Redeeming S1 moments.

[JaxsBrokenHeart]

The issue with season 1 at least for me was its bad moments are unfortunately distinct in how awful they are. Season 7 TNG was no prize much of the time but I was more confused or unimpressed by its weaker efforts. Even Season 2, as rough as it can get at times is typically able to buoy its worst parts by some character or story element.

TNG season 1 though is one of the few periods of Trek where I'm consistently getting second hand embarrassment throughout much of it. The story shilling of Wesley, the awful fashion design, how badly the crew is characterized, how out of date the tone feels, the attempts at humor that so often land with a thud, etc. There's a lot of ST that I'd be happy to have someone view with me, but this is one where I'd actually be a bit mortified if they walked in on me watching various episodes (The Naked Now and Haven say hello).

And the sad thing is that there are some genuinely interesting high concept ideas and poignant moments that happen with it, but they're surrounded by such dubious execution everywhere else that it almost feels hard to enjoy them. Its why I mentioned that Picard bit in Where No One Has Gone Before because its a scene that's just far removed enough from the weaker elements of that story (Kosinski's one note characterization and the unintentionally creepy nature of the Traveler) that it still largely works.

 

[Orphalesion]

I've said several times that, despite it's obvious plot holes and other problems with the story (such as Riker's perplexing characterization in the whole episode), I do think Haven as a whole is a redeeming Season 1 moment.
Maybe it's because I'm a person who enjoys romanticism, but I think TNG might have sometimes profited from a bit of the colourful, exotic feel of that episode: A planet so darn beautiful that it is said to possess mystical healing powers, two lovers finding each other across time and space, the idea that all life is one on a fundamental level and that rose that changes colour with your emotions (even if the prop wasn't used very well, it's nice to for once see a plant that isn't from Southern California)
TNG is always so sober, it's nice to have an episode that is not.

As for specific redeeming moments in it:
1)The scene where Wyatt and Lwaxana talk about the possibility of all life being connected, and for once Lwaxana is sincere and sensible.
2)The First Electorine of Haven hailing the Enterprise is, imho, a brilliant piece of world building. Her gossamer-like clothing and the romantic coastal cliffs in the background manage to convey the beauty of Haven in a very concise way.

 

[somebuddyX]

I think Where No One Has Gone Before is pretty solid overall. Kosinski's arrogance is great. I love the scene building up to the Enterprise kicking into super warp and seeing the warp core lights flashing like a disco. There's something magical to me about the Enterprise being out that far and alone that I sort of think that's how the original premise of the show could have gone, in a way, before the show kept the Enterprise around the local area of the Federation in later seasons. If the Enterprise was like a big mobile colony out in the middle of nowhere, maybe hundreds or thousands of light years from Federation space then having families and kids onboard doesn't seem so bad to me. I quite liked that people's fantasies were taking over and it would be hard to separate reality from thought, like living in a daydream, which feels all too familiar to me. I think it would be disturbing being faced with dead relatives or your worst fears. I wish they'd dropped a probe out in M33 and then in several hundred years Enterprise-J stumbled upon it. Picard's message to Starfleet is still out there heading back to Earth and is due to arrive in 2416.

 

[Qonundrum]

I've said several times that, despite it's obvious plot holes and other problems with the story (such as Riker's perplexing characterization in the whole episode), I do think Haven as a whole is a redeeming Season 1 moment.
Maybe it's because I'm a person who enjoys romanticism, but I think TNG might have sometimes profited from a bit of the colourful, exotic feel of that episode: A planet so darn beautiful that it is said to possess mystical healing powers, two lovers finding each other across time and space, the idea that all life is one on a fundamental level and that rose that changes colour with your emotions (even if the prop wasn't used very well, it's nice to for once see a plant that isn't from Southern California)
TNG is always so sober, it's nice to have an episode that is not.

