Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I just wanted to point out that today is the 30th anniversary of of one of the great television classics (and my personal favorite show of all time), Star Trek: The Next Generation. It opened a whole flood gate of genre television. Would we have Babylon 5, X-files, Buffy and many others made it to air if TNG hadn't proved to be successful? And I personally marvel how damned optimistic it was (something that's pretty much verboten in genre shows today). But, for me anyway, it was the ultimate televised comfort food. So many people I know from so many different walks of life have shown to be this show. Anyway, I raise my glass to the most (ratings) successful Trek of them all.

Do you have any fond memories? What's your favorite episode? (Mine is "Deja Q", a highly underrated episode that illustrates the humanistic Trek philosophy with equal parts humor and poignancy.)

Also:

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I always felt sorry for whoever had to mop the holodeck after Geordi used it

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

"Measure of a Man" remains my favorite episode followed by "Best of Both Worlds." The first season is an unwatchable mess (and manages to have the most racist Trek episode with "Code of Honor") but it was up hill after that.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

My parents weren't big Star Trek fans, so we never watched the show when I was growing up. The only place I saw it was when I visited my cousins, and even then it was a rare occasion. I have very fond memories of settling in with them to watch an episode or two. The characters, how they acted, their voices, it all stuck with me for a long time through those relatively few viewings.

Sometime after Netflix started up, I started with TOS and then went through TNG. It was a fun experience, remembering my childhood while seeing a lot of new things. TOS is good television, but after the first season, TNG was top-tier programming. I've struggled to get into other Star Trek series, mainly because I do too much comparing to TNG, and I don't watch the new series on their own merit.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I used to videotape favorite episodes of series I used to watch, -in retrospect, I never watched any one of them again, and they've gone off to a landfill somewhere along the way. I only recorded two first season episodes, "Heart of Glory", -an early Klingon episode, -and "Conspiracy" which suggests a conspiracy in the Starfleet hierarchy and contains some gruesome effects. "Conspiracy" was the type of episode I was waiting for "Trek" to do, but The Powers That Be were supposedly horrified by it and wrote off the deeper long-term storyline it promised. Anyway, that's my memory of things...

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

My favorite is Cause and Effect. I believe they show the Enterprise blowing up 5 times, and each time they show it from a different perspective, and every time they say the same lines, they say it a little differently ("Back us off ensign, nice and slow"). It's got this great time loop concept, great execution by the actors and Frakes who directed.

But the high point in television history for me is that Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger. I remember watching it the 1st time and it was 8:52 or whenever and you start to realize they can't possibly wrap this up in 4 minutes.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I can't remember exactly, but either Cause and Effect or Disaster was the first Star Trek episode I ever watched as a kid. Both were from the 5th season and have vaguely similar "the Enterprise is in peril" plotlines. Whichever episode it was, it got me hooked and I loved the series. I remember my city's 50,000 seat stadium sold out completely to watch the series finale live, complete with 90s era cosplay.

DS9 was the superior show IMO, but TNG is always thought of fondly as the show that introduced me to Trek. Patrick Stewart remains the single most incredible actor on any of the 6 series and 13 movies.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

For me the best episode will always be "The Inner Light". At the end of the episode's first run I remember thinking it was probably the best hour of Sci-fi TV I ever watched. I remember a ton of casual fans thinking I was crazy because it basically ignored the rest of the crew. Beyond that I pretty much love everything Q/Borg related, especially "Best of Both Worlds" and "Q Who". I look at everything with the Borg related as related to Q because you never know if Starfleet would have encountered the Borg if the TNG era if not for Q.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I have a soft spot for "Starship Mine", a season 6 episode. Basically Die Hard in space, with Picard as John McClane.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

Another vote for "The Inner Light"

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I agree with the big event episodes every one else is mentioning but I'll throw in a personal "fun" favorite: Remember Me.

"If there's nothing wrong with me, there must be something wrong with the universe."

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

My favourite guilty pleasure episode is Season 7's Genesis. It's the one where the crew de-evolves and Picard and Data have to try to save the ship. Barclay turns into a spider, Troi into an amphibian, Riker into a Neanderthal, and Worf into the Predator. You can tell that by this point in the show, they were willing to try anything.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I know that's your opinion, it's cool and I'm not trying to debate about which is the best.

However, I don't get it why DS9 is "superior" to all Star Trek series. I watched all series - I had few favorite episodes in TNG, but only TWO episode DS9 is my favorite (Children of Time and In the Pale Moonlight) and only one character is my favorite (Garak). I just not into "Messiah" storyline.

