Yeah, I know a lot of it sucked. The premiere was really far more hit and miss than it should have been, the Naked Now sucked, and it had a lot of mediocre episodes, but there were some that I really liked. I liked Symbiosis and 11001001. I thought Symbiosis really set the tone for how loyal this crew would be towards the prime directive. Granted, I hated Angel One (And I'm not just saying that because I'm a girl and it was based on an anti-feminist story. It was just really.... Well, the premise was a little unbelievable. For one, they acted like this was the first matriarchal society they had encountered. Two, I had a hard time believing that it really took them that many years to get there and three, it didn't make sense that the Federation settlers there were the first gender equality crusaders on that planet, given that the planet was technologically like mid-twentieth century Earth and by that time on our planet, there had been feminist writing and theory developing since the fifteen hundreds. Okay, I'm rambling, sorry) , Haven (The only good thing about that episode of Lwaxana Troi. It was SO SOAP-OPERA-Y.) Justice (Which was so stupid I couldn't believe it. Really? The officials of that planet never thought to inform every member of the away team of the risk before letting any of them run off??? REALLY?? NO ONE THOUGHT TO LOOK INTO ANY CUSTOMS OR LAWS THEY SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BEFORE LETTING THE TEENAGE BOY RUN OFF ALONE???) and "Where no one has gone before" made me want to gag (well, any Wesley episode did. I know Wesley is the popular character to shit on, but it's true. I've read less transparent Mary-Sues in Harry Potter fanfics). But I think it's not as bad as everyone says it is. Considering that this was a completely new re-envisioning of an old franchise where they had to establish a TON of new stuff while staying true to the classic stuff. I can't imagine that was easy. It at least got me interested enough to stick around, which is more than I can say for some of the other series. I thought the conspiracy episode would have been great if the story took place in a later season and maybe carried on for about half a season with the Enterprise being cut off from the Federation Powers-that-Be or at odds with it for a number of episodes. There were some good ideas and while it could have been done better, it wasn't completely awful, even if it did have some completely awful episodes. A lot of it I think had to do with good ideas but poor execution.
In defense of season one..
- Thread starter WendyNotsid
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At the time of first-run, I was so thrilled to have new Star Trek in addition to TOS crew films, I overlooked the groaners. The ones that are bad I laugh at these days. There are few TNG eps I skip. The show certainly improved as it went along, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the entire run of the series.
My sentiments exactly.
There are aspects of S1 and S2 that I actually prefer to what came later. Even the uniforms (although they should have been made with better materiel). S1 and S2 actually feel like more of a followup to the Trek seen in TMP and GR's novelization of said film. Also S1 and S2 felt more TOS like in some respects.And, yes, some of the early Pocket Book novels were better than the series itself at the time.
My main beef is that the first two seasons lacked polish. And I've never bought the argument that the series needed time to settle because plenty of other shows manage to hit the ground running or settle in within about half a dozen episodes. Yet it really seems like they couldn't get handle on what they were trying to do.
That said I liked the following episodes on some level even if they suffered in execution.
"Code Of Honor"
"The Last Outpost"
"Where No One Has Gone Before" (really needed a different title)
"Lonely Among Us"
"The Big Goodbye"
"11001001" (actually showed some polish)
"Home Soil"
"Heart Of Glory"
"The Arsenal Of Freedom" (good story idea, but oh so brutally executed)
"Symbiosis"
"Conspiracy"
"The Neutral Zone"
Season 2 is where we start to get some polish with some consistency:
"The Child"
"Where Silence Has Lease"
"Elementary, Dear Data"
"Loud As A Whisper"
"The Schizoid Man"
"Unnatural Selection"
"A Matter Of Honor"
"The Measure Of A Man" (my favourite TNG episode)
"Contagion"
"Pen Pals"
"Q, Who?" (another fine episode)
"Up The Long Ladder"
"Emissary"
My main beef is that the first two seasons lacked polish. And I've never bought the argument that the series needed time to settle because plenty of other shows manage to hit the ground running or settle in within about half a dozen episodes. Yet it really seems like they couldn't get handle on what they were trying to do.
