*Why* are TNG Seasons 1 & 2 Bad?

Season 2 is not bad. It's my favorite, and definitely one of the best, far better than the later lifeless seasons where they seemed satisfied just to appear dignified, in place of drama, and mouth easy truisms masquerading as challenging ideas.

 

I like some elements of TNG seasons 1 and 2, like the more rough edges of characters and how you could build a completely different backstory based on some of the background info given in episodes. I feel like there's more danger and wonder in these early seasons and I can't imagine stuff like Where No One Has Gone Before or Q-Who being developed in the later seasons, even if I feel the later seasons are overall better.

 

I don't think they're bad. They were going for a very different style to the following 5 seasons, and undoubtedly there were some understandable 'growing pains' in the first dozen episodes in particular. But once it found its style and its comfort zone, which it actually did a lot earlier than some people say it did, then TNG really started cooking. In fact my own personal favorite season is the second, where I felt they had finally found their voice while still retaining something of the uniqueness of the first season. The third seasons onwards increasingly became more consistent, in some ways consistently better, but also a little more.... predictable, less willing to take risks like seasons one and two did. Say what you will about their quality, but they did take more risks early on. Sometimes risks soar and sometimes risks fall flat, that's the nature of taking risks.

 

I'm liking seasons 5 and 6. Nearly up to Time's Arrow which is one of those two parters. Oh ugh it's the one I don't like, with Data finding his own head.

 

I have given some thought to a thread of "What if Season 3+ Episodes Were Made in Season One", where it would be about how individual episodes from seasons 3-7 would have looked and been had they been story ideas in those first two years, and especially in the first. However, I don't know if it would overlap too much with this thread.

 

I think as a whole season 2 is a lot better than season 7 as a whole. It helps that season 2 has a doctor with personality.

 

What? Beverly had no personality.

 

Correct...

 

In what way did she lack a personality?

 

Ah, yes. The episode that taught us that the most challenging obstacle to a boy's path to greatness... is their mother.

Traveller: It's best you do not repeat this to the others, especially not to the mother.

Riker: Sir, shall I send for Doctor Crusher?
Picard: Why? Is someone ill? Or would you rather tell her about this, Wes?
Wesley: If you don't mind, sir, I'd like to sit here awhile. I'll tell her later.
​

You know what? Mothers are stupid. Let's just dump her.
*TNG drops Beverly Crusher's character after Season 1*
Now remember new season 3 writers, we've established in Season 1 that Wesley (our lord and savior) cannot achieve greatness if his mother is around and-
That's stupid.
*TNG brings back Beverly Crusher*
And Wesley's stupid.
*TNG drops Welsey*

 

According to Wil Wheaton, he left because Rick Berman screwed him out of a chance to appear in a movie (I cannot recall the film) and start a grown up film career by telling him he had a major, pivotal scene he needed to film for the episode, so he flies back from I think Paris to LA, and they cut the scene out of the script as soon as he returned, and the whole thing was Berman's way of telling Wheaton that he owned him, he was not going to have a career outside of his relationship to the show, and he needed to know his place. And Wheaton contacted his agent and asked to be gotten out of his contract in disgust.

 

That's terrible the way he was treated.

 

Berman is generally a very smooth operator, but he was clearly capable of being a real dick too when the mood took him.

Sometimes I do wonder if the 'handover' from Roddenberry to Berman wasn't nearly as seamless as we've been led to believe for all these many years. I've heard stories here and there that cumulatively make me wonder if Rick used internal studio politics and Gene's failing health to wrest control of the show from the Bird to his own ends/ambitions.

 

Wasn't Terry Farrel having the same problems with Berman?

 

This was quoted in the Altman/Gross 50 Year vol 2 book. Key part here is "According to Wil Wheaton..." - we don't know Berman's side of things.

Similarly, I would take Terry Farrell's comments with a HUGE grain of salt. She places the blame of her leaving firmly with Berman... but at the time (1998), there was a lot of news that she was simply asking too much money, and trying to get the cast as a whole to negotiate higher salaries (but instead, they all got their own individual agents to do it for them).

We don't know the truth in so much of this - but I do worry that some fans take the "demonisation of Rick Berman" as gospel and don't always question the source of a lot of these stories.

Oh, and season 2 is my favourite season :-)

 

I'm up to season 6 now. A lot of episodes I am loving.

Schisms
True Q
Quality Of Life
Ship In A Bottle
Starship Mine
Lessons
The Chase

Schisms is the one that freaked me out when it was on TV and it still freaks me out.

 

So Mad Magazine was rather brutal back in the day.

http://mystartrekscrapbook2.blogspot.com/2011/03/1988-mad-spoof-star-blecch-next.html

 

I think Season 1 was bad because of weird music, boring alien diplomacy stories over and over again, Wesley saving the ship. Heck even Q was annoying. There were episodes I liked though. Encounter at farpoint was a good start. Conspiracy, Home Soil, Arsenal of freedom (kinda bad special effects though), Where No One Has Gone Before and The Big Goodbye were all really good episodes. The rest were meh to horrible.

I think season 2 gets a bad rap. Shades of Grey and Up the long ladder and the miserable girl mccoy Pulaski seem to be all people remember, but I thought it was where TNG found its legs. The weird music was gone wesleys importance was lessened. Most episodes were actually pretty good and there were great ones like Q Who giving us the Borg. Season 2 only looks weak compared to how amazing things became but next too season 1 of TNG it stands up very well.

 

That was awesome.. Bloody awesome

 

I think the consensus on season one is that the pilot was interesting and set the tone for a good series, and then it limped through lackluster or bad stories, bad scripts, and bad characterizations for the rest of the season. I recall it got better as the season went on. Season two is a matter of the show seeming to get better before quickly succumbing to the problems of the Writer's Guild strike, which tinged the entire season and resulted in a god forsaken clip show.