10 Things To Hate About Star Trek: The Next Generation

Sooooo happy about the nerd rage in here!

For the record, I can offer no constructive criticism of TNG, as I’ve never made it through a full episode. I wake up hours later, feeling refreshed and energized, as if emerging from a deep coma.

>they weren’t afraid to let the recurring cast (something no other Star Trek show has had) take the wheel for an episode.

Barkley had episodes in TNG and he was recurring

I agree in all parts of your list, and was saying it at the time it was airing. Glad to see DS9 growing into the respect it deserves in hindsight.

You are entirely wrong.

Regarding the special fx: many of them are quite better than the ones produced by CGI, for the simple reason that CGI cannot yet create those perfectly realistic surfaces. There are too many shiny surfaces in CGI, something that does not exist in real models.

Regarding the interpersonal conflict: if you want drama, why are you looking for it in a sci-fi show? a sci-fi show is not the place for drama. If you want drama, watch soap operas. I was truly glad that TNG didn’t have the silly interpersonal conflicts of other shows: it gave it the time and space to speak about other more important things.

Regarding allegories: yes, we liked it, thank you very much. We would like to see more allegories. We don’t like silly adventures without a morality story in it; otherwise, the whole thing becomes like a fairy tale.

Regarding the show’s politically correctness: despite that you saw the first interracial TV kiss in TOS, you didn’t see anything else in TOS, did you? the crew had only one black member, and only one woman. TNG had two black members, and two women. In TOS, the black actors were non-existent. There were plenty of black actors in TNG, and many asian actors as well. Much more than in TOS.

Regarding Riker and Troi: It may be amazing to you, but some of us want sci-fi without love stories. If we want to view a love affair, there are plenty of other shows for that. TNG focused on the aspects of exploration (social and physical) and less on romance, and that was a good thing.

Regarding Data: you say the character did nothing to you. Well, if you don’t have philosophical questions about what it takes to be human, if there is a soul, if man can create man, then you are right, it did nothing for you. But it did a lot for some of us. There were some really good episodes that raised the right questions.

Regarding the rest of the crew (besides Picard and Data): every show has one or two main characters. There cannot be 7 main characters with equally expanded stories. TNG was Picard’s and Data’s show, more or less, just like TOS was Kirk’s and Spock’s show, just like DS9 was Sisko’s and Kira’s show, and VOY was Janeway’s show.

Regarding the Borg: the Borg are the most exciting aliens on video. Far more interesting than the Aliens in ‘Alien’, or the Empire in Star Wars, or anything else. There isn’t anything else out there than the Borg.

Regarding the franchise being saved by JJ Abrams:

It’s an insult to humanity. It managed to make Star Trek stupid. It’s a non-movie. It’s one of the worst movies I have witnessed in the last 20 years (and boy, I have seen a lot of movies).

The script was non-existent.

The acting was wooden.

The sci-fi was insulting.

The movie had the intellectuality of a monkey.

For crying out loud…in the last twenty years, has the dumbing down of the masses been so successful that the monstrosity of JJ Abrams is considered a good movie?

I disagree. I’ve been watching TNG reruns lately and I enjoy them more now than I ever did. The things you say you hate, I don’t even notice.

It’s true. Don’t you know all white people are the same. Greeks, British, Americans, French. We’re all one white collective, so we cancel out all diversity….

Yeah, the totally white TNG crew, assuming you look past the Latino woman and two black guys on the bridge crew.

Mmm… Goatee…

Sorry, don’t mean to be a hater, but I found it hilarious that in your very well written deconstruction of the above article, you point out all of the things that a show does NOT need to be successful (interpersonal relationships, romance, adventure), and things that TNG are better than (Star Wars, Aliens, TOS, Trek ’09), yet you point out very little that you actually liked about the show. Out of curiosity, what was it that made TNG so great in your opinion?

As someone who’s never been able to connect with Trek of any sort, feeling it’s a bit pompous, overwrought and boring? Loved the Abrams movie. Many folks are saying that the movie is intellectually worthless, but it’s not a dumb movie, it’s a simple movie. It doesn’t get bogged down with the duller aspects of the franchise (oh boy, BORDER DISPUTES!), opting instead to focus on the components that make an action movie successful: Strong characters, exciting action, high emotion and epic adventure, succeeding admirably on most counts. Most importantly, however, it injected Trek with something the franchise desperately, desperately needed: Fun.

Maybe that’s the thing about most of the series that I just can’t get behind. It seemed utterly joyless. Certainly there’s some intellectual value to the show (I’ll assume…), but it’s never seemed like something that would be fun to watch. Stern faced people walking down hallways, speaking in monotone voices about emotionless, objective topics? Data seemed like the least robotic guy on that ship!