IMHO, I've not been fond of romance, unless:
a) the actors can really sell it (which isn't often)
b) it leads to an ending other than "happily ever after" (too cliche)
c) and due to unexpected reasons and not just "either the pacifist dies or everyone else does" (though it'd be more interesting to have a plot where the pacifist has to kill someone or else evil wins, moohahaha)

Then again, I seem to favor either war stories or stories that are different. "Haven", and I don't recall if I mentioned it in this thread earlier, has a genuinely interesting and creepy backdrop about a species that was given a plague as interplanetary biological warfare and since then everyone they meet wants to kill them just because. That's a season arc just waiting to happen if done right.

Indeed, Wyatt and his big hair has the sort of ending that fits the criteria above. The actors do sell it. Chances are he won't find a cure but will be infected and live with them forevermore. And the storyline's plot points are definitely unexpected and not a typical soap opera (even the soap opera scene in the dining hall in the neck of the ship has a few moments of intrigue.)

As for specific redeeming moments in it:
1)The scene where Wyatt and Lwaxana talk about the possibility of all life being connected, and for once Lwaxana is sincere and sensible.

Like "the Force" only given some weight to it.

2)The First Electorine of Haven hailing the Enterprise is, imho, a brilliant piece of world building. Her gossamer-like clothing and the romantic coastal cliffs in the background manage to convey the beauty of Haven in a very concise way.

^^this

Looks better on blu-ray as well when we can see the ocean waves in the background move distinctively as well. The DVD just lacked the resolution. Upscaling it definitely would not reveal this detail any more convincingly and sometimes those subtle visuals add a lot more dramatic punch.

 

[Qonundrum]

I think Where No One Has Gone Before is pretty solid overall. Kosinski's arrogance is great. I love the scene building up to the Enterprise kicking into super warp and seeing the warp core lights flashing like a disco. There's something magical to me about the Enterprise being out that far and alone that I sort of think that's how the original premise of the show could have gone, in a way, before the show kept the Enterprise around the local area of the Federation in later seasons. If the Enterprise was like a big mobile colony out in the middle of nowhere, maybe hundreds or thousands of light years from Federation space then having families and kids onboard doesn't seem so bad to me. I quite liked that people's fantasies were taking over and it would be hard to separate reality from thought, like living in a daydream, which feels all too familiar to me. I think it would be disturbing being faced with dead relatives or your worst fears. I wish they'd dropped a probe out in M33 and then in several hundred years Enterprise-J stumbled upon it. Picard's message to Starfleet is still out there heading back to Earth and is due to arrive in 2416.

And that the fantasies weren't all the generic adolescent hogwash that were overdone in TNN with very iittle to counterbalance or smooth out the episode with...

I did a review on WNOHGB some time ago. The episode, even with season one-isms (seasoneisms?), got a lot right - and this is only the fifth episode aired, I doubt it was made much later but shifted to an earlier broadcast...

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whe...watching-where-no-one-has-gone-before.302561/

 

[Orphalesion]

IMHO, I've not been fond of romance, unless:
a) the actors can really sell it (which isn't often)
b) it leads to an ending other than "happily ever after" (too cliche)
c) and due to unexpected reasons and not just "either the pacifist dies or everyone else does" (though it'd be more interesting to have a plot where the pacifist has to kill someone or else evil wins, moohahaha)

I wasn't talking about romance or a love story though.
I was talking about romanticism. You know like the literary movement. A planet so beautiful it heals people and people sharing a connection through time and space is right up the romanticism movements' alley.
The love story/stories in the episode is just as awful as any "romance of the week" in Trek :-P

 

[Qonundrum]

I wasn't talking about romance or a love story though.
I was talking about romanticism. You know like the literary movement. A planet so beautiful it heals people and people sharing a connection through time and space is right up the romanticism movements' alley.
The love story/stories in the episode is just as awful as any "romance of the week" in Trek :-P

Good points! Thanks for the clarification. (I often take the literal approach as de facto... and then I looked up "romanticism" to get a better grasp and it's fortunately not like the sort one gets at a seedy bar.) I never perceived "Haven" in the way you described before, and the story is by no means S1's worst. I'll be doing a TNG re-watch in a couple months and "Haven" will be on it.

