Seasons 7 is harder to get through than Season 1
- Thread starter Beard of Sisko
- Start date
It's easy to get through:
The best episodes are great, and I skip the others.
I use this strategy too, although that cuts the season quite short.
But, why watch something you don't like just because "it's that good series".
Even the best artists create weak songs.
No need to listen to certain songs if you don't enjoy them just because it's by [enter bandname].
Or Chancellor of the Klingon Empire. And no convenient Martok to foist the title off on.
And the movies and DS9 crossover?
Well, if I do the DS9 crossover, might as well just do all of DS9 at that point!
I don't agree with the premise of your argument. Season 1 of TNG was excellent as was the second series. I do however agree that the cast were phoning it in during the later seasons.
Code of Honor, though.
And Justice, And Angel One. Core ideas on paper vs the (what amounts to "thoughtless execution of them") are definitely not the same things..
I usually give "Angel One" a pass, just because it does right what "Profit and Lace" didn't: gender equality is a process. You don't just wave a wand.
So Khitomer was a Romulan colony attacked by Klingons in that reality?How about he ends up being a Romulan ?
How about he ends up being a Romulan ?
You know, this just gave me a thread idea. Thank you!
I think a lot of people did/do hate the basic premise of them (and I guess I can see how they would be offputting), I think only in "Code of Honor" is the execution particularly bad.
You're welcome! Curious to see how it will develop.
(I hadn't imagined much beyond that parallels episode ending in an Epic Worf Howl, First showing the ship, then the solar sytem it's in, then the galaxy
)
We should have had a S7 episode where Barclay learns he's the only crew member that won't be finding out about a new family member he never knew he had, and getting into a deep depression over that.
I have disliked the bulk of TNG for many years. I don't revisit often.
I'm rewatching S1 with some guys on youtube.
I love S1.
i think its the best season of TNG.
TOS planet set, great music, comedy to end episodes, sci fi plots being the focus.
As the characters "grow into themselves" it looses a lot.
I LIKE Riker without a beard, doing the Kirk/Decker thing. I LIKE youthful Geordi as part of the bridge crew. I LIKE Tasha, and Worf in red. I much prefer the original configuration to all of these characters. I like the camera angles more. I like the views of the ship more. I like the incidental music more. Everything about S1 is preferable to what comes later, in my opinion.
I don't watch past S3.
I'm rewatching S1 with some guys on youtube.
I love S1.
i think its the best season of TNG.
TOS planet set, great music, comedy to end episodes, sci fi plots being the focus.
As the characters "grow into themselves" it looses a lot.
I LIKE Riker without a beard, doing the Kirk/Decker thing. I LIKE youthful Geordi as part of the bridge crew. I LIKE Tasha, and Worf in red. I much prefer the original configuration to all of these characters. I like the camera angles more. I like the views of the ship more. I like the incidental music more. Everything about S1 is preferable to what comes later, in my opinion.
I don't watch past S3.
Season 1 has grown a ton on me and I've rewatched it more in recent years than the others. It all started thanks to reruns back in the 90s that allowed easier comparisons between "new" and "old". A good friend's brother pointed out that he was preferring the "old" stuff because, despite some cheese, it felt more like adventure and action. He was quite right. (The "new" stuff wasn't bad, but it's definitely different - and not unsuccessful. It also proved Trek can do more than the usual action routine and remain identifiable as Trek.)
The TOS-esque landscapes were both homage to TOS and a cost-cutting measure, since many youtube channels (like Lorerunner, who puts out a lot of great stuff for every episode) cited how TNG's budget - despite being good - was actually small and they had to cut corners, reuse sets and props (which are done really well), etc. Oh, we know each episode on average had cost $1 mil each to make, but some sets and props were divvied up across the season as well. Some stories had far less f/x, since even a single 5-second shot of the Enterprise could rack up a ton of cost for the needed number of camera passes, which looked amazing and still do (even the CGI for the remastering of a couple scenes due to lost footage stand out poorly by comparison.)
