SERIES REVIEW: Star Trek - The Next Generation
Of all of my vast knowledge of geek culture, one of the few gaps in my lore has been the Star Trek series. While I know a lot of the culture simply through the sheer popularity of the series, it was never something that was on TV in the ‘90s, so it had never caught my attention. After all, I was more of a fantasy kid. However, the more I’ve watched shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica (2004), the more I’ve come to appreciate science fiction. So, when a big load of Star Trek shows were dumped onto Netflix, it seemed like a good time to dip into the series and see what all the hype was about. We started with the one I was most familiar with: The Next Generation.
In brief, in case you don’t know your Star Treks, The Next Generation (TNG) is the one that starred Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard and had Whoopi Goldberg as a regular guest star. If you also vaguely remembered a Klingon officer (Worf), an android (Data), and a blind guy with a weird visor (Geordi La Forge), you’ve got the right one. This takes place on the Starfleet Enterprise-D, which is the flagship explorer for the Federation. The show is largely centered around random adventures in space, not unlike a more serious version of Futurama… which makes sense, as I think a lot of Star Trek characters and/or actors have appeared in Futurama.
TNG is a 7-season series of 45-ish minute long episodes, so it took us the better part of the fall and winter to get through the show, but our impression was very positive. Naturally, the first two seasons were less serialized and had considerably worse writing, with their cringe moments (Code of Honor), as well as surprising successes (The Measure of a Man), though I did have a few episodes here and there that I thought were surprisingly innovative and intuitive for their time. In fact, while there are still gaps in their representation that are consistent with the ‘90s, as well as some ‘90s portrayals of certain stereotypes (again, accurate for the time period), the show is otherwise surprisingly insightful and progressive for its time. That might have something to do with Ron D. Moore eventually joining the writing staff, as he’s the brilliant mind responsible for the (IMHO) incredible success that was the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica (which he eventually leaves Star Trek to go on to make). As a dear friend of mine also put it, TNG is also shockingly horny sometimes, which regularly made us laugh.
One of the first things that I found fascinating about the series was how many cultural references I had completely forgotten were from Star Trek. I do think it’s pretty funny that the Vulcan salute is in most emoji stocks and I did remember that “live long and prosper” was a Vulcan greeting, but I had totally forgotten that “the final frontier” was made famous by this series, and “resistance is futile” is also from Star Trek. It was also really fun to figure out where all of the Captain Picard memes came from—facepalming Picard is probably my favorite, but there are some other gems in there!
The quality of writing and the vagueness of the show’s serialization leads to some frustrations, as it’s quite common for episodes to start strong and then rush the ending and miss the landing. I disagreed with their moral stance considerably less than I had expected to though, for a show that’s as old as it is, but I wish that there had been more time for the writers to flesh out some of the topics they take on. A lot of the time, this sort of episode-by-episode television does tend to bite off more than it can chew. This resulted in episodes that could, at times, feel really cool to start with, but then fall flat or feel extremely rushed when resolving the issue. Sometimes, the issues were never properly resolved.
However, that’s part of what I like about the show—there were a lot of unexpected think-pieces in there. Take, for example, a rather mediocrely-rated episode, Suddenly Human, which had me personally chewing through my couch. This episode centers around the Enterprise finding five injured Talarians, though one of them is biologically human. I haven’t found any recent reviews of this episode, but for me, it hit a very personal note. The episode deals with the discovery that the human boy has been raised amongst Talarians as one of them. Upon further investigation, the Talarian captain explains that, in their culture, if you lose a child in battle, you may take one from an enemy. After they had attacked a human settlement, this captain had found a 3-year-old human boy and adopted him as his own. Immediately, this boy, Jono, begins howling in anguish against being kept from his people in the Enterprise’s quarters. The crew aboard the Enterprise all debate amongst themselves about how to bring this boy to his grandmother on Earth, all while not tending to his needs upon being removed from his home and people. I was fascinated that the Starfleet crew didn’t at all consider that they would be ripping this teenaged boy out of everything he had ever known and shoving him into a completely different world… at least before the end of the episode, where Picard figures it out (though, spoilers, it takes him getting stabbed to get there). I admit that a few things should have been done better, because they tell the boy’s grandmother on earth that he exists and she’s really excited to see him, and he had been interested in learning more about his human side, but all of that was completely dropped. It would have been nice to see him return to his family and his people, but say that he’d like to learn more about his human heritage, especially since he had actively shown interest in it during the episode. That said, as someone who’s had a chosen cub in their time, this episode had me wailing alongside the boy. It’s interesting to think that it wasn’t much of a subject of interest to people per what I’ve read, but I really connected to this one.
Now, with regard to the different species in the series, I found a lot of them to be very interesting. The Klingons are the most famous, of course. They are a very martial culture that praises war prowess and pain tolerance. They’re a classic Star Trek race, so it’s only natural that they’re included here, though it’s fun to see them once they’re no longer at war with the Federation. It makes for a lot of good tension between Klingons and other races, all while maintaining some degree of control over the “stabbing solves everything” simplicity. The Ferengi were a nightmare, with only Dr. Reyga (Suspicions, S06E22) being tolerable among them. These sexist little capitalists were very hatable and seldom made for a real threat, so mostly episodes featuring them were annoying. The flipside of this is the Cardassians, who were often quite a scary enemy, which makes moments like in Chain of Command (S06E10-11) and Lower Decks (S07E15) all the more powerful as a result. The same goes for the Romulans, who make for quite captivating enemies in Unification (S05E07) and Face of the Enemy (S06E14). The Borg were also terrifying and fascinating pretty much every time they were seen, as was Lore.
Some of the best episodes, however, have to do with characters meeting unusual races and learning how to deal with them. While some of these are atrocious misses (like The Child, S02E01), a lot of them are really intriguing, like in Darmok (S05E02) and Emergence (S07E23). The show starts to show some quality writing by season 3, with some of the best material taking place in seasons 4-6, with season 7 being very hit-or-miss, with great episodes like Phantasms (S07E06), Dark Page (S07E07), and The Pegasus (S07E12) interspersed with heinous atrocities like Force of Nature (S07E09), Sub Rosa (S07E14), and Journey’s End (S07E20).
However, perhaps what holds the show together so well, despite the hit-or-miss writing, is how generally likeable a lot of the cast are. Picard makes for a respectable and strong Captain, with Riker being an interesting and fun second-in-command. Data was a personal favorite character, with many of the episodes centered around him being among the series’ best, as it explores emotions and what it means to truly be human. I liked La Forge, Worf, and Tasha Yar, and frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss about Wesley Crusher was about, even if he wasn’t generally the best character (he deserved a better ending, too). Among the recurring characters that I ended up growing fond of with time, Q and Lwaxana Troi both ended up going from least favorite to favorite characters over the series, and I really enjoyed Ro Laren’s arc—I would have enjoyed seeing more of her on the show. The final episode also did the series reasonable justice and had a rather heartwarming final scene that I found quite appropriate.
On the whole, I really enjoyed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and I totally see what all the fuss has been about. I look forward to moving on to The Original Series and Deep Space 9 next!
