From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.misc
Subject: Re: ramblings
Date: 4 Sep 92 23:41:10 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

In <1992Sep4.222147.5419@zip.eecs.umich.edu> chuck@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Chuck A. Nicholas) writes:
>>>Matthew  B.  Hicks writes>>
>>But does anyone share my opinion that most of the episodes don't stand up
>>to repeated viewing as well as TOS does? 

>No I don't share that opinion at all.  I have only found one out of the 120+
>TNG shows to be something I would not rather watch or consider a waste of time
>taping (The Lonely Among Us).  The first half of the first season was a little
>ragged.  Even so, there were some very fine stories in there, including Where
>No one has Gone Before, Last Outpost, Coming of Age, Heart of Glory, Arsenal of
>Freedom.

I would rank only "11001001" and (maybe) "Conspiracy" from the first season
among the "very good" TNG shows.  Many of the rest were average, and many
more were, well, rank. :-)

>	   Then you tack on later shows like Measure of a Man, The Offspring,
>Q Who?, Sarek, I Borg, Ensigns of Command, Tin Man, Sins of the Father,
>Brothers, Family, Ensign Rho, Darmok, Inner Light

"Q Who", "I Borg", "Sins Of The Father", "Family" "Darmok" and "Inner Light"
were all 'very good'.  "Measure of a Man" is amazingly overrated (I find it
terminally mediocre, with enough plot holes to drive a starship through).
"The Offspring", "Sarek" and "Tin Man" all missed entirely with me; nice try,
but no thanks.  This isn't soap opera, y'know.  "Ensign Ro" was okay, and
"Brothers" was good once they got past the ridiculous hijacking sequence.
"Ensigns Of Command" is a minor episode which doesn't do much for me.

Among the later episodes, the standouts I think include "Contagion", "Time
Squared", "The Survivor", "The Best Of Both Worlds", "Remember Me" and
"Cause And Effect".  TNG just isn't that great at character stories...

>						    you wonder what would have
>happened if this had been a network show.  How many emmys might it have won?

Who knows; maybe quite a few, given the overall low quality of network TV.
I find TNG to be an average show, generally, with very few episodes I want to
see even a second time.

>I have to agree more with Jonathan Frakkes comments on the TNG  "When its good,
>it's one of the best shows on Television and when its bad, it's still good"

When it's bad, it's AWFUL.

>I don't judge the shows on their scientific acuracy or on internal consistancy
>(It's a TV show!) but rather whether the show touched me in some way.  Did it
>make me look at some situation from a different perspective?   To me,  one of
>the most poignant lines from any of the shows was at the end of the "Ensigns of
>Command"  when Commander Data is speaking to Gosheven:

>"This is but a thing. It can be replaced.  Lives cannot."

Very few TNG shows touch me in any way, and that line is precisely the sort
of line which not only doesn't do anything for me, but makes me wince at
the poor dialogue.  It's such a cliche idea, for one thing.  The line
itself sounds stilted.  It's delivered without any power.  My reaction is,
"Oh, this old saw again.  Don't they have anything new to say or do?"

-- 
Michael Rawdon				 rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI

"Beauty... survives."
				- James T. Kirk, "That Which Survives"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.misc