Exploding skulls, naked frozen orgies, trek for my generation

I got Star Trek TNG Season 1 a few months ago when I found it at a cheap price of 50 bucks, now this was original released at a price near 100 dollars which I thought was a rip off, but at 50 I was willing to bite. Now I became a fan of Star Trek TNG when I was young and saw one of the stars of my favorite PBS show reading rainbow also appeared in this show wearing what look like a part of an air conditioner over his eyes.

Now has most people who watch Star Trek know there was a good 25 year gap between this and the original. Gene Roddenberry decided to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new crew for the next generation. Replacing Captain Kirk is Captain Picard, Picard is a bit more advance in years so we don’t see him getting any action with every hot alien chick the enterprise picks up. Rather he is more of a father figure for the crew and is a lot more patient and wiser and his approaches to situations then Kirk.

Riker is a bit younger and yes he does see a little action from the hot alien chicks that Kirk saw. Riker sees himself has the Captain body guard and his personality is a bit more open and relaxed then that of Picard. In this season we see him without the beard and he does look a decade younger without it.

Finally a few curve balls where thrown in new characters. Data is a twist on Spock an android which has no feelings and his now humans but dreams of being more human, and tries to emulate humans. In this season he has a tenancy to babble and spew out to much information when asked a question and won’t stop in till someone tells him to shut up (and that includes the ships computer on one occasion).

Also in this season is Tasha Yar the security officer, she is a bit of a tomboy Unfourntatley she isn’t around in the series for a lot of development because she gets killed in an episode later in the season. Then there Deanna Troy which the producers seem to play how much cleavage can we show without getting into trouble, Troy would wear the cleavage showing suits for most of the series, she is also a telepath and tells the captain when the people they meet are up to deception.

Geordi Levorge I have a feeling may have been an inside joke, born blind and sees through a special visor, Geordi duty in season 1 is to fly the ship. In later season Geordi becomes chief engineer in this season the chief engineer changes from episode to episode

Finally the big curve ball is that the race that Kirk battle on several episodes has made peace and there is a Klingon officer aboard the ship by the name of Worf. Worf is a bit antisocial has he is the only Klingon in Starfleet and he is usually very serious. His feelings and his character does open up in later seasons of both the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

Of course since this is also a new generation there is Doctor Crusher and her son Wesley. They both have met the Captain personally several years before when he was send to give them the news of her husbands death, also Picard was there when her husband die. Wesley is a child protégé and even though Picard is uncomfortable around children Wesley eventually gets to become a member of a bridge crew.

And of course one other character even though he isn’t a main character of the show appears in many episodes in this season and even many after this season and on DS9 and Voyager. And that is of course Q who we first see in the first episode. Q later becomes more of a fun loving mischievous character. In this season though we see Q at his most malevolent. Condemning humanity for there past mistakes and using his almost god like powers to make the lives of the enterprise crew a living hell, he makes for an interesting villain.

Because the characters and actors are new we see through this season getting to know them testing character traits out and throwing out the ones that don’t and it does make a lot of stories shaky. Also the show is preachy every episode has one reference in how glad humans have evolved since the 21st century and that line gets old after the 27th show. We have stories why arms races are bad, multiple stories on how drug use his bad, and of course my favorite message if you get intoxicated aboard a star ship and have wild sex parties you might end up frozen in the shower.

Still some good episodes still manage to come out of the first season. Epsidoes like Justice in which the enterprise finds a culture that is almost like Eden, the trouble in paradise is that they sentence anyone who breaks there rules, even for simple things like trampling flowers gets sentence to death. And when Weasley gets in trouble Picard has to wrestle with breaking the prime directive, and that’s not easy when you have some super beings making sure you stick to your rules.

Datalore is another interesting episode has we meet Datas evil twin brother Lore. Lore has almost everything that Data wants the human abilities to think and feel like him. But Lore turns out to be incredibly warp and not to mention dangerous. Brent Spiner plays both Data and his evil twin well.

And of course one of my favorite Trek episodes of all come in the form of an episode called Conspiracy, evil alien mind control parasites have taken over the top brass of Starfleet command and are planning on over throwing the federation. Picard returns to earth to see if there is any truth to the conspiracy. In the end this leads to one of the best phaser fights in the series, ending with an exploding head.

Of course we get some pretty generic trek episodes to, the naked truth for example pretty much rehashes an episode of the original. A disease that makes people intoxicated spreads through the ship and everything goes out of control while nearing a sun that is about to explode. This is the 2nd episode of the series and it’s pretty boring.

The DVD
For a DVD set that was near or over 100 dollars when it first came out I expected a bit more then what I got. Not to say there isn’t anything there. The video quality is average, it’s better looking then when this show first appeared in the late 80’s but I have seen shows with better video quality from that time when they got on DVD. The extras are good but a bit sparse for the original asking price we get 4 15 minute features that blend interviews from the actors and producers of the show. The segments shown are from random interviews with the cast, mainly we see interviews from before the shows start, in-between the 1st and 2nd, after the show ended, and a few probably for the DVD releases. Theses are all blended into the featurette and no one featurette shows all of one interview. Still some interesting tid bits are learn about the special effects which despite the lack of any CGI still hold up to this day. I wouldn’t have minded some commentaries or some text tidbits though they were asking for a lot of money after all.

Final Recommendation.
I like Star Trek the Next Generation and even though Season 1 is not the best of the best it features some good episodes and starts off this new cast of characters in the right direction. While I wouldn’t recommend it at its original asking price at around 50 to 60 dollars it’s not a bad way to spend the money if you’re a trekkie.