the next generation | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season 3 (Review)

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

The third season is on a very short list of contenders for “the best season of Star Trek ever produced.” Maybe one or two other Star Trek: The Next Generation seasons make the list, maybe the first two seasons of the original Star Trek and maybe two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. From beginning to end, the third season of The Next Generation hangs together remarkably well, churning out consistently entertaining adventures and several runs of truly classic episodes.

There are two main stretches in the season where the show produces episodes that could legitimately be ranked as the best of The Next Generation. The first comes around the midpoint of the season, from Yesterday’s Enterprise through to Sins of the Father, all episodes that would not look out of place on a “top ten episodes of The Next Generation” list. The second runs from Tin Man through to Sarek. And that’s ignoring the wonderful gems scattered throughout the season, from The Defector and The Hunted through to The Best of Both Worlds.

Of course, one of the most impressive aspects of the third season is the fact that the consistent quality visible on the television screen belies the chaos unfolding behind the scenes. The third season was a deeply troubled year of television, with plenty of unfortunate conflicts and moments of sheer desperation from the creative team. Perhaps the most wonderful demonstration of how far the show has come is obvious in the consistent professional quality of the output.

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: 1989, 1990, characters, gene roddenberry, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Piller, ronald d. moore, sexism, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the enext generation, subversion, Television, the borg, the next generation, utopianism | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Vendetta by Peter David (Review)

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Vendetta was published in May 1991, which is an astonishingly quick turnaround for a novel building on the events of The Best of Both Worlds, which was broadcast in 1990. Vendetta is billed as “the giant novel”, in the spirit of Jean Lorrah’s Metamorphosis – the March 1990 novel building off The Measure of a Man and advertised as “the first giant novel.”

It’s offers a suitably epic premise – the Enterprise caught between the Borg and the Doomsday Machine with the fate of the universe at stake.

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: borg, Comics, Doomsday Machine, peter david, richard arnold, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the borg, the doomsday machine, the next generation, vendetta | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Ménage à Troi (Review)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Darren

So, here we are again. We almost made it. Two episodes away from the series finalé and… boom! Lwaxana Troi episode. Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.

Still, this is the point where we reflect on how far the show has come in a season. Ménage à Troi is hardly the best episode of the season, but then Lwaxana episodes rarely are. We need to compare like with like, to get a sense of how far the show has come along. It’s not enough to say that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a better show when it made Ménage à Troi than it was when it made Manhunt or Haven, but it’s close.

Ménage à Troi is a problematic episode, much like Manhunt and Haven are both problematic episodes. There’s a weird awkward dated quality to the show’s attempts to do relationship humour – a vaguely unsettling sexist undertone about how confident older women are inherently hilarious and its great fun to see them involved in embarrassing relationships. Unfortunately, Ménage à Troi continues that trend.

Two Ferengi walk into a bar…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: betazed, Betazoid, Deanna Troi, Ferengi, gene roddenberry, lwaxana, Lwaxana Troi, Majel Barrett, majel barrett roddenberry, sex, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, tog, Troi | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Imzadi by Peter David (Review)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

As far as tie-in novels for Star Trek: The Next Generation go, Imzadi is the big one. It’s Peter David’s magnum opus for The Next Generation – a wonderfully clever character study that allows David to bask in the character dynamics of the show, while playing with big ideas and grand themes. It’s very easily the strongest Next Generation novel published while the show was on television, and remains a strong contender for the best Next Generation novel ever published.

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Betazoid, Imzadi, love, pad, peter david, Riker, romance, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, Troi | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Sarek (Review)

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Darren

Sarek is a rather wonderful episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a celebration of the franchise’s history, but without being overwhelmed by the weight of continuity. It’s also a heart-breaking story about an old man coming to terms with his mortality, assessing the legacy that he leaves behind and the future he had hoped to shape. The beauty of Sarek, then, is the way that the episode ties these two threads together – offering a rather touching metaphorical exploration of Gene Roddenberry’s own influence on the franchise and his own deteriorating health.

Back to the future…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Emotion, gene roddenberry, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Piller, patrick stewart, picard, Sarek, spock, star trek, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Television, the next generation, tng, tos, Vulcans | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Most Toys (Review)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Darren

In a way, The Most Toys feels like the other side of the coin to Hollow Pursuits. One of the more interesting aspects of Hollow Pursuits is the way that it casts guest character Reginald Barclay as something of a Star Trek fan. He escapes from his mundane existence into a fantasy world where he tells his own stories about the crew, succumbing to various fan fiction clichés. The Most Toys is also built around a guest character who seems to have been written as a Star Trek fan, albeit a lot less pleasant sort of type than Barclay.

