I find it really strange the whole bridge officer test thing was Ron Moore’s idea, given that he was the one who tended to push Trek most towards military SF. It’s also kind of funny that the resolution to the bridge officer’s test is basically to follow Ro’s line of thinking in “Disaster” (really she should have been in command with the plot being her having to get over the lingering distrust of the bridge crew with Troi’s help).
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"Disaster" was such a needless mess. They could have separated the saucer to deal with the most immediate threat, bypass some of that juicy and/or cod drama, and then use site-to-site transporters (most would still work, or just reroute power from the force fields they didn't need to a transporter) or use shuttle if need be. They instead overly-contrived the subplots (Beverly/Geordi being the worst), but my only real defense for it is that it gave DS9 the means to remake it in a far better way with "Starship Down". Well, Troi acknowledging Ro may have just as easily been right works as much in the story's favor as against, but you still need to get yourself into a position of safety and recognition before planning how to get everyone else out of danger. Had Ro and O'Brien been right, the episode would have ended too early... the series too for that matter... at least rekerjiggering the plot to separate the ship might keep suspense going instead of "Oh, we know they'll make it and these subplots are just filler, especially Beverly's & Geordi's" being the prevailing mindset for the next 39 minutes.
Anyway I am not really a fan of TNG’s early seasons but I’ll stand up for “Encounter of Farpoint.” What might come as arrogance from Picard in other context reads as resolve when he’s facing Q (and frankly I’m feeling like Q has a pretty good case in his prosecution of humanity lately), Troi’s big emoting makes sense given she’s conveying the feelings of beings three times the size of the Enterprise, and I am a sucker for all the ship operation play-by-play stuff.
EaF intelligently found a way to have the ship's local empath/telepath saving the day, in a non-contrived way, as nobody else would have been able to figure it out, not even the audience, and it's brilliant because it gets Picard to think (opposite to Q's claims.) Plus, it'd be cool if Worf did phaser the viewer as Q would blink himself over to Qo'Nos at that point to put the Klingons on trial, out of abject boredom if nothing else...
EaF is not the best premiere for any Trek series, but is nothing like the total stinker either. It's often quite engaging; its only "failings" IMHO being the use of TOS-esque space jellyfish, being the first premiere in totally uncharted territory of making a sequel decades later with no template to go on, and McCoy claiming Data is being precise when Data only cites a year with no months, weeks, days, hours, unless their scene together took precisely at the moment McCoy turned 137 (okey dokey then!), but the added content of months, weeks, days, et ak, would be more in tune with the detail-driven point attempted. .
) being glued to the screen the first night it aired. That's back when "kewl science alnomony" was far more important than that boring character stuff.
But, yeah, the peg down-taking does hamper it...
