Comparing TNG's first season to Discovery's first season

[Admiral Archer]

Not sure which forum this belongs in, but this felt like as good a place as any.

First off, let me preface this by saying I am a HUGE Star Trek Discovery fan. I think in the first season alone the series has already matched some of the best episodes of TNG, in any season, and TNG happens to be my favorite Trek series.

But it's no secret that Discovery has its detractors. Everywhere you go you bump into people, in person or online, who despise the new show, in addition to people who absolutely love it, just like I do. My question is, for those are old enough to remember, how does this backlash against Discovery compare to early reception of TNG's first season? Remember, season 1 of TNG was not the best of the show, and also had its detractors. My question is, which show had a more generally favorable first season? Try to compare both series by only their first season, and tell me what people from 1988 thought of TNG, in contrast to people in 2018 and what they think of Discovery.

Oh, and by the way, this is NOT an invitation to bash either Discovery or TNG's first season. We're here to compare notes between two different generation's takes on their respective brand new shows. Let's keep it civil, shall we?

 

[thribs]

At least with TNG, you can still get some joy rewatching it.

 

[Admiral Archer]

At least with TNG, you can still get some joy rewatching it.

Yes, but how much of that is nostalgia? Try to imagine you are in 1988 when examining your feelings towards TNG. You have never seen Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, or Discovery. The last Star Trek film was The Voyage Home. Keep that in mind when comparing your feelings about TNG for the very first time. Then, compare those initial feelings to the feeling of watching Discovery for the first time.

 

[thribs]

I don't really get this nostalgia thing. If I enjoy something, I enjoy something.

 

[Armus]

In terms of ratings, TNG was a hit from the beginning. Personally I love the first season of TNG. It's one of my favorite seasons in Trek's entire history. I became a fan with the first episode I saw, which was "The Big Goodbye". "Skin of Evil" and "Conspiracy" are in my top 10. I rewatch the episodes because they hold up to repeated viewings, like most of TNG. I haven't seen a single episode of Discovery so I can't compare.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

The best place for this is the General Trek forum since it involves two distinct shows.

Whooooosh!

 

[The Old Mixer]

Remember, season 1 of TNG was not the best of the show

But people didn't have the perspective to know that at the time. I'm sure that TNG had its detractors out of the gate, but some of us were just happy to have a spanking-new Trek show after two decades.

 

[Push The Button]

I didn’t like TNG at first, but fortunately I stuck with it until season three, when it got better.

 

[Hey Missy]

With TNG's first season you can "jump in" and watch whatever episode at random. Due to DSC's serialized nature you can't just "jump in" because most of the episodes blend together. I understand that TV nowadays is meant to be binged 15 hours a day or whatever the people my age do, but I believe 99% serialization hurts DSC's rewatchability.

 

[Lord Garth]

The '80s are the decade of my childhood, so I should be hugely biased towards TNG Season 1. It should actually be one of my favorite seasons. In theory. But the season is like a variety pack, quality-wise. Great episodes, good episodes, mediocre episodes, bad episodes, terrible episodes. You name it, they have it. I rated all the episodes on a scale of 0 to 10 and the final average came out to 6.

DSC Season 1 was leaner and meaner. No chance for bad episodes to slip in. Or at least not bad episodes in my opinion. The average for that first season came out to an 8. I treat DSC like a book where every episode is a new chapter. I start any time I want and, once I know the story, jump in any point that I want. I do the same with Mad Men.

Both these things having been said, I'll take TNG Season 1 music any day over DSC Season 1 music. And, if you know nothing else about the series but the titles, "Where No One Has Gone Before" sounds, based on a title alone, more like it would belong on a series called Star Trek: Discovery.

So TNG S1 does have some things over DSC S1. Minuet would be another one of those things. And "Conspiracy". Disco, TV-MA or not, will probably never have exploding heads. Last but not least, Security Chiefs: unlike with Landry, I actually cared when Tasha Yar died.

I bet some of you didn't think I had it in me: saying things I like better about TNG than DSC. But there we are!

 

[Nerys Myk]

But people didn't have the perspective to know that at the time. I'm sure that TNG had its detractors out of the gate, but some of us were just happy to have a spanking-new Trek show after two decades.

Some of us were both.

 

[1001001]

I think DSC Season One is way ahead of TNG Season One.

I also think TNG became the best Trek series of all, so we'll see what else DSC has in store.

 

[Admiral Archer]

The best place for this is the General Trek forum since it involves two distinct shows.

Whooooosh!

Thanks much! I was originally going to put this in the General Discussion when I first posted it, but wasn't quite sure it belonged here. For future reference, if one of my threads references two shows, I will definitely put it here.

 

[Terok Nor]

Ima letchu finish but Star Trek 1966-1967 is the best first season of all time!

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I was too young to remember its original airing, but I can tell you that I started rewatching TNG around the same time DSC came on and even though I had some issues with Discovery (mostly in the second half) I still looked forward to every episode. My TNG rewatch still hasn't even made it to the end of season 1 yet, because TNG season 1 is frakking painful to watch. 17 episodes in and I saw exactly 2 that were at all above average, neither of them great. 'Rewatchable' my ass.

