I’ve been watching TNG for the first time and so far season 1 has been hit or miss. Ether a episode will be really good or really bad. So far I think episode 23 is a really good episode! I hope that Tasha isn’t actually dead. I liked her and thought she was a gorgeous woman! This is the one and only time I will ever want spoilers but is she fully dead or does she return?
The following seasons are better with a few exceptions.
Which exceptions? I honestly can’t think of a weaker season of TNG than the first one.
“Shades of Gray” is terrible as they ran out of money and strung together other episodes.
There’s also the season 7 episode where Crusher has a…‘relationship’…with a alien ghost thing which also did it with her grandma.
Fair. Although I suppose my point was more that season 1 was weak, rather than that there weren’t individual episodes that were worse than season 1. Sub Rosa is a terrible episode but season 7 as a whole is dramatically better than season 1 as a whole.
@theinspectorst @DarthonTV @bstix The only clip show in all of Star Trek history was at the end of TNG season 2.
Fair point!
I’m thinking in episodes. I dislike the ones where they just mess around on the holodeck.
Yes.
The actress returns. I’m not gonna tell you any more than that haha. It’s a story arc I really liked actually.
And Season 1 is notoriously bad. The show was really struggling to figure out what it wanted to be. Season 2, like around episode 8 is where you start to get into the “holy crap this has no right to be this good” stuff.
@Chetzemoka @DarthonTV I wasn’t particularly attached to Crusher but MAN they screwed up Pulaski bad. You cannot recreate the Spock-McCoy dynamic with Pulaski and Data because Data is too distinct and Pulaski is too derivative. You COULD have had an interesting back and forth if you put more thought into Pulaski rather than just making her bluntly prejudiced, but instead you set her as a bully against the show’s best character and made everyone instantly dislike her. There’s some good stuff in S2, Moriarty, the Borg, but they mishandled a lot.
@Chetzemoka @DarthonTV McCoy and Spock worked because they were on even ground. For all we love Spock, he has a prejudice against his human half instilled by his vulcan upbringing. He could give it as well as he could take it as a result. McCoy and Spock were on equal footing, both working through their own prejudices and philosophical differences while maintaining a friendship. McCoy could snip at vulcan and Spock would come back with a dig at humans.
Data did have the same standing, the same critique of humanity. It was just Pulaski talking over him with no pushback pointing out the flaws in her nature.
@Chetzemoka @DarthonTV Ugh, “didn’t”. Not sure I can edit a comment from Mastodon.
Anyway, the writers in S2 could have set up something where Pulaski doubts Data’s self-determination abilities and Data regularly comes back with questioning the free will of biological organisms, if they had tweaked Pulaski enough that she did speak to Data like a person even as she put forth these ideas. Instead, she thinks he’s a thing and most of her objections are to the people AROUND Data rather than to Data himself.
It was a very bad look and no wonder people wanted Crusher back.
To keep it vague, many actors who liked working on Trek and who the show staff liked working with would often come back as either other characters or their popular characters via various means (time travel eps, dreams, etc). Tasha’s actress does make several reappearances and Tasha’s story does get some continuation/wrap-up story wise (to effect the character is not forgotten by the other characters or the writers after she dies), but the actress never rejoins the cast as a full-time regular.
@DarthonTV Oh man… Let’s just say this is not the last time you’ll see that face.
So you see, that’s where the trouble began.
That smile.
That damned smile.
Removed by mod
her acting was terrible.
It’s not like the rest of the cast were stellar (yet). The first season was pretty bad in general, I don’t see her being that much worse.
I’ve seen the series so many times and I still mourn Tasha! I was so happy to see her briefly for a moment in the last season of Picard.
I tried getting into TNG a few times but always end up skipping first season and a half
@DarthonTV “Skin of Evil” gets a lot of flak for its dodgy special effects, but it’s one of my favourite episodes in season 1 (along with “Coming of Age” and “The Big Goodbye”). I love the suddenness and senselessness of Tasha’s death, the concept of a race that has cleaved its evil nature into a separate being which it then abandoned, and the holodeck farewell scene, especially the final shot. It’s also a really good Troi episode. Lord knows she didn’t get a lot of them, especially in the first season.