Oh, and just for fun, next time you’re talking about TNG with a fan of it, mispronounce Data’s name. You will be immediately corrected, in a tone that seethes with disgust.

One of the biggest pitfalls of a science fiction show is, “how does one make an alien LOOK alien?”

Two of everything, i.e., legs, arms, eyes, ears, etc., just doesn’t work for Star Trek, any longer. Sure, you can make big heads and pointed ears, but that’s not what an alien looks like, at least in my book.

I agree with the author’s comments on “The Show Was Offensively Inoffensive.” He’s right, no one is that nice, patient…or dumb. Where were the interpersonal relationships and all the hardships, conflict and etcetera?

A socialist society is among the most boring…but that’s what Roddenberry believed in (partly). If poverty is eliminated and money is abolished (except for gold latinum and credits?) then how does one find one’s purpose?

STTNG wasn’t “theater” in any sense that STTOS was. We were asked to expand and suspend our belief in TOS…STTNG was just cheesy.

It’s more than hardly a failure.

Look back at what ACTUALLY happened with Star Trek: it not only succeeded in getting to air after first being rejected by NBC, but was actually cancelled at the end of second season and brought back for a third because of fan campaign — an unheard of connection in those days.

NBC only cancelled Star Trek because they’d bounced it around into unwatchable time slots to lower the numbers. They were really worried about the show’s controversial aspects, most notably the interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura which was a unheard of when the series first aired.

And there was already fan fiction by the time it went into syndication. That fan fiction was so strong, it was published in books. And let us also not forget that Filmation saw enough of that fan base in 1972 to make the animated series (cancelled due to poor ratings from being bi-weekly at 7.30 am), and NASA a few years later to name its shuttle U.S.S. Enterprise.

(And note that it’s NASA naming it. Anyone can name a celestial body, but an official government agency naming a ship of the official, national fleet???)

Paramount saw enough in Star Trek to warrant a second live action series ten years after the first aired, and it was only when their network plans collapsed that they turned to motion pictures. 1979′s The Motion Picture was one of the most expensive movies ever made and turned enough profit to warrant some of the greatest sequels in movie history.

That is HARDLY a failure.

Gotta disagree with you here.

Television viewers weren’t treated to many black female characters on television, much less those in a somewhat command role. Writers of the original series were very aware of this, but they did do episodes which made Uhura far more than just a telephone operator — most notably the episode where the crew is charmed, and where Kirk kisses her.

Plus, it wasn’t just Sulu. Science fiction series didn’t put aliens working with humans, they were always the enemy — and here was Spock. The Reds were our enemies — yet here was Chekhov. It was as if every big issue of the day was saying on Star Trek that it would be resolved eventually, so let’s hope.

Geordi was more important as a handicapped person than a black man in command, but even then TNG copped out by having him remove the visor in the movies for implants. Yet the rest of the crew did nothing else: what’s special about Troi? Data? Wesley? (Data, as an android, just made it impossible for them to really fail.)

As for ruining the franchise, I think TNG *did* do just that — but not as the author thinks. I think it painted writers into a box that Voyager could only repeat. And the fans that loved it became a box themselves as the authorities, so that when Enterprise aired, there were complaints about how unrealistic and against the rules of the series it was. Abrams revitalized it as a FILM franchise when television audiences had become sick of it, yet anyone could have done it — all it needed was a story that you could care about.

As for DS9, it WAS Star Trek. Roddenberry’s vision was complete peace in the Federation by the time of TNG, but as DS9 — and Andromeda, based on HIS ideas — showed, that rosy vision was bound to implode one day. And it wasn’t too much interpersonal drama; the war story was as much external drama as it was interior, to the point that Jake Sisko was almost forgotten as the characters dealt with the crisis of the invasion.

Where it differed — and this is the biggest point people tend to forget — is that DS9 moved from going to the crisis to the crisis coming at them, and ended up having to mimic another series’ (Babylon-5′s) gimmick of recognizing viewers remember material from episode to episode. TNG solved everything in 50 minutes, Voyager 35 (because the series got nailed for too many commercials!). DS9 took a season to follow it. You call it a “black ops” division, but that was dealt with more in TNG; DS9 used open command structures to deal with a massive threat, and appealed to a lot of fans because it forced an interaction with Klingons and Romulans we had never seen before… an interaction which made Picard’s muddling about with who runs the Klingons pale in comparison.

And TNG didn’t explore. Seriously: what NEW species did they encounter? What world was that impressive that it is remembered for what it was other than a potential space battle? Because TNG is boilable down to Q and The Borg, with the Cardassians thrown in at the very end. DS9, at least, had the guts to say it was stuck where it was and the exploration was how they all interacted.

