Here it is. The moment you’ve all been waiting for! My review of the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation! I know, I know, you guys can hardly contain yourselves. You just love reading my reviews of television shows that ended over 15 years ago (yes, you are that old). So what did I think? Well, I went in with lowered expectations since I heard a lot of not so great things about the final season. But I have to say, it was a pretty solid season overall. Probably not as high as seasons five and six, which were already a bit lower on the scale of awesomeness than three and four, but still a solid season. Perhaps my lowered expectations helped a bit. Yes, there were a few more clunkers than usual (every season has them), but overall I thought the final season was a fitting end to the series.
Standout episodes included: Phantasms, where Data begins to experience odd dreams (Deanna Troi as a human cake) leading to the crew to discover strange creatures infesting the ship; Dark Page, where Lwaxana Troi goes into a coma and Counselor Troi discovers some long buried family secrets showed a great emotional side from Lwaxana that we never really saw and was a very touching episode; Attached was one of my favorites of the season, where Picard and Dr. Crusher are taken hostage and telepathically connected, which forces them to acknowledge their deep feelings for each other; Parallels, where Worf finds himself traveling between multiple universes and timelines was another amazing episode; The Pegasus, where Riker’s old commanding officer needs the Enterprise to find their old ship and its buried secrets; Lower Decks, where we see a dangerous mission from the point of view of the low level officers was another one of my favorites, with an emotional impact I wasn’t anticipating, especially for characters we didn’t really know; and of course the series finale All Good Things was an incredible end to the series with the conclusion of Q’s trial bookending it superbly.
Like I said, overall I thought it was another great season. I, like the rest of humanity, could have done without the Troi/Worf romance, but thankfully, it had been built up in my mind as such a wretched idea that I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was only touched upon in a couple of episodes. Although it is a disappointment for the series to end with them remaining a couple, her relationship with Riker is thankfully resolved (in the best way possible) in the movies. I was pleased with the conclusion of the Wesley storyline. It would have been better if I thought of Wesley as a Mozart-like child all along rather than an annoying nuisance, but I can appreciate the point they were trying to convey. I was a bit disappointed with the conclusion of Ro Laren’s storyline though. I enjoyed her character in previous seasons and it was disappointing to see her only back for a single episode, just to wrap up her storyline so poorly, especially given that her episode was the second to last ever, and they should have been focusing on the entire crew, and not just someone we haven’t seen all season. Oh, and it was also disappointing not getting a Guinan episode this season, though she has a sizable part in Generations to make up for it.
Speaking of the movies (which I’m watching this week and will give you a final review of when I’m finished) it’s interesting how I feel about them now having seen the entire series. I obviously knew about the series, and had seen bits and pieces of it when my brothers and cousins watched it growing up, but I was really a fan of the movies and it wasn’t until now that I’ve sat down and watched the entire series as a whole. And before, I would have considered the movies to be the most vital aspect of The Next Generation, they are really just a bonus. I love the movies of course, and I’ve love picking up little nods to the series now that I’m seeing them again, but now I almost view them similar to the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. The main event is the television series, and that is what is capable of standing on it’s own as a testament to great science fiction. In a way, I feel the opposite is true for the original Star Trek. Yes, the show is great for what it is, but it’s almost as if the television series is a footnote to the wonderful series of movies that came after it, though I may feel differently after seeing the original series from beginning to end of course.
There we have it. I have finally seen the entire series of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and what a wonderful voyage it has been.
Thankfully you mentioned Parallels as a favorite, I probably wouldn’t have been able to be your friend if you hadn’t. And I had forgotten all about Lower Decks. I liked that one a lot two!
HUGS…
Hmmm. I don’t remember too many of he specifics, after all, I was just an infant when those shows came out.
I just saw Insurrection on the weekend on Space. Meh. It was okay but reminded me of a long episode on TV or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.
I love the final bit in Parallels where there’s the alternate Riker who’s gone mad fighting the Borg. Such a great touch.
I also liked the episode HOMEWARD a lot too. I thought Paul Sorvino was excellent as Worf’s human brother.
Oh yeah I forgot about that one. I liked how they were able to trick the people into thinking they were walking from one place to another using the holodeck by slowly changing the environment. Pretty clever.
Gah! It’s been so long since I have seen the series that I can’t remember the individual episodes very well. I am glad you enjoyed the show, it was such a big influence on my teen years and it makes me happy that it still stands up to Craiggers high standards
I notice drily that Polt neglected to read my earlier comment where I mentioned Parallels and Lower Decks
I’m glad you liked Season 7. I agree completely that All Good Things was a great ending to the show. It still gets me choked up when they invite Picard to join them in their card game. I *love* that episode.
I am not really a fan of Attached (or of Homeward).
And I honestly couldn’t disagree more about TOS being a footnote to the movies. Only movies 2, 3 and 4 are worth seeing IMO. All the other original-case movies are horribly bad. And the series itself is still the gold standard.
I haven’t really liked any of the next gen movies actually. First Contact was probably the least bad, but on the whole they were all pretty dreadful as far as I was concerned. The Borg Queen was a great touch in First Contact but otherwise there wasn’t much to recommend it.
I don’t know why everybody hates the Troi/Worf romance. I liked it better than the Worf/Dax romance. I was disappointed they didn’t stay together, myself. Troi seemed less irritating to me when she was with Worf.
Glad you enjoyed the series, Craig
Let me just add that I was unbelievably excited when TNG came out. I was 26. I had read about it in TV Guide and other magazines and was SUPER-excited. The credits for the first few season (where you see the ship speeding away from the earth and past saturn) made the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time. I was just so thrilled to have Star Trek back again.
I had never watched TOS when it was originally on. I lived in Missouri then and there were only two local TV stations — we didn’t have PBS and we didn’t have the network that Star Trek was on. When we moved back to Illinois, eventually TOS came out as reruns on PBS. I had already read all the James Blish novelizations of the series so I knew all the stories, so I was a complete Trek nerd. (And of course there was no Star Wars yet.)
I was horribly disappointed by the first original-cast movie (as most people were). But like I said, 2, 3, and 4 were awesome in my opinion. When they finally FINALLY got around to resurrecting Trek for TV it was one of the biggest TV moments of my life up until that point. Of course now it seems trivial especially with so many more Trek movies, plus multiple Trek series and multiple other scifi series of great note. But at the time it was a HUGE big deal, and I avidly watched every episode.
To this day, however, I have to admit that the best series is TOS. I don’t remember the VAST majority of TNG / DS9 / Voyager / Enterprise episodes. Even when I see them again I don’t remember what happened in most of them — there are only a handful of standouts.
This is not true for TOS. *EVERY SINGLE EPISODE* of TOS is memorable (even the really bad ones like Spock’s Brain or “And the Children Shall Lead” or “The Way to Eden” are memorable. I can recognize every episode of TOS from the first 3 seconds or so … let’s face it: none of the later series have that kind of iconic power. TNG is basically LA Law or St Elsewhere in Space — or for those of you who are younger, ER or CSI. More of a soap opera with a scifi background. Still a very fun show, but not the … impact of TOS.
Why is nobody else commenting on this post?
The reason for the Ro Laren episode was to create seeds for Voyager, which went into production two years later, according to Jeri Taylor in the commentary.
Oh, and Ro Laren was supposed to come back in Deep Space Nine but Michelle Forbes couldn’t commit, so Kira was made instead.