First Season

[Pikirk_Janesisko]

One thing to note is how different the early seasons are to the rest of the show, specifically the style. I know TV shows change a lot during their runs, but TNG it's the one that shows the most. I mean, if you watch DS9 or VOY season 1 and a later episode from, say like season 4, except for some minor differences and less fleshed out characters, you still feel like you're watching the same show. Like some pointed out, the first season is mostly hard sci-fi reminiscent from TOS and it feels very dry, even with the cinematography.

I might've been a bit negative about season 1 but in hindsight I think there's some qualities to admire. Technobabble was avoided for the most part, which was later to become very annoying by season 6. It contains the "best" (least worst?) Lwaxanna Troi episode. Some episodes have interesting concepts and ideas like "Symbiosis" and "Where No One Has Gone Before". The problem really is that there are so many badly written episodes due to the mess that was in the writer's room.

On the other hand, the change for more character stories came at a price like having to endure the Alexander and Worf soap opera crap.

 

[Oddish]

Ah, yes. Worf. Let's look at his stat sheet.
Bravery: >>>>>>>>>
Strength: >>>>>>>>
Loyalty: >>>>>>>>
Honor: >>>>>>>>>
Battle Prowess: >>>>>>>>
Parenting Skill: >

 

[Orphalesion]

It contains the "best" (least worst?) Lwaxanna Troi episode.

Yeah I gotta admit I have a soft spot for Haven. Though I think Dark Page and Half a Life are better.

Edit: Misunderstood you.

 

[Qonundrum]

One thing to note is how different the early seasons are to the rest of the show, specifically the style. I know TV shows change a lot during their runs, but TNG it's the one that shows the most. I mean, if you watch DS9 or VOY season 1 and a later episode from, say like season 4, except for some minor differences and less fleshed out characters, you still feel like you're watching the same show. Like some pointed out, the first season is mostly hard sci-fi reminiscent from TOS and it feels very dry, even with the cinematography.

^^this

DS9 definitely kept that in mind, to avoid trying to feel identical to TNG's established format.

Early TNG, at worst, is trying to redo TOS a little too much.

The hard sci-fi is not as often seen nowadays...

I might've been a bit negative about season 1 but in hindsight I think there's some qualities to admire. Technobabble was avoided for the most part, which was later to become very annoying by season 6. It contains the "best" (least worst?) Lwaxanna Troi episode. Some episodes have interesting concepts and ideas like "Symbiosis" and "Where No One Has Gone Before". The problem really is that there are so many badly written episodes due to the mess that was in the writer's room.

Same here, though depending on mood or availability of coffee, I tend to be generally too sardonic - even when I like or outright adore the episode or season in question.

Total agreement on the concepts versus execution. Season 1's writers' room was a mess but there's a lot of great ideas. For example: I recall disliking "Haven" in the past, but a later rewatch (when the blu-ray came out) had me picking up on some of the story's darker plot points and this one is n impressively underrated episode. The story needed more balance for the two plot strands by letting the Talarian (?) plight get more screentime, especially as Wyatt being a doctor is hinting at being able to save their lives, but I also wonder if the gruesome aspect of genocide was kept buried because of tv censorship at the time? "Haven" doesn't give me the same icky feel as, say, "Justice", which had a massive rewrite for the sake of sexing it up and it's pretty much one of the show's worst episodes as a result.

And the Treknobabble TNG cultivated then went overboard with was a lot more satisfying and didn't feel overly done either. (VOY coasts with that way too much and I recall a joke or something about a website that could generate scripts using a database filled with the treknobabble... I still love the show, but the cringe factor is still there - especially when it doesn't add up to previous uses or feels like coasting.)

On the other hand, the change for more character stories came at a price like having to endure the Alexander and Worf soap opera crap.

^^this

TNG was uneven with "kids in space" and the backdrop for Alexander was the smoothest that any kid character on the ship could hope to have, but it was handled worse than season 1 IMHO.

 

[Qonundrum]

I would say season 2 is a step up, overall. It definitely made space feel dangerous, mysterious, and unsafe. I'd argue it's the one season in the franchise that makes space feel as dangerous as it should feel.

I don't know Maurice Hurley as a person, but his tone and style when crafting season 2 really stabilized TNG and makes him an unsung hero. Danger, mystery, unsafe - it was true exploration and definitely starts to set TNG apart from TOS far more strongly and consistently. The season deserved the same quality of restoration season 1 got.

