Rewatching TNG (Season 3).

In the past week or so I've been re-watching Season 3 of TNG (Seasons 3-6 are widely cited the creative high point) and I've made it up to "Booby Trap", where the ENT-D is trapped in an asteroid field opposite a millennia old alien warship (where Picard's curiosity got the better of him).

Only 6 episodes in and virtually none of them disappointed (with "The Survivors" being my personal favourite so-far) and it's no surprise Season 3 is arguably TNG's best season (though Season 4 is my personal favourite and Season 2 was OK really, despite teething problems, ala DSCO S2) and it's really weird seeing relatively youthful looking Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Brent Spiner.

 

There are definitely some clunkers in season 3. Evolution, The Bonding, The Price, Allegiance, Tin Man, Menage a Troi, Transfiguations were all kind of on the lower side of TNG episodes.
The Enemy and Menage a Troi were Wesley to the rescue episodes.
The uniforms are much improved from the first 2 seasons, but still have some work to do.

 

Season 3 is great. It's cool to see you excited about and enjoying it.

I think I'm going to do a rewatch of seasons 1 & 2 sometime soon. They needed work, but there's a lot of really good world building stuff in there that I love.

My cursory ratings of Seasons 1 and 3:

Meh *
Decent **
Good ***

SEASON 3:

Evolution *
The Ensigns of Command **
The Survivors **
Who Watches The Watchers ***
The Bonding *
Booby Trap **
The Enemy **
The Price **
The Vengeance Factor **
The Defector ***
The Hunted **
The High Ground **
Deja Q ***
A Matter of Perspective **
Yesterday's Enterprise ***
The Offspring ***
Sins of the Father ***
Allegiance ***
Captain's Holiday **
Tin Man *
Hollow Pursuits ***
The Most Toys ***
Sarek ***
Ménage à Troi *
Transfigurations *
The Best of Both Worlds ***

​

SEASON 1:

Encounter at Farpoint *
The Naked Now **
Code of Honor *
The Last Outpost **
Where No One Has Gone Before ***
Lonely Among Us *
Justice *
The Battle *
Hide and Q **
Haven **
The Big Goodbye **
Datalore *
Angel One *
11001001 ***
Too Short a Season *
When The Bough Breaks **
Home Soil *
Coming of Age **
Heart of Glory **
The Arsenal of Freedom ***
Symbiosis *
Skin of Evil **
We'll Always Have Paris **
Conspiracy ***
The Neutral Zone **

(I feel like these ratings are relative to the season though. Some I've given ** in Season 3 I might have given *** in season 1 – i.e. "The Hunted.")

 

"Evolution" was a bit forgettable and routine as episodes go (with shoddy, anti-climatic SFX at the end), but I appreciated how "The Bonding" tried to tackle traumatic loss and grief (possibly "The Price" is the weakest episode so-far, but may become one of my guilty pleasures alongside ENT's "Carpenter Street").

 

Evolution just had a horrible premise.
No one has ever put nanites with other nanites?
It is pretty boring. The danger doesn't feel threatening.
And we get it...Wesley Crusher is the smartest person in the Federation. The show made sure to beat that over everyone's head is season 1. And just to make sure you don't forget, the writers also needed to point out that he also is the only one who can save the day in The Enemy and Menage A Troi.

 

If nothing else, letting Wesley cause the nanite problem in the first place was a nice change of pace...

 

"The Enemy" was a pretty decent episode otherwise and fitted in well with the more famous "The Defector".

Another weak S3 episode was "The Vengeance Factor" (which felt very much like a throwback to S1 in appearance and tone). "Evolution" was routine and disposable but had a memorable soundtrack to go along with it:



And I liked "Tin Man" almost as much as S4's "Galaxy's Child".

And "Who Watches The Watchers" and "The Ensigns Of Command" was what hooked me with the S3 marathon re-watch.

 

^^this

Rough around the edges or otherwise, there's still some fun to be had and potential in (most of) the stories too...

