Am I the only one who enjoyed the first two seasons of "TNG"?
- Thread starter AdamNY
- Start date
I enjoyed some of it. There's plenty of good episodes, just lower ceiling and lower average quality.
I feel like every the ones rated low were pretty enjoyable. Even if at times politically incorrect. They were experimental.
Code of Honor and culturally problematic episodes aside, I find them a little campy. They took story shortcuts and took overly simplistic paths from point A to point B, like the silly contraction thing in Datalore. The dialog is generally rigid, the sets look much cheaper than in later seasons, and in general the characters' behavior just doesn't remind me much of real human beings.
I like season 2 and Pulaski.
Add me to the list. And when I saw these during original run I was more often than not openly laughing and poking fun AT a lot of the show. Possibly because those book covers were inappropriate for school but I was a nerd and would have been laughed at even if I ultimately didn't use them, ha! I still can't believe the 1981 hairdo mannequin used for Lore, never mind the atrocious dialogue that tries to make Wesley look great by turning all the adults into true nincompoops. That's not a good way to elevate any character, especially in a fledgling show that has already had episodes showing the adults not being a gaggle of sheepdip on screen. Not that I'm opinionated on this or anything...
Seasons 1 and 2, especially 1, grew on me and the blu-ray edition felt like watching them again for the very first time. They, especially season 1, try to mimick TOS' universe while doing their own thing. It's not always successful but in tune with the original feel/premise. Season 2 started a format change, which was solid enough, but season 3 really made a paradigm shift and made TNG its own superstar -- something that is not easy in the slightest to do. (DS9 would have the same success in finding itself and breaking free from TNG after season one as well...)
Season 1 is indeed experimental, and did have more of Gene Roddenberry's influence - which wasn't always in the show's best interests. Read up on the initial ideas for Troi Gene had, and the original plots for "Justice" and "Angel One" (that Gene hadn't touched at that point) as being two prime examples of, for the stories, what could have been better since along with Troi without DC Fontana's recommendations would have been bad and the two aforementioned stories without Gene's handling would have been a lot better, even with season one's production foibles.
Having praised season 3, I still maintain that Dr Pulaski always seemed more interesting and engaging as a character. And there is a subtle arc with learning to work with Cmdr Data. A few moments with Worf showed a ton of potential had Diana Muldar stayed.
And Ron Jones more or less set the definitive standard, though each composer hired clearly brought something special TO the show. And when season 5 was retooled, it's clear it's the production team telling the composers to use the new style. A style that hasn't aged as well and even hampers a number of otherwise robust episodes, "Power Play" being an easy example of that. Yet at the same time, season 5's new style also lent to rock-solid, classic and fresh scores such as the one used in "The Next Phase" and that's the style that DS9 would take and hone as its series really got heated up.
(DS9 season 1 was hit or miss for me, YMMV, but not as awful as even TNG season 1's best stories still has issues or logic lapses that drag it down. Even "11001001", which is a phenomenal episode in just about every sense of the word, had a couple scenes that don't make sense (especially Picard being there is just a fortunate accident when the Bynars always work in pairs and the solution required two to unlock the computer, in a case of ransomware decades before the term was even coined. Now that's a fortunate happenstance.
But 11001001 is more the exception. Stories like "Datalore" and "Angel One" are more the rule - good concepts with questionable execution that renders them falling flat no matter what the premise or reasoning was.
Seasons 1 and 2, especially 1, grew on me and the blu-ray edition felt like watching them again for the very first time. They, especially season 1, try to mimick TOS' universe while doing their own thing. It's not always successful but in tune with the original feel/premise. Season 2 started a format change, which was solid enough, but season 3 really made a paradigm shift and made TNG its own superstar -- something that is not easy in the slightest to do. (DS9 would have the same success in finding itself and breaking free from TNG after season one as well...)
Season 1 is indeed experimental, and did have more of Gene Roddenberry's influence - which wasn't always in the show's best interests. Read up on the initial ideas for Troi Gene had, and the original plots for "Justice" and "Angel One" (that Gene hadn't touched at that point) as being two prime examples of, for the stories, what could have been better since along with Troi without DC Fontana's recommendations would have been bad and the two aforementioned stories without Gene's handling would have been a lot better, even with season one's production foibles.
Having praised season 3, I still maintain that Dr Pulaski always seemed more interesting and engaging as a character. And there is a subtle arc with learning to work with Cmdr Data. A few moments with Worf showed a ton of potential had Diana Muldar stayed.
And Ron Jones more or less set the definitive standard, though each composer hired clearly brought something special TO the show. And when season 5 was retooled, it's clear it's the production team telling the composers to use the new style. A style that hasn't aged as well and even hampers a number of otherwise robust episodes, "Power Play" being an easy example of that. Yet at the same time, season 5's new style also lent to rock-solid, classic and fresh scores such as the one used in "The Next Phase" and that's the style that DS9 would take and hone as its series really got heated up.
(DS9 season 1 was hit or miss for me, YMMV, but not as awful as even TNG season 1's best stories still has issues or logic lapses that drag it down. Even "11001001", which is a phenomenal episode in just about every sense of the word, had a couple scenes that don't make sense (especially Picard being there is just a fortunate accident when the Bynars always work in pairs and the solution required two to unlock the computer, in a case of ransomware decades before the term was even coined. Now that's a fortunate happenstance.
But 11001001 is more the exception. Stories like "Datalore" and "Angel One" are more the rule - good concepts with questionable execution that renders them falling flat no matter what the premise or reasoning was.
Pulaski was a carbon copy of McCoy, designed to create the same friction with Data as was done with Spock. I was delighted when Gates McFadden returned in S3.
I feel a need to disagree. While Pulaski was the show's first attempt to put in some badly needed personality conflict, is she really a clone? Maybe influenced by the McCoy trope but rarely, if ever, did she really come across as a paint-by-numbers duplicate.
For carbon copies, the EMH is a carbon copy of McCoy. Count the times Pulaski said "I'm a Doctor not a _____" then count the times the EMH had. Their basic demeanor were sufficiently different, she was a similar trope but the EMH was definitely a copy. Makes for an interesting in-joke and Robert Picardo had the knack and talent and made the EMH his own, otherwise the character would have been denounced.
McFadden is iconic but Crusher got such poor treatment in so many episodes. Probably a textbook ESFJ, especially episodes like 'I, Borg" where she's letting emotion cloud her mind over a mortal enemy, but to be fair that episode does change numerous characters for the sake of the narrative. And far worse than making Chekov from a campy comedy act into a by-the-numbers officer in "The Way to Eden" (where the same accusation of altering character for the sake of narrative is made, only Chekov in season 3 was toned down in most of his episodes.)
I liked Pulaski. I like Crusher better but with Pulaski continuing would still have been a great show.
The trouble is they never built chemistry between her and the cast. She was always at odds with someone in all her stories.
I don’t think seeing Hugh as an individual separate from the Borg was morally unreasonable. It was probably a mistake to place his rights against an opportunity to end the war, based on what we know of the Borg now it probably would have destroyed one cube only. Pragmatically speaking Picard should have overruled her, but she wasn’t wrong to empathize.
The trouble is they never built chemistry between her and the cast. She was always at odds with someone in all her stories.
I don’t think seeing Hugh as an individual separate from the Borg was morally unreasonable. It was probably a mistake to place his rights against an opportunity to end the war, based on what we know of the Borg now it probably would have destroyed one cube only. Pragmatically speaking Picard should have overruled her, but she wasn’t wrong to empathize.
Similar threads
