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Season 3 Why So Many Good Story's !!!

Nero's Shadow

Nero's Shadow

Captain
Captain
Out of all the seasons of TNG Season 3 is still my favourite.... I was thinking why.... ???

Some of the story's are brilliant E.G. Yesterday's Enterprise BOBW part 1 I also noticed they seemed to be more action in season 3 like The Vengeance Factor The Hunted The Survivors The High Ground Also lets not forget there is some really good story's to do with the Romulans as well The Enemy The Defector is still one of my all time favourite TNG episodes !!!

So what makes Season 3 so good !!!
 
They lucked out getting Michael Piller in. He replaced Maurice Hurley, who'd been doing the job for most of seasons one and two. Piller brought a different sensibility to the series to what Hurley had been doing, although Hurley still contributed a script or two during Piller's first run.

The difference in tone is startling. I've seen a fellow TrekBBSer describe it as being like the producers were saying, 'Hey, that stuff we did the first two years, well we're going to start doing it properly now'. It's like TNG was a child who was finally becoming an adult. It's exactly like that. It's as if Piller sat everybody down in the writer's room after he took over in season three and just said to them, "Okay guys, let's make this series grow up a bit now".
 
Perhaps never in tv history has a tv show hitting its stride been so pronounced as the stark improvement of style & form of TNG seasons 3 & 4. It's like some characters actually hadn't even been fully realized until then, I mean Sins of The Father, & The Offspring were major milestones for Worf & Data's development

& then there's Sarek, for god sake, & season 4 was just a continuation of the hit parade
 
They started focusing on the characters more and become more willing to do light serialization starting in season 3. Also there was no more revolving door of writers with many of them leaving or being fired like in the first two seasons, the writers mostly stayed in S3 and lasted for the rest of the series.
 
Lance said:
They lucked out getting Michael Piller in. He replaced Maurice Hurley, who'd been doing the job for most of seasons one and two. Piller brought a different sensibility to the series to what Hurley had been doing, although Hurley still contributed a script or two during Piller's first run.
Click to expand...

Kind of funny how fast Piller got the job.

"Hey, we really liked your 'Evolution' Script! Want to be the head of the writing staff?"

"Sure!"
 
Definitely the best ever TNG season for me and probably the second or third best year's worth of Star Trek ever. The fewest disappointing episodes of any run I can think of and that's really saying something in a 26 show stretch.

The Best of Both Worlds feels like it might be Michael Piller's wish fulfilment - literally exhausted and hoping some writer equivalent of Shelby would oust him from his responsilbility. Or for the Borg to suddenly show up and arrange a kidnapping! TNG is suddenly becoming a monsterous success and the demand for that standard to be bettered or at least upheld, was probably intense.
 
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S1 was shit, S2 was mediocre, S3 was fucking brilliant.

Huge change in gears and an incredibly important season. Ensured Star Trek survived as long as it has.
 
Actually, I think that season 3, while good, is a bit overrated in that now I think it's often regarded as the best season. To me, this season had a few too many slower, more soap opera-esque episodes to be the best one. Seasons 4, 5, and 6 were all better.
 
Michael Piller's not the only great writer they brought aboard season 3. Moore, Biemer, Behr, Echevarria.

Season 3 does have to be one of the most incredible stretches of episodes in Star Trek history.
 
I love season 2, but season 3 is also fantastic. A few classics, but generally just a higher level of consistently "good" episodes.

Whereas season 2 ranged from utterly fantastic to really dreadful, even season 3's "lesser" episodes were "good". Set a much higher bar to TNG. Shame they couldn't maintain it beyond season 4.
 
Season 3 is just excellent. It is the classic season of Star Trek for me, and to a great degree it is responsible of making me a life-long Star Trek fan (the first season of Trek I regularly watched on TV back then). Not any aother season (not even S4) is equl, though, TNG S4 and DS9 S4-S5 come very close.

I just cannot wait to see this season on BluRay, restored by CBS.

The list of excellent episodes covers almost all 26 eps, but the main highlights are:
- Yesterday's Enterprise
- BOBW
- Enemy / Defector mini-arc
- Booby Trap
- Hunted
- High Ground
- Survivors
- Tin Man
 
For me, the only episodes that I tend to skip are Captain's Holiday, Who Watches the Watchers, The High Ground and Transfigurations. So that's 22 out of 26 that I enjoy watching. I can barely find 22 enjoyable episodes in seasons 1, 2, 6 and 7 combined.

Heck, they had an episode that focused on Wesley and Lwaxana Troi AND featured the Ferengi and still managed to make it entertaining. That right there is a writing staff that can do no wrong.
 
jimbotron said:
For me, the only episodes that I tend to skip are Captain's Holiday, Who Watches the Watchers, The High Ground and Transfigurations.
Click to expand...

Personally, I really dig "Who Watches the Watchers." I think it's one of the standout episodes of the first half of Season 3. Solid writing, interesting premise and great Ron Jones score. Interestingly, it was the last episode with Michael Wagner in his brief stint as showrunner (he co-wrote "Evolution" with Michael Piller and recommended him for the job when he decided to leave).

A decade ago when I put together my own themed discs, this was part of my "False Beliefs" DVD:

pdvd028s.png
 
Ron Jones had a lot to do with making season 3 so good. Would Booby Trap have been as good without his score? Certainly BOBW wouldn't have been. Seasons 5-7 might have seemed better in hindsight if he hadn't been fired.
 
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