Mine:

SEASON 3:

Evolution ***
The Ensigns of Command **
The Survivors ***
Who Watches The Watchers **
The Bonding **
Booby Trap ***
The Enemy ***
The Price *
The Vengeance Factor **
The Defector ***
The Hunted **
The High Ground **
Deja Q ***
A Matter of Perspective *
Yesterday's Enterprise ***
The Offspring *
Sins of the Father **
Allegiance **
Captain's Holiday **
Tin Man ***
Hollow Pursuits ***
The Most Toys ***
Sarek **
Ménage à Troi *
Transfigurations *
The Best of Both Worlds ***

​

SEASON 1:

Encounter at Farpoint **
The Naked Now * (wasted potential)
Code of Honor *
The Last Outpost *
Where No One Has Gone Before ***
Lonely Among Us **
Justice *
The Battle *
Hide and Q **
Haven **
The Big Goodbye **
Datalore * (direction, acting, and music are ***. The core story is *.)
Angel One *
11001001 ***
Too Short a Season **
When The Bough Breaks **
Home Soil **
Coming of Age **
Heart of Glory **
The Arsenal of Freedom ***
Symbiosis *
Skin of Evil **
We'll Always Have Paris **
Conspiracy ***
The Neutral Zone ** (the Romulan plot is ***, the B-plot is *)

 

I wrote this in the Best of TNG thread:

I kinda think "Naked Now" is underrated. Wesley saving the day at the end torpedoes it, but it's memorable and fun otherwise.

I do feel like I need to rewatch Season 3 too. I suspect I'd rate more of the ** episodes ***, but then maybe I need to make it a **** scale to really recognize the season's best.

 

My season three clunkers and yawnfests.

Who Watches The Watchers - Yawnfest. Never cared for this episode. I'm not saying it's a bad episode I just finding it boring.
The Bonding - Yawnfest.
The Price - I like this one but the lovey dovey scenes with Lloyd Braun are the yawnfest
Captain's Holiday - Clunker. Other than the humor around the Horga'hn, it's a waste of time.
Menage a Troi - Extreme filler clunker. Most Lwaxana episodes are clunkers and should have been replaced with anything else.

 

"Who Watches The Watchers" has a pretty daft moment where Troi and Riker, carefully disguised as locals, immediately stick out out like sore thumbs with their behaviour (took me out the episode a bit). Not a boring episode otherwise and "The Bonding" felt unnerving.

I found "The Defector" heartbreaking, even if the Romulan in question came across as a bit of a deluded sleaze (with the Romulan regime in its prime at its most super passive-aggressive against both its foreign and domestic foes).

The show feels very earnest, but then again so was the first half of the 90s (and very late 80s):

 

It's underwhelming and could have been a lot better, but the fact TNN captures enough character detail about Geordi and Yar that I can give it some slack. It's still on the whole awful, mostly because the episode resorts to a superficial frat party and showing just how to never ever remake any episode. If it were a 4-star system I'd give it two stars.

Brownie points for it showing male nudity if one really wants to look.

 

^"The Naked Now" was a classic demonstration of TNG's problem in Season 1 of transplanting the cheesier, rejected TOS style scripts into a new era (they gradually pulled back from that during Season 2).

Ok, I've made it up to "Dèjà Q", and it's still a blast all these decades later, with "The High Ground" being alright and more nuanced than I expected (despite the ill advised mentioning of IRA victory in Trek's alternate near future, that got it banned or/and edited in earlier broadcasts in the UK).

 

I have sat through "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Offspring", two really strong episodes that had firmly put TNG on the map.

 

"Sins Of The Father" is a 3rd time in a row where TNG really knocked it out the park (with major character development by Worf, forced to leave the corrupt Klingon court disowned by his birth state and people, with the Candyman always the sign of a great Trek episode).

 

I always wondered if the Klingons attacking Picard here had ever seen The Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood?
JB

 

Some of those weren't all that bad IMHO. I agree with you on The Bonding (I tend to skip it) and I wasn't a huge fan of Tin Man and Menage A Troi (except for the last part with Picard LOL). Evolution had some amazing visuals and score by Ron Jones and Allegiance was a fun doppelganger episode and it was neat to see some new aliens, especially Essoq.

 

The Defector is a standout episode from start to finish and Stewart was amazing in his scenes addressing Admiral Jarok and the scene of unfolding horror when the Enterprise finally goes to Nelvana 3 and the crew (and Jarok) slowly realize that they've been played by the Romulans and are caught up in the Romulan's trap. Picard's decision to bring along the Klingons was a genius masterstroke and one that seems to come out of nowhere but you later realize that it's done very subtly during that moment when Picard summons Worf to his ready room but it's not revealed why or what happened while he was there. And Ron Jones' score again throughout the episode. He had some definite music chops!

 

Boobytrap was such an excellent episode! The end of the episode where Picard pilots the Enterprise out on thrusters and gravity was suspenseful. I was on the edge of my seat.

 

IMO, the first 3 seasons are the good ones, and its only down hill from here.