Wait, Season 1 really IS good!

[Trek Survivor]

So the popular opinion seems to be that season 1 of TNG is pretty dire, 2 is mediocre with a few good episodes, and season 3 is where it all started to get "really good".

I have long since disagreed with this assessment of season 2 (it is, in fact, my favourite season!) but have always been a little indifferent to season 1. A recent purchase of the blu-ray set meant a complete rewatch for me, and you know what...

Season 1 really is good as well!

I love the ensemble and how some of those early character interactions went (shame the Worf/Geordi friendship seen in "Lonely Among Us" and "Angel One" didn't go much further). I also think there are a lot of really interesting story concepts in almost all these stories, and a true feeling that the creators really were trying as hard as they could to make a quality SF show - plenty of missteps, but I appreciate many of the choices and risks taken.

Some highlights for me:

* Like I said some of the character dynamics show a promise and interaction that you don't necessarily get in later episodes; I enjoy Worf/Geordi, Data/Geordi (though they did spend a lot of time simply nodding at each other on the Bridge), Riker/Data, Picard/Crusher particularly.

* Episodes like "Heart Of Glory", "Arsenal of Freedom", "Datalore", "11001001", "Conspiracy", "Where No One Has Gone Before" are as good as I remember them... but others whose memory had faded over time have surprised me: "Coming of Age", "Too Short A Season", "When The Bough Breaks", "The Battle" spring to mind.

* The episodes weren't quite as "plodding", slow-paced as I remember... actually, there is a certain liveliness to many stories that is often lacking in later seasons.

* There is a 'feel' to these episodes - lacking the familiarity and 'formula' of later eps, of space being a little dangerous; truly unknown... this ramped up in season 2, and one of the reasons I love that season.

I'm not knocking later episodes - I love all of TNG - but I think season 1 gets a bad rap (on account of being different?) that's just not warranted.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It has its charm. I don't think the bad rap is because it's different. It approaches cultural themes and issues in a hamfisted way. The sets are a little more poorly designed, the dialog never quite feels natural, and the characters pontificate about evolved man a lot more than in the later seasons.

A lot of the people they meet are so completely and inflexibly mired in their philosophical paradigms regardless of the situation they're in, they don't seem like real people.

Not to mention how badly they shoved the boy genius down our throats in S1.

 

[The Wormhole]

Admittedly, I've watched seasons 3-7 so much at this point I kind of prefer seasons 1 and 2 simply because I don't have those episodes memorized and a few of them I've actually forgotten. Well, that was my experience when I did a rewatch of the whole series around Christmas, anyway.

 

[gantoris]

Garrett Wang's favourite episode is Code of Honor from season 1

 

[1moreRobot]

I really enjoy the first couple seasons of TNG. Complete 180 turnaround from my opinion years ago. I've come to realize that I generally enjoy the introduction to a story the most — the freshness of it, all the untapped potential of directions it could go in.

 

[rcjames]

The thing that I always take away from Season 1, and I guess to a lesser extent Season 2, compared to the rest of TNG, is that in those earlier seasons there was a real sense of wonder. The universe felt so much bigger than it did later down the track. In that respect it felt much more like TOS, which I did enjoy. I think there can be no doubt the show was superior character-wise and story-wise from Season 3 onwards, but Season 1, especially holds a pretty special place for me.

 

[Tosk]

I like a lot about season 1, but some of the writing is sooo clunky. And some of the acting, umm...questionable? And some of the pacing is atrocious.

One thing that the Blu-rays has revealed to me though, the cinematography is amazing on season 1. It looked so murky and cheap for so long, I really relish being able to see it properly. Just a pity they were still in TOS mode when it came to planet sets.

 

[BillJ]

I love seasons one and two, and definitely prefer them to what came later (across all the spinoffs). But, there were definite misfires that first year ("Code of Honor", "Angel One").

 

[JayTheTrekkie]

Season 1 was pretty good. I liked some episodes but I liked the later seasons more.

 

[RAMA]

I was perusing Season one on Hulu and they show 4 episodes at a time on the browser version..they were all solid episodes. There were definitely blocks of good ones in there.

RAMA

 

[Armus]

My opinion is that the first half of season one has some awkwardness and goofiness but its still enjoyable. By mid season the show came together beautifully. The dialogue improved, the actors were comfortable in their roles, and the show had its own identity. In the first season the audience feels that there really is an Enterprise out in space on a mission of exploration, that these people love what they do, and the episodes feel, look, and sound like feature films. Whenever the Enterprise experiences something new or threatening it's presented with believability and cinematic energy. There's no technobabble or fake science in season one. Also, Data is funnier and more energetic in season one than in the later years. I'd include "The Big Goodbye", "Datalore", 11001001", "Too Short A Season", "Heart of Glory", "Symbiosis", "Skin Of Evil", and "Conspiracy" as some of my favorite Star Trek episodes of all time.

