After a pretty impressive streak of four strong seasons, The Next Generation had to drop off in quality at some point, and Season 7 is an especially impressive drop off.
Right from the first few episodes, Season 7's overarching theme is pretty apparent (one might even say "a parent"). It's about family, similarly to the start of Season 4. Season 4's family-related episodes paid off backstories and plot threads from earlier seasons, involving Wesley's father, Worf's adoptive parents, and Lore, while also fleshing out the concept of the Enterprise crew being their own unconventional family. Season 7, on the other hand, dealt with the concept a lot more haphazardly. Family members appeared out of nowhere, characters suddenly had tragic backstories, and Star Trek felt oddly like a soap opera at points, with one episode even giving Data temporary amnesia (ugh!). On the other hand, the storylines about saying goodbye to the characters fared much better. You can tell the showrunners knew this was going to be TNG's final season from the very start, since it had this great sense of finality to it. We got an episode about Picard and Crusher's relationship, the last few episodes focused on saying goodbye to all the side characters, and it does explain all the family-related hijinks. It all lead to a pretty great finale that definitely stuck the landing.
However, when it comes to the standalone episodes, this season lacked the strong consistency of prior seasons. The writing just felt lifeless at times, as if the whole cast and crew was eager and waiting to be done with the show to do. Otherwise interesting concepts were wasted, many episodes were lacking in tension, and what could have been a fun tight caper in Gambit got stretched out to probably the show's weakest two-parter. There were some fantastic episodes here and there, many of which I'll mention below, but the general level of quality aligned more with Seasons 1 & 2. But at least it felt like those seasons were trying as much as they failed, Season 7 just felt bored. Looking at the behind the scenes info on Season 7, it's not hard to see why things didn't go so well. Back in Season 6, the showrunners wanted to shake up the status quo in a big way, from replacing Riker with his clone to destroying the Enterprise, only to be shot down every chance they got. Even more, much of the crew was also working on DS9 and Generations, and the writing staff was limited to a bunch of veterans who were running out of ideas. Once again, this season wasn't awful, but coming after Seasons 3-6, it felt like a big drop in quality.
Still, at its best, Season 7 had some pretty great episodes:
Parallels: Out of weird "space-time-reality manipulation episodes" in The Next Generation, Parallels is probably my favorite of the bunch. I like how the parallel universes continue to layer on top of each other throughout the episode, constantly changing things until we get hundreds of Enterprises in the same space. I especially love how Worf was the main character here. He's normally the focus of some really serious episodes, so I admired that Parallels was much more comedic than his usual material.
The Pegasus: This episode was a pretty neat exploration of Riker as a character, as well as his philosophy on following orders. The mystery of what the Pegasus is was compelling, and the subsequent reveal of Riker's role in it was great. It also addressed the question of why Federation didn't make their own cloaking tech.
Lower Decks: Lower Decks is my favorite episode of TNG, and it came directly after one of the worst. After nearly 10 seasons of countless red shirts dying, we finally get to focus on some of them! This episode does a great job of making you care about these one-off characters, as they all have interesting and entertaining subplots and great banter with each other. I love how, since you're following the perspective of the lower decks, you have no idea what the Enterprise is actually dealing with for a lot of the episode. The writing is witty and funny, which is why it's such a shocking tonal shift when one of said red shirts predictably dies. It's a rare high point in Season 7, an episode that executes its concept perfectly.
Preemptive Strike: One of my favorite plot points from this season was the treaty between the Federation and Cardassians, and this episode reveals that there's a group of Federation citizens called the Maquis that are against the treaty. I'm not a massive Ro fan, but I think she got a fantastic ending here. She never really fit into Starfleet, and her allying with the Maqius and betraying Picard is a perfect end for her character, regardless of whether or not you agree with her actions. I've mentioned many times in my TNG reviews that the Cardassians are my favorite Trek species and one of the reasons is just how well-realized and messy the politics involving them are. This episode leaves you feeling conflicted, and it's all just so grey.
All Good Things: Ah, so this is what a good Star Trek finale looks like. I'm so glad we didn't have a Turnabout Intruder situation this time around. All Good Things is a pretty solid final episode for TNG, it's a well-acted and high stakes time travel caper that explores the crew's past, present, and potential future. I have some gripes with the episode, particularly with how the cast was treated in the future, but between getting to see O'Brien and Tasha again, the resolution of Q's trial, and the final poker table scene, I think this worked really well as a satisfying finale.
At its worst, Season 7 had some truly awful episodes as well:
Sub Rosa: This is why Star Trek shouldn't try to do gothic horror. Sub Rosa definitely has some comedic value in how campy the acting and writing is, but the story itself is just so uncomfortable. Beverly's grandma was in a romance with a ghost? And now the ghost wants to get with Beverly?! And the episode ends with the ghost being depicted in a sympathetic light?!?1 What the hell was this episode?!
Masks: This one wasn't as bad as Sub Rosa. I like that Picard got another chance to show his love for archeology, and there are some interesting concepts here, but Masks slowly devolved into a poorly-acted, horribly-paced, awful dialogue, and incomprehensible episode that was bizarre even by Season 7 standards.
Bloodlines: This episode was probably the worst case of this season's odd habit of randomly shoving in family members we never knew about. Thankfully, Jason isn't actually Picard's son, but that doesn't mean that he wasn't a dull character who the show wanted us to believe was his son. Not to mention this was a Ferengi episode. Need I say more?
Overall, Season 7 was a pretty rough final season. While it had some of the show's best episodes and ended TNG on a nice and satisfying note, the writing lacked energy, the focus on family drama felt soapy, and you can tell the writers were running out of ideas.
2/5 Stars
My ranking of the The Next Generation's seasons is:
6 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 7 > 2 > 1
My ranking of the The Next Generation's finales is:
3 > 4 > 7 > 6 > 5 > 1 > 2
Following the trend of my TOS reviews, my Top 5 episodes of The Next Generation are:
- Lower Decks
- Darmok
- Chain Of Command: Part 2
- The Best Of Both Worlds: Part 1
- The Inner Light
And my Top 5 least favorite episodes of The Next Generation are:
- Shades Of Grey
- Code Of Honor
- The Outcast
- Sub Rosa
- Angel One
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