And keep in mind one last thing: DS9 didn’t want to end either. The actors wanted more time in between episodes to do some other work, but they were extremely happy with the series and not rushing to movies like TNG. TNG ended because Spiner and Stewart wanted Seinfeld/Friends numbers and the series was damned without them; and they knew the movies were theirs.

Quick questions: when did Crusher have this crush? If you’re thinking of the Trill episode, that ending contradicts what you say because she rejects someone she loves because she’s not a homosexual — something that’s quite clear in the character’s body language.

And what character did Riker fall for that was transgender? The most important romance for Riker was in season one, when a hologram was created of the ideal woman that he lost and could never quite reprogram.

TNG did have its issues like TOS, but I think the real difference is that TNG tried very desperately to bury them rather than make them the focus of the story, like Troi’s question of abortion in season 2.

As for Guinan being important: BULL.SHIT. She was the bartender, nothing more. And whatever was hinted as more put her on the level with Q, which they never did anything about.

While I agree with many of the posts here that DS9 was easily the best Trek spinoff (and most underrated), I do feel you are being too harsh on TNG. Granted, many of the episodes may seem kinda blase, but there was more than a handful of very strong, well-written episodes with deep characterization and was part of a fully realized vision that Roddenberry had, almost single-handedly creating a wonderful universe and rich tapestry that was expanded on (except for Enterprise; now, there is what killed the franchise) and was definitely not saved by JJ Abrams.

I will not bother arguing point-by-point, but suffice to say, the visual effects and look of the show does not seem that dated and I enjoy watching reruns from time to time (okay, not frequently). Voyager actually made the Borg interesting again (itself not a bad show, but like the other spinoffs, got off to a bad start).

And all JJ Abrams did was make Trek popular again and probably for the first time, a money-maker at the box office, by appealing to the lowest common denominator. An almost non-existent, hole-ridden plot with lots of action, eye candy (the effects), and humor that would fit right at home on a bad sitcom . . . from the 80s. I fear for those that will grow up with the new Abramsverse, having never known the genius of the original Trek and the purity of Roddenberry’s vision, which was honored (and yes, improved upon by Berman) throughout all of the spinoffs (except for maybe Enterprise; okay, in its last season when it was too late).

Star Trek: TNG really was about something different than the original series. While TOS was about exploration and random adventures in an increasingly random galaxy, TNG was about the future of humanity. From its inception, from the moment Q set foot on the bridge of the Enterprise-D and began to challenge Picard on the history and destiny of his race, the show was about proving how far we’ve come. Its aim, its goal, was to show that we have evolved as a species beyond our basest desires and impulses.

Perhaps that had nothing to do with the original, haphazard adventures of the original ship and crew, but I think that, more than being set a century later with a different mix of characters and settings, helped define the “next generation” of Trekkies. Yes, Kirk was an explorer and Picard was a champion; that’s how they were intended. That is not a reason to hate either of them, but a reason to admire them.

As for what happened with the later series, you can’t blame that on TNG. Deep Space Nine had to find its own way, its own “voice”, as did Voyager and Enterprise. If they failed (which DS9 didn’t but the others did, in my opinion), then that’s no fault of TNG, which accomplished its mission.

The show was NOT terrible. I found it to be far more entertaining than the original Star Trek, as the characters (to me anyway) had much more depth. Just because you thought J.J. Abrams’ reboot was awesome doesn’t give you the right to call TNG crap.

Uh… that’s JOSS Wheadon. If you’re going to attempt a clever insult, you might want to spell the subject’s name correctly. Speaking of your insult, what a jackassy thing to say. Yes, you must be correct, anyone who likes Buffy, Angel, Firefly, or Dollhouse hates action. Geez, go watch some Walker Texas Ranger, and pipe down.

All Picard see’s is haters! You hate on the award winning special effects and never bring up Wil Wheaton is the one storyline from the first season. This alien tells Picard he has to take care of wesly because he has no idea how important he is and then leaves the show to chill on this inconsequential planet he falls in love with. Was that his destiny did Picard say screw it?

I thought the Borg were truly terrifying, at least in their first few appearances. But before you write off the show, just remember: Troi’s plunging necklines and Seven of Nine.

I find much of the argument trite and biased. Clearly the author is a nuTrek fan, eager to bash the most financially successful of the Star Trek series incarnations. He asks “surely I’m not alone in thinking it was kind of terrible more often than not, right?” He’s probably not alone, but I’ll bet anything he’s in an extreme minority. And really… Abrams has not “saved the franchise.” It wasn’t dead, just momentarily suspended (as it was in the past between TOS and TNG). He just kicked it along for a few more movies. I seriously doubt we’ll see more than 3 from him.