 

[Spot261]

I think the landscape has changed significantly in the meantime, most notably in terms of how commonplace communication on the internet has accelerated and exaggerated the spread of criticism. Where we once had letter writing, word of mouth at conventions and a very limited USENET community now one person's most inane thoughts can become viral on a global scale within minutes.

This tends to distort the balance of opinions in that a tiny minority viewpoint can nonetheless be manipulated to become disproportionately visible and influential. We've seen this recently in the political arena and closer to home both DSC and SW have suffered from the impact of viewpoints which once upon a time would have got no further than the owner's basement.

That puts DSC at a disadvantage by comparison, despite being quite reasonably much stronger at this point than TNG was.

 

[BillJ]

I enjoyed TNG season one far more.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Disco season 1 is far superior in most respects. There are no turds on the scale of "Justice". But Disco didn't have to fill a 26 episode order. Disco and Next Gen are trying to be very different things. Next Gen season one would be a better fit against Orville season one, which is trying to be more Next Gen with dick jokes.

Disco v Next Gen is the battle of the Treks with the most fucked up backstage drama

 

[Qonundrum]

Yes, but how much of that is nostalgia? Try to imagine you are in 1988 when examining your feelings towards TNG. You have never seen Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, or Discovery. The last Star Trek film was The Voyage Home. Keep that in mind when comparing your feelings about TNG for the very first time. Then, compare those initial feelings to the feeling of watching Discovery for the first time.

The year was 1987:

* only 79 TV episodes and a handful of movies existed, most in release as VHS home video
* everyone loved Trek's spirit and wanted more
* everyone wanted better effects, so up to $1 million per episode was given out
* there is some reuse of TOS tropes
* there are callbacks to "the old Enterprise" as if no history existed between Kirk and Picard
* episode remakes too
* some viewers claimed the new show was killing off the brand

The year was 2017:
* TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT existed along with a dozen movies plus the shallow JJ-era
* Trek was long forgotten after 2003
* JJ's nostalgia-driven hollow reboot (2009-present) was fizzling out, ironic as "Beyond" is the most Trek-like of the three films so far, but casual audiences were done with their fill of nostalgia instead of watching the old stuff to gripe about how dated it looks since
* $8 to $10 million per episode can't capture enough viewers' attention
* reusing tropes, since nobody wants to see episodes merely remade anymore (though most of those tropes aim for long-time audiences as fanservice, many of which hate everything else STD is doing, and casuals may or may not see the reused tropes as original or done in a better-than-cornball manner
* some viewers claimed the new show was killing off the brand

Both also have instances of poor writing, breaking plot logic/rules, cashing in on nostalgia, and so on...

As much as STD tries for the DS9 grittier feel, it's missing something.

TNG's first season is a self-congratulatory circlefest for Roddenberry's pet ideas, but it feels far more lively despite having some moments of horror and grit. And don't get me wrong, DS9's seasons 4-6 have the same lively feel and are the grittiest anything Trek ever got. Point being: STD has yet to find its soul and presence and no matter how much they throw at it with ersatz shock moments or big budgets, it feels hollow and pointless and with big logic loopholes. But it sure does look pretty.

Which is scary since TNG season 1 often didn't have any soul or presence, spent enormous sums of money to look pretty as well, it was finding its own feet and cashing in on brand recognition as well, which was higher back then. And when it tried something like 'Justice' to show a death penalty for something simple, early drafts were replaced with that nonsensical trash that got filmed. The ending with the prime directive being ignored by the Picard is far worse than any number of STD's gaffes.

But STD's grittiness is not the problem, but it's no panacea nor placeholder for what it lacks. Characters need strong plotting - even if they're per-episode-reseted archetypes like TOS.

And the pretty must complement the story, the icing must complement the cake. Eat a cake made out of sawdust and that tasty icing becomes very tacky very quickly. TNG and STD both had the same problem, but TNG improved its stories and became its own thing and made its own lore (not Lore, but Lore is part of the lore). Once STD does, imagine how cool it will be.

That and competition in TNG's early years didn't exist. In 2017, STD has a lot of competition onscreen. Just being the name "Star Trek", is that enough? Would tern million units of "Star Trek Toothpaste" sell in a month? Or "Deanna's Dental Dams" just because it has the Star Trek name along with anything else on the packaging to make the product fly out of store shelves? (e.g. Troi in season 3 attire, the same teal color as the leotard that matches the color of Geordi's aforementioned toothpaste...)

So to cut a long story short, STD meanders with its plots worse than any of my individual posts does, while engaging in needless fanservice or catering to audiences with whatever is trendy and safe, but with a few twists that should be good but fail to really have an impact. Lorca is easily the best twist of the bunch, but they could have waited another year to get more mileage out of him as well as worldbuilding this new timeline - which apparently is all due to who owns which copyrights and other agreements, which is why the new 1701 also looks different (by at least 25%) and why STD simply doesn't work in the Prime universe unless obvious changes take place (e.g. spore drive is experimental, fails in a nasty way, so they get rid of it).

 

[Qonundrum]

I enjoyed TNG season one far more.

Same here. Never expected to since I didn't exactly care for it at the time. But by season six, friends were saying the same thing about how season one felt more exciting and adventurous, with a greater sense of wonder and exploration.