Plus, we get Dr. Pulaski, who actually had more growth as a character in one season that most of the others did in multiple seasons. (Particularly how she views Data from the start to later in the season.)

Seconded. The Pulaski/Data arc is subtle and strong, had more character growth, is not a McCoy clone (the EMH is closer to that at times)... just a stronger character for any number of reasons, not just the Data double act.

Season 2 definitely had really bad ones, don't get me wrong. "Up The Long Ladder" and "Shades Of Gray" spring to mind. But some of those can be attributed to the chaos in the writing staff that was going on at the time, not to mention the Writers' Guild strike that occured, which is ultimately why we got 178 episodes instead of 182.

^^this

"Up the Long Ladder" has some interesting ideas, but some of it's pure cringe and coasting on an unsavory stereotype.

"Shades of Gray" without the clip show half is actually steeped with atmosphere and a great initial setup, which looks well-made. A shame they had to do a clip show format because of the industrial action.

Season 2 had some great ones, like "Where Silence Has Lease", "A Matter Of Honor", "The Measure Of A Man", "Contagion", "Q Who", "The Emissary", and "Peak Performance".

Silence is one that's steeped in atmosphere and an overall unusual presence.

Matter of Honor is easily first rate and keeps the Klingons shrouded in mystique.

Measure, for me, has gone downhill a bit as nobody would create a sentient being with an on/off switch. But it's still a strong episode.

Contagion is another classic. Computer viruses were not new, but new enough that many in the audience might not see the resolution coming. Even so, everything's tightly written. The Romulans are great. The warp core breach may have been introduced but it was given the level of gravitas needed...

Q Who - the title referring to Q disappearing as if he didn't exist in some allusion from Q's point of view, it's a bona fide classic that introduces the Borg and with supreme menace. It adds to Guinan without demystifying her in the process. Definitely is what the franchise needed.

Emissary - another strong one. Sadly, it's because of this episode that Alexander is made, but not even the 10/10 stories are perfect and this one is a 9/10.

Peak Performance is a fantastic self-contained war story.

Then you have the danger and mystery of space with episodes like (again) "Where Silence Has Lease", "Unnatural Selection", "The Royale", "Time Squared", and (again) "Q Who".

Season 3 gets a lot of the credit for being the turning point for TNG, and while I do agree with that overall, a lot of pieces that help make it the turning point can be seen in season 2.

Unnatural - I'll stand up for this one too. It takes the premise from the old TOS episode about rabid aging thanks to magical radiation ("The Deadly Years"? Its not one of Trek's best...) - but does it with some credibility and not as a whiz-bang gimmick. This episode does bring in the transporter panacea, but in this one it doesn't feel as much of a gimmick either, is held off toward the end, and there's enough threat and urgency to try to save the Doctor - especially when they have to figure out how to reconstruct her as she's never used the thing! This, unlike 'The Naked Now', is how to take an old episode and innovate on it proper.

I might include The Dauphin as well - it's a decent coming of age story handled with maturity by the writers, has a "villain" who is multilayered (the dauphin's protector and not just a villain with a typical sad origin story) and sold well enough, and the science bit at the start with the machinery that ostensibly rips iron out of blood is a subtle but worthy reminder that space is a dangerous place, even in an advanced shape ship due to its complexity. quite an underrated moment in an underrated episode.

I think of season 1 as the rough draft, season 2 as the one that gets the rest of the kinks out, and season 3 as the polishing finish.

^^this

2 has a couple rubbish episodes but the whole season being lumped into the same category as season 1 is undeserved. (Heck, season 1 isn't all trash and is often pawned as being that in another misconception.)

 

[suarezguy]

I think, though uneven, the first 2 seasons, heck all of the seasons (maybe not so much 7) deserve a lot of credit for being as engaging, interesting, entertaining as they are while being constrained by the no-internal-conflict guideline.

I don't get why "Justice" or "Angel One" are widely hated.

 

[Orphalesion]

I think, though uneven, the first 2 seasons, heck all of the seasons (maybe not so much 7) deserve a lot of credit for being as engaging, interesting, entertaining as they are while being constrained by the no-internal-conflict guideline.

I don't get why "Justice" or "Angel One" are widely hated.

Justice mostly consists of Aryan fetish Barbies rubbing oil on each other, prancing around and "playing at love", makes Tasha come off as a complete fool for declaring their "justice system" (which she claims to have studied extensively) to be "common sense" and then tacks on yet another false god out of nowhere at the end of the episode.
Hard to find anything good in that mess, in my opinion.