That said I liked the following episodes on some level even if they suffered in execution.
"Code Of Honor"
"The Last Outpost"
"Where No One Has Gone Before" (really needed a different title)
"Lonely Among Us"
"The Big Goodbye"
"11001001" (actually showed some polish)
"Home Soil"
"Heart Of Glory"
"The Arsenal Of Freedom" (good story idea, but oh so brutally executed)
"Symbiosis"
"Conspiracy"
"The Neutral Zone"
Season 2 is where we start to get some polish with some consistency:
"The Child"
"Where Silence Has Lease"
"Elementary, Dear Data"
"Loud As A Whisper"
"The Schizoid Man"
"Unnatural Selection"
"A Matter Of Honor"
"The Measure Of A Man" (my favourite TNG episode)
"Contagion"
"Pen Pals"
"Q, Who?" (another fine episode)
"Up The Long Ladder"
"Emissary"
I (respectfully) disagree. You've got to remember that this was a new incarnation of a show that tons of people really, really loved. TNG was the first new ST series in a long time and so it had to deal with more than most new shows in that it had to try to please fans of the old show while finding its own identity. It also was created in a time period that was quite different from the time period of the original series in a lot of social change had taken place and it had to adapt to create a setting that still felt like Star Trek but also fit into the social climate of the new show's time. The Next Generation had to set a sort of standard for the continuation of the franchise. It meant that the Star Trek Universe had to adapt to the changing times while still ringing true to the original incarnation of the series. The first couple of seasons I felt were sort of a test run, the creators and writers trying to figure out what and what not to do. With a concept like "Military body explores space" there are so many options. Some of them good, some of them not so good.
The other Star Trek shows had an easier time of it because they came after TNG and the creators of the new shows could look at TNG to know what and what not to do. They had a lot of TNG's mistakes and triumphs to learn from. And even then, it wasn't easy. They still had to make new concepts. And even then it didn't always work (I'm sorry if you're a Voyager fan, because I really, really wanted to like that show. I really, really did. But I couldn't. I feel like that show took a great premise out to the woods and shot it).
A lot of other shows don't have to deal with the same burdens TNG had, is all I'm trying to say. Whether they're Star Trek shows or not. So I still think the "series needed time" excuse is justified.
I just watched part one of the pilot the other day, and hilariously you could hear the set creaking as Picard walks across the conference room. It's fun to watch just to see how the actors, scripts and production values evolved over the run of the show.
TNG season 1 is looked on these days as bad stuff, but at the time it was first airing, audiences and Trek fans loved it. It was a big hit. It looks bad now because the show got so much better in later seasons, and because SFTV as a whole has grown so much more sophisticated than it was then. But at the time, we didn't know that was going to happen. Compared to most other genre or action shows that had come along in the two decades between Star Trek shows, TNG's first season held up pretty well in terms of intelligence and production values. Sure, it had clunky dialogue, but no worse than any Glen Larson show had (seriously, I just rewatched original Galactica recently and Larson's use of English was often painfully awkward). And as crude as TNG's video-composited FX look by today's standards, they were pretty impressive for TV at the time. And it told stories that were about something, that had some intelligent ideas behind them and featured smart, thoughtful characters, rather than being the mindless action of a Manimal or V: The Series. It wasn't as good as its contemporary Beauty and the Beast or the previous season's Max Headroom, but it was loads better than Space: 1999 or the two Galactica shows or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; essentially, TNG was the first good space-based prime-time US show to come along since TOS. So we loved it.
I love the first season, and on a whole, prefer Seasons 1-3 to the later seasons. Reasons:
> Music: Ron Jones made some amazing scores in just about every episode he did, but even the other scores were well done. They stood out, and especially Seasons 1 & 2 made great, liberal uses of the Courage and Goldsmith fanfares. Sadly, after Season 3, they were rarely used.
> Uniforms: Yeah, I prefer those too.
