The first announcement of TNG...

[Ryann866]

From way back in October of 1986, the first official word in the press that Trek was coming back:

http://tinyurl.com/246nkbc

The most interesting quote from Gene Roddenberry: ""I want to treat the whole problem of terrorists. I don't think that's ever been treated in depth"

Seemed to be ahead of his time in his thinking of using "current issues' in the stories for the show...

 

[SPOCKED]

A world before TNG?? Impossible

I was 28 back then and the return of Trek to the small screen was incredibly exciting.

 

[Saga]

i remember my dad telling me about TNG. he was like, there is this new Star Trek show. but, it doesn't have Kirk or Spock. being the little kid i was i just looked at him and said, i don't think i'll like it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I remember being entirely amazed that Star Trek had clawed its way back onto TV! That's why I didn't believe those doomsayers after ENT was cancelled...waa waa Trek will never be back...BULL! TNG proved Trek is immortal!

Then I saw the premiere (ugh) and the first few episodes (dire) and just kinda forgot about being a Trekkie for a long while...

Till DS9 came along.

TNG hasn't aged well. But it's the show that proved Trek can never die!

 

[C.E. Evans]

I heard it the same day it was announced on Entertainment Tonight (back when it was less about celebrities' personal lives). I actually remember not being that terribly excited about it, but I think it was because I thought it was bound to happen eventually more than anything else. It was the 20th anniversary, and I was feeling "Yeah, a new series is appropriate now."

I don't think I got truly excited until I saw my first images of the Enterprise-D, the bridge, and the cast in full costume in Star magazine a few months before the show debuted and I went "Whoa...this is different. I like it."

 

[Mr_Homn]

TNG hasn't aged well.

It's aged at least as well, if not better than the original series considering their respective times, IMO. Which is pretty damn well, IMO.

 

[Finn]

There may not even be a spaceship of any kind, let alone the Enterprise, which was destroyed in the last film, "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock."

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Great article - thanks for posting!

I was a teenager at the time, and was interested because I'd been a Trek fan since I was a little kid. So I and the pilot and the first few episodes, and was terribly disappointed -- TNG just seemed childish and boring compared to TOS. I tuned out of Trek until DS9 premiered, and I also didn't like the DS9 pilot, so just assumed at that point that anything other than TOS was crap.

I later rediscovered both shows on DVD and realized that in both cases, the good stuff comes after the first few seasons.

 

[Leathco]

I was 4 when it was announced, so consider me a late bloomer. I started really getting into Trek when i was 8 or 9 I believe.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Fun article. I didn't discover Star Trek until a couple seasons into TNG. I don't understand why some people say TNG hasn't aged well. It's still my favorite series.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I remember when they showed TNG on TV (wow, they really did that, in 1987 in Poland, you know, on the other side of the Iron Curtain) it was on Saturday mornings in program block for children, just after a show for kids

I was a kid at that time, so it was perrrrfect I missed Spock, but loved Data

 

[Alienesse]

Thanks for this precious bit of history!

TNG WAS Trek to me until a few years ago, when I rediscovered Star Trek, also through a TNG rerun on AXN, and decided to watch the other installments as well.
It marked my introduction to Star Trek in the early 90s when they started airing TNG in Romania every Sunday evening. It was a national event. Everybody watched it. I watched it with my parents and grandparents, if you can imagine that.

I'm forever grateful to TNG and its creators for planting the Trekkie seeds in me.

TNG hasn't aged well.

Then how come we're still talking and having conventions about it? I think TNG's subject matter and Star Trek as a whole are ageless.

 

[Snaploud]

That was why Roddenberry has waited 20 years from "Star Trek's" first airing to work on a new version of the series.


"In the past, all of the talk about a new television show was an exact retread of the old one," he said. " 'Get another guy who looks like a Vulcan, get a guy who looks like Kirk.'


"This time, it is more of a challenge. There are things you've done in the past that you wouldn't do again."


Roddenberry said that the former Paramount regime led by Barry Diller was a stumbling block to bringing back the show. Diller spearheaded attempts at a new "Star Trek" series while at Paramount and after moving to 20th Century Fox, where he started the FBC network.


Diller wanted a "retread," Roddenberry said

I guess they finally won that battle with Trek2009.

