Closing out today’s science fiction-heavy posts, first here’s an in-depth re-evaluation (in two parts, via Gerry Canavan) of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which suggests that ultimately the show must be understood as a creative failure:
Again, though, in order to find something interesting to say about the characters, the writers had to go out of their way to concoct Rube Goldberg plot machines that would allow for emotional arcs without messing with the precious status quo. If you start looking, you can find a lot of episodes that go to the same well: there’s always something to trigger or mitigate unusual behavior, something to excuse the characters from acting like real people as soon as they put on those damn Starfleet unitards.
I don’t agree completely with everything he says here, but it’s hard not to see the show as deeply flawed in its slavish devotion to its status quo. Even Deep Space Nine, which I think was ultimately the better show in almost every way — admittedly, in part, because TNG helped pave the way for it and it also became a very different show — had this problem. I’ve always felt that my two very favorite episodes of each (“The Inner Light” on TNG and “The Visitor” on DS9 would have worked better if they weren’t Trek episodes, if in the end they didn’t have to return to business as usual.
This is what I loved about Farscape, and what the cast and crew talk about time and again in their DVD commentaries for the show: there was no reset button. Because really, only a show with a reset button could air an episode like “Conspiracy” and never return to it.
And next, Cinema Blend argues that Star Wars killed Babylon 5.
And you know, I don’t buy the argument at all. Babylon 5 had a five-year plan, and it was on the air for five years. Even for that final year, when the quality was really starting to slip. It even had spinoffs, in which the quality was sometimes not even present. To claim that the show would have taken off in year five and become some kind of huge cultural touchstone in the geek community if only it hadn’t been for that meddlesome George Lucas (and his mangy droid)…well, it’s beyond silly.
And this?
Farscape blew the minds of the few who bothered to see it, before being quietly cancelled and forgotten by all but the most hardcore fans.
Quietly? Really? There was a huge fan campaign that got Ben Browder, albeit briefly, interviewed on CNN about the show and a Sci-Fi miniseries made. There are still webisodes and comics planned.
And don’t get me started on the “Farscape, Firefly and Serenity are all crap” folks commenting there. They’re entitled to their opinions, but these ones are pretty ill-informed. (If Firefly had 20 episodes, please direct me towards those last five. I’ve never seen ’em. I don’t think anyone inside this universe has.)
Are any of these shows as big a hit as Star Wars? No, even if they arguably should be. For a lot of people, science fiction is Star Wars, or Star Trek, of their like. And that’s unfortunate…but I think it would also be unfortunate if Babylon 5 was the series by which you judged everything else. I think you lose out on a lot great stuff if you restrict your focus in either way.
I think the thing to keep in mind about TNG is that it aired during a transitional era. Soap operas and such aside, at that point the standard format, particularly for an SF action/adventure show was to keep things completely episodic. After all, before VCRs became standard in everybody’s home, and before TV eventually changed to reflect that fact, you simply couldn’t count on even the most dedicated viewers being able/willing to watch every single episode. (I haven’t read the article in question yet, so maybe Canavan address this.)
I remember actually being deeply surprised and pleased at the time by the fact that TNG had continuity touches and sometimes even — gasp! — followed up on things in later episodes. I was genuinely shocked, and deeply gratified, when they actually followed Picard’s traumatic experiences with the Borg, not with another episode-as-usual in which he’d show no ill effects, but with an entire story devoted to him coping with what he’d been through. I’d never seen a show do something like that before.
So, sure, by today’s standards it’s rather pitifully static and reset-buttony, but I think it deserves some credit for managing some tentative, glimmering foreshadowings of trends to come. In fact, I rather suspect that if shows like TNG hadn’t made tiny baby steps in that direction, we wouldn’t have gotten arc-heavy shows like B5 when we did.
OK, I’ve read the TNG article now. He’s harsher on the show than I’m willing to be, especially as I do think it’s important to keep in mind the series’ historical context and that judging it by current standards is a tad bit unfair. (I’m much, much less willing to be forgiving of Voyager and Enterprise, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant.) In general, though, I have to agree with the great majority of what he’s saying. Some of it is criticism I even recall making, or hearing other make, at the time. As far as the lack-of-conflict issue goes, by the way, it’s clear to me that the Trekkish Powers That Be did realize that this was a problem. Unfortunately, their attempt to address it by adding an abrasive and annoying character, in the form of Dr. Pulaski, backfired badly.
By the way, am I really the only Trek nerd in existence who didn’t like “All Good Things?” Among other things, the whole time travel premise falls apart completely if you think about it for, like, two seconds. Or so I recall, anyway. It’s been long enough since I’ve seen it that I probably couldn’t properly debate the point now. I just remember being seriously unimpressed, except for the stellar job done my the actors and costumers in re-creating the feel of the first season in such excellent detail.
(Um, yeah. Shutting up now. :))
I liked “All Good Things,” but I wouldn’t put it anywhere in their best episodes. It was a pleasant enough coda, and I always preferred the Q who wasn’t just a dick but actually sort of a trickster god. (For that, though, the earlier “Tapestry” is a much better episode.)
I really don’t agree with all the points in the TNG article. Absolutely it was a product of its time, in which today’s level of continuity and character arc was only just starting to take serious root. I don’t think the show was a creative failure. And in fact, the reset-button quality of Trek bothers me much less there than in later shows, since by its nature it was an “every week a new adventure” type of show.
I think it’s actually a good sign, and says a lot about the genre and where television storytelling is today, that TNG‘s sops to continuity seem weak and half-hearted by comparison. So the criticism certainly needs to be put into context, but I don’t think it’s totally unfounded.
The B5 article, though, is really just sort of silly.
I have to agree, “All Good Things” was kind of sucky. There were some good performances and some of the sort of geeky “hey wasn’t that cool” moments you’d expect from the finale of a highly popular series, but there wasn’t any sort of strong storytelling to hold it all together.
I’ve never been a big fan of TNG, but you’re right that it still needs to be judged in context. Unfortunately (and this is one of the things that bugged me about the early seasons of TNG), that context isn’t just of sci-fi in the late ’80s/early ’90s. The early episodes were slavishly devoted to the “vision” of Gene Roddenberry, which was rooted deeply in the sci-fi of the ’60s. Early TNG wasn’t of its time, it was behind its time. I know this sounds bad, but I think that Roddenberry dying was the best thing that happened to the show, as it let Berman and others finally pull the series into ’90s.
I don’t know that the show (or Trek as a whole) ever fully emerged from Roddenberry’s shadow, but I agree those first-season episodes are sometimes pretty dire, retreads of ground already covered in the original series. I can respect Roddenberry’s vision of the future, but I think it was flawed (unlike his future) and already looking long-in-the-tooth by the time TNG rolled out.
Have you read Wil Wheaton’s (much-too-slowly-updated) posts on those early episodes? He’s deservedly critical of them. (And of himself as an actor at the time.)
I think TNG had a lot of really good standalone strange-anomaly-of-the-week episodes, a few genuinely terrific episodes (“Yesterday’s Enterprise” comes to mind, for instance), some pretty sub-par episodes, and a few real duds. I don’t think it hangs together remarkably well as a whole — if you’d never seen the show, you could theoretically start at any episode and not be lost — but I don’t know that merits calling it a failure creatively.