Re: Sci-Fi gets "Ghost Whisperer," "Star Trek: TNG," "Charmed," "Highlander,"

PV wrote:
> "Obveeus" <Obveeus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>> The Next Generation, being the best of the Star Trek series, is most 
>> certainly not 'crap'.
> 
> Except that TNG isn't even the second best Star Trek series (if you
include
> TOS), and most of it *is* crap that doesn't survive rewatching. *

Except that it isn't. It is the best of the ST series.

TOS was too much a product of its times. Some of the episodes have 
withstood time, but it's overall look and language dates it too much. 
What's more, the series often became tiresome with its 
monster-of-the-week repetitions.

DS9 was incredibly inconsistent with plot and character, and too often 
descended into soap-opera plotting.

VOY, of course, might as well have been a stand-along series, without 
any regards to the established universe. When the plots weren't just 
plain inane, they were too much of a soap-opera. And the characters were 
very inconsistent, annoying, or useless.

ENT, like VOY, discarded the established universe and just couldn't 
figure out what it wanted to be about.

TNG, at least, attempted to be consistent (both in its own universe and 
the greater ST universe), broke new ground in many of the plots and 
devices, and distinguished itself effectively from the past incarnations.

While I'd agree that Seasons 1 - 2 were weak (suffering from turnover, a 
writers' strike, and the normal growing pains) even many of those 
episodes resonate with events that are going on in today's world. By 
Season 3, the show had found its voice and direction, and started 
consistently producing extremely good and entertaining television.

One of my biggest complaints about DS9 and VOY, in fact, is that they 
ran many of the themes introduced (and often done extremely well) in TNG 
into the ground, and never distinguished themselves sufficiently from 
the series. These themes mostly revolve around the exploration of 
individual "species-ness": Data's quest for humanity, Worf's quest for 
Klingon-ness, etc...these stories repeat ad infinitum in the arcs 
followed by Ba****r, Dax, Torres, Seven, Tuvok, etc.

The biggest weakness of TNG is that it did tend towards preachiness 
(especially in S5, when the actors were allowed to introduce their pet 
causes into the show), the insistence of keeping Troi (and her mother) 
as an active cast member, and the reliance on too much techno-babble.

As far as re-watchability goes, I can sit through a lot more TNG 
episodes than I can DS9 or VOY episodes - and I often don't have the 
desire to watch episodes of the later series at all.

-- 
JWH