TNG as three seasons
- Thread starter Lance Warren Baylis
- Start date
I totally thought the OP was going to go a different direction. I kind of think of TNG in 3 parts:
Part 1: Finding its footing: S1 & S2
Part 2: Hitting its stride: S3, S4, S5
Part 3: After Gene: S6, S7
PS: I know Gene died during S5s run, but I figure a lot of the work on it had been done before he passed. S6 & S7 just felt a bit different.
Part 1: Finding its footing: S1 & S2
Part 2: Hitting its stride: S3, S4, S5
Part 3: After Gene: S6, S7
PS: I know Gene died during S5s run, but I figure a lot of the work on it had been done before he passed. S6 & S7 just felt a bit different.
He didn't have much to do with it beyond season 1. Hence the increase in quality, even in season 2.
Seasons 6 and 7 felt different because Piller and others moved over to DS9.
And then RDM went over to DS9 for it's third season, Ira Stephen Behr took over that show from Piller shortly afterward, and DS9 had the best 4 consecutive seasons of Star Trek to date.
Season 3 of TNG is the best season of Star Trek to date, but seasons 4-7 of DS9 edge out their TNG counterparts, especially seasons 5 and 6.
The BBC showed all three seasons of TNG in a mammoth run and ended it with Best of Both Worlds Part Two! So that could work if that was all that there was!
JB
JB
7 Seasons of TNG were not nearly enough to satisfy. Even with 4 movies thrown in ... I need more!!!
I'm a defender of the first two (heavily maligned) seasons of TNG, but if 1-3 made up the entirety of TNG, then 1-2 would lose a lot of their cache. Having had seven seasons (and even movies), part of what makes 1-2 work is the "look at how different things were before it got good / look at how different things were when the music was still lively / look at how young they all were except unaging Picard". I love TNG as a whole, but the characters aren't great, at best they're like the TOS supporting cast, thinly written and imbued with life by game actors. I love Scotty and Uhura, but let's be honest, TOS wouldn't have had legs if all we had was three seasons of characters written like those two, some added charm around a centerpiece that's missing. In the case of TOS, that centerpiece was the Big Three and their interplay. On TNG that centerpiece was entirely Patrick Stewart's dignity... The supporting cast came to inhabit their roles (much as the TOS cast had done during the movies), and that's only possible with more time, more years, more episodes. I love Riker, I love that he kept turning down commands of his own, I love that his career plateaued because it made sense for that headstrong leader to chill out into part of the team, but again, that only works with the greater context.
A TNG that consisted solely of seasons 1-3 would probably be well regarded, and certainly 1-2 would probably be thought of differently (better? or perhaps at least more interesting?) because the episodes would be evaluated more as individual episodes rather than part of a larger tapestry. But there would never have been DS9 or VOY or the TNG movies. They probably would have circled back to reboot earlier (and more cheaply). TNG wouldn't have become an institution and would probably be thought of as a sort of awkward remake of TOS before more literal remake(s), an asterisk in a Trek history that would become a TOS ouroboros.
A TNG that consisted solely of seasons 1-3 would probably be well regarded, and certainly 1-2 would probably be thought of differently (better? or perhaps at least more interesting?) because the episodes would be evaluated more as individual episodes rather than part of a larger tapestry. But there would never have been DS9 or VOY or the TNG movies. They probably would have circled back to reboot earlier (and more cheaply). TNG wouldn't have become an institution and would probably be thought of as a sort of awkward remake of TOS before more literal remake(s), an asterisk in a Trek history that would become a TOS ouroboros.