 

[The Wormhole]

Garrett Wang's favourite episode is Code of Honor from season 1

No one in this thread cares about Garrett Wang.

 

[Nebusj]

In the first season the audience feels that there really is an Enterprise out in space on a mission of exploration, that these people love what they do, and the episodes feel, look, and sound like feature films.

I described it glibly to a friend once that the difference was in the first season the show was set in the 24th century and by the last season they weren't doing that anymore. As with all glib descriptions that's wrong, but there are some defensible bits to it.

Which is not to say that the first season isn't frightfully ungainly, mostly because every episode seems to have been painted with a thick layer of childishness. If there were a way of blending the basic story competence of the third-through-fifth seasons with the slightly unworldly attitude of the first season you might have a real powerhouse show.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I agree that it was a good thing that in season 1, the ship was out exploring the unknown and charting new territory and that should have stayed around to later seasons.

Season 1 was just so lazy in many other ways. Any time they went down to a planet it would be poorly molded rocks with a solid green sky and dry ice mist on the ground. Or something equally unconvincing and cheap. It kept attempting to add sex appeal to the story in ways that were juvenile. Villains were one dimensional stereotypes like the Ferengi who were impossible to take seriously. Writers took facile shortcuts to connect point A to point B like Riker's Pythagorean Theorem test for Lore and the contraction nonsense. Season 1 had the campiness and cheapness of TOS but without the human relatability.

 

[Vger23]

I actually find the earlier seasons more watchable than the later ones. The later seasons had a much more comfortable feel, and the first two felt far more adventurous and had the "let's see what's out there" feel. Camp and cheese aside, it's a lot of fun. The later TNG may have been higher quality (I guess), but the fun wasn't as fresh.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

I hated NextGen when it first premiered and only grew to like it is as the show improved over time. Even in my early 20s, I found most Season 1 eps. to be pretty clunky if not downright embarrassing (for me, I mean...I wouldn't want anyone to know I watched the show).

Even today, I find there are not all that many episodes of NextGen worth sitting down to watch these days, at least not as a percentage of the total. If limited to season 1, that percentage becomes exceedingly small.

 

[Armus]

I agree that the first half of season one has camp, awkwardness, and hokeyness. The pilot, "The Naked Now", "Code Of Honor", "Lonely Among Us", "The Last Outpost", "The Battle", "Hide And Q", and "Angel One" all have some pretty goofy moments. I find most of those episodes entertaining however. There was a real turning point in mid season when Maurice Hurley took over from Rodenberry(or his lawyer) and Tracy Torme joined the staff. By the time you get to "11001001", "The Big Goodbye", and "Heart Of Glory" all the camp and goofiness is gone and TNG had found itself with a slew of great episodes.

 

[tomalak301]

I just started a TNG rewatch (To celebrate the 30th anniversary" and tonight I saw Lonely Among Us. With all due respect to Where No One..., I think Lonely Among Us might be the first great episode of TNG. We had two truly alien looking races, a sci fi concept really seeking out new life, and the introduction of Data's fascination with Sherlock Holmes. It really is an underrated gem of the first season.

 

[RAMA]

Odd statement. STNG had 176 episodes. TOS 79. To me there are about 25 to 30 good/very good episodes of TOS. I would rank maybe 90-100 episodes of STNG in this category. Sure STNG has a larger sample and the percentage is only slightly higher for STNG but the end result is a much higher number of good episodes of STNG.

RAMA

I hated NextGen when it first premiered and only grew to like it is as the show improved over time. Even in my early 20s, I found most Season 1 eps. to be pretty clunky if not downright embarrassing (for me, I mean...I wouldn't want anyone to know I watched the show).

Even today, I find there are not all that many episodes of NextGen worth sitting down to watch these days, at least not as a percentage of the total. If limited to season 1, that percentage becomes exceedingly small.

 

[RAMA]

I just started a TNG rewatch (To celebrate the 30th anniversary" and tonight I saw Lonely Among Us. With all due respect to Where No One..., I think Lonely Among Us might be the first great episode of TNG. We had two truly alien looking races, a sci fi concept really seeking out new life, and the introduction of Data's fascination with Sherlock Holmes. It really is an underrated gem of the first season.

I rewatch this episode fairly often. It's a good episode to go to if you don't want monumental events all the time and want to ease in with something low-key.

So the down side..we've seen similar stories before and repeated again after in other shows, but here it still feels fresh. We have great mood lighting and photography. We see secondary characters. Spiner puts on a good performance. We see Sherlock for the first time. The FX are simple but crisp. Yes the whole episode is about exploration.