AG Monday!
The final part of our 4-part discussion of TNG season 1!
We wrap up our in-depth coverage of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We continue our discussion of some of the signature episodes of the season. How do they fall in the categories of good, bad, and meh? We finish with an overall evaluation of season one. Why wasn’t it better? Why did we stick with it? And what are the lessons for other TV shows?
More ridiculous Ferengi! Flying pan pizzas! Space pushers! Holodeck honey traps! The worst of Jonathan Frakes! Worf gets pummeled again! It’s all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I thought the ep with the Binars was a good idea badly executed. Minuet shows up again much later in a better episode; one with Andreas Katsulas as a guest star.
The very first Trek novel I bought was a discounted hardcover title called Reunion. It was in Laredo en route to San Antonio, mostly because I had no books with me. I think I got it at a pharmacy, too. Anyway, it deals with a reunion of the surviving Stargazer members on the Enterprise.
Let’s say the discount was thoroughly warranted.
@Kathy:
That describes a lot of s1!
@Steven L. Taylor:
I have to wonder whether a bad idea well executed would result in a better TV episode.
Unfortunately Season 1 has hardly any episode that could be called objectively “good”.. there are ones that are important in terms of setting up things for the future or introducing characters. These would include Encounter at Farpoint, Skin of Evil, The Neutral Zone.. um… anything else? Datalore is fun due to Spiner, as y’all pointed out. Conspiracy is good though hardly feels like Star Trek. Heart of Glory is great. All else ranges from bad to mediocre. If it didn’t have the Star Trek name, I can’t see how it could have made it any further…