In defense of season one..

[WendyNotsid]

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

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.

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 didn't. I said exactly the opposite. "And I'm not just saying that because I'm a girl and it was based on an anti-feminist story." How does that sentence in any way state that factor as a primary issue for me?

I said the main reason I didn't like it were some of the unbelievable things. I just mentioned that part to get that out of the way and make it clear that that wasn't my major beef with it. The only reason I was talking about that now was because that part was brought up. The first thing I said about Angel One was that the supposed anti-feminist influence wasn't the primary reason why I hated the episode.

 

[Christopher]

Sorry I upset you with my mistake.

You didn't upset me. It's my nature to be thorough in checking the facts and providing information. Some tend to interpret that as evidence that I'm emotionally invested in an issue, but it's simply my nature and my training to do thorough research. You should see the lengths I go to in researching my novels.

I don't really see why it matters all that much.

It matters to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Nothing matters more.

 

[Destructor]

Sorry I upset you with my mistake.

You didn't upset me. It's my nature to be thorough in checking the facts and providing information. Some tend to interpret that as evidence that I'm emotionally invested in an issue, but it's simply my nature and my training to do thorough research. You should see the lengths I go to in researching my novels.

You freakin' rule, Christopher!

 

[Gojira]

I never felt the 1st season was as bad as people have said. Sure it has some stinkers but all in all there are many episodes I enjoy too. I watched the first season a couple of months ago and I do think it isn't too bad.

 

[trentman359]

The 1st season is not bad. My only complaint is that there was too many characters without a defined role. Geordi and Worf never had anything to do and why was there never a chief engineer?
The first 3 seasons had great music as well. In the later seasons it kinda turned into wallpaper.

 

[Warped9]

When Season 1 debuted and I caught some of the episodes (beginning with EOF) I was very critical. I didn't like the new ship design and I thought the acting, writing and entire execution was brutally inept. It was only as TNG was progressing through the later seasons that I began to look back and appreciate many of the ideas in the early seasons. Now while I still think there is much crudity there I can also appreciate things they got right or ideas they later failed to explore and build on.

 

[Christopher]

The 1st season is not bad. My only complaint is that there was too many characters without a defined role. Geordi and Worf never had anything to do and why was there never a chief engineer?

Geordi's role was quite clearly defined in the first season. He was the conn officer, i.e. the helmsman. (And yes, the producers did make jokes about having the blind guy fly the ship.)

As for Worf, he was added as an afterthought, which is why he didn't have a clearly defined role. But his position was one that does have naval precedent, even if it's rarely been depicted in ST: that of the "watch officer," someone who's basically the captain's right hand and is responsible for the bridge as a whole, filling in at any station as necessary. Which is really a good idea; it makes more sense than the usual way that relief extras somehow materialize out of nowhere when a main character leaves his or her station.

There wasn't a regular chief engineer character in the first season because there was an effort being made to structure the crew a little differently than before for the sake of novelty. Also because the original concept of the show's developers was "Technology Unchained": that by the 24th century, technology would've become so advanced, self-sustaining, and seamless that there would be little need for the characters to get into the technical details of the ship's operation. You can see this in the first-season bridge design, with its lounge-like appearance and the blinky lights and displays reduced to a bare minimum. But as they went along, they found that there were still plenty of story reasons for including an engineer character after all.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Sorry I upset you with my mistake.

You didn't upset me. It's my nature to be thorough in checking the facts and providing information. Some tend to interpret that as evidence that I'm emotionally invested in an issue, but it's simply my nature and my training to do thorough research. You should see the lengths I go to in researching my novels.

I don't really see why it matters all that much.

It matters to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Nothing matters more.

Christopher, this post just worked better than any marketing could have. I'll be looking for your books, just because I like your attitude/philosophy.

 

[trentman359]

The 1st season is not bad. My only complaint is that there was too many characters without a defined role. Geordi and Worf never had anything to do and why was there never a chief engineer?

Geordi's role was quite clearly defined in the first season. He was the conn officer, i.e. the helmsman. (And yes, the producers did make jokes about having the blind guy fly the ship.)

Ya, that's true. But he seemed to be just another bridge officer. I didn't know about that whole "Tech Unchained" idea. Very interesting.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I prefer season one to season two - there are only three or four season two episodes that are any good, IMAO.

 

[Christopher]

Geordi's role was quite clearly defined in the first season. He was the conn officer, i.e. the helmsman. (And yes, the producers did make jokes about having the blind guy fly the ship.)

Ya, that's true. But he seemed to be just another bridge officer.

Well, you could say the same about Sulu and Chekov in TOS. Seriously, why would Kirk bring his navigator on so many landing parties? When you've got a finite-sized regular cast, there's likely to be some flexibility in the roles they play.

 

[MikeS]

Sorry I upset you with my mistake.

You didn't upset me. It's my nature to be thorough in checking the facts and providing information. Some tend to interpret that as evidence that I'm emotionally invested in an issue, but it's simply my nature and my training to do thorough research. You should see the lengths I go to in researching my novels.

I don't really see why it matters all that much.

It matters to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Nothing matters more.

Christopher, this post just worked better than any marketing could have. I'll be looking for your books, just because I like your attitude/philosophy.

Seconded.

 

[Warped9]

My defense of Season One boils down to my willing to include it in my dvd library. I only want Seasons 1-3, but I need 4 because it has Part II of "Best Of Both Worlds."

Ideally I'd love a set comprised solely of my favourite episodes from Seasons 1 through 4. As such I'd have about 1-2 seasons worth of episodes.