For Christmas the family bought me the TNG blu ray set and the DS9 set.

I loved ST when I was a little kid.

I’m not quite old enough to remember seeing any original run TOS.
As a little kid in the early 70s I remember seeing episodes on TV on the weekends.
And the Saturday morning cartoon when it originally ran.



I don’t recall TNG when it started.
I lived in the barracks and didn’t have cable and was like a PFC in Ranger Bn or in Ranger school or whatever when it started.

Around Sep. 1990 to 1994 is when I was in a situation where I caught TOS and saw every episode, started watching that season of TNG, and also caught up on the rebroadcasts of the first few seasons.

I started watching DS9 when it came out and also Voyager.
I never caught all the episodes or completed those series.

My plan is to little by little to through TNG and start DS9 mixed in just like it was when originally aired.

Then go with DS9 until Voyager and mix them in, then finish that.

I have seen all the movies.
And, paradoxically, streamed enterprise a while back.

As far as TNG blurays-
They look amazing.
Yes, it is dated sfx, and still in classic broadcast TV ratio, but everthing looks far better than the 19 inch color TV I saw them on.
Amusingly, my modern big flat screen is feeding into the same analog amp and out the same speakers as when I first saw the episodes air.  And the same VCR I taped many an episode on is still running.  (The tv finally died around 2008, after about 20 years of service.)

And it sounds great.  And is neat still “feeling” the hum of the engines through those same speakers.

I went with TNG on DVD.  I want the quality the same.  Watching it on a 65" tv in hi def4k or whatever vs 24" tv on broadcast tv are very different quality.  Red Letter Media did a whole video on the little things they can see, like set repairs and things.  I don't need to see that, nor do I want to.  That's not what the show was.  I feel the same about ToS, TAS, DS9, Babylon 5, and Voyager.  I have no opinion on Enterprise.

TNG Season 1 is bad.  Writing sucks.  Season 2 less so.

The thing I have noticed more and more is that Worf is always right, and always ignored, and every episode would be 5 minutes long if they listened to his security advice.  With the exception of Drumhead, where he's probably got so much pent up security angst he goes nuts.

It took a while for TNG to find its sea legs, so to speak. The first season, they were trying to figure out a lot of details about who they were and what they were doing as a series. By the end of the second season, they seemed to have an idea about where they wanted to go with the show. I recall B5 was much the same way. Both shows got much better as they got into the series. I remember TNG being a much better show by the third season. It was far more cohesive and enjoyable.

It seemed to me that the trend for Star Trek is that the first 2 seasons are usually mediocre at best, but th start picking up on around season 3.  There are exceptions, but from where I stand TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT all suffered from it.  I cant speak for anything after ENT, though it sounds like PIC did the same (for different reasons).

B5 was kind of that way as well, but S1 and 2 were more worldbuilding/story setup for later seasons than anything else so it makes a little more sense in that context.

There are individual episodes in early TNG seasons that are good, and the massive plot arc through season 1 is pretty damned good, though tragically it wasn't really revisited.

It's just stuck in there with a whole lot of "Wesley does a science experiment for class that almost destroys the ship" and "planet of the stereotypes" episodes.  Between Angel One and Code of Honor, I'm not sure if they're stupidly offensive, offensively stupid, or both.

For all their failures, they still have charm, and did lead to some of the greatest sci-fi on TV.

Though those two episodes are noteable for being the kind of thing that would have been tone-deaf on the original series.

There was a theory that season 3 of Picard might involve them in some fashion but that didn't happen. It would have been interesting to see that story continued. The premise was introduced and then subsequently dropped the next season, never to be mentioned again.

B5 had a lot of filler episodes in the first two seasons. After that, they began to focus a lot more on the main story arc. It was a bummer the pacing got messed up for season 5 because of the studio.

Picard seasons 1 and 2 were off, I think, because they wanted the show to be entirely about Picard. What made TNG special was the chemistry of the cast. It was a brilliant move bringing them back for season 3. It really redeemed the series. Watching the season really made everyone realize how much we had missed these characters. It was a joy to see them all together again. When Picard and Crusher see each other again for the first time in 20 years on the bridge of the Titan, neither of them say a word to each other. But so much was said between them in the moment anyway. Just great character moments.

I re-watched it last year, currently watching DS9.  Like others have said, the first two seasons aren't the best, but there good episodes.  From season 3 on it is pretty good.

They tortured Icheb from Voyager because the actor said something slightly less left of center.

All nutrek sucks and hates the source material, and no amount of pandering late matters.

Federation has a case over Data in Measure of A Man, "you ask us to seek out new life well there it sits!"  And then the Federation has android slaves they abuse as a basis for their economy.  Then Picard is dead and a clone android.  [Critical drinker]Fuck off, film![/criticsl drinker]

Yeah, it’s painful.  