> Saucer Separation and Battle Bridge: Criminally underused after Season 1
> More Interesting Plots: The plots were great sci-fi plots mixing action, adventure, optimism, science and more. There were way too many dull character-focused episodes in the later seasons, with a few exceptions of course.
And, overall, I just love the entire feel and execution of the first season.
> Music: Ron Jones made some amazing scores in just about every episode he did, but even the other scores were well done. They stood out, and especially Seasons 1 & 2 made great, liberal uses of the Courage and Goldsmith fanfares. Sadly, after Season 3, they were rarely used.
> Uniforms: Yeah, I prefer those too.
> Saucer Separation and Battle Bridge: Criminally underused after Season 1
> More Interesting Plots: The plots were great sci-fi plots mixing action, adventure, optimism, science and more. There were way too many dull character-focused episodes in the later seasons, with a few exceptions of course.
And, overall, I just love the entire feel and execution of the first season.
The show came out four years before I was born and while I haven't watched a ton of sci-fi series outside of Trek, Firefly and some anime, I've read a good deal of sci-fi and I've seen a good deal of sci-fi films outside of Trek and Star Wars. But even though I grew up on far superior special effects than what was around in the eighties, the quality of the effects on TNG never bothered me. I really don't care if the effects are bad if the story and characters are good. And I'm saying this as the person who has never seen the pre-remastered version of the first Star Wars film.
I first saw TOS when I was about nine or ten and I loved it. Even then, the cheesy bad effects seemed ridiculous, but I didn't really care. And even though TNG had some crappy episodes in its first season, I didn't care about that as much because I liked Data, Worf and Picard and loved Q and Lwaxana Troi. And then I think Symbiosis kind of cinched it for me. And even though I found Wesley annoying, I did sort of like the idea of having a young person around my age aboard the ship and being a major character.
My favorite Trek episodes are always the ones that analyze some social, cultural or philosophical issue and season one had more than one episode like that. I'm kind of drawn to cultural analysis, which they did in a lot of season one episodes (110010011, Bough Breaks, Justice, etc) and that kept me going because it seemed like exactly the right theme for a show based around space exploration. Even with the bad writing, it seemed to me that the writers at least understood the possibilities, potential and purpose of a show like Star Trek. It wasn't trying to be an action show, it was being a show where there was more thought than fists.
I would have to agree with you. The legacy of the original Star Trek was difficult to surmount. You had Gene Roddenberry with a totally new cast and production crew so the dynamics were different. I do not fault the Next Generation for having a lot of issues through seasons 01 & 02. By the start of season 03, the show hit its stride quite well.
I do not think there's anything to defend with season 01. It was the start of something new and would have growing pains. It definitely shows. But at the same time it stands as a nice comparison for the rest of the series. It makes the rest look very good.
Just an observation...I was adding some info to my STNG Database today and I noticed that even the mediocre pilot "EaF" was rated at almost a 7 on IMDB!! I think some of us underestimate how much people like the first season of STNG.
WNOHGB was one of the brilliant episodes of the 1st season and remains in my top ten of all time...wonderful concept taken from a good novel written by Diane Duane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wounded_Sky
...and whoaa Angel One was NOT a good episode but it was hardly anti-feminist! It basically suggested we get get along better as a society if males and females worked together in an equitable way rather than one dominating the other...they just used a matriarchal society to drive the point home.
RAMA
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I think season one was better than season 2. So I don't really agree that the series was on an upward swing the whole time...still season 3 was a major overall improvement. I just miss the photography and music from season one.
WNOHGB had a dual purpose...the episode dealt with thought being a central storyline and of great importance to the universe much like the original series WNMHGB(In WNMHGB it was for power, here it is an underlying theme of the universe..related to current ideas in quantum mechanics). It also showed the difference from the original show to the new show in the acceptance of women.
RAMA
I didn't say it was. I said it was BASED on an anti-feminist story. It's based on an 1882 anti-feminist dystopian novel by Walter Besant called "The Revolt of Man."
