Season 1 really isn't as bad as its reputation
Posted by Planatus666@reddit | TNG | View on Reddit | 78 comments
Having recently rewatched all of season one I am left with the impression that it was, on the whole, fairly good. However, I'll have to restrict that assessment to approximately the second half of the season because the first half, with a few exceptions, had an awful lot of problems.
For the first half, besides a lot of very weak writing (which I don't feel is worth going into again, it's been done to death) just one of its many problems was Gates McFadden - for that season's first half her acting was often very wooden and stilted but during the second half she noticeably improved. I'll also note that I'm one of those who prefers Beverly Crusher over Pulaski (although the latter has grown on me a little).
Another problem was Tasha - a lot of the writing for her was horrendous so I'm not blaming Crosby's acting in this case, it's a shame that Tasha was treated so poorly by the writers. Then again, if Crosby hadn't hadn't left we presumably wouldn't have had Worf step up to the plate, so every cloud has a silver lining.
It was fun seeing the actors slowly grow into their characters and, by the end of the season, while they still weren't perfected, they were slowly getting there.
Now on to season 2 which, from my last rewatch, I recall enjoying a lot more than I expected. Let's see if I feel the same way now.
MAJORMETAL84@reddit
A lot of Season 1 TNG feels like unused scripts from TOS.
Major-Tourist-5696@reddit
It’s better than season 7.
BadProfreader@reddit
Season 1 had to set up all of the characters. There's a lot of exposition to get out of the way. Nearly everyone is a little wooden because of that (except for Patrick Stewart, who is always brilliant). Tasha is the weak link, but I agree that it's not because she can't act. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the lines were at fault though. You can tell by watching her that Denise Crosby doesn't "get" the show and kind of phones it in. Her heart wasn't in it from the beginning. I'm sure better lines would have helped, but everyone in the series has to say some silly lines just to get the plot going.
fatlittletoad@reddit
I fully agree. I'm in season 2 now, and my watching experience is a little different - I decided one day that I'm going to watch all of Star Trek, which I'd never seen one episode of before. So I finished up TOS about two months ago and now I'm in TNG. I liked season 1 just fine, it just felt like everything was still settling and the characters had to gel a bit. I was fussy about Crusher, but only because McCoy was my favorite and she did start out a little . . . stiff. She grew on me, though. Overall I enjoyed watching it take shape and grow into its own fully unique but still Trek thing over season one.
I do like Crusher better than Palaski who is also growing on me, probably because in her first several episodes she was basically "what you get when you get Bones off Temu" and c'mon. Don't bully Data. She's getting better, though. (I'm on season 2 ep 21.)
Jenn_FTW@reddit
Oh gosh, I envy you getting to experience Trek for the first time! I hope you plan on starting Deep Space 9 after you finish TNG, it’s the best Trek series by far IMO
fatlittletoad@reddit
That's the plan! I've really been enjoying it.
Overall_Falcon_8526@reddit
I won't hear a word against Gates McFadden.
The writing for Tasha was quite bad indeed, paerticularly in Code of Honor (though no one escaped that stinker), Hide and Q, and Angel One.
But I agree, Season 1 is not "bad." It's just inconsistent. There are some real fun and thought provoking episodes, and then some massive up the back and over the collar sharts.
It was good enough to make me a lifelong fan as a kid, that's for sure.
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
Not even her intermittently wooden acting in the first half of season 1? :-) I like the actress and the part of Dr Crusher, but I can't overlook the early acting issues. :)
SMc1701@reddit
I liked Gates but they seemed to make her less pretty as the show went on. With awful bangs and pasty makeup. However she looked amazing in the movies.
Overall_Falcon_8526@reddit
Once she hits "The Big Goodbye" it's clear that she has acting skill as well as good comedic timing. I chalk it up to writing and an inconsistent vision for the voice of the show in season one.
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
And, now that I think about it, perhaps the behind the scenes problems that she had which caused her to not appear in season 2?
DCBronzeAge@reddit
I am also a pretty big Season 1 fan. The writing is generally not up to snuff and even in the episodes that have strong concepts, the writing is still lacking. The women characters are written horribly, which honestly doesn't get that much better over time (though it does get better, especially for guest stars). A lot of things also look pretty cheap compared to how it will look later.
However, there is a vibe in Season 1 that is unmatched. It really feels like they are going where no one has gone before. Space feels dangerous and like there is a threat and mystery behind every corner. There's almost a Lovecraftean sense to it where some of the threats and even the allies are truly unknowable. The writing is still bad, but the ideas are stellar.
