2022/08/13

It was 1987 when Star Trek was brought back to our television, 35 years ago on September 28^th Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in the US. Original Star Trek fans didn’t like it at first, some perhaps still don’t, the first two seasons, for most, were….tough, to say the least. Although in the first two seasons Data (Brent Spiner) is already shining in my opinion, mainly because of his humor. I remember from the Blu-ray (re) watches I really found it surprising how fun Data is in the first two seasons. I have to say, I did enjoy most of the first two season episodes.

It was expected by many, including Patrick Stewart, that it would be cancelled after one season but along the way The Next Generation became more and more popular, it became mainstream, not only nerds watched it, but whole families. Of course everybody knows who Kirk is, Spock, McCoy…but this is also the case for Picard, Data, Riker. This is not the case when you ask people on the street about Star Trek: DS9 characters, most of the general people haven’t got a clue about these characters but most know The Next Generation characters.

It was a large crew, it was said in the interviews over the years is that there were a lot of laughs, it sometimes was hard to get any work done, it must have been a good working environment, it shows on the screen, these people were more with each other than with their own family.

As every SCI-FI fan probably knows it was that The Next Generation ran for 7 seasons and as I said, the show got more popular each season, I believe in season 6 the popularity was at it’s highest point. It was decided that after season 7 the cast of The Next Generation would transfer to the movies. The first movie was in 1994 called Generations, in that same year season had 7 ended on May 23rd.

For me personally, the movies did more for me than the TV show itself, somehow these characters grew more for me in the movies than in the series. Have to say that I missed out The Next Generation first 4-5 season in its original run. In the 80’s, after Star Trek TOS, Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 80, Dr. Who, Buck Rogers, Blake’s 7, V and so on, I lost my SCI-FI mojo for a number of years so when I got back into it, The Next Generation was already in its 4^th or even perhaps in it’s fifth season. So it took awhile for me to see every episode in the re-run.

For most people The Next Generation or The Original series are their favorite TREK, as you probably will know I am not one of these people, my favorite is Deep Space Nine, because of the story arcs, characters who really evolve, this is far less the case with The Next Generation, of course there was some growth but not as much as on Deep Space Nine and this is logical because of the format. The Next Generation was episodic in nature, every week the story was wrapped up, sometimes a two-parter and as I said, there was some growth but this was minimal in my opinion. Still it is way more popular than Deep Space Nine or Voyager but this is probably due to the fact it was the first Star Trek series after 20 years and of course also the cast was stellar, Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Denise Crosby, Diana Muldaur, it was a great cast!

So don’t get me wrong, I like The Next Generation as well, I have all the seasons on Blu-ray, I rewatched it twice since then. But what bugs me is that mainly the last season I had the feeling the writers were a bit lost, there of course were still good stories, but most of these stories were, in my humble opinion, mediocre, it limped towards the last episode “All Good Things”. As I said, there still were good stories but the mediocre outweighed the good stories. This always bugged me, Voyager has the same problem, which I wrote about too many times already! My “Next Generation” high point are seasons 3 & 4 and if I am honest, I think I rather watch seasons 1 & 2 than season 7! I know, I am a bit odd, I am different than most TNG fans but this is how I feel about it. And as I said, I love all the movies of The Next Generation. Again people will look-up strange when they read this because most don’t like Insurrection or Nemesis, but I do.

I think that The Next Generation will forever be the most popular Star Trek show, I believe indeed more popular than The Original Series, for one because the people who grew up with TOS will become a minority in the coming years.

Final Word:

How is it possible, 35 years, still so popular! This is only possible with SCI-FI shows, I don’t think you or I can name any other non-SCI-FI show which is still so popular after 30+ years. The characters will always have a special place in my heart, these characters are a bit like family after watching so much Star Trek in the last 40+ years. Same of course is for the TOS crew, DS9 crew and also the Voyager crew. I am happy that nowadays Star Trek is back on TV but for me the 90’s Star Trek is still preferable to me.

Screencaps taken from: Trekcore.com