I got the point of the episode, but it was based on a work of literature with a completely opposite message. And it was poorly executed. Like Riker finding the fact that the Elected One insisted he wear that weird skimpy tunic thing very funny. Troi was the one who was offended by the fact that skimpy clothing was required for the meeting. But Riker was pretty fine with it. Never mind that it was a gesture essentially assigning him the role of a sex object and that it was an insult to his dignity as an officer and representative of the federation.
None of the men there, not even the dudes who crashed ever really convinced me that they felt, and understood how it felt, to be oppressed. The only thing that episode really got right was how the Angel One women acted, such as the elected one trying to rationalize and defend the oppressive society by saying that the men were lucky that the women decided to take the burden of power onto themselves alone (a popular sentiment among those who opposed womens' suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) and basically treating the men like sex objects. The problem is that if the people being oppressed and treated without dignity do not convey the feelings of shame, anger, and pain well they just come off as a bunch of angry a--holes trying to tell people how to live, especially since there were no signs of feminist campaigning before the researchers arrived and the fact that we never get to truly meet or get to know any native males-- the only thing we see of them is them being subservient and putting on perfume.
You know how in the original Planet of the Apes the humans were stupid and that was the explanation as to why they were slaves? Angel One kind of set the same tone, which is part of the reason it failed so badly.
I'm not a female supremacist. Angel One was basically a patriarchal society, but with chicks. But it didn't convey the message well and pretty much everyone in that episode came off as an asshole.
As for WNOHGB, I'm probably being unfair, but I think that shpeil the traveler went on about how Wesley is the new Mozart kind of ruined it for me.
The way I look upon TNG Season 1 is same as how I look upon such things as TMNT or Power Rangers to give a couple of examples from personal recollection. At the time it was the coolest thing ever, but then when you look at it retrospectivly, you think about how lame it is (although with the examples I gave that was simply a matter of outgrowing them).
What's your basis for that assertion? I can't find any reference to Besant or his book on Memory Alpha's or the TNG Companion's entry for "Angel One." The script is credited solely to Patrick Barry.
According to the Companion, Barry's original script (which differed considerably from the final episode) was intended as an allegory for apartheid. Apartheid was a policy that was first instituted in 1948. The Revolt of Man was written in 1882.
The only references I can find online associating "Angel One" with The Revolt of Man are all repostings of the same Wikipedia article which simply happens to mention (or to mention that somebody else mentioned) that they have similar premises. It does not say that one was based on the other.
Okay, fine, maybe I was mistaken. It really doesn't matter though. Point is, I wasn't saying the episode was anti-feminist itself, I had just heard from some others that it was (at least partially) based on that book.
Sorry I upset you with my mistake. I don't really see why it matters all that much. I just figured they took the premise of that book and altered it for the time. But just because this episode was based on one thing doesn't mean it can't also be based on something else. But I'm probably wrong and I defer to your knowledge, which is most likely far superior to mine. I don't think the show or the episode were anti-feminist, I just heard that they drew ideas from an anti-feminist work for this episode.
It's really not a big deal. Whether it was based on that or "Fun With Dick and Jane" it still was a bad episode.
I didnt really matter to me that it was Wesley, though it was an internally consistent part of his established character trait of being a "genius" that must have made him seem the logical one for the Traveler to talk about, but I DO love the fact that a human being was considered unique enough (or smart enough if you will) to read into the equations of a far more advanced species about how thought and space-time were linked. Just love the concept.
I have NEVER heard of Angel One being based on any novel much less a anti-feminist one. Even if that were the case and you understood it wasn't anti-feminist why did you state that as a main reason you didn't like it??
I think Riker appreciated the fact the Elected One was interested in him as being a way to complete their mission. I think we've seen Picard and Kirk before him follow alien customs that seem strange in order find a way through difficulties. Still, I don't know too many guys who wouldn't mind being treated as sex objects...at least for a short time. Insulting or not it rings true.
RAMA
I don't think Chris is upset, he's just fact checking a claim you made. I didn't see him answer you emotionally or personally over it. Being a published Star Trek/SF writer himself, I am sure Chris was just trying to support his fellow ST scribes.
RAMA
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