[jonnathanson]

The problem with TNG is that it didn't necessarily get better in linear fashion, the way one could argue that DS9 got better as it "found its voice" and established a continuous storyline. TNG has some high points and some clunkers in almost every season, though there are slightly more low points in the first two seasons. Having recently rewatched the run of the show, in chronological order, I'd guesstimate that 10% of the episodes are bad, 50% are decent, 20% are great, and 20% are spectacular. [1]

So something like this would be especially helpful for TNG, where a) there are a lot of episodes in total, and b) there are no useful rules of thumb or shorthand (such as "skip season X," or "it gets better beyond Y").

Now, the great news about TNG is that it's mostly episodic. Which means she can watch any episode, at random, and enjoy it as a self-contained story. (Aside from the two-parters.) TNG really lends itself to randomized viewing. DS9 needs to be watched in chronological order (at least for the first-time viewer). TNG can be watched in any order.

[1] Some people will find this assessment overly generous, and others will find it overly harsh. That's the beauty of Trek fandom; there's plenty of room for disagreement. :) Just about the only things TNG fans can agree on are that: 1) Riker with beard > Riker without beard; 2) "The Naked Now" is probably the series' worst episode, although it's enjoyable in a kitschy, ironic sort of way; 3) Wesley Crusher sucks (although Wil Wheaton himself is a pretty awesome guy).

[glenra]

By way of a friend-of-a-friend being one of the TNG writers, I was given a pretty cool explanation for what happened with Wesley. Upshot: It was the writers' strike.

What happened was this: The TNG team had regular meetings where the writers and producers got together and reviewed the state of the series - what kinds of scripts and stories they were looking for and what was in the pipeline and what sort of course corrections they wanted to see. At one such meeting the producers said "we've got this character Wesley but we haven't really DONE anything with him - the audience doesn't know much about him. We'd really like to see some stories that let us connect more with that character." Then the dozen writers all went home with that thought in mind: let's get to know Wesley! And how do you "get to know a character better" on a Trek show? Have him save the ship! So the following week, a dozen writers all submitted their own independent "Wesley saves the ship" scripts.

...and right after that the writers' strike happened and nobody could write any NEW scripts, so to keep the series going they had to film and show any decent scripts they already had handy, far too many of which (by pure chance) featured Wesley saving the ship. If they had had a choice, they would have filmed fewer of those scripts at all, sent a few back for rewrites, and staggered them out much farther apart between runs of episodes in which a little kid DOESN'T manage to make everyone else on the ship look stupid or redundant.

[jonnathanson]

That is kind of hilarious and amazing. My understanding is that the writers' strike also accounts for the notorious clip-show episode "Shades of Grey" in Season 2, in which an entire plot is loosely constructed around Riker's "flashbacks" to footage from previous episodes -- made all the more jarring by the fact that it's only Season 2, and there haven't even been all that many clips to flash back to.

[JoshTriplett]

> The problem with TNG is that it didn't necessarily get better in linear fashion, the way one could argue that DS9 got better as it "found its voice" and established a continuous storyline. TNG has some high points and some clunkers in almost every season, though there are slightly more low points in the first two seasons.

http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0092455 might help.

[nkohari]

Hey, when I was 12, Wesley was pretty awesome.

[jonnathanson]

Was he? I mean, in theory, he was definitely there to provide the pre/adolescent entry point into the show. So I get that. But I always hated him. When I was 12, he was kind of a minor annoyance. Data was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Riker completely puzzled me; I kept hearing about how cool he was supposed to be, and to me, he just seemed like kind of a dick. Worf was pretty cool. Geordi was ok, and he got a lot of good will for having been on Reading Rainbow. Troi was annoying, but 12-year-old me really appreciated her taste in spandex. Beverly Crusher was kind of boring. Picard was pretty cool.

As an adult, I still find Wesley annoying (if, ironically enough, less so). Data is still pretty awesome. Riker has grown on me in a way that I don't think I would have been capable of appreciating as an inexperienced kid. He is a nuanced character that you kind of have to have lived a little in order to get. My opinion on Worf is largely unchanged, though his stock benefitted retrospectively from his appearances on DS9. Geordi got better with the benefit of time. Troi still bugs me; I find her one-dimensional with only occasional chances to shine. (Probably not her fault. It seems that the writers just didn't know what to do with her, other than consign her to stereotypical, damsel-in-distress and love-interest tropes. Her mother, by contrast, is a fantastic character, if a bit of a lightning rod amongst fans.) Beverly Crusher grew on me a bit -- especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century. Picard went from being "pretty cool" to being, unquestionably, the best thing about the show.

[jerf]

Your post sums up why I'm interested in going back and seeing it again. As I said, I've only sampled a couple of episodes, and even in my brief dalliance there I can see what you're talking about in my second paragraph.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

It seems to me that it is a general problem that a multi-writer show like Star Trek can only carry along certain types of nuance. I suspect there's a lot of writers that, given six or seven episodes to play with, could have done fantastic things with Worf or Troi... but that's not how it works. They also have problems with change... especially in the movies (which I do more clearly remember), they had a real problem with Data. By the time of the movies he'd made a lot of progress and grown a lot as a character, but in a couple of the movies (particularly Insurrection) it's like he's regressed almost all the way back to the first episode of TNG. The "Pinocchio" aspect of the story carried along, but the already-existing nuance had disappeared.

Multi-writer stories are hard.

[jonnathanson]

There are benefits and drawbacks to multi-writer teams. I say this as someone who spent the first half of his career in TV development and production. (In fact, I briefly interned on a Trek series back in college.)