When TNG originally aired/premiered I was in a Ranger Bn and lived in the barracks, didn’t have cable, was in Ranger school, deployed, training, etc.  so, I don’t really recall ever seeing it until maybe summer of ‘88 and saw it playing on TV.  It was basically a bald captain, some dude with an air cleaner on his head, on the bridge and the minute or few I saw just wasn’t interested/seemed virtually unrelated to TOS.  (Don’t get me wrong, TOS had some stinker episodes, etc.). But when you are a little kid in the early 70s TOS was about as good as it got for sci Fi popping up on TV.

In the summer of ‘90, I had finished a 4 year enlistment, was in the guard/reserves, had an apartment, was about to start college.  Some local station aired the current episodes as they came out once a week, and also repeats of the current season, nightly TOS syndication, and nightly repeats/syndication or whatever of past seasons and the current season.  So, I guess a repeat of the current, just finished season was on.

It had a romulan defector, Klingon warbirds surprise arrive to back the enterprise against the romulans,  a suicide, etc. and I was like-
This is pretty good.

So, over a couple of years I ended up seeing all TOS episodes, the repeats of the first few TNG episodes, and got current and finished TNG.  Maybe I missed a few TNG episodes, and DS9- I’ll see as I go through them.

I caught most  of seasons 1-4 of DS9 and 1 of Voyager, but really missed most past that.

But yeah, I’m part way through S1 of TNG and how many reused scripts, holodeck episodes, etc…

I understand that and respect that.  I saw TOS on a black  and white 13 inch TV.
And TNG on a 19” color TV OTA broadcast.

While I would not want to see a crazy update like they did with the original Star Wars trilogy, I’m pretty happy with how it’s looking.

Season one of TNG contained several stories based on re-worked scripts intended for season three of TOS.  Some even resemble the material that was re-worked for the Animated Series.  Wesley was supposed to be part of a trinity involving Riker and Picard:  each character having a different outlook based on their maturity and life experience.  The writers never really embraced that idea and wrote for his character as if he was 12 years old rather than a young adult of 16 or 17.

If you watch Chaos on the Bridge, it explains a lot about why stuff was the way it was.   It's free on several streaming services.

Yeah, it sounds horrible, and I appreciate GR coming up with the concept for ST.
But….

I always got the vibe he was kind of a hack and ego type whose writing and weird, perfect future, despite being a greedy, hard drinking, womanizing type…
Really detracted from the future of the franchise.

It might not be fair,
But after his end with the involvement, the break away from trying to recycle scripts, etc. made for a much better show/future.

I love STNG, and it has one of the greatest endings ever.   I consider DS9 part 2 of STNG, and the Dominion Wars are awesome.  My theory is that if Q never intervened with the Borg stuff, the Federation would have been wasted by the Dominion.  It's all one giant story arc.

Ain't nothing perfect, but there is so much of it I enjoy.

The DVDs I have for ToS have the remastered effects, which are okay when dealing with scenes with people, but the ship CGI  effects don't have the same charm.  But they're still ok.

What I did notice that threw me off was they rerecorded the score.  It took me a while to notice it, but it didn't sound the same.  The rerecorded score had a new chick singing who didn't have the same period kind of sound, like they were doing something new and weird.  For the modern singer, she'd heard the theme a million times and it wasn't the same, and thus it didn't have that strange quality to it of doing something wild and 60s.  They also put it over Kirk's voiceover too loud.

It's like the difference between one of those famous "they just did it live at the studio and took the take from 2AM" stories vs the version made decades later.

Sometimes subtle things, but I just kinda like the original the way it was experienced.

Same for TNG.

TNG didn't get consistently good until Gene Roddenberry was too ill to manage it. Seasons 3 - 6 are some of the best TV ever, and the graphics don't even matter. You can listen to episodes in the car with no video and they come across great as an audio drama because they're so well-written.

Season 1 is pretty painful. Men in skirts, Captain Picard apologizing profusely in every episode to everyone in sight for how bad humans used to be, Wesley Crusher might have been the worst TV mistake in all of the 20th century, and then they killed off the only character I found relatable (Tasha Yar) with the most pointless death ever. But about halfway through Season 3 it just suddenly gets very, very good.

So, since Christmas I have made it through season one and partway into season two.

Some random thoughts.

Worf looks tiny in season 1.

At 35, number one as the DCO of a premiere O6 Com looks very young to me.  At around 21 when I first started watching, I thought he was old.

Picard looked old as dirt for like 47.  Sure, he was trim and fit, but damn.
I thought he was a fit looking 60.

The counselor and doctor did not look as good as I remember.  In the early 90s, people at the gym, work, college, etc. would have discussions over which they would rather bang. The short, curvy thirty something one, or the tall, slender  40 year old redhead.

And there is another redhead in a skirtiform in the background a lot.  Who was she?  OTA SD 19” color TV when I first saw these episodes 30+ years ago I didn’t catch that.

Their background role is usually a little less obvious and most often their hair is up.



