My temporally confused rewatch and compulsive ranking of all seven seasons of tween telly favourite Star Trek: TNG is now complete, so what else am I supposed to do than celebrate the best of the best! And to dredge up the stinkiest shits again, because sometimes that's entertaining too. Make it so!
Top Ten TNG!
Easily the best of the old-timer guest spots (including Generations), though for me, Scotty's return has always been literally dwarfed by the presence of the Dyson Sphere, one of the series' most mind-blowing concepts executed with conventional implausibility. The two come together in an exciting finale.
Star Trek's most outspoken atheist statement this side of the 60s, that probably gets the episode disproportionate love and disdain in equal measure, which might be what I'm doing right now, but it's also the most effective demonstration of the Prime Directive and there are nice callbacks to the classic series with the return of Vasquez Rocks and parallel evolution.
Wesley's getting a bit old for these science project screw-ups, but it treats his mother to her best episode of the series. The mystery of the vanishing crew ramps up from creepy to hysterical, and her comrades' trust despite Beverly's seemingly deranged conspiracy ramblings is touching.
This inverted perspective is exactly the kind of next-level episode The Next Generation should be doing, complete with diverse characters who behave like real people for a change. Eleven-year-old me never would have believed that he'd one day prefer this random talkie episode over its exciting movie namesake.
A fantastic episode not only for its android subject, but also for Picard and Riker, as white humans debate another being's rights before a black character points out the ramifications. The point about humans being biological machines has always stayed with me, and the questions about artificial life will become ever more relevant, so I can even look past some horrendously out of scale model shots.
They may be an especially kid-baiting villain and overused in the long run, but these initial Borg outings still hold up as some of the best episodes of the series, and the threat and hopelessness are especially palpable in this one. It's so memorable as their introduction, it's easy to forget that the story's mainly about Q being really needy. What does the title even mean?
If there was any episode I didn't need to see again, it's the one that repeats itself multiple times. But even after so many goes around, the nerds' Groundhog Day is still riveting, from the most iconic cold open of the series to the eerie premonitions and creative efforts to escape the loop of doom.
Always my favourite Data episode, don't worry about the technobabble, just experience the feelings that he can't have. My last rewatch was before I became a father myself, so it'll only have grown more powerful now.
I was worried that I might have outgrown the Borg, but when I watched this two-parter again for the umpteenth time, the ominous dread was palpable. Things wouldn't get this convincingly desperate again until Deep Space Nine approached the Dominion War. The foreshadowing of Riker's hesitance to take command sells the jeopardy brilliantly, even when you're not watching in 1990.
One of the first episodes I saw and probably the most frequently watched, revisiting this now-legendary finale after my own comparable time skip cemented it as my favourite of them all. The convoluted time puzzle is a cool sci-fi story, self-contradictory plot holes and all, and it would have been a spectacular send-off for the crew, but their story wasn't over yet.
Turd Ten TNG!
Wesley gets a crush, just when he was on the mend, and there's a parade of unconvincing creature suits. It's some light relief after heavier instalments, but who is it aimed at? I thought it was just as crap when I was in primary school.
They might have got away with this later in the year, but rehashing a 60s plot as your second episode just looks lazy, making everyone horny just looks desperate, and breaking down the characters before they've even properly formed yet is just pointless. This might be Wesley at his cringiest too, even before infection.
A couple of firsts for the series in its first Starfleet Admiral with a shady past (under Roddenberry's watch, too) and an underground Phaserquest shootout, which would become a fixation in a couple of years. I always thought the old-age acting and make-up were satisfactory, but that character isn't interesting enough to hijack a whole episode.
Another popular season one anti-classic, I'm less troubled by its confused gender politics than with it being so boring and lame, especially with the completely forgettable virus padding that's only there to give the rest of the cast something to do. There's also much teasing of an exciting Romulan return that amounts to nothing.
The most infamous episode this side of 'Shades of Gray' deserves the bad rap. Star Trek's a flexible format, but supernatural Gothic romance is a warp jump too far, and contriving bonnie Space Scotland in season seven is an embarrassment. Nana Palpatine might have pushed it across the so-bad-it's-good border if it wasn't for all the excused rape.
A topping of 80s cheese sometimes makes the bad episodes watchable, but then they overdo it and it just stinks. If TV Han Solo sexing up half the ship and Space Dynasty aren't bad enough, this is also the one where Data does stand-up, setting the low bar for filler B-stories until Voyager came along. Outrageous indeed.
Lwaxana Troi at her predatory worst, an unnecessary Dixon Hill retread and Doctor Who-quality aliens are the bad ingredients for an episode where characters spend half the time waiting around or being bored. The season running a few episodes short may have been a blessing.
Formerly one of the most forgettably dull entries in the first season, its notoriety as that racist episode has grown in the online era to the point that it's now probably the most infamous of the entire show.
Season four's 'Qpid' is off the hook, as a memeable death scene (he got better) doesn't excuse this from being easily the worst Q episode and close to the bottom of the pile generally. Cheesy, childish and pompously pointless, it feels like what fans of the time would have dreaded the sequel series being like. It's not even a proper pun.
A clip show is almost doomed by design in this sort of judgement, but up against some real stinkers from the year, they didn't have to try too hard to make it at least watchable. Unfortunately, the bare minimum effort is insultingly shit.
Season ranking: 3 > 5 > 4 > 6 > 2 > 7 > 1
