TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation

I’ll be upfront about my rating here. I’m torn between giving this an 8 or a 9 out of 10. When this show is at its best, it’s unbelievably good — probably the best incarnation of Star Trek, filled with optimism, imagination, and creative science fiction stories. But with seven seasons of over 20 episodes a season, the show is frequently not at its best, and with a genuinely pretty awful first season (which I knew about going in, otherwise I probably would have stopped watching), and a mediocre final season, I’m not sure how to feel about the show overall.

The show follows the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise-D. The diplomatic captain Jean-Luc Picard, adventurous first officer Riker, and android Data whose logic sort of functions as a replacement for Spock, among the main characters, the show takes an episodic format. Each episode doesn’t lead into the next one, though there are a number of two-part episodes, many of which are among the best in the show.

The characters are a lot of fun, but ironically they’re most fun when the show isn’t really trying to explore them all that deeply. When we get an episode that is very clearly a Geordi episode, or a Worf episode, they usually end up being pretty weak. Data is sort of the exception to this, as many of the best episodes such as “The Most Toys” or “Measure of a Man” focus largely on him.

The show is at its best when it uses the characters to explore the ever-interesting Star Trek universe. The show ironically makes better use of some of Roddenberry’s ideas than TOS, with things such as the Prime Directive being explored quite substantially.

The show provides a wide variety of interesting stories ranging from problems with the ship, encounters with weird space phenomena, to ethical debates over the differences between culture. I’m not going to lie and say it was always great, but the show definitely had the ability to make you think.

All this having been said, the first season is truly atrocious. And even the second season is very inconsistent. The third through sixth season, though, are fantastic, and the show only lets up a bit in the final season, where a lot of the character stuff they’re trying to do doesn’t really work.

The show is excellent if you are a fan of science fiction, and a must-watch.

Rating: 8/10