Stardate; Tuesday. Damn laundrybot shrank my velor pants again. No sign of Klingons, but we did see a slightly odd green star. No one cared.`
back in 1987 they didn't reveal HOW the 1701-D actually looked until about one week prior to the premiere. And while I wasn't really looking at Starlog at the time, in the local Calendar section I remember an article had a shot of Geordi and Picard standing next to the 1701-D Warp Core about two weeks prior to the premiere. They shown more about ST: D in there run up to this premiere date then they ever did for TNG at this point in time (6 weeks) prior to it's premiere on TV in 1987.
When TNG premiered, I was a member of that Star Trek: The Official Fan Club, and the most I think I saw in those magazines was the cast photographed with Roddenberry in front of some of the rock formations on the "Planet Hell" soundstage, and the small cardstock mock-up of the bridge that Roddenberry and a couple people were moving figures around on. As far as shots beyond the 1701-D, which was shown only a little bit, I don't remember a ton of other interior shots.
I have to say this looked pretty good. No "long arc" crap, no mention of any wars, of Mudd or any other nonsense. If this was all we had to go by, I'd be excited for this show once again.
Here in Toronto fandom around the same time, at conventions like Ad Astra (the only continuous one around then in Toronto), we had panels critical of the show with names like 'The Wesley Crusher Power Hour' and 'Barefoot & Pregnant At The Replicator'-the titles of those tell you how fans felt about the new show.
I remember being very disappointed by "Farpoint" and "The Naked Now", but I still gave the show a chance to find its legs -- and it did (eventually). I think one problem today that they didn't have in 1987 is the there are far more TV shows to choose from, and if someone doesn't like the first few episodes of a TV show today, they may move on to something else and never return.
There are many shows but they're all dystopian or fantasy, there's nothing in the Star Trek category. If I don't like STD I'll have to go back to TOS and TNG, there's nothing else that can fill this niche.
TNN is not a rip off of TNT, though, it's purposefully a copy -- an homage to show how TNG is NOT going to be a TOS copy. The episode is ridiculously identical to TNT, so much so that you can't actually believe what you're seeing. That is, up to when they use the Tsiolkovsky to avoid the space debris. Note the dialogue: WESLEY: Then reversing power leads, back through the force activator. Repulser beam hard against Tsiolkovsky. Don't you see? It's giving us a push off. The extra time we need. RIKER: We're pushing away. They're moving away from the TOS era ship, and hence the TOS era. The episode is showing they will establish their own path. Even Riker explicitly repeats it, just in case you missed the point. That works for me, anyway.
It may have been intended as homage, but it came off as a lazy copy, a poor shadow of the original. And when you paint it as their attempt to distance TNG from TOS comes off as a middle finger to TOS.
It was a terrible episode, and coming that early on it was even worse, we have the cast acting out of character before we know what their character is. The fact it was a total rip off of TNT just adds to the fail. I can't for the life of me understand why they did that episode. Even with Code of Honor, I know what they going for, amidst the awfulness, but when did "hey, I've got an idea, let's redo a TOS episode for our second show" get approved?
Actually it's because there was a writer's strike going on in 1987 (IIRC) and they had to use existing episode scripts. This particular screenplay was from Phase II and it worked for them because most of TNG's characters were essentially the Phase II characters: Decker/Riker, Ilia/Troy, Xon/Data. The Child was another such Phase II episode. The Mission Impossible revival series that had also aired around the same time also had to do some M.I.: TOS episode remakes and use some existing unfilmed scripts from the '60s/'70s.