It's one of the reasons why I vibe less with Season 2. There are some great episodes that are better than every single episode in Season 1, but the mysterious vibe starts to get stripped away outside of episodes like Q Who, Where Silence Has Lease, The Schizoid Man, Contagion, and The Royale. The show overall starts to become a bit more conventional and the writing doesn't quite come with it. It's weak writing with less to latch onto, except in rare cases like my absolute favorite episode The Measure of a Man.
That tone completely vanished by Season 3, but thankfully the writing got significantly better with Michael Piller, Ronald Moore, Ira Steven Behr, and René Echevarria joining the writer's room.
RamboMcMutNutts@reddit
This is exactly how I feel about season one so thank you for putting it into words. There's definitely a vibe of the unknown and mystery about it, it really felt like they were going into deep space, and was the thing that hooked me in when I was 7-8 years when it first came out. Later seasons the writing and characters got better but it felt like the were just flying around the federations back yard instead of truly going where no one had gone before.
Basic-Series8695@reddit
That's really what changed. Once boundaries were more established, it felt a lot more political over frontier diplomacy.
Also, the space synth being done away with in favor of standard orchestra.
SMc1701@reddit
Both TNG and the war of the world's TV series at about the same time were pushing the envelope for what they could get away with. So TNG took more risks. It was darker, embraced horror and had more amped up sex. WotW, if you remember, was very graphically violent the first year.
As TNG went on, the show got more vanilla but the writing was much better. Still, I wish they kept the "Conspiracy" type darkness in TNG.
SoybeanArson@reddit
Rewatching with my son right now and I thought I'd have to skip a lot of season 1, but I really haven't. There is a lot of quality in it.
MarkB74205@reddit
I like season 1, but it's not the best of them. It has some of the worst stinkers of the run (Code of Honor, The Naked Now), some of which are considered the worst in the franchise, and the average quality is not as high as later seasons. The lighting on the ship makes everything feel cold and mechanical which is at odds with the decor, and the sound mix isn't as polished. They were also writing it as if it was TOS at times. Add in turmoil between Roddenberry and the writers, and them struggling with his rules and it's flat in comparison. The actors were also settling into their roles.
On the other hand, the Enterprise is treated with awe, as the biggest and newest ship, the cast were, despite the settling in, extremely good even then, and overall the quality was insanely above any other sci-fi of it's time. I do sometimes wish that Denise Crosby had stayed longer. It would have been interesting to see how Tasha grew over time like the others.
redshirt1701J@reddit
I found (with a few exceptions) season one to be just weak. Now, It's easy to blame it on actors getting their timing down, but I just didn't like the stories told. Some were just awful. Season two had better writing, but there were some noticeably bad ones there too (The Royale, I'm looking at you).
Turbo_express_Guy@reddit
How about That time Picard yelled at the Transporter Room to “engage” the transporter instead of “energize” lol
Commando_NL@reddit
Season 1 is legendary. But it aged poorly. And a victim of the follow up seasons, who were better.
kab3121@reddit
Seasons 1-2 of TNG are pretty awful.
When you consider how many classic episodes TOS had in season 1-2.
The 80s wasn’t a great era for TV generally when you consider the A Team and Knightrider were two of the most popular shows!
ParsleySlow@reddit
there's one or two real stinkers and a lot of mediocre episodes. Not much that was exceptional, but the seeds were there. I still think it's perfectly watchable.
TexasTokyo@reddit
I liked it as a kid because it was new Star Trek. And since the scripts were reworked stories written ten years earlier or more, it felt familiar in a third season of TOS sort of way.
So it gets a pass because of what it was and what it was going to be, but it’s not really very good.
rotenbart@reddit
I like season 1. It’s just a bit different than the rest.
Constant-Box-7898@reddit
It's better than all of Discovery.
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
I won't argue with that - in fact I'd take the worst season 1 episode of TNG over the best Discovery episode. The same applies to Picard season 1 and 2 (3 was at least watchable).
AlexG2490@reddit
Oof, I'll argue it. Not that Discovery deserves a lot of praise, but I would absolutely watch the Harry Mudd episode of Discovery again before I subjected myself to Code of Honor a second time.
Cookie_Kiki@reddit
I love that episode. I started to believe at that point that the show was getting on its feet.
AlexG2490@reddit
Please tell me you mean the Discovery episode and not Racist Space Africa episode.
Cookie_Kiki@reddit
It truly never occurred to me I might have to clarify this.
DoctorAnnual6823@reddit
Ngl I'd rather watch boss baby than fucking Code of Honor. That episode is actual unwashed ass and the writer is forever on my blacklist. One exception to this black list is that I will watch episode 3 of DS9 because it has the Duras sisters.
jrgkgb@reddit
I’m not a discovery fan at all, but there were a handful of excellent episodes every season.
