5 out of 5

Created by: Gene Roddenberry

covers seasons 1 – 7

As with my review of The Original Series, I don’t want to assume I have any unique observations on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s surely notable that this was my introduction to Trek, and that I was watching it at the time of airing; if my memories aren’t lying to me, I would’ve jumped on around season 4 – very likely because my dad was watching it; I hadn’t much developed my own TV tastes beyond MacGyver and TMNT – and then was pretty consistent after that. There’s no need to add further historical details of my own, even though I know you’re begging for them, but that seems like a good frame to toss down.

A larger frame is that I don’t think I’m alone there: just as TOS clearly made an imprint, sustaining us through a followup animated series and multiple films, TNG is (thus far) the only TV crew to also support several films, and the attempts at shows thereafter suggests the license holders were eager to maintain some momentum… which drifted off eventually into a similar TV gap between TOS-era and TNG-era and TNG and the Discovery-era. There’s more to add in there about film reboots and streaming platforms and the changing expectations of audiences, but all of that still adds in to TNG being a pretty big sci-fi landmark for a particular age of viewers.

Does it hold up?

My rating would suggest that it does. From a comparison standpoint, I find the show improves upon TOS’ limitations – both the societal ones, pushing its representation and equality agendas more effectively (though of course still limited); but more directly to the writing quality, it’s allowed to be a bit “drier” and talky, leading to a purer sci-fi vibe of conceptual exploration, and as such, it’s much less repetitive. That said, mileage is going to vary on perceptions of how the show finds its footing during its first couple seasons, and also – since I’m talking about this decades on – how it fares as a 22+ episodes-per-season show that cross an early 90s transition to a larger range of shows that were pushing beyond some popcorn procedural standards, very early echoes of mid-2000s linearity.

If you go in with some awareness of the Trek legacy, the early unnevenness isn’t nearly as uneven as I think some writeups suggest. It’s clunky, as the writers and cast come to understand how serious they should be – i.e. is this silly, or is it drama? – how risky the stories should be, and how indebted to the original they should be in terms of tone and lore, but I think this gets masked perfectly by pairing a crew with their terse new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, played indelibly by Patrick Stewart, instantly setting a mold that is as bold as it is different from TOS’ Captain Kirk. Similarly, the batch of non-Earthers / non-humans inserted into the team – empath Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis); android Data (Brett Spiner); Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn) – instantly gives the scripts some leeway in getting everyone communicating, shored up by the expectations of rank. So we can play fish-out-of-water, or we can play it straight. Add to this some careful dots of intersecting pasts (Jonathan Frakes’ Riker and Troi; Picard and Gates McFadden’s ship doctor Beverly Crusher) and logical but fun personality flourishes (Riker’s command presence is juxtaposed with his filandering; the brilliance of LeVar Burton’s engineer Geordi La Forge with his social incompetence), and TNG was equipped to shape the tone as things went along, as determined by the reception. Yes, the echoes of TOS scripts are there, but you can already feel the show pushing to legitimize the fantasy.

That, I think, is TNG’s television legacy: it legitimized the genre for a much broader audience. While it was surely still part of nerd culture, I recall being able to talk about TNG with a fair amount of classmates, to the extent that when the finale aired, it felt like something of an event. But even rewinding several seasons before that point, once the show gets some better fitting outfits and starts introducing its own mic-drop lore bits – as early as season two – the characters all develop their own voices, and the writers their own pace. It becomes enduring enough to flex around long-running background arcs, and to really push on the character interactions in ways that don’t require cheap relationships or deaths (there are relationships, and there are deaths, but they do not come across as bids for ratings). It was one of the first series I watched that really moved beyond the sets and actors to become something potentially affecting; a quality it retains years later, even though we know so much more about the behind-the-scenes and the people involved. When there are lesser episodes, they are still clearly trying, and the great episodes, of which there are many, are instantly absorbing.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is about a crew on a spaceship, exploring space. It’s an ongoing, peaceful mission for the mostly functional Federation, but sometimes there are fights, and conspiracies, and pleasure planets. As it started in the late 80s and extended into the early 90s, it’s not always the most progressive thing – I can never not feel bad for Sirtis having to wear that mono-color full body stocking – but moreso than most shows which are noted for pushing barriers, it’s truly impressive how much thought-provoking material they cover, using the ambiguousness of sci-fi to not come around to some easy answer. While I realize I have some blinders on in terms of its imperfections, at least in comparison to the majority of the franchise, it is one of the pinnacle accomplishments, with a universally great cast (I’ll stan for Diana Muldaur’s doctor Pulaski), an impressive amount of landmark episodes, and a true sense of growth from start to finish that fits well with the in-universe crew growing together as well.