Strongest Season of Star Trek - The Next Generation

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I saw some first Season episodes being aired today (Arsenal of Freedom, We'll Always Have Paris) and liked them alot. Seasons 1 and 2 definately had some other tone to it than later seasons, but already had some great shows (Contagion, the one with the alien parasites) and foreshadowed a lot that made TNG special, like the Borg in season 2. So I kinda like the early seasons of TNG as well as the later ones.

What are your thoughts an this?

(As with the same ENT poll, you can vote here on multiple seasons as well!).

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*bump*

Still interested in your thoughts on this.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

I had to pick season 2-6, as I can't say any of those seasons is stronger or weaker than one of the others. But it hadn't found its footing during season one, and while I can't put my finger on it I find season seven to be a bit weak as well.

But I never got a feeling of continuity between episodes in TNE; more a bunch of disconnected episodes. So I can't see a season as strong, but more that a season can be stronger by having more episodes I like.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Season seven jumps between sort of pointless gimmick stories that abut TNG's lack of true seriality (Attached, Sub Rosa), adventure stories with a some sciencey idea behind them but no emotional core (Gambit, Phantasms, Genesis, Masks) or Meet the Family episodes—we even meet Data's mom. Data's mom. To whit, we meet:

- Lore
- Lwaxana
- Geordi's ghost mom
- Data's mom
- Worf's brother
- Beverly's zombie grandmother
- Future Alexander
- Picard's fake son
and
- The Enterprise's baby

That's a lot of relatives for one season. You can tell the writers are stretching to find a reason to care about the situation when they go, "Oh, its' a relative of one of the main characters!"

Now, the seventh season does have some really excellent episodes: The Pegasus, Lower Decks, and Thine Own Self. (I'm also a fan of how weird Masks is, despite how lacking it is dramatically.) And All Good Things was a really good episode. How many series can really say that about their final two hours? (Not TOS!) But overall, I agree with RDM's assessment that they were just spinning their wheels at that point.

[Dan Gurden]

Its a good question for sure. The early stuff I feel tended to be better written, and more exploratory sci fi, the first couple of season are much more akin to the old TOS era is style, which is charming but has definately dated (oddly more than TOS has).

The later stuff had much better FX and clearly better production budgets which allowed them to push the Trek mythos and expand the universe... After all they started using TNG to setup some of the ground work to setup Bajor sector, The Bajorans and Cardassians in preparation for Deep Space Nine alongside season 6...

For my money I feel that in Trek in the newer incarnations it always took them a couple of seasons or so to really find their own voice. Its like they start by writing for the previous crew until the scripts come in dedicated to the new show? And TNG (IMO) hit its stride in Season 4 and remained fairl consistant to Season 6. Ironically (as noted above), the quality seemed to drop at Descent.

I for one am hard pressed to pick the best of those 3 series, pretty much all my favourite episodes come from these seasons. If I HAD to pick one, it would probably be series 4 simply because this was where they had their own voice and were not working towards the past TOS or foreshadowing DS9.

Ironically Netflix only plays up to season 4... They need to get that resolved STAT!

[Sarge]

I voted the same as Capt Lundgren, and for exactly the same reasons. My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts...

[Owen E Oulton]

I found the first two seasons were just plain bad TV, with a couple of exceptions. A TV story has to have a beginning, a middle and an END, which often seemed to be forgotten. The series' best was the lat half of season 3, with Yesterday's Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds. Season 4 wasn't bad, either. The last few seasons they tried getting experimental, and didn't always work.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

I voted the same as Capt Lundgren, and for exactly the same reasons. My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts...

Yoga can apparently give Internet based mind meld abilities. Who knew...