Thoughts on Season Seven

The series gets a dignified final bow. Too bad it comes
at the end of a desperately uneven final season!

All Good Things Must Come to an End...

And in the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation, they probably should have come to an end a season earlier. Despite a handful of bright moments and a genuinely superb series finale, the iconic science fiction show's final year is largely flat and stale, to the point that it's often a chore to plow through it.


THE FLAT EARTH SOCIETY

In my look back at Season Six, I observed that the series had not gotten stale yet, but that it was showing signs of doing so. Well, Season Seven sees the series grow as stale as a crust of a cheap bread left out for a week on a kitchen counter. Most of the episodes are so dramatically flat, I half-expected Christopher Columbus to sail off the edge.

There are echoes here of TOS' third season. The first half of the season is weaker than what preceded it, but not disastrously so. There are a few very strong episodes in the mid-season... and then it collapses into a sustained rut of shows that are downright awful, with only a scattered few rising to the heights of mediocrity.

I will say that the last regular episode makes a stab at recovery, and the series finale is genuinely fine television. But this dignified final bow is preceded by a full third of a season of dross, with the series too often seeming to be wheel-spinning while waiting impatiently to take the crew to the bigscreen.

When you've run out of ideas, that's when you turn
one of your regulars into a ghost-sex maniac.

CHARACTERS

In defense of the production staff and writers, I'll acknowledge how difficult it must have been to do much with characters already so thoroughly explored. But for the most part, the season doesn't even try to do anything new with them. Geordi feels bad when his mom dies, but that reveals nothing about him unless you were under the impression that he was the android regular instead of Data. Worf continues to struggle with his son's resistance to Klingon ways, but that is also nothing new. And Worf's not-quite-relationship with Troi is something that comes out of nowhere and never feels convincing - Just a desperate attempt to try to do something different with the characters.

A few episodes try to get around this by doing downright wacky things: Data gets possessed by an entire race's consciousness; Dr. Crusher is transformed into a ghost sex maniac; Troi becomes a hyper-jealous murderess; and the entire crew embrace their inner animals. I suppose when you can't think of anything to do with your characters, making them behave out of character is one solution... Though given how poorly all of those episodes are regarded, it doesn't seem to be a very good one.

Riker is unhappily reunited with his former captain
in The Pegasus, one of the season's best episodes.

FLECKS OF GOLD IN THE MUCK

Faring better are those episodes that reinforce and build on the characters' established attributes. Attached revisits the Picard/Crusher attraction that had been prominent in Season One, folding their unspoken mutual feelings into the "trusted friends" dynamic that had built up in later seasons. By working with what had already been established about the characters and and allowing the actors some mature and intelligent conversations within the framework of the story, it quietly emerged as an enormously entertaining piece.

Even better was The Pegasus, the mid-season Riker episode. A conversation between Picard and Admiral Pressman calls back to the very first Picard/Riker scene, in which Picard pressed his new first officer about overruling a previous captain's orders. That early scene is given new context, as we learn that the very thing Picard seemed irritated about was, in reality, the reason he had requested Riker be assigned. This adds a new level to their heated exchange in the pilot, making it a stronger scene in retrospect than it was at the time.

Thine Own Self proves to be a solid Data-centric episode (though the less said about the subplot, the better), simply because Data is so perfectly written that even a predictable story ends up being enjoyable. Pre-Emptive Strike brings Ensign Ro back to complete her arc from outcast to Starfleet officer in a way that isn't what most contemporary viewers would have expected, but that fits perfectly with who she has always been.

Basically, when the episodes don't try to push the characters in bizarre directions and just take them as they are, they tend to work. When the writers try to compensate for us already knowing the regulars by presenting bizarre situations for them to deal with, then the results tend to be a lot worse. The obvious exception is the excellent Parallels - but that one gets the characters so right that the strangeness is grounded in a way that isn't true in, say, Genesis or Masks.