The ratio is like 4:1 bad to good, but there were a couple of bangers in there.
S1 and 2 of TNG are probably 2 or 3:1 bad to good.
Washburne221@reddit
This is exactly the attitude a lot of TOS fans had when TNG debuted. Season 1 really struggled against a headwind of criticism from people who thought it was too different from TOS and that liking TNG was a betrayal of Trekdom.
Tobi119@reddit
I am usually not one to defend Disco, but I strongly disagree with that one.
There are plenty of episodes better than Code of Honour. I'd even argue that almost any show ever has episodes better than Code of Honour.
DoctorAnnual6823@reddit
I won't say Code of Honor is the worst episode of Star Trek in its entirety.
But I haven't seen a worse one yet.
Key-Difficulty5123@reddit
Sorry, first 15 episodes season 1 are awful
BILLCLINTONMASK@reddit
I tend to place season 1 above season 2 as a whole. Season 1 has a lot of big ideas and simply falls short in the execution. Season 2 has a lot of dumb ideas that also fall short in execution.
Now, obviously, season 2 has some legitimately great episodes and season 1 doesn’t, but it also has pure nonsense like the outrageous okana and shades of grey.
Cookie_Kiki@reddit
Does Shades of Grey count? It's essentially them not having a final episode.
Cookie_Kiki@reddit
Season 1 is definitely stronger than it gets credit for. It just gets so much better afterward that it seems really bad by comparison. But it has some absolute banger episodes. I do wonder what Worf's trajectory would have looked like if he wasn't head of security. But, Tasha's dying is also the reason Deanna stayed, so he might have taken up some space left by her, though obviously not as a counselor.
I think some of Gates' acting in the beginning can be attributed to the awkwardness of being under the command of someone who might have once been a lover, who also killed her husband. It took awhile for them to figure out what their relationship was and for her to find her footing on the ship. I am not a Beverly fan, but I am a Gates fan, and I feel like she handled the writing well.
SparkyFrog@reddit
Well, maybe, season 1 had some good episodes, but not that many. Some episodes were just okay, and many could have used a rewrite or two. I guess they had to rush, because the writer’s strike was coming, and caused a delay to the start of season 2.
Season 2 is much better and vastly underrated on the other hand. Pulaski is great, and moving Geordi to engineering helped a lot. Riker looks much better with the beard.
hydrahahaha@reddit
upvoted for the pulaski support!
Triad64@reddit
Yeah the first half was pretty awful, with a few cool moments or episodes.
The second half improved and had some very good and even great episodes.
The bad are very bad. The good are very good.
hydrahahaha@reddit
Whats a very bad one except S1E3 for you?
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
I'm not the person who you are asking but another episode which I really disliked was 'Too Short a Season'.
Triad64@reddit
I agree with Too Short a Season as a ‘bad’ one.
I’ll add: Angel One Justice (though it has an interesting dilemma towards the end) Haven The Last Outpost started a bit interesting then became bad.
hydrahahaha@reddit
Would you like to elaborate what you disliked about the episodes?
hydrahahaha@reddit
What did you dislike about it?
PermaDerpFace@reddit
It's not bad at all. And people saying skip to season 3.. do you even like Star Trek??
AzLibDem@reddit
I was there, man.
EffectiveSalamander@reddit
I recently watched S1. It was way better than TV science fiction that came before - TNG really revitalized science fiction on TV. It really only looks bad relative to later Trek.
Kulban@reddit
The biggest problem with season 1 was Gene Roddenberry's insistence on being as integrated with it as he was. There's a reason why s1 feels a lot like TOS and a reason why s1 is as "horny" as it was. And ask if it points back to Gene (an established well-known horny man). For instance: he had a huge pervy kink about a story about a human having sex with an android. So what happens in the third episode? Yep.
Gene also had to be talked into Stewart not wearing a hair piece. Fortunately others won that battle.
GoatApprehensive9866@reddit
If anything, TNG1 is too indulgent for thr sex stuff and too inconsistently handled. "When the Bough Breaks" and "Justice" never ceases to amaze.
Davenport1980@reddit
Another reason Season1 (and 2) felt a lot like TOS is that they reused many scripts that had been written for the Star Trek Phase 2 series, before they decided to do movies instead.
That_Draft708@reddit
Truthfully. It is bad, but there is sooooo much worse lately
disdkatster@reddit
What bad reputation? This is one of the best ST made.
Raterus_@reddit
If Season 1 didn't exist, we'd never have this meme, and that would be a sad world
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
True enough! :)
In fact, here's a controversial take - I don't mind Wesley. He gets such a bad rap but he's not a bad character, particularly as his role is developed.