In Season Two the handsome loveable rouge Han Okana episode you finally get a real look.  She’s sort of a Starship Troopers Dizzy look.



Keep in mind, I starting watching around the start of season 4, so a season of tiny worf, beardless Riker, and season 2 doctor were seen by me as reruns after the show had started to gel and seemed off to me.

For some reason, season 2 Troi is more like I remember looks wise than S1.

De. Pulaski is a damn rough 50.  I thought she was 60 something.  The haircut is was doing her no favors to boot.  

God the reusing scripts like something in the air aging us, something in the air making us act crazy, etc. or themes oh, we meet a godlike creature, etc. we’re tough.

S1 I thought looked amazing.  On the S2 episodes I’ve seen, unless my TV is intermittently doing something funny, there seem to be more scenes they just had the tapes and not film that don’t look like great def.

And, as much crap as he has gotten, and as painful as seeing him become Wesley Sue instantly,
I don’t find the character AS annoying as I did on first watch decades ago.  Maybe having raised kids to adulthood, I’m just more tolerant of some teenager now, than say in my 20s.

It's because comparable films and shows today are so much worse.

I forget if it's STD or one of the other shit treks where they have the porcine-looking flab-based female human lifeform yell "fuck yeah, science", which is just bonesnappingly insipid.

Compare that to Wesley and his constant endangering of the ship through dangerously reckless things, but in those events at least he doesn't look like a denizen of the idiocracy world dropped into a flashy sci-fi background.  This makes him not look quite so bad.

It's like forgetting how bad the ewoks were in Jedi because you have Gungans to compare them to, or worse yet, porgs.  It's not that Wesley isn't an insufferable douche, it's that in old trek, he was terrible.  Now, there's so much vile shit in nutrek that he seems positively tame.

I can’t 100% discount your theory -
But I think it was more of-
JFC, this 15 year old is just plopped in with everything handed to him on a silver plater, and he’s already smarter than all the smart people he is surrounded by, but let’s set him up with hints of being the ultimate Uber-ascending evolving into a god prodigy extra, super special…
But he gets googly eyed around girls, can’t get into Star fleet, but gets a commission, but gets kicked out of star fleet, but…

I use one specific episode of TNG as an example of some of the symptoms of how Wesleys writing is bad.

In one episode the Enterprise squares up to conduct a 1v1 combat exercise against a much older Federation ship (already dubious, but 'ok).  While preparing for this Wesley manages to get his science experiment brought onboard the OPFOR ship (with the specific intention of using it to cheat the military exercise); an experiment that contains anti-matter of all things.  Ferengi shenanigans transpire and the anti-matter in Wesleys expermient is key in saving the day.

So, your telling me that someone in a position of power and that should know better... gave a kid enough anti-matter to allow a starship to go to warp... even if only for an instant?  Considering how dangerous anti-matter is (and is in universe), how is that anything but criminal negligence of the highest order?  Thats like a scientist from a national lab giving a teenage kid a pellet of weapons grade plutonium to play with for a science fair.  On top of that, nobody really seemed to care in the end that he and the rest knowingly attempted to subvert a military exercise (thus invalidating any findings from the exercise)?

But hey, it works as a way to make Wesley the hero of the story and show just how brilliant he is.

I recently binge watched Enterprise. I've been leapfrogging around Voyager but find many of the episodes unwatchable. TNG and DS9 will probably wait until next winter at this point

Of course.  There’s even an episode where he makes a pair of nano bots that almost destroy the ship and von Neumann their asses into an entire new race of sapient beings.  Because a kid fell asleep doing his homework/side genius hobby/between shifts on the bridge, etc.

What I’m saying is even though I despised the very concept of the character decades ago,
And would angrily think he should have got the death penalty for almost destroying the ship, etc. Like, the entire concept I wish was not a part of the show.
I more see now how he was a teenager in over his head - often in horribly written scenarios they would not possibly be in, etc.

And, if he had just been a regular 15 year old caught up in stuff it would have been an interesting concept. (Regular for ST, where every single human seems to have an IQ of at least 130 and does calculus in grade school-for all their anti-eugenics and genetic engineering talk something has gone on.)w

Wesley still sucks.  Nutrek is just worse.

The joking SFDebris theory is Picard just wants to bang his mom and puts up with a lot of shit.  Also she's a good doc he doesn't want to alienate.  And again, wants to bone her.

Then he'd be Jake Sisko.

Or better yet, Nog.

Tasha Yar was under-utilized on the show.  I recall seeing an interview with Crosby where she hated having very few lines, and they could've had a double or a set of prop legs at her station and no one would've noticed she wasn't there.

I don't feel Wesley was a mistake.  I get the impression there were several young men in real life sci-fi nerds who were brighter than average, and the writers did injustice to them by the poor writing for Wesley.  In the same way Spock's logic and McCoy's compassion were there for Kirk, Wesley's uncorrupted ambition and idealism could've played a role in a storie's outcome.