into a pretty awesome program.

 

"Swimming is too much like... bathing."
Started with ep. 25! Thanks.

 

Seasons 3-6 are peak TNG. Before that, the show hadn’t come into its own. Stewart wasn’t always given enough to do, and the characters weren’t well developed yet (Also, Dr. Pulaski was a drag).

There were notable exceptions, esp. S2’s “The Measure of a Man,” but the show really took off with S3 and stayed great through S6.

By S7, it was clear the show had mostly run its course. A few gems — particularly the series finale — but a lot of duds too. Let’s not discuss Worf’s brother, Dr. Crusher’s tryst with the Ghost Candle, “FARCE of Nature,” or the Orient Express. OK?

Better still, go back and discover (or REdiscover) DS9. Yes, people will tell you the first season or two are a bit shakey. Don’t believe them. It was hit and miss at times, but from the start it was a better, stronger show than TNG was in its first two seasons. And the “hits” were so, so good. The “Emissary” pilot, “Captive Pursuit,” “Duet” (Still one of my favorite episodes of any TV show, not just Trek), “In the Hands of the Prophets,” and “The Circle” trilogy are prime examples.

DS9 wasn’t TNG, but it wasn’t trying to be and that’s exactly why I loved it so. It was very much Star Trek, but it had its own vision and charted its own course. I also felt the ensemble was the most diverse, and given greater depth, than on any Trek series before own since. They also did the occasional comedic episode better than any of the others.

DS9 was also, from S3 thru the end, something of precursor for the serialized TV shows we see today. Ahead of its time, and therefore underappreciated in its time, but holds up so well today. I have gripes about their final season, and final episode, but it’s still a great, great show.

 

I'd advise anybody to watch Next Generation all the way from the beginning. I have the entire series on Laserdisc. I've watched the whole series all the way through, in order, four times. The first season is dull but the characters are becoming defined. The second season is the key season. Data's charcter gets fully developed. Several of the best episodes in the entire series occur. Dr. Pulaski's one season run keys Data's developement. Like many others, I concur that season's 3-6 are the best seasons. Season 7, to me, is worse than the first season. The show was played out and the producers didn't want to have the federation have an all-out war against the Klingons or Romulans which was about the only interesting avenue left at that point.

 

Agree. Definitely watch season 2, or most of it anyway.

 

Agree that DS9 wasn't very Star Trekky compared to the other series. It wasn't all great all the time but the good stuff is pretty epic and mind blowing. And it had the best character development of any series in the canon.

 

DS9 is definitely a better show than TNG. The first two seasons are hit and miss, but when it's good it's astoundingly good. I actually managed to somehow see pretty much every bad episode of the first season of DS9 and none of the good ones during its initial run so gave up on the show. I finally caught some of the good episodes in reruns, which made me a fan.

I actually think the program peaked during those first couple of years, in spite of dud episodes. The Bajoran political intrigue was handled exceptionally well. I've never felt the Dominion War arc was particularly well-handled - they ultimately turned Dukat into a mustache-twirling loon and spent way too much time on ridiculous detour episodes. That having been said, some of their best episodes happened during the War's 3-season run, and a couple of those (in particular "Far Beyond The Stars") were highlights in spite of being "detours" (well, kinda sorta detours in that episode's case).

I'd say Babylon 5 was the real precursor to that. While its 5th season kinda falls apart - the threat of cancellation forced them to cram most of the proposed 5th season into the end of the 4th, damaging the 4th's pacing and leaving the 5th feeling like fillier - the show is fantastically plotted from the 2nd thru the first half of its 4th season. The only real problem with the show is that the acting isn't as solid as on DS9 - although the aliens are great, the humans aren't so hot - and JMS could write speeches but not really dialog. Whereas DS9's writers created exceptional dialog. Also the production values are crap, but with a budget something like half that of DS9's, it's all pretty impressive for the money.

 

Best onscreen Moriarty to date too, bar none.

I always thought 'Duet' would have worked better as a TNG episode centered on Ensign Ro.

I have to say that I actually enjoy a lot of Season 1... it was, after all, the first season and they were clearly still finding their creative feet, plus they were up against the legacy of TOS and a largely skeptical public, so I cut them a lot of slack (although Roddenberry had started believing his own hype by this point and had become more of a hindrance than help to the writers)... I've seen much worse first seasons, and unlike the deathly-dull, running-on-fumes Season 7, it's still an enjoyable watch overall with some great moments.

TNG is where my 'Trek interest ends... DS9 was an excellent show, it just wasn't a Star Trek show though; too grim and militaristic.... everything afterwards to date has been just plain *meh*.

 

Yes, the Dominion story arc had great promise but didn't really deliver.

