Hi, old user posting here under a new account (I forgot my old password and can't reactivate the email account I had 10 years ago to change the password, so here I am )
I've been pondering this possibility recently as I've collected the Star Trek TNG DVD collection cheaply and, as it is not seperated into seasons, it conveniently features a kind of 'closed finale' on Disc 25, which ends with Best of Both Worlds Part 2.
In effect, it got me to wondering, what if that was it. What if those 25 discs featuring 74 episodes were, like TOS before it, the entire run of The Next Generation? Basically, what if the remaining DVDs were consigned to oblivion, and those 25 discs were everything we got?
I wonder how the show would have been percieved. Not necessarily in terms of just it's legacy, but as a show in its own right. TOS only lasted three seasons and 79 episodes but those 79 are held up as signature TV. Would TNG be similarly fawned? Would Seasons 1 and 2, retrospectively, be assessed very differently if they comprised a whole two thirds of TNG's entire run? (I'm a big fan of those first two seasons so I admit I wouldn't see this as a bad thing ).
The other factor that I wondered about was the finale. BOBW (particularly including the second part so that it isn't a cliffhanger) actually feels like a finale in a lot of ways. As a two part/movie length one could argue it works as a compliment to Encounter At Farpoint, exploring how far the Riker character has come in three years from brash fast tracker to comfortable senior officer. A factor not often acknowledged is that Riker's fate is never explicitly spelled out in the final scenes. He finishes the episode declaring he's made a decision about his future, but doesn't declare overtly what that descion is, and the last time we see him walking out of Picard's ready room he's *still wearing Captain's pips*. If this was a finale, that could have been anything. It's open ended enough to intrigue but also specific enough to satisfy. The entire show would then end with Picard alone, looking out of his window, a kind of dark mirror of the very first shot in Encounter At Farpoint, the optimistic Picard there replaced by a man who has become, thanks to the Borg (and by extension Q for introducing them), a much more cynical man.
To further hypothesize, consider that TOS was revived on movie screens 10 years after its run ended. What if TNG left airwaves in 1990, only to reappear on movie screens in say 1996 with First Contact. Swap out Worf as Defiant commander with Riker and the story barely misses a beat coming after the two part BOBW 'finale', almost seamlessly continuing the story.
Yes, this thread is particularly hypothetical by nature But what say you, TrekBBSers?
I've been pondering this possibility recently as I've collected the Star Trek TNG DVD collection cheaply and, as it is not seperated into seasons, it conveniently features a kind of 'closed finale' on Disc 25, which ends with Best of Both Worlds Part 2.
In effect, it got me to wondering, what if that was it. What if those 25 discs featuring 74 episodes were, like TOS before it, the entire run of The Next Generation? Basically, what if the remaining DVDs were consigned to oblivion, and those 25 discs were everything we got?
I wonder how the show would have been percieved. Not necessarily in terms of just it's legacy, but as a show in its own right. TOS only lasted three seasons and 79 episodes but those 79 are held up as signature TV. Would TNG be similarly fawned? Would Seasons 1 and 2, retrospectively, be assessed very differently if they comprised a whole two thirds of TNG's entire run? (I'm a big fan of those first two seasons so I admit I wouldn't see this as a bad thing ).
The other factor that I wondered about was the finale. BOBW (particularly including the second part so that it isn't a cliffhanger) actually feels like a finale in a lot of ways. As a two part/movie length one could argue it works as a compliment to Encounter At Farpoint, exploring how far the Riker character has come in three years from brash fast tracker to comfortable senior officer. A factor not often acknowledged is that Riker's fate is never explicitly spelled out in the final scenes. He finishes the episode declaring he's made a decision about his future, but doesn't declare overtly what that descion is, and the last time we see him walking out of Picard's ready room he's *still wearing Captain's pips*. If this was a finale, that could have been anything. It's open ended enough to intrigue but also specific enough to satisfy. The entire show would then end with Picard alone, looking out of his window, a kind of dark mirror of the very first shot in Encounter At Farpoint, the optimistic Picard there replaced by a man who has become, thanks to the Borg (and by extension Q for introducing them), a much more cynical man.
To further hypothesize, consider that TOS was revived on movie screens 10 years after its run ended. What if TNG left airwaves in 1990, only to reappear on movie screens in say 1996 with First Contact. Swap out Worf as Defiant commander with Riker and the story barely misses a beat coming after the two part BOBW 'finale', almost seamlessly continuing the story.
Yes, this thread is particularly hypothetical by nature But what say you, TrekBBSers?
I've often wondered if it might be possible to do that with Voyager... create a kind of optimal, perfect season by separating the wheat from all the chaff. 
My old username was simply Lance. Alas I've forgotten my old password and can't access the email I used to register.