Data gets possessed in Masks,
one of the weirdest episodes... well, ever.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm not quite done with Star Trek: The Next Generation, because there are still four TNG movies to review. Though I saw all four at the time, none of them is fresh in my memory so I will be able to rediscover them as new.

I won't write up a wish-list for them, save to hope that the lessons of Season Seven will be applied: That the drama works best when the characters are comfortably in-character, reacting to situations that have been well thought-out; and that it works much less well when the characters don't feel like themselves and are left to react to scenarios that have been poorly thought-out, that are bizarre with minimal explanation, or that are just plain dumb.

Basically: More flecks of gold, please, and a lot less muck.

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Thoughts on Season Six.

Season Six sees Picard and company having a little more fun...

Readers of my reviews may recall my relative disappointment with Season Five of TNG. It had too many episodes centered around either issues of the week or children (or both). It indulged too much in having life-altering events happen to main characters, only for those events never to be referenced again. It wasn't a bad season, per se, and there were enough good and even great episodes that it remained worth watching - but it was a big step down from the highs of Seasons Three and Four.

Season Six is not quite a return to those heights. However, for me at least, it represents a substantial step in the right direction, and a big improvement over the previous year.


BACK TO BASICS - IN A GOOD WAY

Though there are some ambitious episodes in TNG's Sixth Season, the season as a whole could be best summed up as "bread-and-butter Trek." The focus seems to have been on turning out entertaining stories, with more mystery, action, and espionage-centered episodes than generally seen in previous seasons.

There are only a couple of great episodes this season, with only Chain of Command and Tapestry up there with the best of the series. But there are also only a few stinkers. The hit rate is fairly stable, the episode quality the most consistent of the entire series' run. In its sixth year, TNG's writing and production staff have gotten the process of turning out solid television down to almost factory levels.

Which carries dangers of its own...

Aquiel: One of the season's few stinkers, but also a
warning that the series risks growing a little stale.

RELIABILITY VS. STALENESS

Though Season Six is engaging and enjoyable, there is a sense that by this point we've seen what TNG has to offer. I don't think the show is going stale just yet - but staleness doesn't feel very far away.

Aside from the two standouts, few episodes this season took any storytelling risks. There is something to be said for reliability, and I've already mentioned that I preferred this season to the more ideas-driven Season Five. But while the previous year's big fault was in continually putting characters into life-changing situations that would never be shown to particularly affect them afterwards, this season's fault is that few stories bother to push the characters out of their comfort zones at all. It's the most consistent season to date - but it's also the "safest" one, something that becomes especially apparent if you look only at the 23 episodes not titled Chain of Command or Tapestry.

It's also worth noting that the worst episode of this season is Aquiel, a murder mystery involving Klingons. In short, it's a standard, "safe" episode that falls completely flat... a reminder that sometimes, episodes that play it safe can fail just as badly as those that overreach.  In a way, that makes it all the worse - Better to try to do something interesting and fail than to fail to try at all.

Picard turns action hero - and perhaps
takes the lead in a few too many episodes.

CHARACTERS

I have my reservations about the character balance in Season Six. This is the season where Picard and Data become the "spotlight characters," often at the expense of the rest of the cast. This is particularly true of the midseason, which sees a sustained run of stories focusing heavily on Picard and/or Data. Even when there's a break in this run for the two-part Worf story Birthright, Part One is as concerned with a Data-centric "B" plot as it is with Worf's search for his father.

It's hard to complain that a season gives Patrick Stewart's Picard too much to do, though, particularly when episodes like Chain of Command and Tapestry really push him to show his full range as an actor. But until the very last part of the season, starting with Frame of Mind, Picard and Data often feel like they've become the only characters who still matter to the producers.

The final run does pull back and give the full ensemble more to do, with strong episodes for Worf, Troi, and Crusher (sorry, Geordi; you got stuck with Aquiel). Riker gets some particularly strong material in Chain of Command, Frame of Mind, and Second Chances, which makes up for him being little more than a spare part in the first half of the season. Still, the ensemble is generally less balanced than in past years, and I do feel that something is lost in the process.