 

[Farscape One]

My wife is watching some TNG with me. It's sporadic, but I showed her a few later season ones not long ago and I asked if she wanted to go from the beginning. (Didn't do the pilot, but will on the next watch with her.)

Season 1 is a weak season overall, but it does have some amazing ideas. There are some real gems here. ("Where No One Has Gone Before", "The Big Goodbye", "Home Soil", "Heart of Glory", "The Arsenal of Freedom", and "Conspiracy" come immediately to mind.) We have done "The Naked Now" to "The Battle" so far.

One thing she noted... and after seeing EVERY episode a MINIMUM of 10 times, not counting the franchise rewatch I did last year, this never even occured to me... was season 1 Geordi seems more relaxed than later years. It was an interesting point, but I thought about it and figured this was the only time he wasn't the department head of quite probably the most important section of the ship. That kind of stress is likely to change your disposition a bit. At least, in-universe it feels like a good reason.

Out-universe... LeVar wasn't saddled with as much technobabble in season 1 as he was as Chief Engineer. And despite him being able to, in my opinion, sell that technobabble very ably and believably, it might have stiffened his demeanor a bit. One thing I heard over the years was that the technobabble was the hardest thing for many of the actors. Maybe being a bit less relaxed was a tradeoff for his ability to deliver such dialogue as well as he did.

(This also illustrates why I love rewatching a show with someone new to it. They bring a completely new look on it and aren't colored with fandom views or canon wars that so many people tend to do. Fresh meat for the win!)

 

[somebuddyX]

I was looking forward to watching Lonely Among Us but it was kind of boring. I think this type of possession episode has been done better on Stargate SG1 and Crusade, but it was nice seeing Patrick Stewart acting with some menace. I liked seeing Engineer Singh, although it sucked when he got killed. It was cool hearing someone with a different accent. They also had a TOS type shuttle model in the back of one scene. There was some nice prosthetics on the aliens but damn security acted like bunch of idiots. Shove each race on a different deck and lock them from leaving.

 

[Oddish]

11001001. Minuet was awesome. I didn't even know what sultry meant when I watched that episode but daaamn, she was frickin' IT!

 

[somebuddyX]

Justice might have played a bit better as an Enterprise episode (or at least some other hypothetical very early Federation exploration show) where cultural misunderstandings cause some major disaster. I quite liked the Edo people, just in how nice they were, whether they were introducing themselves, making out with you or executing you. I think Liator had a nice speech when he's trying to give Picard an out and he's self aware enough to understand there's nothing he could really do if Picard wanted. You could probably make a neat story about individuals messing up on some planet, maybe even ending in tragedy, but I think the main issue is just the lack of information makes them look dumb, especially when you put this alongside the episode First Contact and how much effort they put into finding out about a place there.

The main reason I wanted to see this episode was to see how the Edo god might be as a counterpart to the Lysian Central Command in Conundrum. Maybe the LCC was a dead or abandoned version of the Edo god. But then I realised the Edo city filmed in the same place as Starfleet Academy and HQ so maybe just leave them as just the prop/set reuses they are. I did like my idea a bit though.

 

[Orphalesion]

Justice might have played a bit better as an Enterprise episode (or at least some other hypothetical very early Federation exploration show) where cultural misunderstandings cause some major disaster. I quite liked the Edo people, just in how nice they were, whether they were introducing themselves, making out with you or executing you. I think Liator had a nice speech when he's trying to give Picard an out and he's self aware enough to understand there's nothing he could really do if Picard wanted. You could probably make a neat story about individuals messing up on some planet, maybe even ending in tragedy, but I think the main issue is just the lack of information makes them look dumb, especially when you put this alongside the episode First Contact and how much effort they put into finding out about a place there.

Justice could have been a decent/good episode if Roddenberry hadn't insisted on the rewrites and shoving half of the episode full of scenes that are just half-naked people rubbing oil on each other.
Oh an tacking on *yet another* false god. How often had they drawn that card by now in the franchise?

