Birthright is at least half good. The bits with DS9 in them... I keep accidentally thinking Quark's cameo was in Gambit, but IMDB tells me it was "Firstborn". Hey ho.
Maybe. But the one With Data's mom is one of my all time favorites. Whatever got her there, I'm cool with it. LOL Wow. I must really be a freak because I really liked seasons 6 and 7. Not all of them of course, but over all I thought they were really good seasons with a lot of great episodes.
Gotta give credit to season 7. They managed to make a Lwaxana Troi episode even more painful to watch than usual.
I'm sorry, I read that as The Bondage and Menage รก Trois. Why all the hate for Dark Page? - that one made me cry for a character that turned out to be brashy on the outside yet pained inside.
Season 7 holds a special place for me because it was when I began watching TNG. I watched it first run and then started from the begining in syndication. In hindsight, I think S6 is definitely the peak. There are some real duds in S7. I don't hate Genesis as much as most do, but Masks, Thine Own Self, Sub Rosa, horrible. Sub Rosa is one of the worst eps of the series, if I were Gates McFadden I would have refused to film it.
I think it's a local phenomenon. I've seen plenty people in other places that like it, and saw it as actual character growth for a character who was mostly there for a gag otherwise. I wouldn't say it's her best episode (Half A Life is much better IMO) but it's not her worst either
This. This forever. They had a chance of giving Wesley some real character growth, to make him conflicted and interesting in his last episode ever, and what do they do? Give him the most Mary Sue-ish exit of all time. I hate that episode with the fire of a thousand suns (and Wesley is not even the only issue I have with that episode), and that alone is enough to make season 6 better than season 7. That and Sub Rosa. Seriously? LAME. Otherwise, the season was decent enough, I guess.
I started watching with Season 7 as well but the only episode that I truly cannot bare to watch now is Sub Rosa. Personally I think the main source of stinkers in Next Generation is Season 5. The Game, New Ground, Hero Worship, Violations, The Masterpiece Society, The Outcast, Cost of Living, Perfect Mate, Imaginary Friend. I seldom watched these during the reruns.
Also remember two of TNG strongest writers were barely available for real writing, for a big stretch of the earlier part of season 7. Braga and Moor spent the earlier part of season 7 writing, and rewriting to death Generations. Meaning that they couldn't contribute to the level they normally had in previous seasons. Once they finished that what happens we get Pegasus and Parallels as their first real assignments of the season.
Too bad Generations turned out to be shit. I hate that movie for being one of the big reasons for the decline of season seven. They should have waited after the show was OVER to get started on the movie like any sane person would have done.
I agree with all of those except The Game and Masterpiece Society, but if all the seasons are on the table, are we forgetting season 1? I count at least 12 stinkers there, and that's being generous in a few cases.
^ I think there is much truth in this, and agree with it completely. Of course, Rick Berman was very much a studio player and almost never "bucked the system" in his 15+ year tenure at the top of the totem on Star Trek. The studio gave them a firm release date for GENS mere months after TNG was to go off the air, so that's what Berman aimed for. Frankly, we're lucky that GENS is even as watchable as it is (the very same problem plagued Insurrection, which was given a release date before a single page of the script had even been written!). I agree it was crazy, and it's why GENS has got so many inconsistencies as well. Nobody came out of that one looking good.
I find the show started to decline in quality around season six. Most of the decline in quality had to with behind the scenes issues and over stretching of resources. In season 6 most of the writers attention was on launching DS9 certainly Michael Piller had no direct involvement with TNG after season 5. Then in season 7 the producers and writers were: writing the second year of DS9, prepping Voyager and working on Generations. I agree with the sentiment expressed by some about Generations coming too close after the end of TNG, but that was a studio mandate. They wanted to strike while the iron was hot so it was decided filming Generations would happen right after the end of the series. That said, Seasons six and seven did have some great stuff and some good character development (minus Beverly having sex with a lamp)
I think having Data go through the process of becoming a full commander would have made more sense than Troi. We'd already seen him give it a shot a few times, it would have been a nice bit of growth for him. But I suppose they wanted to show that Deanna actually had some substance.
Yeah, for me it was 'too little, too late' for Troi. And it certainly didn't help that her promotion really made no difference at all to subsequent episodes. Not that it needed to, but it did make her B plot in Thine Own... even less satisfying in retrospect.