The sci-fi aspect and responding to larger situations - the adventure - does more for me than latter-era TNG when it becomes too much about one character, especially when contrived. When I get to my rewatch of later seasons, there are a lot of episodes I'm tempted to bypass. "Ethics" isn't, only because Worf is explored more effectively than the cardboard cutout guest doctor who is increasingly contrived to be a quack for the sake of artificially boosting Dr Crusher, and they had to close out the episode instead of making it a 5-parter that it almost deserved to be anyway as it is a mix of complex situations...
Geordi managed to do more roles than you'd think in season 1; it's largely LeVar's acting and how the treknobabble made him fit in far better as chief engineer - a role that, to my understanding, they did not want because "TOS did a chief engineer and we're doing different archetypes now". Season 1 proved that the merry-go-round of shiny new engineers every week genuinely detracted from the story, and in-universe it begs far more questions. The only downer to making Geordi chief engineer is, season 1 had showed Geordi getting to do more command functions and he was an audience-identification figure. Seeing Geordi's growth I love, but eventually - if they kept going down that road - he'd either have to replace Picard as there'd be nowhere else to go, or do something else anyway. The longer they'd wait would make the transition more clunky. Also, Geordi's a fan-favorite character - along with Data, and they're a great double-act - so moving him to Engineering was a better move to make as this also gets around problems with "dueling captains, where does one go?" Granted, imagine Locutus leaving, Riker is in command, and now Geordi is #1, with Shelby staying on as special assignment...
-=PART TWO=-
Once the crew are established, they did become stagnant. I appreciated Pulaski, Barclay, and especially Ro as Ro is the strongest (her introduction to Guinan is a top-5 scene in all of Trek, IMHO.)
The camera angles -- yeah, on my last rewatch of "Blake's 7", that's when I noticed some of the same depth-of-field being shifted for characters. As with Doctor Who being enjoyed by some of the makers of TNG (per various episode, of which the biggie is in "The Neutral Zone" if you check out the original DVD release as the easter egg is retained), I suspect B7 may have been another -- the Custodian in "When the Bough Breaks" reminds me loosely of the look and dialogue of the Liberator and its ship Zen, but that may be a total coincidence. Really great set design and iconography regardless.
Tasha was awesome, but the uneven handling of her character was some of the worst. The handling of her in "Justice" is utterly rotten. If you took on the role and had such poor scripting, would you want to stay around? Other scenes do her much credit, but the poorly-written scenes redefine "bad".
Worf - so much mystery to the character and even minutiae such as his hair length was really well-handled; other shows would just plop a bigger wig on him and that's what we'd expect, so that was a nice subversion... Regardless, are you sure you don't want to give season 4 another try?
The music - oooohhh yeah, Ron Jones pretty much makes TNG in this regard. All the composers are fantastic, and Jones is the least experimental in TNG's start. Later seasons do start getting over the top, but it's so easy to see how he's the standout composer, and where some of his experimental scripts could also be truly excellent. Season 5 onward was too far in the opposite direction. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, but so many of seasons 5-7 would really have been elevated so much more with music that fit the scenes that much more. "Powerplay" is a great example of music that does not fit at all and does not work with the tone. Conversely, "The Next Phase" nails it perfectly.
The lighting - yeah, seasons 3 onward have a flatter lighting, regardless if it fixed the problem of needing cardboard over set panels to eliminate glare and reflecting. Plinkett I am not, since the lighting in 1 and 2 are more atmospheric and cinematic. Sadly, this does result in the use of "The Cardboard(tm)" - and IMHO, cardboard shouldn't be anywhere on the set. Not to hide light reflections. Not to pass as actors, either. Given a choice, I'd rather have cardboard light dampers than cardboard actors, but I think that's a given for most fans.
Yeah, I'm definitely with you as to why TNG season 1 is more exciting and exploratory, even with the clunker episodes in all their misteps. But I would still recommend rewatching season 4. If only for Worf.
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