For People Old Enough to Remember

Oh yes, absolutely. It wasn't as apparent, because we didn't have social media as a platform to complain and spread negativity about everything like we do now...but it was definitely there.

It wasn't just prior to launch either. I went to conventions as a teen in 88 and 89 and distinctly remember Takei and Koenig both being dismissive and very unsupportive of TNG.

 

Reading the fan objections to the very IDEA of TNG is always hilarious.

 

I never saw any of those complaints in my circles. We liked and always looked forward to more Trek. We appreciated Trek getting some TV action to go along with the film series. Biggest discussions I remember about TNG premiering were the Enterprise design and Klingon in the crew, but none of it was hateful.

 

Thinking back, my biggest bitch with TNG will ALWAYS be the way it killed FASA Trek in the gaming world. That was an unspeakable crime. (FASA contributed to its own demise, but dayum!)

 

Note that I'm not actively endorsing DIS or PIC. Of the six seasons between the two, I completed one (PIC S2), ground to a halt partway through four more (PIC S1, DID S1-3), and didn't even try to watch DIS S4. Just saying that opinions are apt to change over time. Positively or negatively.

 

Not being a fan of Trek offerings is fine. Continually stating so at every opportunity even when it is off topic is unnecessary damaging. MMV blah blah repeating to infinity....

This is about TNG.

The bluish shade seemed odd but I loved the design.

 

Weren't they the ones who published the Next Generation Officer's Manual that talked about Picard's "totally bald" head? Between that and the bizarre rank pins they had, I remember wondering if they'd ever even seen the show.

 

Not sure- I never picked up any of their TNG material, but that was what ultimately got them into hot water.

 

Ah yeah, the old "crime" of newer entries into ongoing franchises or superseding prior fanon and/or beta-canon.
I'm not being completely dismissive here, I personally preferred what STO did with the Romulans to what PIC did with them, mostly, so I can understand the disappointment.
On the other hand we can't expect them to bind themselves to beta canon. That's one of the reasons I never liked the novelverse; not only did it always seem off to me, but it's also something that can be contradicted by any given future episode.

 

Im a bit too young to have been super media aware when TNG premiered, I remember my dad not liking it much and bailing halfway through the first season. I kept watching and by season 3 it was a pop culture phenomenon and my dad,
along with a lot of other people, watched regularly for a good 2-3 of seasons after that.

TNG was so successful it spawned memes and parodies like TOS did in its day and allowed for the creation of DS9 and Voyager. It was the last Trek on TV to make a real cultural impact, and even though the Kelvin films found success on the big screen they failed to leave and enduring mark outside of scifi circles. The difference between the recent offerings of Trek and TNG is that TNG got better each year and only had a rough premiere season while the new offerings have largely started out disappointing and failed to improve. SNW might break that pattern but it still remains to be seen.

 

I remember reading criticism in Starlog and other fanzines at the time. What I find different this time around is that many fans absolutely hate what they refer to as 'nu-Trek' and feel that the shows 'lack something'.

I was around 11 at the time of TNG's release. I remember my Dad criticising the lack of action and 'where no ONE has gone before'. Even when AGT aired, I remember retrospectives looking back saying that the show did not do enough space exploration and boldly going. There was a lot of commentary saying that TNG was more about exploring humanity and kind of patrolling Federation space.

Now I'm the fudy duddy saying that DSC and the rest are no good, lol.

Enterprise got slammed by many (including me), but people weren't saying that it 'wasn't Star Trek'.

 

I was excited by presentations describing the new series I heard at a con in 1986-87. Throughout the early 80s, we survived on sporadic news about upcoming movies every two years, and novels.

I loved the show from its premiere. It was a fresh approach, I liked the characters, and it was exciting to have new Trek on the tube every week. In retrospect, I can see how the early seasons could sometimes be a bit awkward, but overall I loved it. Some friends (hardcore fans and casual fans) both expressed the "No Kirk-Spock, no Trek") prejudice, but some enjoyed it like I did.

I was very excited about the sometimes heavy-handed "no interference in other cultures" themes because it matched my young naive ideals at that time. I remember going on and on about it to a couple of casual fans at Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle over drinks one night, and remember their eyes glazing over until I finally shut up!

 

There was some lukewarm beliefs back in the day, and outright dislike. But people still watched and the right group of people made the show into the zeitgeist-breaking hit that it was. Not bad for a show that felt closer in spirit to the 1964 pilot than most of Kirk's TOS era had.

But, yeah, a lot of the early episodes were given flak from many at the time. Even me, I won't deny it. Some early TNG was underwhelming. Code of Honor, Naked Now, Angel One, Justice -- pretty predictable for those and how bad they were and accusations of "ripoff" were not entirely undeserved, or does a pallid rewrite of old stories and chucking the word "New" in place of another in the original title do much (but at least Data corrected Riker on what happens when some twerp opens the friggin' airlock... that's timeless, and proof the show's educational slant hasn't done much since people still act like Riker rather than Data, as if they'll ever really need to apply such knowledge beyond their vacuum cleaner getting clogged, but that's another story.) But I digress.

