Or, watch 'Encounter at Farpoint' from season 1 and 'All Good Things...' from season 7 and between them all the good episodes?
That's my plan next time going through STNG.
Season 1
- Thread starter ELCHawk
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Or, watch 'Encounter at Farpoint' from season 1 and 'All Good Things...' from season 7 and between them all the good episodes?
That's my plan next time going through STNG.
Someone should make that list, and only include the episodes that are either good or necessary for continuity. How much fat could we cut?
The problem is that there are a lot of episodes that are necessary for understanding some continuity elements that are also bad episodes.
Depends on where you want to set the quality threshold. Set it high, you rewatch a handful of episodes. Set it low, you rewatch most of them, skipping only the few you found vile.
Quality, like beauty (or treason, per Garak), is in the eye of the beholder.
Or beerholder, in certain scenarios.
Or beerholder, in certain scenarios.
I like a few episodes in Season 1 but I would agree in that it's the worst first season of any show. Still, episodes like 11001001, Arsenal of Freedom, Conspiracy, and We'll Always Have Paris I would put in my top 50 favorite episodes. It might be a stretch with Paris, but I've always had a soft spot for that episode, and it was very sci fi, especially with the time paradox.
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Amaris
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Yes, season one has some solid episodes. I also enjoy The Big Goodbye, and Datalore.
So you have:
11001001
Arsenal of Freedom
Conspiracy
We'll Always Have Paris
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
All generally well received. That's 6 episodes, easy.
I can also add my favorites:
The Neutral Zone (Leon Rippy deserves to be watched)
Heart of Glory
Hide and Q
Lonely Among Us
Where No One Has Gone Before
So that's 11 episodes out of 26, almost half. That's honestly not too bad for a first season where everyone's still finding their footing, and the writing room is still fighting over who is actually writing (Gene) and who is dictating (also Gene).
Plus, the background music was the best thing during Season 1 and Season 2 TNG. After that, I forgot it was there, and I think it took some of the spice out of the series with it when it left.
The music of Season 1 and 2 are a lot better than what came after. It seemed more lively, and it set the mood of various scenes. My least favorite thing about 90s trek is the music was pretty terrible most of the time for the TV series.
Datalore is one of the worst episodes of the entire series. Putrid, sophomoric crapola.
These others are all great, though...and Heart of Glory, Where No One Has gone Before, and Encounter at Farpoint are all solid stories. The Battle and Home Soil aren't half-bad either.
S1's worst are:
Datalore
Code of Honor
Angel One
Too Short a Season
The Neutral Zone
Obviously all my opinion only....I know it's an uneven season and people's opinions obviously vary!
Right. Being ordered to save the day isn't a significant improvement over doing it on his own.
And it's still contrived when "the kid" or "the acting ensign" is put in command over actual Starfleet personnel.
I agree that it is rather contrived. But it further proves a point in another thread that position overrides rank, like Lt. junior grade Torres being chief engineer on Voyager while Carey is a full lieutenant.
Or my theory that Sisko, being Admiral Ross' adjutant, gave him broad enough authority to command the fleets to retake DS9 and the First Battle of Chin'toka.
Or my theory that Sisko, being Admiral Ross' adjutant, gave him broad enough authority to command the fleets to retake DS9 and the First Battle of Chin'toka.
The music is really bad in Voyager and late TNG for me..its just like constant blandness..it doesn't even always fit what's happening on screen.
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Agreed. With a number of exceptions, the music of the later seasons was too uniform and dull, I guess to create that "wallpaper" Rick Berman wanted.
Necessary:
- Encounter at Farpoint
- Datalore (mostly for recurring character Lore, is otherwise good - but needed a second draft)
- Coming of Age
- Conspiracy (it doesn't hurt to see Coming of Age as it ties in, but it's a solid enough story)
- 11001001
Great:
- Where No One Has Gone Before
- Heart of Glory
- The Arsenal of Freedom
- Symbiosis
- Skin of Evil
- Home Soil (TNG's most hard science-based episode is fairly great, and also features the best and worst acting from the same guest actor.)
Good:
- The Battle
- Hide & Q (pretty much a saving grace)
- Haven (mixed bag of mixed priorities, but has its moments)
Meh:
- We'll Always Have Paris
- The Big Goodbye
Sub-par:
- The Last Outpost (introduces the Ferengi, and it starts out as good episode -- but descends. Watch 'The Battle' and later outings first.)
- Lonely Among Us
- Angel One
- Too Short a Season
So stinky that a three-change of diapers won't fix 'em:
- The Naked Now (yes, later episodes refer to one scene in this one. But, mo, there's no need to sit through this one as, for once, leaving something up to the imagination may not be bad.)
- Code of Honor
- Justice
- The Neutral Zone (or at least the first 43 minutes of it, the last few minutes are almost 'necessity' status - but is otherwise so awful an episode that one may as well say SPOILER -->
But so do dust bunnies, the episode amounts to nothing apart from more of the same half-baked hokey hubris that "Lonely Among us" puked out, combined with "We promise to be exciting later, because we feel we screwed up so bad with the Ferengi" (a promise that's actually kept, so watch those stories long before this one that introduces them. ) Oh yeah, the first hints atRomulans come back.are made as well, but only by happenstance as the TV strike ad such prevented their original creation, akin toThe Borgso it's a blessing in disguise. Still, one needn't sit through the thing creating dust bunnies to get the needed piece of information. Season 2 revamps things beautifully. It's faff that "TNG sucks until season 3". It was uneven in season 1, and remarkably solid for season 2 despite a could bad misfires, which only needed a slight rewrite or better direction. )the human-eatin' insect critters from 1978's Battlestar Galactica,
Wallpaper that you wish new owners would tear down and put up an exciting coat of paint with because it's pointless, even more distracting than Ron Jones' most notorious score, and often enough it's far more annoying than Ron Jones' most obnoxious score. TNG was shifting from "action-based exploration" to "soapbox of the week", but the music didn't need to become frail paperboard as a result.
Wallpaper music, if any music is needed, probably should not be there for wallpaper's sake. Without a good script, bad or no music won't help it out. Case in point, take "Datalore" and swap its music with the usual mud season 5 belches out. Or take "Powerplay" and imaging Ron Jones giving it the same treatment as "Datalore" and marvel at how much, MUCH, MUCH more exciting it would have been as a result. Oh well, at least they allowed something other than the "symphony of farting toads" for, among a few other stories, "The Next Phase"... (seasons 5-7 do have a lot of good or better stories, but most of them are let down by the new musical format. It was a letdown in the 90s, as others had made anecdotes on as well.) Still, DS9 did get a new style and even VOY with its reuse still put in new tones once in a while... Season 7 had an uptick as well -- at least nothing was stagnant.
We'll always have Paris becomes necessary if you want to include "Minuet" as the solution to "Future Imperfect" later on. I would say the Neutral Zone is also necessary. I've always liked Too Short a Season, but it may just be I liked the monster maroon, and loved the idea that it should have been Shatner.
There is a remarkably small number of episodes from Season 1 that can be removed. To me, this says that there was a lot more worldbuilding and good episodes than expected, and there is nothing wrong with the Season as a whole.
You mean "11001001." Jenice Manheim is the love interest for Picard in "We'll Always Have Paris." Minuet was Riker's.
Thanks for the correction. Its been awhile.
And that was already in the "necessary" list.
Still.
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