Riker gets some good episodes late in the season, such as
when he comes face-to-face with himself in Second Chances.

SEASON SEVEN WISHLIST

I genuinely enjoyed Season Six, but I would like to see a few minor course corrections going into the show's last year.

First and foremost, I would like Season Seven to be less "safe." The two best episodes of Season Six were Chain of Command and Tapestry - both of which stand out by their willingness to push their narratives in directions that are uncomfortable for both characters and viewers. With only one year to go, I'd like to see more of that kind of ambition, even if it means that some episodes fail. I also think this might stave off the hints of staleness starting to show.

Second, I would like to see a more balanced approach to the ensemble again. Yes, Patrick Stewart is a great actor and Brent Spiner a very good one. But the rest of the cast is also quite capable. Too many Picard/Data episodes in a row during the middle of this season made me hungry for stories about the other characters - and when they finally did come at the end of the year, some of those episodes were pretty good.

Finally, I just hope that Season Seven remains enjoyable television. Star Trek: The Next Generation had the worst first season of any Trek series, and yet it steadily retooled itself into a very good science fiction series. It would be nice to see it end that way.

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Thoughts on Season Five

Picard lives another life in The Inner Light,
one of TNG's best episodes.

Season Five saw Star Trek: The Next Generation at its mainstream apex. The high quality of the previous two seasons had washed away memories of the series' weak start, and TNG had crossed over to mainstream success. The frequently-voiced (and in my opinion, wrong) view that this series was better than the original was gaining traction. High ratings, critical success, and a run that already exceeded the original show... in popular terms, TNG was at its peak.

I personally regard Season Five as a comedown from the heights of Seasons Three and Four, but I will be fair and say that it's not because the series suddenly decided to play it safe. Instead, Season Five marks a shift in focus, one that in my opinion comes at a cost.


PERSONAL STORIES:

The previous season saw the series, either by design or happy accident, hit upon a year-long theme: Family. Multiple episodes thoughout that season focused on the crew's relationships with their families, or with the families of former comrades, or with the extended family created by Starfleet in general and by the Enterprise in particular. This resulted in a thematically unified season with several outstanding episodes.

It's little surprise that the producers decided to build on that success. Season Five is extremely character-centered, with at least half of its episodes focused firmly on one character or another, often dealing with either family or with issues closely related to ones in society.

The problem is, this just isn't as artfully done as in Season Four. There's no larger theme unifying these episodes. They are just disparate pieces, most of which don't connect to any larger continuity. The result is that we lurch from one character to another, watching a play that centers tightly on them. Sometimes the play is good, sometimes it is bad - but the next episode generally renders it meaningless either way.

An assault traumatizes Troi... but don't
worry, she's all better by the next episode!

CONTINUITY, OR LACK THEREOF

Take Violations, for example. This is one of arguably too many Troi-centered episodes this season, and it sees her become a victim of (psychic) sexual assault. Yes, it's TNG's rape episode, with the fact of it as a rape episode made explicit in dialogue near the end. But Troi doesn't have to worry about any lasting trauma, because that's all wiped clean for future installments, never to be so much as mentioned again.

The same is true of Worf's paralysis.  Ethics is a rather good episode, with strong performances and a script that is willing to acknowledge both sides of its issue even if it clearly has its thumb on one end of the scale. But once again, something life-altering happens to a main character - and once again, it has no lingering effects. We end the episode with Worf and his son agreeing that they will work on his long recovery "together." Exactly one episode later, Worf is fully recovered, back at his station, and even assisting Riker in an action scene. In the 24th century, debilitating spinal injuries are apparently "just a flesh wound."

This lack of continuity is a blight on the season's ambitions to push the characters to the fore. We get a lot of episodes centered around a member of the regular cast, sure. But we can't really feel close to the characters when the events of a given episode are almost certain to never be followed up! The nature of the series, in which each episode largely stands on its own, is fine for adventures dealing with external conflict. But it doesn't lend itself to really digging into the characters as people, because they rarely get to change in any meaningful way.