I've just come off the back of rewatching it this way -- starting with "Encounter At Farpoint Part 1", ending with "Best of Both Worlds Part 2" then moving directly onto the movie First Contact -- and it actually works surprisingly well! BOBW actually feels like a series finale / counterpoint to the TNG pilot in a lot of very subtle ways I've already discussed earlier in this thread (Picard even does a call back to his first meeting with Riker) and is a suitably action packed 'end' to the show. First Contact also works astonishingly well as a follow-up movie in the same way TMP and TWOK do to the original series: although set many years later, it begins with a flashback to Picard's assimilation, old TNG uniform and all, and deals with the emotional fallout of it. The start of the movie segues beautifully from the final moment of BOBW where Picard is staring out his window in deep contemplation. It really feels like it launches nicely from the end of BOBW straight to the movie without missing *anything* of the subsequent four seasons 
The only leaps we're asked to make are 1: The narrative skips a few years (not that big a problem, no more so than TWOK or TMP and actually not affecting the story at all), 2: there's a new Enterprise, 3: Worf has been promoted and moved on, 4: Geordi has eye implants now instead of a visor, 5: Data has an emotion chip he can turn on and off, and 6: there are new uniforms. Yes, these are all different to where things were left off in BOBW, but none of them are any more or less intrusive than the narrative leap and changes from TOS to the movies, and if anything it's a much smoother transition than from TOS to the movies. None of them are narrative gaps whose lack of explaination either isn't covered in the movie itself. It's like First Contact was basically made to passively discard four years of TV adventures. Just about the only missing element is Wesley not being at the helm in the movie, but hardly a loss worth noting. 
It feels... refreshing to look at TNG this way. Three seasons, and three movies, like TOS the show doesn't outstay its welcome, and the movies feel like a bigger deal. Indeed, one could even argue DS9 launches from the end of BOBW just as successfully as First Contact does, starting as it does with BOBW as a narrative. There is nothing specific to TNG seasons 4-7 that is important to DS9's narrative that you couldn't simply leap straight in there at that point.
I'm beginning to wonder how many other TV shows could be similarly reassessed? How many have natural conclusions long before the actual end of their existence? Buffy is an obvious one: either season 3 (end of high school) or season 5 (a certain character's death) are significantly good endings for the show overall, both long before it actually ended, but you could theoretically purge the remainder and not miss anything, so clean is the branch cut off. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
The only leaps we're asked to make are 1: The narrative skips a few years (not that big a problem, no more so than TWOK or TMP and actually not affecting the story at all), 2: there's a new Enterprise, 3: Worf has been promoted and moved on, 4: Geordi has eye implants now instead of a visor, 5: Data has an emotion chip he can turn on and off, and 6: there are new uniforms. Yes, these are all different to where things were left off in BOBW, but none of them are any more or less intrusive than the narrative leap and changes from TOS to the movies, and if anything it's a much smoother transition than from TOS to the movies. None of them are narrative gaps whose lack of explaination either isn't covered in the movie itself. It's like First Contact was basically made to passively discard four years of TV adventures. Just about the only missing element is Wesley not being at the helm in the movie, but hardly a loss worth noting. It feels... refreshing to look at TNG this way. Three seasons, and three movies, like TOS the show doesn't outstay its welcome, and the movies feel like a bigger deal. Indeed, one could even argue DS9 launches from the end of BOBW just as successfully as First Contact does, starting as it does with BOBW as a narrative. There is nothing specific to TNG seasons 4-7 that is important to DS9's narrative that you couldn't simply leap straight in there at that point.
I'm beginning to wonder how many other TV shows could be similarly reassessed? How many have natural conclusions long before the actual end of their existence? Buffy is an obvious one: either season 3 (end of high school) or season 5 (a certain character's death) are significantly good endings for the show overall, both long before it actually ended, but you could theoretically purge the remainder and not miss anything, so clean is the branch cut off. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
I've just come off the back of rewatching it this way -- starting with "Encounter At Farpoint Part 1", ending with "Best of Both Worlds Part 2" then moving directly onto the movie First Contact -- and it actually works surprisingly well! BOBW actually feels like a series finale / counterpoint to the TNG pilot in a lot of very subtle ways I've already discussed earlier in this thread (Picard even does a call back to his first meeting with Riker) and is a suitably action packed 'end' to the show. First Contact also works astonishingly well as a follow-up movie in the same way TMP and TWOK do to the original series: although set many years later, it begins with a flashback to Picard's assimilation, old TNG uniform and all, and deals with the emotional fallout of it. The start of the movie segues beautifully from the final moment of BOBW where Picard is staring out his window in deep contemplation. It really feels like it launches nicely from the end of BOBW straight to the movie without missing *anything* of the subsequent four seasons
It feels... refreshing to look at TNG this way. Three seasons, and three movies, like TOS the show doesn't outstay its welcome, and the movies feel like a bigger deal. Indeed, one could even argue DS9 launches from the end of BOBW just as successfully as First Contact does, starting as it does with BOBW as a narrative. There is nothing specific to TNG seasons 4-7 that is important to DS9's narrative that you couldn't simply leap straight in there at that point.
