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Editorial Reviews
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A writer's guide was composed with which to sell and define where the Trek universe was in the 24th Century. The United Federation of Planets was a more appealing ideology to an America keen to see where the Reagan/Gorbachev faceoff was taking them. Starfleet's meritocratic philosophy had always embraced all races and species. Now Earth's utopian history, featuring the abolishment of poverty, was brandished prominently and proudly. The new Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, was no longer a ship of war but an exploration vessel carrying families. The ethical and ethnical flagship also carried a former enemy (the Klingon Worf, played by Michael Dorn), and its Chief Engineer (Geordi LaForge) was blind and black. From every politically correct viewpoint, Paramount executives thought the future looked just swell!
Roddenberry's feminism now contrasted a pilot episode featuring ship's Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) in a mini-skirt with her ongoing inner strengths and also those of Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) and the short-lived Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). The arrival of Whoopi Goldberg in season 2 as mystic barkeep Guinan is a great example of the good the original Trek did for racial groups--Goldberg has stated that she was inspired to become an actress in large part through seeing Nichelle Nichols' Uhura. Her credibility as an actress helped enormously alongside the strong central performances of Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Jonathan Frakes (First Officer Will Riker), and Brent Spiner (Data) in defining another wholly believable environment once again populated with well-defined characters. Star Trek, it turned out, did not depend for its success on any single group of actors.
Like its predecessor in the 1960s, TNG pioneered visual effects on TV, making it an increasingly jaw-dropping show to look at. And thanks also to the enduring success of the original show, phasers, tricorders, communicators and even phase inverters were already familiar to most viewers. But while technology was a useful tool in most crises, it now frequently seemed to be the cause of them too, as the show's writers continually warned about the dangers of over-reliance on technology (the Borg were the ultimate expression of this maxim). The word "technobabble" came to describe a weakness in many TNG scripts, which sacrificed the social and political allegories of the original and relied instead upon invented technological faults and their equally fictitious resolutions to provide drama within the Enterprise's self-contained society. (The holodeck's safety protocol override seemed to be next to the light switch given the number of times crew members were trapped within.) This emphasis on scientific jargon appealed strongly to an audience who were growing up for the first time in the late 1980s with the home computer--and gave rise to the clichéd image of the nerdy Trek fan.
Like in the original Trek, it was in the stories themselves that much of the show's success is to be found. That pesky Prime Directive kept moral dilemmas afloat ("Justice"/"Who Watches the Watchers?"/"First Contact"). More "what if" scenarios came out of time-travel episodes ("Cause and Effect"/"Time's Arrow"/"Yesterday's Enterprise"). And there were some episodes that touched on the political world, such as "The Arsenal of Freedom" questioning the supply of arms, "Chain of Command" decrying the torture of political prisoners and "The Defector", which was called "The Cuban Missile Crisis of The Neutral Zone" by its writer. The show ran for more than twice as many episodes as its progenitor and therefore had more time to explore wider ranging issues. But the choice of issues illustrates the change in the social climate that had occurred with the passing of a couple of decades. "Angel One" covered sexism; "The Outcast" was about homosexuality; "Symbiosis"--drug addiction; "The High Ground"--terrorism; "Ethics"--euthanasia; "Darmok"--language barriers; and "Journey's End"--displacement of Indians from their homeland. It would have been unthinkable for the original series to have tackled most of these.
TNG could so easily have been a failure, but it wasn't. It survived a writer's strike in its second year, the tragic death of Roddenberry just after Trek's 25th anniversary in 1991, and plenty of competition from would-be rival franchises. Yes, its maintenance of an optimistic future was appealing, but the strong stories and readily identifiable characters ensured the viewers' continuing loyalty. --Paul Tonks
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Customer Reviews
1) The discs are in cheap, brittle trays -- easily subject to breakage -- rather than in well-built cases.
2) These trays are not labeled, and amazingly, there is no insert describing -- or even listing -- the episodes, or which discs they are on. Episode titles are printed on the disc labels, but that's all the info you get, so after spending $300, a buyer has to flip through the 49 discs like file cards, to find the episode s/he wants.
3) The discs are stuck into three unweildy clumps -- of either eight or nine trays, each -- that are held together by inexpensive adhesive tape. This tape seems likely to decay, and the result will be 26 individual, unlabled trays scattered around your living room. (Most trays have two discs).
4) The tray configuration leaves some discs uncovered, unless the whole awkward mess is stored together...a problem which will get worse when the trays inevitably separate.
The lone advantage is the bonus disc. Most of the features on the disc appear to have been meant for, and for some reason never made it onto, the original releases of seasons 4 - 7. That doesn't mean they're not worth watching; some of them are quite good. Of the three new features, the best offers interviews with several of the series' writers and producers. (However, it only tangentally deals with its supposed subject -- introduced by John DeLancie -- about Star Trek's cultural impact.) Less successful is the roundtable of visual effects wizards; it has interesting moments, but it did not explain enough for a layman, nor did it go into enough detail for an expert. The Will Wheaton-hosted "Legacy" looks at how Star Trek ideas have shown up at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but it's pretty vapid (not Wheaton's fault).
To be honest, I'm torn. I'm glad to have the bonus disc (the features on Q and Lwaxana were touching) but part of me wishes I'd purchased the previously released conglomeration of individual seasons, "Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete Seasons 1-7". The price of that set has decreased to compete with this new, and somewhat inconsiderate, release...and the packaging of the old set is far easier to deal with.
Columbia House. Read more
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