 

[Ryann866]

I remember being entirely amazed that Star Trek had clawed its way back onto TV! That's why I didn't believe those doomsayers after ENT was cancelled...waa waa Trek will never be back...BULL! TNG proved Trek is immortal!

Then I saw the premiere (ugh) and the first few episodes (dire) and just kinda forgot about being a Trekkie for a long while...

Till DS9 came along.

TNG hasn't aged well. But it's the show that proved Trek can never die!

Looking back at TNG now, it does LOOK very dated... and for the first few seasons it does FEEL very dated in it's sensibilities and dramatic pacing... but I feel like the acting and the quality of the kind of stories they were telling still holds up incredibly well overall

While TOS was narratively grounded as a kind of sixties morality play wrapped up in a campy, action/adventure package, TNG was able to be more subtle with it's social commentary when they tried -- and get away with it mostly due to Patrick Stewart's acting talent.

Where TNG lost it's way was it's devolution into using technobabble to solve a story and increasing reliance on heavy science/cosmic anomaly of the week tales.

They also began to plague themselves with endless backstory episodes, and became more concerned with "filling in" the Trek universe as opposed to pushing the concept of the show further than it had been. This was the start of Trek becoming too insular and bogged down in continuity, and that pattern ended up hurting VOY & ENT down the line.

Watching it now, as a drama, TNG seems so drawn out and talky... boring frankly, compared to today's television. In some ways TOS holds up better because the action tended to drive those plots as opposed to conversation and debate, as was so soften the case on TNG.

And when it comes right down to it, no matter how silly it got, TOS was just more fun... and that never gets old.

 

[T'Girl]

Gene Roddenberry: ""I want to treat the whole problem of terrorists. I don't think that's ever been treated in depth"

Seemed to be ahead of his time in his thinking of using "current issues' in the stories for the show...

Given all the terrorism in the nineteen fifties, sixties, and seventies, how was Roddenberry in the smallest way ahead of his time?

If you were employing sarcasm Ryann866, my bad.

 

[VBurd2128]

I was 8 and have no memory of it. Unfortunately I didn't really start watching at all until I was in high school or so.

 

[Doug Otte]

Looking back at TNG now, it does LOOK very dated... and for the first few seasons it does FEEL very dated in it's sensibilities and dramatic pacing... but I feel like the acting and the quality of the kind of stories they were telling still holds up incredibly well overall

While TOS was narratively grounded as a kind of sixties morality play wrapped up in a campy, action/adventure package, TNG was able to be more subtle with it's social commentary when they tried -- and get away with it mostly due to Patrick Stewart's acting talent.

Where TNG lost it's way was it's devolution into using technobabble to solve a story and increasing reliance on heavy science/cosmic anomaly of the week tales.

They also began to plague themselves with endless backstory episodes, and became more concerned with "filling in" the Trek universe as opposed to pushing the concept of the show further than it had been. This was the start of Trek becoming too insular and bogged down in continuity, and that pattern ended up hurting VOY & ENT down the line.

Watching it now, as a drama, TNG seems so drawn out and talky... boring frankly, compared to today's television. In some ways TOS holds up better because the action tended to drive those plots as opposed to conversation and debate, as was so soften the case on TNG.

And when it comes right down to it, no matter how silly it got, TOS was just more fun... and that never gets old.

I agree with your opinions. Although the first two seasons were clunky dramatically, they at least tried to make it different, and create truly unknown, dangerous situations.

Later seasons became almost an on-board soap opera, where we delved into minute familial details of our beloved characters. Although I cherish those years of watching TNG first-run, even then I felt the increasing stifling formulaic nature of TNG.

Doug

 

[Doug Otte]

I think I've posted this story before, but I'll always remember how I first heard about TNG. I was at a convention where DeForest Kelley was the main guest. Before he appeared, we had Richard Arnold. He made the big announcement, including giving details on a lot of the characters. I remember him mentioning Geordi by name, and how Roddenberry based the character on a real fan.

I was excited about the prospects for the new show. I'm guessing this was late 1986 or early '87.

Doug

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I remember the announcement - it was late in the week, I think - and remember being excited about it. In the following weeks the cast of TVH spent more time being asked about it during their interviews for the upcoming movie than they were probably expecting, and their answers were in some cases rather unguarded. My favorite was Nichols, who said in a TV interview for a morning show that her first reaction to the announcement had been "free at last, free at last!"