Imaginary Friend. Arguably the worst of Season Five's
far, far too many child-centered episodes.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR

Season Five also sees a significant increase in the number of child-centered stories. Worf's son, Alexander, comes onto the Enterprise full-time. This... is not a good thing. There might be some potential interest in watching Worf grapple with the responsibilities of being a father to a troubled son, but these are washed away by writing that is frankly not up to the task.

Every episode featuring Alexander has to have a happy ending in which his relationship with his father improves. This means that Alexander is never allowed to be truly troubled. The things that concern Counsellor Troi - lying to stay out of trouble, occasional misbehavior, playing when he should be doing classwork - basically add up to him being a normal kid! He hardly comes across as psychologically troubled. At worst, he might have a (very mild) case of ADHD.

Alexander would be hard enough to take on his own. But then the show has to give us multiple children's episodes in addition to the Alexander ones. I will admit that I enjoyed Hero Worship, though I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't come immediately after the very similar (but much worse) New Ground. Even so, should a television series aimed primarily at teens and adults have a full 20% of the season be episodes focused the misadventures of small children? I would argue that anything more than two child-centered episodes per year is a bit much. 5 - 6 such episodes is definitely too much and would be even if those episodes were good! Not that "good" is much of a worry for the likes of: New Ground, Cost of Living, or Imaginary Friend.

Ensign Ro. One of Guinan's too few appearances this season.

ABSENT FRIENDS (AND ENEMIES):

I missed Q and Guinan this year. Presumably because of both actors' busy schedules, Guinan's role was reduced to a couple of appearances while Q was outright absent. Not taht one Q episode that may or may not have even been any good would have changed the shape of the season. Still, it's always fun to see John deLancie, and even a weak Q episode usually has some good interaction between him and Patrick Stewart.

That said, I think Guinan's absence was more keenly felt. After a major role in Ensign Ro, she vanished until very near the end of the season. I never realized how much she added until there was such a long stretch without her. In fairness, I'm sure the production staff would have loved Whoopi Goldberg to have been in more episodes. Given her stardom at this time, the series was lucky to have her at all. Still, her diminished role was felt this season, even if she came back at the end with some strong material.


THE GOOD NEWS:

I've focused so far on the aspects of the season that didn't work for me. Much of the season did work, and often quite well. The First Duty delivers what is almost certainly TNG's best Wesley Crusher story, one of only a few stories in which he really works as a character. The Inner Light brings us closer to Picard by putting him into a very different world and very different life and watching as he adjusts and eventually embraces these changes. In both of these cases, the season's decision to focus on character stories pays off in a big way.

There are several fine episodes. Darmok and The Inner Light triumphantly blend personal stories for Picard with intriguing science fiction ideas. I Borg uses the emphasis on the personal to tell a very different kind of Borg story, one that reveals the members of the Collective to be every bit as much victims as those they conquer.
Unification brings the TNG cast together with Spock, the original series' most iconic character. Cause and Effect, Power Play, and The Next Phase are good, fun adventures.

I might not think the balance is as good as it could be, but there is still some variety in the storytelling. And if the hit rate isn't as strong as it was in the previous two seasons, it still isn't as bad as it was in the show's first two years on-air.

The First Duty gives us a Wesley Crusher
who is both relatable and interesting.

SEASON SIX WISHLIST:

Season Five featured character episodes, science fiction "concept" episodes, and adventure stories. Unfortunately, I felt that the balance was tilted too much in one direction. Character episodes are a good thing - but not when they become this dominant. I hope to see a more even balance of episode types in Season Six.

I strongly hope that episodes centered around children are minimized. If Alexander is going to stay around, then either allow his issues to be genuinely complicated ones that aren't neatly resolved at the end of each episode, or else drop the whole idea of him being a "troubled child." From what we've seen, he's a fairly normal young boy. If that continues being the case, he should stop being treated like a delinquent who's one step removed from a lost cause.