Maybe I'm way too picky. :shrug:

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

Deep Space Nine is a bore fest in my opinion. It has its moments but overall I feel like there's a select group that overrate it to try and think their opinion is superior or something.

The Next Generation is my favorite by a long shot. It has the best cast and Picard is my favorite Captain, I like the design of the Enterprise D, I think it has a lot of the strongest episodes, and it introduced great villains like Q and the Borg. When I was younger I probably would have said I liked TOS better and while I like the cast I feel like the series overall doesn't hold up as well. I actually enjoy the TOS movies more than the series.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I suspect for many people, the DS9 series being one long story (for the most part) puts it above what was typically a bunch of one-offs with TNG. And it doesn't help that so many TNG episodes were very lame. I still feel that way today with all TV shows. Give me one long story arc rather than a bunch of one-off procedural episodes.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I too am a DS9 believer and I just think that show was more consist in its quality than TNG. I also think there was a lot more character development in DS9 which is something I'm into. TNG is the reason I became a trekkie so it still holds a special place in my heart.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

DS9 is my favorite Trek series, and by a fairly wide margin.

Having said that, I love TNG. At it's best it was a phenomenal show, and there would be no DS9, Babylon 5, or Farscape without it.

Favorite TNG episodes? I'd really have to spend some time thinking about it because there are a couple dozen episodes that I would choose from. There are also about a dozen really bad episodes (the 7th season had at least 4 of them), but there was far more good than bad with TNG. It was a groundbreaking series.

I had grown up watching Star Trek in it's very first syndication run after being cancelled. (I remember watching my first episode, The Empath, when I came in to the living room and my dad was watching it in 1972 - I was 4.) When they announced a new Star Trek show I was really excited! And even though Encounter at Farpoint kind of sucked from a technical standpoint (lousy synth led score, weak dialogue, less than stellar special effects), I loved the characters and concepts and recognized the potential the show had. It may not have been until Season 3 that the show finally reached that potential, but once it did it became one of the best Science Fiction shows ever on TV.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

Ugh. That and Masks are two that immediately come to mind as the worst episodes of the series. The 7th Season was half great, half awful. They'd bounce back and forth, week to week between really, really good to great episodes and really bad episodes that were among the worst they had done.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I get that but I feel like Star Trek is more about the adventure of the week over long drawn out arcs personally. In a lot of ways I'd say Deep Space Nine feels the least Trek of any of the shows. I mean it's mostly set on the station and there isn't much exploration. I guess I can see some merits in approaching a Star Trek series from a different angle but it doesn't work for me. Also it's personal preference but I don't really care for most of the cast. A lot of the core characters like Sisko, Odo, and Quarck I find to be annoying/unlikeable. My favorite characters are ones that were later brought over from The Next Generation (O'Brien and Worf).

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

The post I responded to didn't say that DS9 just doesn't work for you. You specifically posted the words "overrated" and that fans feel their opinions are "superior". I don't in any way feel superior is liking DS9 more despite my opinion that DS9 is the superior show when taken as a whole. The truth is that I prefer many single TNG episodes over any DS9 episode, but as a whole, I like the DS9 story more. Essentially so much of TNG doesn't work for me. Especially some of the TNG characters which I find to be totally annoying/unlikable.

When I went back through the series TNG series on DVD I skipped many episodes. Didn't do the same when re-watching DS9.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

Technically, the DS9 crew accumulated more frequent flyer miles than Picard and co. All those trips through the wormhole!

TOS, TNG, and VOY were very idyllic for the most part, cruising around the galaxy in luxury, saving random species from their various issues, learning a lesson, and then moving on. DS9 showed the price one had to pay to maintain that level of moral superiority, which was often heavy. It stayed in one place (more or less) and dealt with ongoing issues, which to me is more realistic. It, along with maybe The X-Files, is also the ancestor of all the amazing serialized TV we have today.

I also loved all the deep character development. Compare how Nog changed compared to Troi or LaForge.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I didn't specifically mean you just so you know but I've come across people like that on other sites and forums.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

And I've run into TNG snobs that go as far as thinking that all episodes among the 7 seasons are awesome and better than everything that came after. Usually going on about how even the shit TNG episodes still had more heart, or something like that. But I thinks it's fair to consider both of these extremes as outliers and talk about the general majority, no? :shrug:

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

Yeah, I suppose your right.

Re: Happy 30th Anniversary, Star Trek: The Next Generation!
 

I prefer DS9. But TNG was really good season 3 on.

Inner Light, Best of Both Worlds were fantastic

Sub Rosa is the worst post season 2. Beverly "I was reading a particularly erotic entry in my Grandmother's journal"

:yack: