Should they have cancelled TNG?

[Karzak]

I seem to recall reading in the Companion that the original plan was to have the Enterprise crash seen in Generations be used in the season six finale/season seven premiere, but it got postponed for the feature film.

AGT was a herculean task to complete, with fun bumps along the way -- Moore and Braga lost an act due to some computer error and had to rewrite it over the course of a weekend.

There's also the fun anecdote that it "took a year to write Generations, and a month to write "All Good Things," with the result being that "All Good Things" wound up being the superior effort.

 

[Memory Alpha]

Option 2. I'd gladly have three more TNG seasons to round out at 10 at the complete expense of DS9 / VOY. I really liked where TNG was in seasons 6-7. If that bumps back the movies five years or so, so much the better.

 

[Anwar]

The TNG Movies...I just don't think they were all that good an idea. The TOS Movies revive a canceled show and expanded on the Universe, but the TNG movies didn't add much.

 

[Noname Given]

AGT was a herculean task to complete, with fun bumps along the way -- Moore and Braga lost an act due to some computer error and had to rewrite it over the course of a weekend.

^^^
probably a PEBKAC situation (IE accidental deletion or someone forgot to hit 'save')

 

[suarezguy]

I'm afraid I think it would have been better to have ended a year or two earlier; the actors and writers were or were getting tired (the writers definitely running out of ideas, especially in terms of character growth) and while season 7 had some good developments and conclusions it would have been worse if they had made more seasons without (as they likely would not have been) being willing to make bigger changes to the characters or style.

 

[Dukhat]

So I'm not sure what "coming out of nowhere end ending the same episode" has to do with whether subsequent seasons would be justified or not.

Because the person who posted all of those examples was making it sound like they were a bunch of loose ends throughout the 7-year run of the show that were wrapped up in the final season, when that wasn't the case at all. At least that was my interpretation of what he wrote.

 

[tafkats]

Hmm, TNG Season 7. There's probably no other season in Trek with the same crazy mix of really strong episodes and what-the-fuck-were-they-smoking episodes.

Ronald D. Moore recalls about the writing of "Interface" that the writers looked around at each other and basically said "This is sad ... this is the best we can do?" For a while it seemed like every episode was "let's see what random weird shit we can have happen to people."

"Phantasms," "Dark Page," "Sub Rosa," "Masks," "Eye of the Beholder," "Genesis," "Emergence" ... all head-scratchers. But I'd rank "Gambit," "Parallels," "The Pegasus," "Lower Decks," "Thine Own Self" and "Preemptive Strike" as among the show's best.

 

[bolak]

Another vote here that it should have wound-down well before Season 7.

Seasons 1 and 2 were interesting, edgy, still trying to explore. 3 had some good meaty episodes and there was still some prospect of characer development.

By season 4 to 5 they were starting to 'settle down' and became, in my mind, a 'soap in space'. Same old folks doing the same thing every week. Might have been a good point to transition to something new and fresh, to return to the 'exploration of dangerous space' theme

Same problem that hit TOS Season 3 I think: the producers wanted to play it safe, keep the money-making characters together and not do anything that would confuse casual viewers.

 

[Lance]

I seem to recall reading in the Companion that the original plan was to have the Enterprise crash seen in Generations be used in the season six finale/season seven premiere, but it got postponed for the feature film.

I've often attributed this decision for why I find the Descent two-parter such a damp squib. It seems that, in recognizing the strength of the idea of forcing the Enterprise to crash land being "too good to put on TV", and keeping it for the movie, they ended up instead with a story that to me sort of felt empty. "Oh, Lore's back. Oh, the Borg are back." But it's like nobody seemed to care.

Using the Enterprise's destruction as the Season 6 cliffhanger would have been awesome, but I rather wonder if it would have been too much of a 'game changer' for TNG on television at that point in it's life. They'd have to address it somehow in Season 7, either by giving the crew a new ship (which would mean building brand new sets for only one season's worth of episodes, though maybe it would've saved the staff on Voyager from having to do it anyway), or else giving them another Galaxy Class ship so they could keep using the same sets (which would have just felt like a cheat on the cliffhanger). Either reason probably could have extinguished the concept, but the image of the Enterprise crash landing on a planet was still felt to be salvagable, and they used it in the movie.

 

[Relayer1]

Lin also did the 'unnoficial' F&F Better Luck Tomorrow, which gives me a little hope...

 

[suarezguy]

Ronald D. Moore recalls about the writing of "Interface" that the writers looked around at each other and basically said "This is sad ... this is the best we can do?"

Well Geordi had been pretty neglected since season 3/4 so I wonder how much of that reaction was from dislike or disinterest in the character. I think that episode is one of Menosky's better TNG ones.

For a while it seemed like every episode was "let's see what random weird shit we can have happen to people."

Taylor, Braga and Menosky seemed to have more influence in the series as it went on and they were generally more interested in weird episodic adventures than character development.

 

[Orphalesion]

Seasons 1 and 2 were interesting, edgy, still trying to explore.

Huh interesting how people's opinion differ on that. In my eyes season 1 and two were still much too stuck in the mentality of TOS with overly sexual/culturally insensitive aliens, flat/one note characters, boring conceptual antagonists like Armus and cliched plots. Though season 2 was leaps and bounds better than one and had the excellent Dr. Pulaski as well as episodes like "Measure of a Man" and the introduction of the Borg.