Mostly, I'd just like to see quality control return to at least where it was in Seasons Three and Four. I know 26 episodes per season makes it hard to tell good stories every time. But there remain too many episodes that feel like they exist solely to fill airtime. When I plow through a few such episodes in close proximity, it kills my enthusiasm for the series.


IN CONCLUSION:

I found Season Five to be the most uneven since the series' early years. This season does feature a few of the series' very best episodes, but it's also overstuffed with filler. That sense is not helped by the insistence on telling stories that should profoundly change the characters, only to see those stories never followed up. If you're not going to deal with the emotional fallout of Troi being assaulted or the long physical recovery ahead of Worf... then just don't tell those stories in the first place!

There is enough good in Season Five to recommend it as a season of television - but unlike Seasons Three and Four, I'd label this one more a case of "rent it" than "buy it."

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Thoughts on Season Four

The Enterprise at the edge of Federation space in The Nth
Degree, a good episode in the midst of a good season.

After two seasons that varied between pathetic and wildly uneven, TNG finally hit its stride in Season Three. The hit rate improved, with even the failed episodes mostly legitimately trying to be about something. The acting was better across the board. And the season cliffhanger, as Picard was converted into "Locutus of Borg," still stands as an iconic television moment.

Season Four's biggest challenge was to maintain that level of improvement. I'm happy to say it succeeds, and in some ways even improves on Season Three's successes.


THEMATIC CONSISTENCY

One thing that really stands out about Season Four of TNG is its thematic consistency. Even Season Three wasn't, as a unit, really about anything. It was simply 26 episodes that were of generally higher quality than what came before. In Season Four, whether deliberately or by happy accident, the writing staff have assembled a season with a unifying theme. This is best expressed by the title of the season's second episode:

Family.

Picard finds himself again after the Borg incident by returning home to his brother and his nephew. One episode later, Data is confronted with both his father and his brother. The crew meet Tasha Yar's sister, and they try with near-desperation to see something of their fallen comrade in a girl whose loyalties lie elsewhere. Riker is presented with a future in which he is a father, and he takes to it surprisingly well.

Though the tight focus on family broadens by the midseason, the sense of the Enterprise crew as a family unto themselves remains. Even the characters who don't and will never quite work are inhabited by actors who are now fully comfortable playing those parts. Interactions no longer feel forced. These are people who know each other and support each other without even having to think about it.

The family theme comes up in a very big way with Worf. Family reunites him with his human parents and shows us a glimpse of the pain he feels at his discommendation. Reunion presents him with a son and develops his discommendation further, as he agonizes over allowing his son to share a name that is tarnished. Finally, Redemption reunites him with his brother and allows him to reclaim his name - but at the cost of seeing just how poor a fit he is with Klingon society. He cannot be truly part of the Klingon family, so the start of Season Five sees him returning to the one place he does belong: the Enterprise.

Worf leaves the Enterprise to support his Klingon family.

ONGOING QUALITY

Season Four begins with a high-quality run. Of the first eight episodes, only two are weak and even those are legitimate efforts. The quality grows more variable thereafter, but good and very good episodes continue to come with regularity. It's a lot easier to wade through a couple of bad episodes when you know there's liable to be something like The Wounded or First Contact around the next corner.

By this point, the production staff knew how to make the show well. Production values are high, occasionally even cinematic, with only a few stray moments of cheapness. The days when this series looked even more dated than the 1960s original are far in the past by this point.

This is matched by attempts to stretch the series' narrative format. Family gives us an entirely character-centered episode, with no external threat at all. First Contact provides an episode that is largely from the point of view of the alien society Picard is contacting. The Romulan and Klingon episodes show a further push toward arc storytelling, with all the Romulan and Klingon stories of the past two years intertwined and built on. Reunion is a rich episode because it builds so effectively on Sins of the Father and The Emissary. Redemption actively assumes familiarity with Reunion and Sins of the Father, making few concessions to new viewers even as it folds in the events of Yesterday's Enterprise and The Mind's Eye.

