Long post is long.
TNG is the Star Trek I grew up watching, in reruns at first (too young for initial broadcast of the first few seasons), and I've never actually watched the whole thing even as an adult – favorites and best-ofs, sure. And man, I've joked about it, but I never really internalized how rough TNG S1 is right out of the gate. Any TV show's first season is going to be a little wonky because of the sheer amount of world-building and introductions that have to play out; it's definitely in full effect here. But the seeds of the good things are there as well. All good things, if you will.
On the other hand, what must it have been like if you liked Star Trek in 1987? At that point there had been TOS/TAS, the first four TOS movies, and novels. Fandom wasn't even a fraction of how connected it's become, but it was real, and someone somewhere was screaming at hearing the chimes and “Space, the final frontier...” on TV again. It's really hard to try to watch these with a fresh mind, given how long I've liked Star Trek and how well I know the show, the characters, and the memes, but I'm certainly giving it a go.
1x01/02 Encounter at Farpoint I/II
So we're introduced to the main cast and a whole bunch of exposition. John Delancie's Q from moment one was certainly a choice to lead off with, probably far stronger than bringing back a TOS villain, and it tries to establish a whole lot about the characters in a very short time. Some of it's successful, some of it isn't, some of it doesn't stick at all.
On the gripping hand, I had completely forgotten that O'brien is there from day 1. Also, Deanna, that skirt could not get any shorter. As costumes go, even the jumpsuits are an improvement from almost having an incident every time she sits down.
Doing the saucer separation is very much a “look what we can do now” moment, and it is pretty awesome even if it's severely downplayed on the rare occasions they subsequently use it. And I don't think we ever see them do the re-connect again.
Q's court is kind of hilarious and kind of cringe-inducing these days, given the costume warehouse raid for the crowd. I swear they made the WW3 trooper guy outfits out of tarps and bubble wrap.
Legacy character cameos are hardly a new phenomenon. Wonderful to hear De Kelley's voice as old man McCoy one more time.
Riker's introduction is another exposition dump, but it sets up the 'mystery' part of the episodes and does work to establish the history between Picard and the Crusher family, along with Beverly's conversation later.
Deanna senses some things, much pain and suffering, et and cetera. The flying saucer is a jellyfish, the station is an enslaved jellyfish, shine a light on it, they get to hold hands and fly off screen, we solved Q's test.
I remember reading somewhere, but can't find the source, that the TNG pilot was actually two different scripts mashed together (the Farpoint stuff and the Q stuff, basically), which jives with how disjointed it sometimes feels between the two plotlines.
1x03 The Naked Now
Oh boy. So you've barely started establishing the characters in the pilot two-parter, and now is when you schedule the “mind-altering virus makes everyone act out of character” episode? I mean, it's literally the earliest they could have done a direct TOS reference after the pilot, which...I understand, but still. I don't know what I would have done in its place, but purely for the TNG characters this exact episode would have been more impactful a little further down the line.
'Victim ship of the week: Oberth' count: 1
'OSHA would have prevented the whole episode' count: 1 (hazmat and isolation protocols)
First regular episode, first occurrence of Wesley actively making everything worse and nearly killing everyone! Also, someone recording and splicing Picard's voice, that's not going to come back to haunt a later episode, no...
Ah, to be a drunk-and-horny virus in the 80s, when casual sexual harassment was...wait, no, it's still used for comedy. Dammit. Yar gets the short end of the stick, also a spit curl and a severely backless dress. And also somehow the virus (and the cure) affects the android, if to a lesser degree. They hadn't really established just how robotic he was yet, so I suppose it's kind of a wash.
...that said, Data keeling over on the bridge still makes me snort.
I get that it's exposition for the audience, and in all of episode two the Doylist explanation is the writers had to get it in there somewhere, but surely in-universe someone's used a tractor beam as a pressor beam before. RIP Tsilkovsky.
1x04 Code of Honor
Man. This one's pretty awkward even for 1987, and it didn't have to be – according to Memory Alpha, the script only called for leader dude's guards to be black, and the director made everyone from the planet black instead. Combine that with the presentation of the Ligonian society as a little backward about things like how women are treated, and it's not exactly a shining example of an episode. The MA article even cites several of the main cast saying it's the worst episode they ever did. Small wonder the director left/was fired.
Shelving the racism for now, the basic “outsmart the Honorable Warrior Culture Planet” plot is not on its own awful – it'd be a slightly sketchy first-season outing, but mostly unremarkable otherwise. Worf is Sir Not Appearing In This Episode, might have been handy to have around even if TNG Klingons had actually not yet been established as Honorable Warrior Guys yet. Bet he'd have had a quip about it at least.
Yar at least gets to beat some people up before getting kidnapped. Is that a step up from getting ice Qbed in Farpoint, then made the main victim of the horny virus in the previous episode, or no?
Wow. Picard going right to orbit-to-surface bombardment as a warning shot. Forgot about that. What a difference two episodes makes, hmm?
Troi's questionable fashion decisions: jumpsuit, fine. Bikini-bottom overlay a la Superman? Iffy.
“May your code bring you everything you deserve” is actually a really good line.
Did they have to make the arena look like a strip club stage? Some netting would have done wonders to prevent that 'whoopsie' death of that extra.
And of course, technically correct is the best kind of correct, yep, Yareena sure did die, your laws don't have a provision for reviving her, so...off we go!
Four down, (26 per season x 7 seasons =) 178 to go, or at three to four per week I'll be done approximately...next July. Oh boy.