 

Too many episodes played like a bad Combat rerun. And that final season was a mess - the writing tanked, they ruined Dukat, made Garak dull, featured way too much kooky stuff with the Prophets, etc. The final couple of episodes sorta pulled it back on track.

I thought the show jumped the shark with "The Sacrifice Of Angels". Deux ex machina endings always suck. They had plenty of great episodes after that, but it was hard to take it all very seriously. There were also severe character missteps, which is a problem when your plotting isn't particularly good, either.

 

I watched season 3-7 last year for the first time. Many episodes two times each.
But I just started with season 1 and it's not as bad as I've heard. It ain't great either that's for sure.
It just feels and looks like TOS light to me. Very different to season 3 and onwards

 

As I'm sure you've read, Season One was under direct Roddenberry control with an attempt to use the old-guard writers like Gerrold and Fontana - basically an attempt to catch lightening in a bottle a second time. So there were a lot of TOS touches to that first season, especially the earliest episodes. Season Two had the characters find their way, and the addition of Pulaski was an attempt to re-create "Bones" McCoy, so the TOS effects were still hanging on. By Season Three, Dr. Crusher was back and the series just took off with a new crew of writers/producers and Roddenberry was just a figurehead at that point.

Season Seven gets a lot of bad press, and some of it IS pretty bad, but there were still some really good episodes that year. "Parallels" comes to mind right away. "Phantasms" is weird, but I always liked it. "Gambit", the two parter, has its moments too. i liked "Thine Own Self" and even "The Pegasus". But the over-use of family members in S7 was a bit much - trying to drag in Worf's brother, Troi's mother, Picard's offspring, even Beverly's son gets a return episode.

And of course the highlight of S7 is the two-hour finale, "All Good Things", a terrific finale, and a great bookend to the series.

 

I think it's a lost opportunity that Denise Crosby left the series so soon, the Tasha Yar character could have grown as the series improved. And where is she now, apart from appearances at Trek Cons?

 

Denise Crosby just appeared on last Sunday's NCIS: LA so I guess the answer to where she is now is still acting?

 

Did she ever do Murder She Wrote or The Mentalist?

My point was that she left the show because she was gonna be the breakout star going on to bigger and better things, but I think has only managed bit parts and summer stock and Con appearances since then.

 

Denise Crosby has worked in TV and movies steadily for a long while. She produced Trekies & Trekies II . I think that she didn't want to get too very typecast as Yar that nobody would want her outside of Trek world. She's slowed down in recent years but she's getting older. It's probably a natural progression some and getting fewer mother parts than some. I saw her pop up in shows I watched over the years. She was on Boston Legal at least once.... She was in quite a few movies in supporting roles, usually. She never became a mega star but she worked.

 

Yeah, Crosby has probably had more of a post-Trek career than most of her TNG castmates apart from Stewart and possibly Spiner.

I don't know if she left early to become a "big star" or just left early cause she got sick of series television and saying "hailing frequencies open" every episode (and not much else). Given the quality of scripts that first season I can't exactly blame her for bailing on TNG. I think had it staggered on like that for a second season it might not have gotten a third...and she'd have been remembered for being on "that flop Star Trek series".

 

Agree about DS9's final season. The whole arc with Dukat and Kai Winn running around was painful. Dukat was one of the greatest characters ever in the Star Trek universe. They could have come up with something better for him.

 

I'd also add that Crosby was an actress, and their shelf life is typically a decade, tops. If they haven't made it big by then, they never will. If she thought that Yar and/or TNG were going nowhere fast, she was absolutely right to bail and try her luck elsewhere. Her clock was really ticking by that point - she was already 30, arguably over the hill in Hollywood for an actress.

 

I just watched a remarkable one-hour documentary on this show, Chaos on the Bridge, produced and hosted by Bill Shatner, and it had some really scorching controversial information about Gene Roddenberry and how screwed-up the show was in the 1980s. Basically, TNG only found its footing after Roddenberry's health problems sidelined him around 1989 and other producers and writers took over the show and pushed it in a different direction. It's a remarkable documentary -- I'm amazed Paramount let them make the film, because it's a very negative, critical story.



I'm a friend of David Gerrold's, so kind of out of loyalty to him I bailed on watching the show and have yet to try it out. I'm told the show got a lot better by Season 3, but man, 1 & 2 were snoozefests to me.

 

I don't think Gerrold had much problem with the crew that took over S3 onward, did he? His gripes were with management mostly in that first season - he was gone after that IIRC.

 

I saw Chaos On The Bridge too, and was shocked that Paramount let them make it. Then again, Paramount is in chaos itself, so anything for a buck, right?

Also, nothing was really news to me. I heard about most of this at least a decade ago, if not more. The program just confirmed a lot of stuff. Great to see it on the screen, though.