On this page I will discus my process of reviewing the episodes of my favorite television show of all time, Star Trek: The Next Generation. As the show has been remastered in HD and released on Blu Ray I thought this was the perfect time to give my take on each one of the episodes. Seasons one through seven are available now, and I have reviewed all 176 episodes of Star Trek greatness on this blog. Please feel free to read and comment on the episodes in whatever respectful way you prefer. I promise, my reviews have content you have never seen before and I have collected it all in one place, just for you.
Star Trek: TNG is the most successful of the Star Trek series’, both critically and by ratings. It’s also the longest running Star Trek series by number of episodes. I’m including a link here that tracks the Nielsen ratings for all of the 90’s Star Trek series, and as you can see TNG is the only one that didn’t have a general ratings decline over the course of the show. We know the original series had a ratings decline as it was cancelled in its third season. It is primarily because of TNG that Star Trek and science fiction in general returned to television, that’s no exaggeration. The characters changed a lot over the series, and for the better. Here’s a cool meme I found that shows in a funny way how they changed from season one to season seven.
I will briefly mention the format I use in these reviews. The Plot Synopsis will be taken mostly intact from Memory Alpha, one of the best Star Trek sites on the web. I include photos in my reviews, and most of them will be from TrekCore, another great site. I will also include some technical observations from the Ex Astris Scientia web site for details regarding changes in the HD remaster versions, as well as information from Larry Nemecek’s Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. I will also give additional information from stories told by the cast at various Cons over the years and other cast interviews. In some episodes of TNG the writers had an A plot and a B plot going. Typically plot A is the story and plot B is the character development, but in some episodes this is reversed as we’ll see. I discuss these in the Plot Analysis section. Favorite Scenes is a section that requires no explanation.
Use of Cast discusses how the cast and characters are used in the episode. The Blu Ray version section will cover any enhancements or corrections that were made in the episode as well as any deleted scenes or commentary included on the discs. Paramount and CBS went to an enormous amount of effort to remaster every episode, looking at the original film reels, remastering the video into HD and the sound into 7.1. Here’s a link to a nice little demonstration of the difference. Nitpicks are just that: little things that either seem strange, make no sense or that bug me that perhaps other folks don’t notice. Overall Impression is where I discuss what I thought of the episode as a whole, and what works and doesn’t work in it. Interesting things to note about the episode will appear in the Behind the Scenes/Trivia section, many of which in the first season will be supplemented by a series of reviews that Wil Wheaton did. Finally I’ll assign each episode a one-to-five star rating and say whether the casual TNG watcher can afford to miss this episode or not.
I have also written an overview for each of the seven seasons, and the links below will take you directly there. In these I discuss the tone of the show, significant events during that season, links to every episode review in that season, as well as direct links to the preceding or subsequent season overview.
Please know that my reviews have some spoilers, though I’ll try to limit this. Having said that, TNG has been available to watch for 30 years so I don’t feel much guilt about including a spoiler or two! Also, know that I have another agenda in writing these episode reviews. I have a lot of experience watching TNG since 1987, and my overriding goal is to have my say about every episode. This is done for fun so hey, take it all with a grain of salt. 🙂
Saga of the Jasonite 