Somebody want to come up with a 10 Things to Hate about Graeme McMillan thread?

We can start off with:
1) Always writes incredibly pessimistic, whiny rants of inconsequence.

Excellent points, Brian. I tried as hard as I could with every single iteration of post “original” Trek to like them. Every once in a while some write took real risks, something legitimately dramatic happened, and the sterile utopian morally superior TNG/DS9/Vger universe was confounded with No Simple Answers. I can count the number of good episodes (and that’s good on average, not without inherent stupidities) on one hand.
Compare to Babylon 5, you DS9 fans. Sure, this is flame-bait and a religious war and some of us will go to our graves defending our sacred points of view, but B5 got *so much* right about the classic Space Opera genre that DS9 (a sad and transparent rip-off that only became interesting when it even more blatantly stole B5 ideas and plot) that it really should be regarded as the series that returned something sorely lacking to TV SF: damned good writing. Granted, B5 simply cannot get humor right, but for thought-provoking action and wow-factor, nothing came close until recently.
And that brings us to Battlestar Galactica (with a passing and reverent nod to Firefly). BSG (obvious not the original pile of dog feces from the late 70;s) is in every way the Anti-Trek. It’s stunning just how thumb-fingered TNG is in virtually every aspect of dramatic story telling that the “Bible” of BSG is based on its howling knee-slapping mistakes and missteps. All those stupid TNG memes are the “what-not-to-do” rules of good SF writing.
And, please allow me to ceremoniously urinate on the last corner of TNG/DS9/Vger fandom: The original Trek was for the most part written by *actual Science Fiction authors*. That’s right; published, legitimate writers. Yes, there were adaptations of existing short stories (Arena by Fredrick Brown comes to mind) but that was brilliant! Yes, there were some stinker episodes, especially around season 3. But compare the first 10 seconds of these two episodes:

TOG –
(There is no one waiting to meet them. Instead, just razed ground and the smoke of a few fires)
KIRK: Kirk to Enterprise. Red alert.
SULU [OC]: What is it, Captain?
KIRK: Cestus Three has been destroyed.
(They take cover)

TNG – “Mr. Barclay, that’s the third time you’ve been late this week!”

…. Yeah, that’s some high drama there.

Utter stupidity. You should stick to baseball cards my friend.

“TNG is an amazingly therapist-friendly show, refusing to cast blame in almost any direction”

Ah, but it does.  It’s quick to cast blame at anyone other than the humans.  As the article mentions about aliens:  “the crew of the Starship Enterprise would come along, frown and tell them off like their parents, and everything would be over within an hour.” 

That’s why the show comes off as oddly bigoted today.  You’ve got your core group of characters involved in a mutual admiration society, and anyone who doesn’t think exactly like they do is just crazy and needs to be set straight.  The show never challenges its viewers thinking, it only tries to affirm the things they thought already, and tell them how good they are for thinking them.  It’s those other people out there who are all wrong.  You see people who’ve taken this message to heart all over fandom.  Very narrow minded, completely unable to think outside the box, and feeling that nothing is debatable; on every issue, there’s one and only one answer that any sane person could accept.  If it’s a genuinely controversial issue, that doesn’t prove to them that it’s debatable, only that there are a lot of crazy people.  Since there are no aliens to look down on in real life, surrogates have to be found.

Oddly enough, even the superior aliens like the Q need to be set straight.  Nobody ever knows as much as the Humans, which supposedly is why Data is so anxious to be one, even though he seems to be superior in the traits he understands.  If we ever did meet real aliens, I’d be profoundly embarrassed if they saw this show.  That was one of the good things about Spock.  He didn’t follow along puppy-dog like after the Humans, kissing up to them, he told ‘em off.  “You’re not as great as you think you are.”  A message the TNG cast desperately needed to hear.

The characters are strangely unlikable.  They read Shakespeare, or listen to classical music, not because they seem to genuinely enjoy it, but because they feel it makes them cultured to do so.  (We know this because they tell us so.) 

I’d cut ‘em a little slack on some of these, though.  I don’t have any problem with the effects.  The uniforms… well, I liked them better than the DS9 uniforms, or the ones that replaced them.  Better than the Enterprise uniforms, and the Motion Picture uniforms.  Not as good as the originals, or the Trek II – VI uniforms, though.

The Borg were great the first time they were used.  Maybe the first two times.  But they should never have been seen again.  They were introduced as a nightmare monster, a symbol of all the unknown horrors out there.  Something that just kept coming and coming at you and you could never beat it, only get away, if you were lucky.  Every time you saw them (and beat them again and again) they became less nightmarish and more commonplace.