To me season 3 was when the show finally settled into its own with episodes like the Bonding, the Offspring, Sins of the Father and the Hunted. As well as the excellent cliffhanger of Best of Both worlds.
Season 4 was easily my favourite with TONS of awesome episodes, to many to list really.

Beginning with season 5, however, I sort of agree with you that it started to decline again from its peak in season 4. Ro was interesting, but under utilized, the Outcast was a sorry, cowardly excuse for a LGBT episode without showing any real LGBT, Imaginary Friend and the Next Phase were just bizarre.
But it also had cool episodes like I, Borg, Ethics, Hero Worship and Ro's introductory episode.
Season 6 continued with rather bizarre episodes like Rascals, Man of the People and Fistful of Datas but also had Face of the Enemy, one of the BEST Troi episodes.
Season 7 finally was just more of Seasons 5 and 6, still better than 1 and 2 (imho) but not as good as 4.

 

[Lance]

^ The thing about "Imaginary Friend" that really gets me is that you just get the feeling it was conceived as a 'Quota Episode'. I can totally see the staff sitting around the writer's room, saying "Okay guys, we've got to have one episode this season that has children in it as the main characters, to remind all the viewers that the ship has got families on board". I really do feel it's a waste of an episode, it's not intrinsically entertaining in it's own right, it's just there because "Hey, there's kids on board the ship, we have to do something with that idea".

Same of "Rascals" the following year (though that ones more of a guilty pleasure for me ).

 

[nonbelligerency]

I always thought they could've gone 3 more seasons for an even 10, but as others have pointed out money runs everything.

 

[nonbelligerency]

I remember when the BOBW aired. Riker said, "Mr. Worf.... fire." and that was it. You had to wait to see the rest. I was probably in middle school or a freshman in high school. I loved it- what a cliffhanger.

Seasons 1 and 2 were interesting, edgy, still trying to explore.

Huh interesting how people's opinion differ on that. In my eyes season 1 and two were still much too stuck in the mentality of TOS with overly sexual/culturally insensitive aliens, flat/one note characters, boring conceptual antagonists like Armus and cliched plots. Though season 2 was leaps and bounds better than one and had the excellent Dr. Pulaski as well as episodes like "Measure of a Man" and the introduction of the Borg.

To me season 3 was when the show finally settled into its own with episodes like the Bonding, the Offspring, Sins of the Father and the Hunted. As well as the excellent cliffhanger of Best of Both worlds.
Season 4 was easily my favourite with TONS of awesome episodes, to many to list really.

Beginning with season 5, however, I sort of agree with you that it started to decline again from its peak in season 4. Ro was interesting, but under utilized, the Outcast was a sorry, cowardly excuse for a LGBT episode without showing any real LGBT, Imaginary Friend and the Next Phase were just bizarre.
But it also had cool episodes like I, Borg, Ethics, Hero Worship and Ro's introductory episode.
Season 6 continued with rather bizarre episodes like Rascals, Man of the People and Fistful of Datas but also had Face of the Enemy, one of the BEST Troi episodes.
Season 7 finally was just more of Seasons 5 and 6, still better than 1 and 2 (imho) but not as good as 4.

 

[BillJ]

I always thought they could've gone 3 more seasons for an even 10, but as others have pointed out money runs everything.

I think they had ran out of gas midway through season five.

 

[Anwar]

I wouldn't go that far. Season 6 was plenty strong.

 

[DWF]

Had TNG gone the route of Law & Order or ER and they replaced castmembers who left from time to time, they'd probably still on the air. DS9 was only meant as a replacement for TNG in syndication. Generations might've felt alittle rushed but for the most part they had the same amount of production time the TOS movies had and the TNG sets were needed for Voyager.

 

[Salinga]

Its funny how everyone is calling GEN "rushed" since in fact the finale AGT was a rushed script and GEN was a script Braga & Moore worked several months on. AFAIK both said it was in fact too long and writing under time pressure, like it happened with AGT, keeps a writer away from overthinking things too much and just go with the gut. Same happened with "Yesterdays Enterprise", a script so rushed that several writers wrote parts of the story the same time to get it done - and now its one of the best TNG episodes.

 

[EnriqueH]

Its funny how everyone is calling GEN "rushed" since in fact the finale AGT was a rushed script and GEN was a script Braga & Moore worked several months on. AFAIK both said it was in fact too long and writing under time pressure, like it happened with AGT, keeps a writer away from overthinking things too much and just go with the gut. Same happened with "Yesterdays Enterprise", a script so rushed that several writers wrote parts of the story the same time to get it done - and now its one of the best TNG episodes.

I had no idea until this thread that "AGT" was a rushed job. Isn't that funny?

To me, AGT feels like a great TV movie with a lot of attention to detail, plot and characterization while Generations feels rushed, half-assed and a muddy mix of cool ideas that weren't well thought out.

Maybe instead of rush, it would be more appropriate to say it's an overcooked soufflé? Whatever you want to call it, it's pretty clear the movie had some very, very good ideas that weren't executed as well as it could've. The movie's themes on mortality, family and loss resonated with me, but the plot holes, missed character opportunities and overall execution of some of those themes missed the mark.