The main reason I wanted to see this episode was to see how the Edo god might be as a counterpart to the Lysian Central Command in Conundrum. Maybe the LCC was a dead or abandoned version of the Edo god. But then I realised the Edo city filmed in the same place as Starfleet Academy and HQ so maybe just leave them as just the prop/set reuses they are. I did like my idea a bit though.

I mean this is a situation where the fan speculation might actually improve the episode. The false god in the Edo episode is a non-sequitor, so it would be nice if it could be a bit fleshed out with being somehow connected to the Lysian Central Command.

 

[gakelly]

Datalore is possibly the episode with the worst dialogue ever on television. It is so bad that it makes the episode nearly unwatchable. The Wesley-Picard interactions are just pathetic. The entire crew (with the exception of Wesley) act like total idiots the whole episode. Picard must be thinking, well, it is possible that the evil twin brother could have taken out Data and replaced him and is attempting to destroy the ship, but I don't really care that much.

 

[somebuddyX]

The Battle has the introduction of the Stargazer and the Constellation class is pretty nice to look at. This episode has an potentially interesting hook of whether Picard messed up 9 years ago in encountering then unknown Ferengi vessel, but there's no surprises because Picard is portrayed so upstanding and Bok and most Ferengi are a bunch of chumps. He goes for the mind trick technology and could have used that to have Picard go perform some nasty things with the Stargazer but just lets him loose against the Enterprise. Why not have Picard harangued by Starfleet for not blowing up the Stragazer and ram the ship into an inhabited planet causing millions of deaths, destroying Picard's reputation? Send Picard back to Earth aboard the Stargazer blowing up stuff along the way and then have him crash it into the Picard homestead. And the Picard maneuver just plain sucks. It's completely underwhelming, it's boring to look at, deserves none of the praise people keep throwing at it, makes no sense for anyone to be fooled by the lightspeed doubling effect, any schmoe could have come up with a warp strafe and could have been foiled by Geordi hitting the accelerator and warping away. The Picard maneuver could have been something dynamic and I think the 4 warp nacelles and forward shuttlebay and multiple torpedo launchers could have come up with some interesting ideas.
I really like this video and how it acts as a prequel to the episode. I wish the Stargazer had returned.

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[JediKnightButler]

The music was pretty awesome throughout, the season, as was the design of some of the aliens introduced. As botched an introduction as they had, the Ferengi have a very unique look. Look at the Bynars, as well.

The early scores composed by Ron Jones were a highlight for me in those earlier seasons. Even the McCarthy scores were fairly decent. It was disappointing that, following Seasons 1-4, the show's musical cues became rather lackluster, albeit with a few exceptions (i.e. The Inner Light). I am glad that the Ron Jones are completely available from those early seasons. I would like to see more of McCarthy's scores made available from those earlier seasons as well.

 

[JediKnightButler]

"Redeem = compensate for the faults or bad aspects of"

Does season 1 really have much to apologize for? It was the 80s. It was the first Star Trek series for a long time.
Some people apparently like season 1. I don't think they have to give any reasons if they do. Latter seasons have their stinker episodes too so the first two seasons weren't the only seasons with material that wasn't great.
I'm not a fan of 1st and 2nd season, apart from 'Q Who' and 'The Measure of a Man'.
But, it has been a very long time since I watched them. a decade? I'm not even sure, I don't remember much if anything of the episodes. At some point I might need to go back and check out how I'm feeling about the episodes much later. Who knows, I might feel completely different about them. Those two seasons could feel like completely new episodes?

When I first got into TNG, I was only exposed mainly to later seasons. Having binged most of the S1-4 episodes on PlutoTV, many of them have grown on me. While some of the early episodes have certainly not aged well, I can see how they laid a lot of the important groundwork for the rest of the series. I also was re-watching some of the TNG movies recently and they felt........richer, having seen most of the series now.