Angel One, while, in my opinion, not nearly as bad as Justice just ends up awkward with its very clumsy attempt at "reverse sexism" all the awkward stuff about sex in the episode and the two Leaders (forgot their names) are some of the worst actresses ever to grace TNG.

 

[Oddish]

There's a reason why "growing the beard" is considered the opposite of "jumping the shark". TNG had a ways yet to go, but Season 2 was definitely a step up. Even the oft-reviled "Shades of Gray" was probably about as good as it could have been, given the extreme circumstances.

 

[Mudd]

It’s my impression that Diana Muldaur did not enjoy her time on the series...

She was far from alone in that.

 

[Qonundrum]

I think, though uneven, the first 2 seasons, heck all of the seasons (maybe not so much 7) deserve a lot of credit for being as engaging, interesting, entertaining as they are while being constrained by the no-internal-conflict guideline.

I don't get why "Justice" or "Angel One" are widely hated.

Justice = a base plot of "all crimes are punishable by death and that's how we got rid of crime" combined with a great juxtaposition for the Prime Directive and even questioning it was reduced to "The Planet of the Baywatch" and the Prime Directive had potential... but that, after a rewrite, was all shoved aside and solely for the sake of padding out screentime to show more people slathered in baby-(making) oil. Not just that, the rewrites the thing got were so inconsistent that the opening scene involving recreation time for whole families is described with "they boink like bunnies at the drop of a hat" in the very same scene. Not to mention the poor handling of Yar and the episode is almost self-aware of that oversight. Just for the scene of oiling everyone up in "the planet of the hippie utopia yet everybody still shaves anywhere". If anything, the Ido not having gender-conforming hues on their tropey toga clothes is the closest thing they got, but subtlety that alone isn't enough to carry an episode - an episode that's otherwise the very antithesis of "subtle". (Never mind the other disturbing point that everyone's blonde with blue eyes and with really incredibly bad wigs and bleached janitor maps when they ran out of wigs... )

Angel One = another old trope (battle of the sexes and role reversal to attempt showing what it's like when the shoe is on the other foot like a fish out of water, et cetera) treated poorly, and doesn't begin to sell the themes of second class citizenry or why people want to live outside the system, et cetera. No sense of threat or even compelling drama, it's largely hokum. With way too much hair spray and gel. As with most season 1 episodes, there are some ideas that are potentially worthy but are treated as gimmicks. The B-plot on the ship ended up being more genuinely engaging, but has its share of flaws as well.


Also, what @Orphalesion said as the reasons are told rather better...

 

[Oddish]

Say what you want about Angel One, it showed a basic understanding of how societies evolve toward gender equality: through evolution, one step at a time, with the repressed sex having to work for every gain in status it gets, with continuous pushback from the powers that be. No "Ishka waves a magic wand and women go from chattel to full-fledged equals".

 

[Orphalesion]

Say what you want about Angel One, it showed a basic understanding of how societies evolve toward gender equality: through evolution, one step at a time, with the repressed sex having to work for every gain in status it gets, with continuous pushback from the powers that be. No "Ishka waves a magic wand and women go from chattel to full-fledged equals".

Yes, we know.

But that one line doesn't save the whole episode.

 

[Oddish]

Probably not. But it places it at least slightly above dreck like "Profit and Lace".

 

[Captrek]

She was far from alone in that.

Who else?

 

[YetAnotherSubspaceAnomaly]

Regarding the amped up sex in the first season of TNG, a lot of that was Gene being Gene, but 1980’s syndicated TV shows pushed the envelope really hard because they weren’t under the same Broadcast Standards as networks. So TNG sexed things up early on and War of the Worlds was a weekly gore fest. Even The Untouchables had some really explicit sex scenes for broadcast TV. “Conspiracy” with Remmick’s exploding head and steaming, rotting corpse never would have made it on the Big 3 in those days. Eventually, the networks caught up, but for a while, these syndie shows went out of their way to be daring. It’s a shame many of them didn’t have the writing to back it all up with class.

That’s a good historical perspective, to which I’ll simply add that the direct involvement of William Ware Theiss is Season 1 was a meaningful contributing factor. As I recall, his theory of costume sexiness was that it didn’t matter how much or how little skin it showed—what mattered is how easy it looked to shrug out of it. That is as solid a theory of costume design as any I’ve ever come across.