One of the benefits is, for lack of a better word, scalability. A single writer would take forever to write 100+ cogent, consistently great, full-length episodes of a TV show. Since TV series' fates are always in flux, you can't afford a primetime series with only one writer, who becomes a crushing bottleneck if any changes in volume need to be made. Writing a great TV episode is hard, hard work and takes time. Now imagine writing 12, or even 22 of them on an insane production deadline!

On the other hand, some shows and formats work really well with a single writer/auteur. True Detective is famous for having been entirely written and entirely directed by just one writer and one director. Now, True Detective was a miniseries of only 8 episodes, and at that scale, a single writer is more realistic. I doubt you could have produced a primetime Star Trek series with only one writer and one director.

An interesting hybrid approach is what I'd call a staff structure with a clear "visionary" at the helm. This is sort of like what we saw on Battlestar Galactica: a show with a full writing staff, but one or two writers who basically dominated the process and authored the bulk of the series. MASH is another good example; Larry Gelbart clearly exercised strong, authorial control over the show, even though he didn't write every episode.

This latter approach tends to work the best, in my experience as a fan and as a former TV person. But it can have its difficulties and drawbacks, all the same. Sometimes there are limits to the imagination of even the most creative individuals. If you're relying too much on a strong auteur type, and he or she gets writer's block, or gets sick, or becomes extremely difficult, you're SOL.

[mavhc]

Babylon 5, 1 guy wrote most of it, and it was much better planned than BSG

[jonnathanson]

Babylon 5 is what I'd call an acquired taste. :) So many people swear by it, and for the life of me, I just couldn't make it past the first two episodes. It was a slog. I respect the creator of the show immensely; he is a fantastic writer, and also the author of one of the best how-to books on screenwriting I've ever read. And by all accounts, I should love the show. But I just...can't. I don't know why. Does the pace pick up a bit after the first few eps?

[dragonwriter]

> Babylon 5, 1 guy wrote most of it

I thought that while JMS oversaw all of B5 and wrote the broad story arc, he did not write most of the episodes.

[frobozz]

> especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century.

I fancy that this was to offer a bit of continuity with McCoy's fear of Transporters.

I do agree that it felt out of place, but having given it a bit more thought: The fact that Data was unique (ignoring the as-yet unheard of Lore) sort of makes everyone else's easy acceptance of him slightly odd. The doctor (with intimate knowledge of the fact that we're all just very complicated machines) should have been Data's lone champion against his numerous naysayers.

[jonnathanson]

Right? Especially because she was a woman of science. Pulaski should have marveled at the technical accomplishment Data was, even if she retained some healthy skepticism of his apparent humanity. Instead, she took the "tin man" approach, and from an almost Cartesian, animist sense, seemed to dislike him because he didn't have some sort of metaphysical spark of life. I can see that sort of attitude coming from some, but coming from the science-minded doctor, it was odd. Especially because everyone else was just so unconditionally cool with it all.

[danudey]

> especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski, whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th Century

I didn't care for Pulaski, but I kind of get her character, in retrospect. In comparison to Crusher, who was the motherly, caring doctor that we all wish we had, Pulaski was the doctor who was in it for the science. She never really seemed friendly, she wasn't especially caring, and she didn't mind if people disliked her, but she was good at the medicine and the science.

[LandoCalrissian]

I actually really enjoyed Dr. Pulaski, but I'm pretty aware I'm in a small group on that one. She was just so damn surly, which I thought brought a nice contrast to the rest of the cast.

[jonnathanson]

I guess I have mixed feelings about her. She was definitely a character, and I give her credit for that. She was not out to win a popularity contest, or to be Miss Congeniality. She was gruff, old fashioned, and smart. Sort of like McCoy, but without the charm. But I just didn't buy her Luddite tendencies. Her treatment of Data bordered on cruel, even if I understand that sometimes she was doing it to make a point, or to test him in certain ways. But I just didn't get where it came from. It felt odd. And I know this isn't necessarily fair to Pulaski, but seeing as how Data is so gosh-darned lovable, her antagonism towards him makes her unlovable by association. It's like having a character whose defining traits include being mean to puppies. It's just...hard to win people over if you're going to be that person.

[bane]

She's grown on me over the years. She's definitely a more interesting person than Dr. Crusher, but I think she was also too much of an homage to Bones from TOS.

I recently went back and watched some TOS and was really surprised to see young her on the show.

[LandoCalrissian]

I think there are two good Wesley episodes:

Final Mission http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Final_Mission_(episode)

The First Duty http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_First_Duty_(episode)

Other than that he is pretty terrible.

[cmdrfred]

It's a trap!

[zingermc]

Shut up, Wesley!

[CurtMonash]

Re: "The Naked Now" is probably the series' worst episode

I can refute that in two words: "Fully functional".

Similarly for another worst episode candidate, saved almost entirely by "I am not a merry man".

[jonnathanson]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love watching the episode. I also love watching movies like "The Room." To me, "The Naked Now" is "The Room" of TNG episodes. It's a fascinating trainwreck with some hilarious scenes ("Fully functional" being the best, obviously).

What fascinates me is that "Naked Now" was only the second episode of the entire series! It's as if the writers just got together and said, "You know what? Fuck the shark; let's just jump it right out of the gate and get it over with." Or, "Sooner or later, some fanfic weirdos are going to launch a heated debate about whether Data can have sex. Let's address that question preemptively, sparing everyone the flame war."

[Kluny]

I'm commenting here in the hopes that if I check back later the described project will exist.