Fajo is a collector, you see.

An honest trader? Fajo chance!

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, collectibles, Data, david rappaport, fajo, kivas fajo, saul rubinek, star trek, star trek fandom, star trek fans, star trek: the next generation, Television, the most toys, the next generation, Theft, trekkers, trekkies, tv | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Tin Man (Review)

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Darren

Tin Man is an interesting piece of science-fiction situated towards the end of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Michael Piller’s focus on character general shifted the show a little bit away from science-fiction high-concepts, with Tin Man feeling like something of a companion piece to the science-fiction mystery of The Survivors. It’s a story about the wonders of the universe, a rather eloquent (and underrated) celebration of the limitless potential that exists out in the cosmos.

This no the Tam or the place…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: harry groening, high concepts, romulans, science fiction, star trek, star trek: the next generation, Television, the next generation, tin man, tin woodsman | 15 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Captain’s Holiday (Review)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Darren

Captain’s Holiday is another one of those infamously troubled episodes from the third season that turned out fairly okay, considering all the meddling and tinkering unfolding in the background. That said, it’s more like Ensigns of Command than Yesterday’s Enterprise, but it’s still a watchable and entertaining episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also probably the strongest comedy episode so far.

Then again, when the show’s other comedy “highlights” include The Outrageous Okona and Manhunt, you can see why this might seem like damning with faint praise.

A hidden gem?

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: captain's holiday, comedy, gene roddenberry, Ira Steven Behr, jean-luc picard, picard, risa, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, time travel, tng | 10 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1989) #19 – The Lesson (Review)

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

One of the biggest problems that the writing staff had on Star Trek: The Next Generation was the insistence that the show was episodic. Themes and characters were rarely carried from week to week. Occasionally, a plot point or character might recur, but the bulk of the show was intentionally designed to be readily accessible in just about any order imaginable. In the era of HBO and “televisual novels”, this approach seems quite quaint, but it was very much the reality of late eighties and early nineties television.

However, there were no such restrictions on comic book story telling. Far from downplaying continuity and long-term plotting, mainstream American comics pride themselves on their serialised nature. It’s quite common for characters to suddenly reappear after absences of considerable time, and for writers to make callbacks to events that occurred decades ago. Publishing twelve issues a year, typically from the same author, The Next Generation comic book did afford the opportunity for a slightly different type of storytelling.

All set…

And, to be fair, that was one of the strengths of Michael Jan Friedman’s approach to The Next Generation comic book. He was fond of focusing on supporting characters, or giving page space to characterisation, or even basking in the show’s continuity in a way that wasn’t possible on television. Sure, Friedman could occasionally get a little obsessive in his continuity references, and could occasionally have difficulty tying everything into a cohesive story, but this was one way the author capitalised on the shift in the medium.

The Lesson is a single-issue story that is all the more intriguing for essentially existing as a series of character moments, with little in the way of an over-arching plot. The writing is a little clumsy and on-the-nose, with the comic earnestly offering its readers a rather ham-fisted message of the week, but it’s notable for the way that Friedman seems to bask in the freedom afforded to him by virtue of the fact that he’s writing a comic book (rather than an episode) of The Next Generation.

They’ve really bonded…

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Filed under: Comics, The Next Generation | Tagged: comic books, Comics, dc comics, Michael Jan Friedman, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Ensigns of Command by Melinda Snodgrass (Review)

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

One of the benefits of the internet age is the wealth of material that it makes available with comparative ease. Interviews are widely distributed, clips are circulated, and it’s often not too hard to find primary or well-sourced secondary materials available with a simple search. As such, it’s a lot easier to pry into the history and legacy of cult film and television than it has ever been before. Leaping back in Star Trek: The Next Generation more than two decades after it originally aired allows the viewer more insight than they would ever have had back then.

The third season of The Next Generation is widely (and rightly) regarded as one of the strongest seasons in the history of the franchise. Only the first two seasons of the original Star Trek, a few more seasons of The Next Generation and couple of years of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine can claim to compete on a level of quality and consistency with this twenty-six episode rejuvenation of the series that had faltered in its first two years.

Watching The Ensigns of Command, it’s hard to fathom how deeply troubled the production was. The episode was plagued by problems from scripting through to post-production. Writer Melinda Snodgrass has made no secret of her dissatisfaction with the episode. Although her name appears on the finished script, the episode had been heavily re-written. Snodgrass has made her original script available on-line via her website, and it makes for an interesting glimpse at what might have been.