Season 1: Not as bad as I remember?

[JirinPanthosa]

I've been watching through the start of season 1 lately, and I'm resolved to skip fewer episodes than last time. The only ones I skipped this time were Code of Honor and Justice so far.

Last Outpost is exactly as bad as I remember. But Lonely Among Us? The Selay/Antican B plot was terrible, but the main story was actually rather good, same with The Battle. Naked Now, not a good episode but not the horrid piece of crap I think of it as.

The show clearly hasn't found its identity yet. And it's interesting knowing that Worf was originally considered the least important character as he makes one of the biggest immediate impressions.

Season 1 feels like a show from ten years earlier than it aired, and seasons 3 and on feel like a show from ten years later. But that might be why season 1 has the charm it has. It didn't have the same amount of lore to draw on or live up to and it was still just out on its own in a vacuum.

 

[Sistrin]

Season One was poor overall. Both Justice and Code of Honor were hideous, The Naked Now ill-considered and done far too early in the life of the series, Skin of Evil equally abysmal, and Haven lifeless and boring.

Season One had it moments. I though Heart of Glory a good episode, and personally liked 11001001. However most of he remaining episodes were boring. Season Two didn't improve on that much.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Yeah i thought season 1 was ok, some nice little gems in there, but you can see they were still finding their feet, season 2 does improve a good bit, Measure of a man is star Trek at its best for me, but that season end episode was bad to say the least.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

TNG is not one of my favorite series. It's a bit too boring, talky for me. (And for a show that talks about 'we put aside all of our differences,' it's a bit too 'white').Yet, I do revisit Season 1 every now and then despite some cheesiness that crops up...every now and then.

"Code of Honor" is pretty cool because we actually see a planet full of dark-skinned individuals. After this episode, majority the alien planets will be primarily white, or portrayed by primarily white individuals. And, we would see this in the movies as well (e.g. "Insurrection).

I'm doing some research because I want to do a simple Youtube video on the racist comments some fans have made in regards to that particular episode (e.g. How dare Lutan hold an interest with a white female! How dare these black people be likened to Africans! Africans are backwards people, they should be civilized like European folks!) Anywho, I was sad that there weren't any planets that featured any dark-skinned folks.

I have to admit I watch "Heart of Glory" to see the cute Asian Engineering officer sitting at the console towards the end....

And, there are some others I watch every now and then.

TNG is pretty dated for me and, as aforementioned, boring and talky at times(and not as diverse as it, the universe, claims to be) but there are a few episodes I do come back to.

 

[Melakon]

"Heart of Glory" is one of my favorites of the first season, and it's largely due to Vaughn Armstrong. The night it first aired, I was like 'Wow, who is this guy? What a wonderful voice!'

Somebody tell him that for me next time you see him.

 

[JTShanks]

TNG's first season is rather underrated in my opinion.

 

[BillJ]

TNG's first season is rather underrated in my opinion.

Still my favorite season from all the spinoff series.

 

[Vger23]

I like S1 quite a bit, actually. I put it ahead of season 2 and 7 overall.

But then again, I'm the same guy who also likes Star Trek V and Nemesis...so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

@Joel_Kirk

You will really take any opportunity handed to you to make that exact same speech about Code of Honor, won't you? This is like the fourth time in a year by my count.

Rather than go down this entire road again I will just quietly remind you that Lutan did not just hold interest in Tasha, he abducted her against her will with the obvious intent of forcing her to marry him. And that no matter how many times you insist that people have some problem with a romance between a black character and a white character, nobody in the history of time has ever made that particular complaint about the episode, and nobody would be complaining at all if there was a romance between the two characters that was even the slightest bit consensual.

I personally would have loved to see the Enterprise visit the planet of dark skinned rocket scientists. Onward to the Neil DeGrasse Tyson planet!

I like that the show balances talky parts and action parts. Everything ending up in some big gun fight is even more boring and predictable than the talky parts.

Haven isn't nearly as bad as I remember either.

 

[Sistrin]

I have to admit I watch "Heart of Glory" to see the cute Asian Engineering officer sitting at the console towards the end....

I am going to watch the episode again just for this.

 

[Orphalesion]

Funny, I had the exact opposite reaction to Season 1 after rewatchng it last year. When I first saw it in re-runs as a kid I sorta liked it for it's very...exotic atmosphere; everything in it, all props and costumes are very strangely colored, glittery, shmmering which gave it a (positive) feeling of aliness that befits a SciFi series.

