How was season 1 received at the time?

[Lance]

It's also worth noting that Harve Bennett partially blames TNG's burgeoning popularity for the failure of ST5:TFF. He says he kept hearing there were people out there who were putting off going to the movie because 'the new show is on' and they 'don't want to miss it', and that Trek 5's limited theatrical run was something of a result of this (poor box office in its first week). I don't know whether that's just Harve indulging in a little internal politics, though. But certainly, it indicates that the audience had embraced the new show even as early as its second season.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Seriously? Harve was full of crap, then. Does anybody not get around to seeing a movie at all because of a TV series that comes on once a week? We had VCRs in 1989.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

^Seriously? Harve was full of crap, then. Does anybody not get around to seeing a movie at all because of a TV series that comes on once a week? We had VCRs in 1989.

Yeah. The excuse also doesn't hold up given that TUC did so much better at the box office when TNG's fifth season was airing, and that is pretty much regarded as one of TNG's peak years.

 

[borgboy]

I don't really buy that argument. Even people without vcrs could see it a different time, different day.

 

[Lance]

^ Yeah, to be honest I don't buy Harve's reasoning myself. His thinking probably was that the movies pre-TNG did much better partially because 'Trekkies' didn't have anything else other than the original 79 episodes on reruns, so a new movie was a 'big event'. As the first movie since TNG was on the air, he came to the conclusion that the ability to get brand new Star Trek for free at home was impacting on the box office somewhat.

There's probably a grain of truth in that, but to be perfectly honest I doubt TNG alone could be blamed on TFF's lousy showing. Like I said before, I personally think Harve was just playing studio politics, and trying to find a justification for TFF's failure. TNG was something of an easy target at the time.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I saw some things in the pre-release publicity for TFF that indicated a sense of arrogance on the part of the STV cast and crew towards TNG. Thus I would come to savor that the worst TOS film was quickly followed by the best TNG season.

 

[ykickamoocow]

To me seasons 1 and 2 of TNG were rather weak as Gene Roddenberry seemed to be under the impression it was still the 1960's with how he filmed it but by season 3 TNG really began to hit its straps and became a great show. Of course this is just my opinion.

I suspect if TNG was filmed today the first 2 seasons would have been enough to see the show cancelled as the people making the decisions on whether or not a show gets cancelled has less tolerance for shows that might not be successful than they used to and as a result are quicker to cancel a show.

 

[Christopher]

TNG actually got very good ratings from the start. In fact, it was wildly successful and launched the whole syndicated-drama boom of the '90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_(season_1)#Ratings

In advance of the first airing of the pilot, "Encounter at Farpoint", the show had been sold in 171 markets.[14] "Encounter at Farpoint" received Nielson ratings of 15.7 million,[15] and it was granted a commitment for a further 24 one hour episodes following the broadcast.[14][16] The pilot was the highest rated episode of the first season, the lowest rated episode of the first season was "The Last Outpost", the fourth episode broadcast, which received ratings of 8.9 million. Three episodes later, "Justice" was broadcast, which received a rating of 12.7 million, the highest for the season other than the pilot.[15] As of the period between September 6 and January 3, the show was only outranked in the Nielsen Ratings by Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! for shows released directly into syndication,[17] and it became the highest rated syndicated series by the end of the first season, which prompted several other series to be released directly into syndication.[11][18]

Its first seasons look bad to us in retrospect because we have the later seasons and DS9 to compare it to, but at the time these shows debuted -- as I tried to get across above -- the comparisons would've mostly been to cheesy stuff like Knight Rider and V: The Series and the frequently extremely stupid Amazing Stories. Yes, it was contemporary with Beauty and the Beast and Max Headroom, but it had no worthy competitors for space-based SF storytelling. So it looked better by the generally lower standards of the time. People did point out the flaws, but there was enough about the show that excited and engaged people that they wanted to keep watching.

 

[anh165]

Having gotten into TNG in seasons 3-7, I actually found season 1 & some of season 2 akin to TOS.

Later TNG seasons much like Voyager and DS9 became self-indulgent and too much emphasis on ... 'shooting their way out of trouble'

 

[Nebusj]

Season 1 is generally regarded today as being pretty weak compared to later TNG, but I was wondering if anyone could tell me if the general opinion was different then than now.

Well, Mad Magazine's parody introduced the characters with Data standing out by explaining that ``unlike the other characters on the show I've been programmed to have a personality'', which stings but only because it's so.

I can speak only for the reactions I and some of my friends had and obviously can't provide primary references to prove we had it then (which for me was high school), but, there was a lot of trying to insist that this was really as good as we wanted it to be, that ``Encounter at Farpoint'' (say) needed to be so long to cover its plot points, or that ``Angel One'' had something good in it.

The appearance of an episode like ``11001001'' or ``Heart of Glory'' was like an oasis because everyone could look at that and agree that it was a pretty good episode. (My physics teacher agreed that ``Heart of Glory'' was a big step up, and thought it worth mentioning to us.)

