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Rating:  -
I am STUNNED that this show is nearing its 20th anniversary. Just in the past couple of months, I have been catching up on the old episodes; although I remember being thrilled by the show when it was first on the air, TV has gained so much in sophistication since then that I expected to have only a nostalgic interest in most of the shows. To my delighted surprise, TNG stands up as fresh and invigorating TV even now. Aided greatly by masterful performances by Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, the show found its way past its uneven first two seasons, when it tried too hard to walk in the footsteps of the original series; then, in the third season, the show finds its characters and its voice and comes alive. The pace is slower than on great current-day shows such as "Alias" and "Veronica Mars," but that's the way TV was, then -- also, I find it sort of refreshing to see them taking so much time to just revel in small moments among the crew. The third, fourth and fifth seasons of TNG are about as good as TV gets; though the last two years weren't as strong, there are still some knockout episodes, including one of the greatest series finales ever. I can't afford this whole set, but if I ever win the lottery, this goes on my shelf.
Top 10 Episodes:
1) "Best of Both Worlds," parts one and two
2) "Sarek"
3) "Sins of the Father"
4) "Family"
5) "Chain of Command," parts one and two
6) "Lower Decks"
7) "Hollow Pursuits"
8) "The First Duty"
9) "Parallels"
10) "Frame of Mind"
Rating:  -
I purchased the whole 7 seasons and so far I love it however there is a problem with one of the DVD's. On the 4th season, the 1st DVD, the episode of "The Family", the program continually freezes through out the whole episode. There is no one to contact to find out if this happened on all the DVDs that were made. The set was brand new and still sealed so it had to have left the factory that way. In the future someone needs to have a contact address or number for situations like this so any problems can be resolved.
Rating: -
What is there to say. If you are a treki then its a guarenteed enjoy. everything is nicely packed in season by season boxes. Really liked the tracking system while it was being shipped too.
Rating: -
This will be not so much of a review of this specific DVD set as a general review of the actual TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" itself. Keep that in mind as you read further. I say that because for potential buyers, DVD extras might influence one to spend the rather hefty bucks being asked to own the whole show, even though a lot of episodes in the final years are really not that good, in my view.
The first 3 years of this 7 year long series are undoubtedly the best in my opinion, though there still WERE a few great episodes scattered among the final four years. All things considered, this was undoubtedly one of the best sci-fi shows ever, period, but in general, the longer it ran, the worse it got.
This decades in coming spinoff to the original Kirk-Spock version truly holds its own, and in many ways, exceeds the late 60's series, if only in that in a seven year run, there were simply more GOOD episodes than were seen in its genesis. Still, there are many, many BAD ST:TNG episodes, or poor/below average, and it all came down to the writing. The technical attributes (special effects/sets/production values) and achievements of the show were far beyond the original Star Trek series however, and remained consistently excellent throughout its entire run. A minor carp in this was the seeming "video to film" nature of the SFX, but still, most of it was done excellently.
Still, one has to wonder if the original Star Trek series had 7 years, instead of 3, whether the original would've been better than ST:TNG. And there were the first four excellent feature films based upon the original, which might even things out in general when comparing the two versions overall.
ST:TNG, as was the original series, was best when it stuck to the opening credits, "...To seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldy go where nobody has gone before..." In other words, episodes dealing with the "unknown" out there deep in space, were always high points for this series.
Sadly, great and original and mind-blowing sci-fi ideas were confined to only a small portion of the ST: TNG series as a whole, especially in the last four years. As with the awful (imho) followup series "Deep Space Nine" and "Enterprise," too often, Star Trek: The Next Generation sunk into meaningless, boring, and trivial stories about Troi's mother or Worf's son. Such became merely sci-fi soap opera and did NOT live up to the potential of this series shown during the early years. There were also completely silly and boring, waste of time episodes involving android Mr. Data (ironically, the most interesting and compelling character on the show) playing Sherlock Holmes or other members of the cast in similar "Holodeck" created, mundane and indulgent, unimaginative "period" stories, most of which were dull and uninspiring.
Again, the best moments of this particular series dealt with the WRITING and with IDEAS. Some were quite mindblowing and deserving of much thinking and afterthought, like "Tin Man," and "Remember Me." Others, which again dealt with long, silly episodes involving Troi's mother or Worf's son, or many of the Klingon dominated shows full of ridiculous and long-winded Klingon traditions and "culture," were and still are, rather lame.
Overall, I would break this series down as follows:
10 percent Excellent shows
20 percent Very good shows
40 percent Acceptable shows
20 percent Poor shows
10 percent Very poor shows
When the writing was true to Gene Roddenberry's original vision, and when he was still alive and basically in control of the show, ST:TNG was the golden age of anything and everything STAR TREK. Though spinoffs "Deep Space" and "Enterprise" were and always will remain comparatively bad to me, "Star Trek: Voyager" for awhile was pretty good and the reason again was because it stuck to the theme of "strange new worlds" and "exploration" of the unknown. This has always been true of any good sci-fi, and when this show stuck to that idea, it was great. When it sunk into sci-fi soap opera instead however, it was pretty much a waste of time. Unfortunately, in the last few years, this was the case more often than not.
All in all, because in general, MOST supposed "sci-fi" TV series efforts have been pretty awful, with some noted exceptions like "Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits," while I'd like to give this ENTIRE series overall a 3 rating, I'll be generous here and give it a 4. This is simply because the truly great, original and thought-provoking episodes of ST:TNG more than make up for the too numerous Troi's mother/Worf's son type episodes, the ones in other words, where the writers and producers were obviously just "phoning it in."
Rating: -
I really enjoyed seeing the series over again and the tracing of the characters.
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