It's not at the level that would later be employed by Deep Space 9, but the series is showing enough confidence to assume viewers can follow running arcs... and indeed, that they are interested in doing so.

Data comes face-to-face with his creator. It doesn't go well.

SEASON FIVE WISHLIST

For Season Four, I mainly just wanted to see the improved quality of Season Three maintained. Now that they've done that, I would like to see the show go a bit farther.

The series continues to be uneven, with great episodes sitting side-by-side with mediocre and even terrible ones. With 26 episodes per season, that's never going to be entirely resolved, but I do think there's room for improvement. The series has shown its facility for building and intertwining strong running arcs. Though I don't expect TNG to develop this as far as Deep Space 9 does, I do think that more focus on these arcs would diminish the number of bland filler episodes.


IN CONCLUSION

Another strong season in a series that, at its start, appeared to be a poor imitation of its classic predecessor. It's hard to say whether I would rate Season Three or Season Four as the stronger. This season had more thematic cohesion, and I think it had a slightly better hit rate... but Season Three's highs felt a bit higher; and, of course, it had a stronger finale.

In any case, this was a second very good TNG season in a row. Going into the series' fifth year, it's clear that these characters still have plenty of life in them - something that seemed inconceivable way back in Season One!

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Thoughts on Season One

There's a fair amount to weigh, in creating an assessment of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I should say, if it's not clear enough from my reviews, that I found Season One of TNG to be quite weak overall. If Season One of Enterprise just barely did what the first season of a television series needed to do, then Season One of TNG fails to do even that much. If the series had been cancelled after this first season, I would have felt the cancellation entirely deserved.


Horrible Beginnings

Though Encounter at Farpoint was solid both as a pilot and a story in its own right, it did suffer from problems that would recur throughout the season. These problems could be summed up by the words "pacing" and "jeopardy." Namely, there wasn't any. The plot of the pilot has Q giving Picard a puzzle to solve to earn humanity's continued right to explore space. When Picard moves too slowly, Q gives him a time limit, in order to increase the stakes and amp up the pace. Then we cut to an extended, jokey sequence on the holodeck before the plot even attempts to advance further. If the writers were deliberately trying to undercut the tension, they couldn't have done a better job of it.

At least Farpoint had a solid story at its core, and had the excuse of being a pilot - meaning it was burdened not only with a story, but with the introduction of a large (too large) cast of characters. But it was followed by a series of some of the worst episodes any of the Trek series have ever seen: The Naked Now, Code of Honor, The Last Outpost, Lonely Among Us, Justice... Some truly horrible television. Out of the first third or more of the season, only Where No One Has Gone Before manages to show any real potential for this series to be good, let alone for it to be a worthy successor to the 1960's original.

I suspect TNG benefitted from the late 1980's television landscape. There had been no new televised Star Trek since the animated series of the early 1970's, and fans had all but memorized the episodes of the original series from the many reruns they had enjoyed. The movies were fun, but they only came out about once every two to three years. There was a real hunger for a new Trek show, in a television landscape that was otherwise devoid of outer space adventure shows. This probably helped to create a very forgiving audience. I can scarce credit that viewers would patiently wait out such a bad beginning otherwise.


Signs of Improvement

I'll be fair and acknowledge that the show improved around the series' midpoint. It was slow to do so, but we started getting watchable episodes like Hide and Q and Haven. They weren't brilliant television by any means, but they were enjoyable and the characters started to emerge from their one-dimensional sketch stages. Then actual good episodes began to come around with some regularity: The Big Goodbye, Datalore, 11001001, Heart of Glory. The dogs were still there too, but at least the show started to put out about as many good episodes as bad ones. With Coming of Age and Conspiracy, there was even an attempt at arc building... though the combination of a strike and the reconception of the Borg as something other than the insect race shown in Conspiracy meant that this "infant arc" effectively was stillborn. Still, it was a legitimate attempt.


