Guest Trek Blogging #3

The Next Generation.

Other than Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, this show is the most mainstream Trek ever got…and ever will get, in my opinion. And it deserves to be mainstream, cause you know what, it was really good. It was really really good. And man, when it was good, it positively crackled. This show had fantastic characters---Picard, Data, Worf, Ensign Ro, Q. Patrick Stewart played those dramatic scenes like he was in a fucking Shakespeare and Ibsen festival…thank God no one ever apparently told him he was in a friggin spinoff of an obscure, absurb little toy guns in outer space show. That Klingon intrigue! That Borg cliffhanger! That quest to be human! That was fantastic stuff, people and we all love it. The Next Generation is the only Trek show which no one will argue with me about, because everyone loves it. And we should.That being said…The Next Generation's first season was not horrible. But at times it came really damn close. It was not only clearly the worst first season of any Trek show, but also quite possibly one of the worst first seasons of ANY show that had even close of its kind of longevity. Look at the first season. Just look at it. Sure, someone had been smart enough to cast Stewart, but the writers were scared to death of actually giving some bald, middle-aged Englishman heroic, leading man stuff to do. Most of that stuff went to Riker at first; our beloved Jean "the line must be drawn here" Luc was pretty damn boring and passive those first few years. It wasn't until around the third season that they really realized what a gold mine they had with the future X-Men star, and that the meaty cool stuff should be going to the more interesting character, not to mention the better actor. (sorry Jonathan Frakes. You know I love you. You know I love Riker. But like I said, I'm cutting out the bullshit today and let's face facts---Riker is to Picard as Mick Shrimpton is to Nigel Tufnel. Riker could spontaneously combust while playing his goddamn trombone and they could get someone to replace him in a heartbeat. Without Picard, the whole bloody show falls apart.)Like any Trek show, there were some bad episodes. And let me tell you something about Wesley Crusher. Yeah, he's the Jar Jar Binks of Star Trek…it's easy to hate him because he's such an easy target. But I'm not going to defend him. I happen to like him, but I refuse to defend him, because he was a bad concept from the very start. Casting the kind from "Stand By Me." Sure, good idea. But making him a genius? Bad idea. And what the hell was he doing at the helm of the Enterprise? Wil Wheaton did his job, give him a break. But Wesley was a mistake. I am now going to say something which some may regard as sacrilegious. Bear with me, I'm only saying it because I promised to be candid. The Next Generation got better after Roddenberry got his nose out of it.I love what Roddenberry brought us. He established the universe, the characters. But the show got better after he and his hippie dreams of conflict-free banality were out of the way of Trek's day-to-day production. Just like the Trek movies got better when he wasn't running them (Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a good film…yes, it is, watch it again, it's not as bad as you remember. But put it up against Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home…there's no contest. It's standard Trek pedestrianism compared to those later movies, which really pushed the envelope and dared to tell us stuff about the characters that we didn't already know.)But I digress----I'll get to the movies later, I promise. TNG set the standard for modern Trek. Unfortunately, it arguably set it so high and so well, that -with one notable exception-future spinoffs were scared shitless to divert from it.Let's continue…