Well, obviously the reset was deliberate (i.e. it wasn't casual). And it's not like the alternative was impossible and/or unthinkable. Serialized tv did exist at the time. In addition to the aforenamed Dallas and Crime Story, you had Hill Street Blues and obviously the various soaps and sitcoms. But for various reasons the Networks preferred the episodic formula for hour long tv shows.
Well, it's still better than most of tv shows of that era... About the scene in the Nexus, I always interpreted as a manifestation of his guilt (he always negleted his family, even before Inner Light episode).This is one of my biggest gripes with TNG - since this seems to never have really affected him again (aside from the "Lessons" moments when he gets asked about the Ressikan flute) it's also massively overlooked by the viewers of the show, which causes somewhat bizarre misconceptions. The man raised two kids, and yet people always claim "Picard hates kids/knows nothing about kids", etc etc. He. Raised. Two. Kids. I mean just because the experience wasn't real for anyone but him doesn't invalidate it, and I for one think "Inner Light" should have affected him profoundly, perhaps even more than the Borg or Gul Madred (the latter of which is yet another trauma of his that's never mentioned again... sigh). I've always found it extremely illogical that he resorts to making up a family in Generations when the real Nexus thing should have been him reuiniting with Eline and Batai and Meribor. They were his family, right there, but nah, the writers had come up with some super bizarre Elizabethan-style XMas scene scenario.
Ah, well. Episodic TNG could only go SO far, I know. Still kinda aggravating how they just "forgot" about most of Jean-Luc's traumatic experiences.
You know, it never really bothered me... I was more troubled by the fact that people can die for a fire in the 24th century...Yeah they at least tried to have a continous thing going on with his Borg PTSD, I gotta give them that. It's more than a lot of other shows did at the time.
And yeah, his guilt playing a huge part in the whole Nexus manifestation is also how I choose to interpret the scene... at least in those moments in which I don't want to throw something because of it.
I'm not sure that having the protagonist living an earth-shattering experience that normally could cause PTSD in average people and then in the following episode everything is ok is the best choice... If I had to write for these shows, I would probably have avoided this kind of plots because I would have found them insulting for the audience... Law And Order is a perfect example (in my opinion) of a episodic format. Main characters are more or less ciphers who have the task to advance the plot.
Well, interestingly, his definition of "technology" (like so many people in real life) is completely arbitrary, because I'm pretty sure he didn't light the fire with two sticks or bathe in the river. And because of this hypocrisy, innocent people died (again, far too many parallels with real life).
That's what ended up putting me off Smallville - so many characters, many of them high schoolers, died in such a short time with no discernible effect that the whole show became ghoulish. Particularly when Lana (accidentally, but still) killed a dude in 3x2, and it was never mentioned again.
I actually watched that one recently I thought that since it was so close to the end they were finally going to have the secret get out.