The Shadow of the '60's

One of the show's biggest problems, in its first season, is a lack of its own identity. Particularly in the first half of the season, there's a real sense that the writers just don't know what show they're making. Gene Roddenberry clearly wanted a more intellectual show, hence creating in Picard an older and more intellectual captain, with Riker on hand to carry the "action man" duties. Unfortunately, the writers seemed to associate Trek with "action man" Kirk. The result is entirely too many episodes that feel like TOS retreads, with Riker shoved into the Kirk role and Picard left to wander around in the background like a badly-directed extra. This is particularly glaring in episodes such as The Last Outpost and Angel One.

The frustrating thing about the TOS knockoff episodes is that they are consistently the worst of the season. Not only do they feel like TOS knockoffs, they are often worse on every level (even technical ones) than the 1960's shows. When the good episodes start to come, they are ones that tilt in the more intellectual direction Roddenberry probably envisioned. Episodes like Where No One Has Gone Before, The Big Goodbye, and 11001001 are specifically Next Generation episodes. Not only are they not aping Kirk & company, they actually wouldn't work very well with Kirk's crew. Hopefully, the increase in these episodes in the season's second half means that there will be more of those in future seasons.


The Tasha Debacle

Wesley's annoying, there's not much serious question about that. But it does seem that the writers came to realize how annoying it was to have Wesley the Wonderful save the ship from the stupid adults, given that this became less and less common as the season progressed. It's notable that the last three episodes of the season don't even feature Wesley, while the last Wesley-centric episode of the season actually manages to make his character work for probably the only time this year.

As much of an easy target as "Shut Up, Wesley" might be, the show's real "miss" in character terms is Tasha Yar. It's fair to say that Denise Crosby is not the world's most versatile actress.  Still, both she and her character showed potential in the series' early episodes. Tasha has a genuinely interesting backstory, and Crosby's early performances demonstrate some enthusiasm. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that, cast in a "serious" role, Crosby's best moments are consistently comedic ones. She's very good in The Naked Now, and in her nonverbal reactions to awkward moments in episodes such as Haven, Justice, and Angel One.

Perhaps it stemmed from a realization of Crosby's dramatic limitations. Perhaps Trek writers just didn't know what to do with a character who had such a dark backstory.  It's not exactly in the Trek ethos to explore a background of extreme poverty, drugs, and battling "rape gangs." But as the season went on, Tasha became more and more sidelined. Thus began what I have dubbed "The Mayweather Effect." As with Anthony Montgomery's performance as Mayweather in Enterprise, Crosby's initially promising performances became increasingly flat, likely in response to increasingly anemic material. As the actor begins to realize that better material really isn't going to be forthcoming, at least not on a regular basis, the actor gives up and starts playing lines by rote. Denise Crosby leaves the show as a regular in Skin of Evil. But she basically checked out several episodes before that, and I find that I can't particularly blame her. It's tough to show up to play a part, and end up playing a prop.


Final Analysis

I find it very difficult to really come up with a firm evaluation of this season. If you were take the 26 episodes of this season and boil it down to the 13 episodes of the average cable television season, you would probably be able to present a fairly strong season of television. As I complained frequently in my early Enterprise reviews, when you have too many slots to fill in a given season, the result will inevitably be filler.

There is potential for a good series here. A show with no potential does not produce episodes of the quality of: Where No One Has Gone Before, The Big Goodbye, 11001001, Datalore, Heart of Glory, and We'll Always Have Paris. The cast ranges from adequate to very good.  Patrick Stewart is a splendid actor, and his character finally seems to be working by the season's end.  Supporting actors Levar Burton, Brent Spiner, and Michael Dorn also do consistently excellent work. Jonathan Frakes is more limited, but he is at least solid and fairly likable.

Unfortunately, this was not a good season of television. Too many bad episodes, too much lack of imagination, too many bland productions whose directorial vision amounted to shooting whatever happened to be (mostly) in focus.

Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season is the worst Star Trek season I've yet reviewed. Based on what I've viewed and reviewed thus far, it was very lucky to get a second year to improve.  However, based on the best episodes of the season, there is at least room to hope for real improvement.


Next: Season Two Overview

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