Now however, I just find most of the episodes badly done and almost like TOS shows filmed 20 years too late. There is of course Justice, Angel One and Code of Honour as the "unholy trinity" of not only the (imho) three worst shows, but also the three most TOS-like episodes. The 100% human aliens in the goofy costumes do not help, neither does the obsession with sex all three of those stories have.
Naked Now is a non-sequitur this early, Hide and Q features the worst of Riker (he's just plain painful to watch in that one) as did 11001001 where he spent the whole episode flirting with a painted bar floozy. The Ferengi Episodes suck by design and The Big Goodbye is a travesty of a genre shift that never should have existed. The Neutral Zone was preachy etc.

There are some good episodes like Heart of Glory introducing the upgraded Klingons and Homesoil.
I kind of like Encounter at Farpoint. I also like Haven, despite its cringeworthiness and potholes for being a space romance in a franchise that could use a few of them (and I mean romance in the 19th century sense of the word, not the modern).

Of course if you look at this thread: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=263539 you'll see that the early drafts for many episodes (including my personal three "basket cases") were much, much better or at least showed potential to be better until "someone" got their hands on them and "improved" them.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Season One benefitted greatly by the fact that such care and concern went into it, considering the novelty of its being the first STAR TREK spin-off. The cinematography was often allowed unusual approaches to scenes, instead of just blanket-lighting everything, as came later, during the third season or so. The Art Direction was much better overall, the show was allowed to experiment to a much greater degree with style and format than came later. I loved the use of the fake planet sets, as they were sort of "tradition" because of TOS. But when you think about it, other planets would have to look "off" or "weird" in some way. A way that might even register as looking "fake" to us, somehow.

Unfortunately, the use of such sets means that ALL alien planets suddenly become less "alien," as a result and that space ends up looking pretty much the same, everywhere you go. But with the limitations of 80's television and the budgets of that time ... I prefer the stylised look over shooting on a bike trail in public park. Michael Westmore's department came up with much better latex aliens than the weird noses and odd foreheads he started pumping out at a great pace after season 3. I loved the Snake people, especially! And I liked that the characters had to "find their way" in Season One, the "growing pains" are very interesting as Gene Roddenberry kept throwing shit at the wall to see what would stick. All in all, considering the pressures of coming up with a new STAR TREK that did NOT involve Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley, for the first time ... it was another pioneer effort by GR and I'm very fond of it, actually.

 

[suarezguy]

It's definitely uneven but still gets most of the characters off to good starts. I like "Where No One Has Gone Before" and love "Datalore".

 

[Ghrakh]

It's OK. The stories are compelling but the production values are awkward to me.

 

[Use of Time]

A lot of the stories were hit and miss in season 1 but it still holds a high rewatchability factor for me. This may have a lot to do with nostalgia I suppose. The standouts for me where "Where No One Has Gone Before" and "We'll Always Have Paris."

 

[TheSeeker]

I re-watched Season 1 not too long ago and found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I don't know if it was the nostalgia factor or just the beautiful picture quality of the remaster, but I really enjoyed it.

 

[Kor]

Seasons one and two.... how quaint.

Yes, early TNG had much more of Gene Roddenberry's influence. But by that point he was not the same man that he was when he first conceived of Trek two decades prior.

He had retroactively come up with this lauded Utopian concept that he promoted as the true "vision" of Trek, and then helplessly watched from the sidelines as the Trek movie franchise took off in a more violent and militaristic direction outside of his control.

Now he wanted to bring Trek back to television, and this time he would have full creative authority. Early TNG was his power-hungry retribution over the lackluster reactions to TMP and the subsequent huge popularity of the Meyer Trekverse. We ended up with a dull, sanitized universe filled with flawless, preachy characters and no human conflict to speak of. (And Wesley Crusher )

Kor

 

[Mytran]

I have a soft spot for season one because although there were some undeniable clunkers, the rawness and freshness of trying to create a whole new universe from scratch is always fascinating to watch.
And in general, there's far more middling and good episodes in S1 than downright bad ones.

 

[JD5000]

I liked the first season of TNG a lot more when I still smoked weed.

It's still not bad. A bridge is being built between TOS and TNG, necessarily, and it could be a lot worse. Many concepts are introduced in the first season that influence great episodes in later seasons as well as literature. Stewart goes in balls-out and makes Picard a great character.

 

[SAndrews10]

Season one has always been one of my favorites. Great guilty pleasure and brings me right back to when I was watching it for the first time.