1-24 We'll Always Have ParisThis, the first of many
Next Generation outings dealing with time-manipulation, gets overshadowed by a cheesy soap opera plot with Picard's old flame. And neither is particularly interesting.
There will be other by far more clever and cool time hiccups on this show. Despite the dire threat of tearing through the very fabric of space time, we never feel any real sense of urgency. And in the end all it took to repair the rift was for Data to put a thermos through some mirrors.
There was no chemistry between Picard and his old love Jenice, which should have made Dr. Crusher feel better about her reappearing. And again I had to fight the urge to hit Troi with a shovel for being such a nosy shrink.
We'll Always Have Paris gets a grade of
2- from me.
1-25 ConspiracyConspiracy could have been much better had they gone with the original intent of having a real human conspiracy within the ranks of Starfleet instead of some never heard of (and never seen again since) alien bugs. Alas, Roddenberry nixed that idea because it was way too un-Trekkian, or at least to un-shiny-happy-24th-century-people-Trekkian, and the episode suffers from it.
That makes the alien threat less menacing. There's very little build-up. It's only hinted at in
Coming of Age and then we're smack down in the middle of it. This is a storyline that would have benefited with a longer arc, spanning many episodes. Instead it's all resolved in an hour and that's too rushed. The end also sets up for a sequel that we'll never see.
Still, I was fairly entertained by it and I liked how Riker fooled the possessed Admirals that he was one of them. And the gory ending was surprising.
But I cannot give
Conspiracy a higher grade than
6- on my 10-graded scale.
1-26 The Neutral ZoneI think my favourite Trek villains are the Romulans, so this episode ought to have made me a happy camper. Not so, for it amounts to nothing more than having them appear from an extended period of isolationism to say "we're back". They're not even responsible for the destruction of the Federation outposts along the border - that's presumably the yet to be introduced Borg's doing. Sigh, what a disappointment!
And the less said about the b-plot the better. It's not even connected to the main story in any meaningful way. Or is the b-plot really the a-story? It gets more screen time at any rate. At the risk of repeating myself, I've come to loathe the holier-than-thou mentality of the humans in the 24th century, and that attitude is painfully evident here.
We have some thawed up people from the 20th century and no one is even remotely curious about them (it's telling that two non-humans, Data and Worf, are the ones to beam over to their cryogenic station). Why should they, it's just some barbaric people from the past. Riker even says those people have "no redeeming qualities" and feels no interest in the derelict at all. I guess they're all so enlightened now that they have nothing to learn from the past. That kind of thinking drives me, a history buff, completely batty.
The writers try to make it easy enough by making the cryo-people rather uninteresting, except perhaps for the banker, but he's made to be a strawman capitalist. God I hate this condescension Picard et al. exhibits! And here I thought Picard was interested in archaeology, but then again archaeology is about artefacts long buried, not people. He even seems pissed off that the cryo-people, technically dead, had been brought back to life so they can be a personal nuisance to him. What a humanitarian! What compassion!
I'll give a grade of
2+ to
The Neutral Zone and that's only for because the Rommies are back, and that one of them was played by the great Marc Alaimo, better known as Gul Dukat on DS9.
Season One overviewIt's safe to say that season one was pretty abysmal, garnering a mere 2.78 (or 3- ) in average rating. Although I haven't graded
Voyager yet, I'm pretty certain that its first season will have a much better average. That makes this season the absolute worst of any Trek show. It's a small miracle that it managed to get both renewed and relaunch the entire franchise.
It had as many as four episodes which I couldn't give anything other than a zero grade, and there was also a multitude of ones and twos. Only five episodes got an average grade or above, with 6+ being the highest.
I could forget the lack of any meaningful action if the scripts hadn't been so boring and the dialogue so dull and uninspiring. I don't mind cerebral stories, but they have to be interesting and challenging. First season
Next Generation was rarely that. Add to that characters that were bland and uninteresting, which means their interactions couldn't make up for bad plots.
The only characters I found somewhat intriguing were Worf and Data. It's no surprise that they are the non-humans aboard. Roddenberry's idea that there would be no interpersonal conflicts among the supposedly evolved humans of the 24th century effectively stifled any drama. As any writing teacher will tell you, conflicts create drama, and this ban on such conflicts severely constrained the stories you could tell. It also created conflicts (ironically) with the writers since Roddenberry saw fit to do extensive rewrites to their stories to excise any conflicts between the main characters.
Classically trained Patrick Stewart made a good Picard, but his character never grabbed me and I was never invested much in his character. Most of the rest, apart from the aforementioned Worf and Data, were pretty interchangeable. Small wonder that Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) asked to leave. I just wish it had been Troi who would have left instead. She was pretty useless, spouting psychobabble when she wasn't stating the obvious. Her presence as the resident shrink on the bridge really dates this show. No wonder we haven't seen any "counsellors" on subsequent Treks. She was absent for a few episodes and I certainly didn't miss her. It only showed that her presence wasn't really needed. And the less said about the annoying Gary Stu Crusher the better. One thing that also hampered the cast was that most of them didn't have a proper function. What exactly were the job descriptions for LaForge or Worf? That would be remedied next season though.
Alas, it would take a while until
The Next Generation took off. I still have trouble believing that it was the success it once was, despite it not having much competition back in the late eighties. But it hasn't aged well at all.