To celebrate Picard day ( my first time celebrating it ) I wanted to give my thought on TNG so far. I’m about done with the first season and there’s been a lot of good episodes and some episodes that are pretty boring ( sorry 😢 ) however every episode Captain Picard is the reason I finish it no matter if it’s a good or great episode or if it’s a boring episode. Picard is a very stern and serious character but can also be very caring and since he’s so serious when you see those moments of him being caring and nice and going out of his way for others it really shines bright and shows that Captain Picard is one of the best characters in Star Trek. Also Patrick Stewart is so good at his job!
Season One of TNG was very much a “finding its feet” season. It was trying to do a lot of “mysterious space thing of the week” format episodes that harkened back to The Original Series, and hadn’t really established its own identity yet.
One example of this that jumps out at me is… I think it’s episode one, “Encounter at Farpoint.” Riker walks into the holodeck and finds Data trying (and failing) to whistle. Riker whistles the tune, and Data responds, “How easily you humans do that,” in this bitter, snide tone of voice that is 100% NOT in keeping with Data but sounds exactly spot-on like Lore. Of course, that was a while before that character had ever been dreamt up, written, or screened, so of course it wasn’t, but Spiner’s delivery in that scene was just off in exactly the wrong way to freak me the f— out every time.
So… yeah. Season One is very hit-or-miss but the show really only gets better from there. I would say that later-season episodes “Chains of Command” and “Frame of Mind” were some of the best television I had ever seen up to that point. (The ones directed by Jonathan Frakes are always high-water marks for the show, every single one.) The thing that overtook them all, though, was “In the Pale Moonlight” (DS9) which to this day is the best thing I have EVER seen on television.