Star Trek's first ever season, Season 1 of The Original Series, was fantastic. The show really hit the ground running and delivered probably one of the best seasons of 60s TV. The sequel series, The Next Generation, despite being made two decades late, struggles to reach such a high bar.
Star Trek: The Next Generation has pretty much the same premise as The Original Series: The new crew of the new Enterprise go on an expedition to seek out new life, explore the galaxy, and boldly go where no one's gone before. Despite the similar main premise, there are quite a few things TNG does differently, and dare I say better. TOS felt like an anthology series that lost all sense of continuity by Season 2. TNG is still episodic and lacks an overarching story arc for the season, but there is a much stronger sense of continuity here, along with a bunch of running storylines like the looming Romulan threat, a Federation conspiracy, and Wesley rising up the ranks. We have reoccurring species and characters, character arcs and backstories, and genuine shifts to the status quo. This kind of continuity would never have been seen TOS, and I like it a lot. It feels like the series is evolving and that events matter and have an impact, while still not transforming into a strictly serialized story. TNG also does a much better job of giving all of its cast equal screentime. There's no "core trio" this time, rather a large ensemble that all gets their episodes that focus on them. I found myself liking a large portion of the cast, but the highlights ended up being Data and Geordi, the former due to Brent Spiner's fantastic and hilarious performance and the latter for just being so damn likable. I know Wesley Crusher is divisive and while I don't love him, I was pretty impressed with how much development he got throughout the season.
However, Season 1 of TOS this is not. Despite the positive changes, The Next Generation gets off to a much rougher start. For starters, it takes a while for the cast to really ease into their roles, and the early episodes can be especially awkward. But that's an issue most shows have. Where Season 1 of TNG really suffers is in its episodic stories, many of which showcase a lack of originality or a waste of potential. There are plenty of episodes that feel ripped straight out of The Original Series, without quite understanding why they worked. For example, The Naked Now was a copy of one of my favorite TOS episodes, but the premise of the characters acting unlike themselves doesn't work when it's the second episode of the series. And while all that great world-building and serialization feels cool in theory, some of the storylines (like the Ferengi ones) just aren't all that good. Thankfully, the season does slowly improve over time, but it never reached the heights of TOS's first season, or really came anywhere close. I also wanted to briefly talk about the presentation. The effects can be hit or miss, with some really great CGI for the Enterprise yet plenty of bad one-off effects on the level of TOS. The music, on the other hand, is fantastic. It was such a pleasant surprise to find that the main theme of TMP, my favorite piece of Trek music (at least so far), became TNG's main theme as well. The ethereal background music is also pretty good and gives the series a unique vibe.
With its greater sense of continuity, I'm not going to review every single episode like with The Original Series. I'm sticking with the highlights of each season, as I usually do. Not that there were many in the case of Season 1:
Coming Of Age: I can't even begin to express how much I enjoyed this episode, it's so low stakes and character-driven. Wesley's Starfleet exam subplot gave him a lot of depth and added some more Starfleet lore. The Remmick subplot not only really solidified how close the cast is to each other, but it showed just how continuity-driven TNG is compared to TOS by calling back nearly every prior episode and setting up the events of Conspiracy. It helps that this is the point that the season becomes genuinely solid.
Skin Of Evil: I can imagine how divisive Tasha Yar's death must have been, but I think it works to really differentiate this series from TOS. Until this point, the only characters who ever died in Star Trek are the redshirts (and Spock but he came back to life), so a major character dying is shocking. As much as I wish Tasha got more focus, her death and funeral were well-executed and the episode itself was built around it in an interesting way.
Conspiracy: This was by far the best episode of the whole season. It's a dark and suspenseful slow-burn that pays off the plot threads laid out in Coming Of Age. It's shocking just how gory Conspiracy is, and granted the effects aren't all fantastic, but it's a kind of intensity that we haven't really seen in Trek yet and that I'd love to see more of (though maybe with less gross chestbusters?). I think this episode could have worked as a great Season 1 finale between the titular conspiracy, Remmick's death, and the cliffhanger, though the one we got was alright too.
I also wanted to touch on the worst episodes of the season as well, such as:
Code Of Honor: An already bad episode made even worse by the painfully racist casting decisions. Let's just pretend this one never happened, shall we?
Justice: This felt like a TOS in the worst possible way. Confusing exploration of the Prime Directive, awful costumes, and the sex-driven planet just felt too goofy.
Angel One: Geordi in command was adorable, but it couldn't save an otherwise sexist episode that made some of the most tone-deaf storytelling decisions in the whole season, which is saying something!
Too Short A Season: Whoever thought to hire a 30-year-old to play an elderly person should have been fired. The bad makeup and awful acting almost distracted me from how stupid the Fountain Of Youth plot was.
Overall, the first season of The Next Generation isn't that great. Despite the greater sense of continuity and larger cast, the show suffers from unoriginal episodic storylines, shaky world-building, unsure character work, and a feeling that the show still feels like it's stuck in the 60s.
1/5 Stars
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