I'm beginning to wonder how many other TV shows could be similarly reassessed? How many have natural conclusions long before the actual end of their existence? Buffy is an obvious one: either season 3 (end of high school) or season 5 (a certain character's death) are significantly good endings for the show overall, both long before it actually ended, but you could theoretically purge the remainder and not miss anything, so clean is the branch cut off. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
Smallville could have ended after season 5.
Supernatural at 5 or 11.
I think the strongest seasons of TNG are seasons 3 and 4 so just stopping after TBOBW wouldn't work for me.
Also, there are some gems on 5, 6 and 7.
I'll quote myself...
Also, there are some gems on 5, 6 and 7.
I'll quote myself...
Look, I like seasons 1 & 2 as much as the next guy, but there is some awkwardness in there, more so than the other seasons, & they just hadn't landed it to where it seemed contiguous. I mean Justice & Conspiracy don't even seem like the same show. Neither do The Royale & Q-Who. Even when TOS went in oddball directions, it was still rooted. This stuff wasn't always... yet
Season 4 might have the largest number of my favorite episodes, & while it's true that they did settle in a little too comfortably after a while, a lot of people think DS9 is a better show for exactly the same reason people criticize later TNG, finding a homeostasis, & living there, exploring the characters, creating a recognizable brand... which btw, is exactly what sells a tv show.
Season 4 might have the largest number of my favorite episodes, & while it's true that they did settle in a little too comfortably after a while, a lot of people think DS9 is a better show for exactly the same reason people criticize later TNG, finding a homeostasis, & living there, exploring the characters, creating a recognizable brand... which btw, is exactly what sells a tv show.
I tried this and this is what I came up with. 78 episodes. I count "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things" twice. It was a combination of episodes I rated 8 out of 10 or above and episodes that would be needed so there wouldn't be a significant loss of information.
1-2. Encounter at Farpoint
3. The Naked Now
4. Where No One Has Gone Before
5. The Battle
6. Datalore
7. 11001001
8. Coming of Age
9. Heart of Glory
10. The Arsenal of Freedom
11. Conspiracy
12. Elementary, Dear Data
13. The Measure of a Man
14. Time Squared
15. Q Who
16. The Emissary
17. Peak Performance
18. Evolution
19. The Ensigns of Command
20. The Survivors
21. Who Watches the Watchers
22. The Enemy
23. The Defector
24. Deja Q
25. Yesterday’s Enterprise
26. The Offspring
27. Sins of the Father
28. Allegiance
29. Hollow Pursuits
30. Sarek
31. The Best of Both Worlds, Part I
32. The Best of Both Worlds, Part II
33. Family
34. Brothers
35. Remember Me
36. Reunion
37. Future Imperfect
38. Final Mission
39. Data’s Day
40. The Wounded
41. Clues
42. Galaxy’s Child
43. The Drumhead
44. The Mind’s Eye
45. Redemption, Part I
46. Redemption, Part II
47. Darmok
48. Ensign Ro
49. Disaster
50. Conundrum
51. Power Play
52. Ethics
53. Cause and Effect
54. The First Duty
55. I, Borg
56. The Next Phase
57. The Inner Light
58. Schisms
59. A Fistful of Datas
60. Chain of Command, Part I
61. Chain of Command, Part II
62. Ship in a Bottle
63. Face of the Enemy
64. Tapestry
65. Lessons
66. The Chase
67. Frame of Mind
68. Rightful Heir
69. Second Chances
70. Timescape
71. Gambit, Part I
72. Gambit, Part II
73. Parallels
74. The Pegasus
75. Lower Decks
76. Preemptive Strike
77-78. All Good Things
For the heck of it, I'll do the same to TOS. To keep everything to scale: What if it only had three 13-episode seasons? Which would I choose? I left out "The Cage" because it's effectively a different show.