As season 3 onward took off and especially season 5, people did revisit the older episodes in reruns - people did still gripe, but a re-viewing had brought in a different perspective and most of the clunkers had some ideas they hadn't picked up on beyond the craptacular treacle. And the Data-corrects-Riker bit in TNN is still timeless. I recall a friend's brother saying that, while the early seasons were rough around the edges, they felt like actual adventure and were more watchable - he said that in 1993. I hope they're both doing well... But he's right. As hokey as some of season 1's more dreadful outings were at the time, they were oddly more engaging and with bigger ideas than Worf's three convenient brain stem sockets there... if told deftly, there's clearly a place for both types of storytelling (situation- or character-driven.)

Indeed, with TNG's successes, you'll see aspects of TNG creep into TFF and TUC - spruced up sets being re-used and, of course, NCC-1701-A ("Alpha", woohoo!) getting its own version of Ten-Forward, which has a certain charm. But by season 2, TNG was being serious and TFF (and TUC) were becoming comedy acts thanks to IV. That's what bugged me the most; TOS was becoming a lampoon. At least TNG took itself seriously and that's a big reason for the show taking off, and some of that can be seen in season 1 as well.

In retrospect, of all the seasons to have been lambasted, season 2's is the most undeserving. Yes, it was still finding its way, but the more reasoned fan criticisms were listened to and it shows. There are plenty of robust episodes and even with the writers' strike, season 2 is when the show truly began - only hindered due to the strike and the few duffer episodes that remained. Okona is surely a season 1 leftover and is one of the worst, by far - but, and I'd have to read up, I'd suspect they ran out of time and had to use some stories to fill in story gaps. (On the plus side, the strike and related issues helped ensure the Borg would not be a race of gigantic insects - a la Battlestar Galactica circa 1978 - but cybernetic terrors that also happened to be a fairly clever satire of the Federation...)

That, and in 1987 I was whining in typical Sheldon Cooper/Lisa Simpson fashion about why the book covers were being handed out in schools. We're there to learn history and math and AV club and science and absolutely never English, not just advertise something we hadn't seen. Oh well. I do remember the library at the school; it was 3 levels and octagonal-shaped. Now I see why they got the covers for us to pass around. The Engineering section with warp core had a not-dissimilar look, guardrails and all so clearly they had seen some episodes and were hoping students would make a visual reference and spend more time in the library.

 

Not to mention, the bookstore I went to at college always had lots of great Trek stuff, including hard to find novels, along with magazines and books for other franchises - like Red Dwarf... and Doctor Who back when it was for teh geeky nerds and nerdy geeks, the latest novels when the major retailers didn't get those in as quickly, and materials covering all the 60s episodes since those had like this aura of mysticism because, yo - it's the 60s and all that... the wall by the entrance had BBS telephone numbers and pamphlets, notification ads for conventions, flyers for events with those tear-off slips of paper... they had quite a selection at that place. The DWM issues were aplenty and cheap. The John Peel booklets covering the 1960s stories were overpriced but I picked up a few anyway. So lovely to read...

 

There was resistance to TNG but not nearly the rejection of Picard and STD.

 

I'm sure there was, but I was 10 years old when it started, certainly wasn't reading trades or on what passed for the internet at the time. My friends and I were just excited for more Star Trek.

 

The only complaint I had about TNG during its first run was that it was far too boring far too often.

It wasn’t objectionable. I was just dull at times, especially compared to how colorful and dynamic TOS was.

 

I'm pretty sure that if pre-TNG times had the same proliferation of social media that we have today, it would have been just as toxic and vitriolic as we see for modern!Trek. Face it, social media is a cesspit of the worst of humanity, driven by an algorithm that favors "engagement," which generally means you're going to see more reaction with the things that make you angry BECAUSE that baits you into responding to it.

Like I wasn't around for the backlash to TNG, but I was there for the backlash for Enterprise, and in the strictest, technical sense, it was less than what Discovery/Picard in particular have gotten, but if it were amplified by an internet made up of loudspeakers able to drown out the positivity, feeding on peoples' anger butting up against other peoples'... Yeah, I see it going the same way.

 

I was rather young when it came out...when I was eight. I'm pretty sure I was blissfully unaware of such things....

 

I remember seeing that article posted here once before, and the one thing I still find the most entertaining is how they made almost everybody a commander. Commander Data, Commander Yar, a ship full of commanders!
Also wonder why Troi is missing, and why they thought hat Gerodi would be the new Spock.

Then again, from what I can be bothered to read/decipher of the article...they probably didn't think all that much and just screamed salty nostalgia into the night.

Also, looking at the photos...those really aren't flattering looks for Burton and Frakes. Especially Frakes who looks like a 1970s news anchor/weather man