Raterus_@reddit
That's how I feel too, but my original run with TNG was when I was a teen, so maybe I looked up to him and didn't see his faults like an adult would have.
Resident_Beautiful27@reddit
His best episode was when he went off to the academy.
Groundbreaking-Pea92@reddit
Its hard to believe the team behind tng s1 had opposable thumbs let alone any experience creating a tv show
TranslatorStraight46@reddit
Season 1 is still >>> TOS.
Season 2 is one of my favourites but I loved Pulaski so I guess I am an outlier. Crusher was a shit character with all the worst episodes.
Davenport1980@reddit
What could have been if Crosby hadn't left is interesting. Worf could have remained a minor character or written out if they didn't find another role for him. Also, Troi would almost certainly have been written out if Crosby stayed. The writers were having trouble with how to write Troi, but the show knew that they could not remove all three female actresses, so Troi stayed.
schwarzekatze999@reddit
Controversial opinion - S1 and S2 have some of my favorite TNG episodes. To be frank, though, they were childhood favorites and make me nostalgic for a simpler time.
I also happen to like Dr. Pulaski. Yeah she didn't like Data at first, but she showed real character growth in learning to overcome her bias. There's a lot of value in showing that kind of learning onscreen.
hyst0rica1_29@reddit
Good assessment. For sure by the 2nd half the stories were way better. I think Naked Now, & Code of Honor make us forget we’d later have Heart of Glory, The Neutral Zone, and the criminally abandoned thread of Conspiracy in the same season.
BigMrTea@reddit
This is a pretty sober take. I'm with you.
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
Thank you.
Another behind the scenes problem was Roddenberry's lawyer, Leonard Maizlish, who seems to have been a major wrench in the works for both seasons 1 and 2 (after that he left because of Roddenberry's reduced involvement due to increasingly poor health). Maizlish seems to have been universally hated and David Gerrold has recounted his thoughts a number of times, for example:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Leonard_Maizlish
(see the second large paragraph for details).
BigMrTea@reddit
I had heard of this but didn't know any of the details. I guess he should have stuck with the law.
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
The three top quotes on the page that I linked to are quite something. :)
BigMrTea@reddit
Hahaha wow
PuzzleheadedCook4578@reddit
Well said, I have recently rewatched it too, and it's easy to be sniffy about, but I'll take it over seasons two and seven every day!
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
Season 7 certainly has well documented issues, but one story that's of course very well loved is All Good Things.
kalcobalt@reddit
I agree with your general sentiment here, as a huge TNG fan. I read somewhere that on…IMDB(?), all the seasons get unprecedentedly high viewer scores except for season two, which I agree with.
I miss the kind of television art we got when shows were allowed to have a find-their-feet first season, a wobbly season two, and then really hit their groove in season three to make a few bangers of seasons after that.
Everything has to hit the ground running from the first five minutes of episode one now, and because of that so many shows that feel like they have promise never have the opportunity to develop into classics like this!
Planatus666@reddit (OP)
Indeed, things get canceled way too soon. Having said that, some that should have been canceled end up going on far too long (in the Star Trek universe that would be Discovery ........ ).
kalcobalt@reddit
Can’t speak to Discovery, haven’t seen it, but absolutely with you that some series are inexplicably bulletproof despite being horrendous!
TribalChief2025@reddit
I enjoy a lot of season one. The problems with it are:
Glacial pacing. Extended exposition can work when the stakes are high enough. They rarely were in S1.
Poor writing. Some great ideas were handled in the most mundane manner possible, and the resolutions felt rushed and poorly thought out.
TOS aesthetic. Some of the episodes look terribly dated, even for the mid 80s.
Worldly-Ad-9303@reddit
I can't say that I particularly enjoyed seasons 1and 2, but now looking back I see them as "settling in seasons". I think the actors were just learning their roles and the writers getting their sh*t together. I think that the fact that they were following such an iconic series (STTOS) must have had some effect on the cast!
Stargate525@reddit
Seasons 1 and 2 are big on worldbuilding. There's entire scenes that don't do anything except show the viewers a piece of tech or culture and go 'isn't this neat?'
If you're into that, it's great. If you aren't then those episodes are interminable.
Ponderer13@reddit
Tracy Torme talked about the writers room finding their rhythm about halfway through, especially with the run of Big Goodbye/11011001 on - and being really upset when the long 1988 writers strike happened, and instead of being able to charge into season 2 with that new confidence, they were set back on their heels and scrambling. But yeah, they knew there had been an enormous difference between the launch episodes and the back half of the season.