1. Where No Man Has Gone Before
2. The Enemy Within
3. The Naked Time
4. Balance of Terror
5. What Are Little Girls Made Of?
6. Conscience of the King
7. Galileo Seven
8. Court Martial
9. Shore Leave
10. The Squire of Gothos
11. Tomorrow Is Yesterday
12. A Taste of Armageddon
13. Space Seed
14. This Side of Paradise
15. Errand of Mercy
16. City on the Edge of Forever
17. Operation: Annihilate!
18. Amok Time
19. The Doomsday Machine
20. Mirror, Mirror
21. The Trouble With Tribbles
22. Journey to Babel
23. A Private Little War
24. Obsession
25. The Immunity Syndrome
26. A Piece of the Action
27. By Any Other Name
28. Return to Tomorrow
29. The Ultimate Computer
30. Assignment: Earth
31. The Paradise Syndrome
32. The Enterprise Incident
33. The Empath
34. The Tholian Web
35. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
36. Day of the Dove
37. The Cloud Minders
38. Requiem for Methuselah
39. All Our Yesterdays
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I love the symmetry of watching 3 seasons of TNG, then skipping the first weaker movie and going right to the 2nd one, with action and a return to the series for a villain, plus new uniforms and unexplained changes needing to imagine how they got there. its literally the TOS experience for TNG, and gets rid of SO Many of the weaker, talkier, preachier technobabbly late season stories. I'm one of the few that prefers the first 3 seasons, so for me this is a no-brainer.
Strangely enough they didn't show Family till the following year! Obviously it was like they couldn't leave a cliffhanger for the British viewers to wait more than six or seven months for but they could make 'em wait that long and more for the full ramifications of what happened to Picard in the two parter!!!
JB
I agree that seasons 6-7 feel different. While there are many great episodes, in retrospect, my estimation of TNG's final 2 years have gone down.
For one thing, both the music and Patrick Stewart seem tired in seasons 6-7.
In season 5, TNG was the only Star Trek on air. So it did feel more special then and parts of seasons 6-7 feel like setups for DS9 and Voyager.
I think Worf and Troi becoming involved was a bad idea that demonstrated a lack of reverence for the established Riker/Troi relationship.
Michael Piller said he felt having Wesley quit starfleet academy was a slap in the face to Gene Rodenberry and I think it was a misstep for the character to jettison everything that defined him.
The abundance of technobabble and fake science began in season 6.
By season 6, the weekly mission of the Enterprise almost seemed irrelevant to each episode's drama.
To me, in retrospect, a lot of season 6-7 feels like Ron Moore's warmup for his work on DS9 and Galactica.
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Star Trek, on the whole, would probably be in a better state today. The owners of Star Trek (Paramount, CBS, whomever) hopefully would have learned they needed to work at maintaining Trek's success. That it needed to be managed and not merely exploited.
To be fair, Star Wars is now suffering the same fate as Star Trek since being purchased by Disney.
I think Stewart getting tired and there being a lot of technobabble were only in season 7.
Yeah Ron Moore has been pretty critical of season 7 but never of that aspect that he came up with despite a lot of fans disliking it.
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Just three years would have been too brief, so much so the show would widely be regarded as failure and not very remembered even though the third season was considered the best; audiences expect successful shows to go on for a while and continue to be good while doing so. Six or seven years, though, and then not doing another spinoff until '96 or '01 would have been both a good run and a good break.
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