Star Trek for the First Time #3 – Finishing Season 1

It’s taken me longer than expected, but I did it…I finished Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Let’s talk about the second part of season one shall we?

After watching the first season, I can see why it’s so maligned in Star Trek culture. While there are some bright spot episodes, there are a lot of episodes that fall into 80′s television clichés. The worst of those episodes was the ‘drug special’ officially titled ‘Symbiosis’. This is the episode where the Enterprise acts as a mediator between two planets: one has been stricken with a plague that their culture has no cure for, while the other supplies a life saving drug for said cure. Everything was going along fine until Wesley starts asking questions that were dropped in solely for exposition, “Why would they take the pills if it hurts them in the end?”…”Even if it feels good for a little while it really isn’t worth it, is it?”. I can almost picture the promos that ran for this episodes, “Tonight…on a very special Star Trek: TNG…”

'Why would anyone want to become chemically dependent?'

There were really good episodes as well and I imagine that the potential these showed were the reason the show stayed alive. I’ve always said that I’m a sucker for ‘fish out of water’ stories, so the season finale where the crew finds people who have been cryogenically frozen since the late 20th century was great (even if it did have more overt ‘don’t do drug’ messages). ‘Heart of Glory’ gave me my first look at Klingons not named Worf. I totally see why they’re such a popular character, they’re kind of awesome. After watching the episode I Immediately realized that I wanted to see more about the Klingons, I assume that I’ll get that in the coming seasons.

If there’s one thing i took away from this season though, it’s that Riker…is an intergalactic playboy! Seriously he’s like the anti-Picard-ian leader. He gets the job done but doesn’t have any problems going for a few detours along the way. I mean, he beams down to be part of a diplomatic team in ‘Angel One’ (the one about the matriarchal society) and ends up sleeping with the leader of the place in under an hour! Couple that with his New Orleans jazz club experience with Minuet in ’11001001′ and he’s a regular space Hugh Hefner.

And why did nobody warn me about Lt Yar?! I wasn’t ready for that! To be done in by some ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ reject in a mid-season episode was disappointing.

I started the first episode of the second season, but only got about five minutes before I stopped to write this. From just the first five minutes I just have one questions, “Bearded Riker?”

Favorite Episodes of the week(s):

• ’11001001′
• ‘When the Bough Breaks
• ‘The Neutral Zone’