I remember thinking the sets looked weirdly antiseptic and un-lived-in compared to the Original Series, even though the Original Series just had a couple basic sets and then that spray foam that could be turned into cave walls, ice deposits, or just a fire hazard, to make stuff look lived-in.

Mostly I remember thinking that there were no really unsalvageable plots, but that the final writing --- the dialogue, the details of the story construction --- were terribly pat and juvenile, and they needed another round of writing to be, you know, grown-up, especially when they took a story premise that was clearly a remake of some Original Series one --- the silicon-based life forms, or the cryogenically unfrozen people from the 20th century --- and made a lousy story out if it.

What really caught my imagination in comparison was Max Headroom, starting about the same time, and in early season two figuring that if Next Generation didn't start picking up I'd just give up on the Enterprise-D and content myself with this little cyberpunk show. Fortunately, I guess, Next Generation did at least stop screwing up, and Max Headroom got cancelled, so I was there to start watching in season three when they started getting seriously grown-up.

 

[MikeS]

That's why I never shared the common hatred of "Shades of Gray." For me, it offered an appreciated peak at episodes that I wouldn't see in their entirety until years later.

I too felt that Shades of Gray was a good episode when I first saw it. Because it gave me a peek at the episodes I'd missed through the BBC messing around with schedules for Wimbledon, chess or whatever else happened to be on that week!

 

[CrazyMatt]

I remember having roughly the same reaction as when I saw ST:TMP in 1979:

"What a letdown!"

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Its first seasons look bad to us in retrospect because we have the later seasons and DS9 to compare it to

I clearly recall fans dragging TNG seasons 1 & 2 through the coals for being tepid, or just plain "un-Trek" in the execution--as the seasons were first run.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But how many of those were TOS purists who continued to be anti-TNG after it got better? There are still a lot of those people around here.

 

[Christopher]

Well, it should go without saying that there's nothing that fandom will universally agree on. Anyone who's spent more than a day on this BBS should have ample proof of that. Naturally TNG had its detractors as well as its fans. But the point is that it had enough viewers to be quite successful -- so successful that it spawned a whole generation of syndicated first-run dramas. Some people here seem to have had the impression that the show struggled to survive in its first couple of seasons, and that's not the way it happened. It was a hit from the start, even though it wasn't free of criticism.

 

[LOKAI of CHERON]

For me, Seasons 1 & 2 of TNG are its zenith - I absolutely love them. I'm not saying there isn't some excellent material between 3-7, but I feel the show began a slow and painful slide into mind-numbing blandness with many episodes from Evolution onward.

I mean bland from every perspective, (some of) the stories, characterisation, lighting, direction - and - the turgid, dull and tedious muzak style which really takes grip from the end of S4. I detest it, the worst decision producers took for the show.

I certainly realise I'm in a minority here, but sorry, Darmok's OK, and The Inner Light is a profoundly overrated snooze fest.

Please don't flame me, I AM a big fan of the show - currently enjoying zipping through the S5 Blu-ray's, and still really enjoying the heck out of many episodes

 

[BillJ]

For me, Seasons 1 & 2 of TNG are its zenith - I absolutely love them. I'm not saying there isn't some excellent material between 3-7, but I feel the show began a slow and painful slide into mind-numbing blandness with many episodes from Evolution onward.

I mean bland from every perspective, (some of) the stories, characterisation, lighting, direction - and - the turgid, dull and tedious muzak style which really takes grip from the end of S4. I detest it, the worst decision producers took for the show.

I certainly realise I'm in a minority here, but sorry, Darmok's OK, and The Inner Light is a profoundly overrated snooze fest.

Please don't flame me, I AM a big fan of the show - currently enjoying zipping through the S5 Blu-ray's, and still really enjoying the heck out of many episodes

This describes my feelings to a tee!

 

[Admiral Bear]

For me, Seasons 1 & 2 of TNG are its zenith - I absolutely love them. I'm not saying there isn't some excellent material between 3-7, but I feel the show began a slow and painful slide into mind-numbing blandness with many episodes from Evolution onward.

Since revisiting seasons 1 and 2 on Blu-ray, I'll confess to having become a fan of Stewart's far more assholey Picard, a character which became a bit of a wet blanket in later seasons.

I'm not massive fan of The Inner Light either. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not an episode I would choose to watch given a choice.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I can get that. A preference for the more bombastic past that had more hard lighting with shadows, music with melodies, ect. After Ed Brown left, the show would never look like this again.

I always thought of this shot being pretty reminencet of something we see in TOS, a dramatic close up of the hero at work.

That being said, I'll take the later seasons for the better stories. Would have been great if episodes like "Unification" could have been done in the S1 style as far as music and lighting go. There definitely is a dryness in those later seasons that make me fatigued.

 

[Lance]

I do love the more dynamic lighting on the Enterprise in seasons 1 and 2. It's almost noir-ish in some episodes. From the third season onwards it sometimes seemed like everything just got white-washed in light, which just wasn't true in Seasons 1 and 2. In some ways, 'Generations' kind of restored the richer palette of the Season 1/2 look again.

^ Oh, and LOKAI, I too really like the early version of Picard. I like that he still keeps himself at something of a distance to his crew.