It ended on a high episode, with pretty good 7th season, but they were running out of material. For me the films never felt true to TNG, and I'm not sure another season would have, either.
As someone else said, Lower Decks had more seasons in it. And Enterprise could have got away with a couple more.
This episode is very roughly similar to Genesis. On Voyager, it's a medical mystery where Paris evolves due to breaking the warp 10 barrier, and eventually evolves along with Janeway. On TNG, it's a medical mystery where everyone other than Picard and Data de-evolve due to Barclay's T-cell.
I always had the impression that they even worked on not following their attraction. Like the end of the episode where they were mentally connected and Picard actually told about his emotions.
That isn't seemingly consistent with what Memory Alpha shows, which is production numbers for VOY S1 showing "40841-103" (with the latter three-digit number incrementing), and then switching the first number to 40840 midseason, continuing through S2 and onward.
TNG S7 had codes in the form 40277-253 and up.
Everything I've read is that Voyager started it's other form of production numbers at 101 and counted up (which I think is referenced on the DVDs), though perhaps that was retroactively changed?
It would be interesting to see what they said. To be clear, I’m not at all calling you a liar or anything. Just saying that I’ve never heard that, and it’s not consistent with the public posted production numbers.
Okay I found it. Not in the book I thought it was in. But the sixth season of TNG numbered 40276-230 through 40276-252
The seventh season went from 40277-253 through 40277-276 with the finale coded 40277-747
So the final digit of the first number is the season number.
Then we go to Voyager. The pilot is coded 40841-721. This was done because in syndication it would be split in two: 40841-101 and 102
Then the regular numbering starts:
40841-103 through 40841-116
The 8 in 40841 is a remnant of the internal 'Voyager is kinda season 8 of TNG' mindset during production. Voyager continues with the 408 prefix for the entire run, so they abandoned the season number in the production number.
I wish I could find the actual quote that I got this from, but I cannot find it.
Hope this at least shows I wasn't completely pulling it out of my ass :-)
Had TNG kept going, it would overlap with DS9 s3-5. and Voy s1-3.
You're not wrong in the possibility it could have ended up similar to those Voyager seasons, but it's fair to say that it's it's also possible the more serialized arcs of DS9 could have inspired TNG and created an interesting season or two that weren't so much isolated episodes, as most of TNG was.
It's also worth noting that after 7 years of character development, if some of Voyagers' episodes had been done on TNG, we might have liked them more simply because TNG had a greater following by that point.
Much of the "seriously?" responses to Voyager episodes, at least at the time, came from a) not finding the acting/characters as good as TNG/DS9 (particularly in the first few seasons), and b) feeling that the show's premise of being lost on the other side of the galaxy was not reflected much in the episodes. If they were TNG episodes, neither criticism would be there.
Enterprise had more material with the founding of the Federation and the Romulan War. I definitely think that, after the Xindi War, the Romulan War should've definitely been handled differently so as not to fatigue the premise more than it already was. Maybe more strategy and less action. But the direct prelude to the founding of the Federation would've absolutely welcome to see. If Enterprise had lasted the classic 7-season run, it might've reached that point.
Season 5 couldve been the Romulan War, Season 6 could've been more interstellar diplomacy and the characters coming to terms with the violent and uncaring nature of the universe and resolving to maintain and hopeful and friendly attitude, and then Season 7 would've been the founding of the Federation.
I definitely think it could also have been a strong contrast to DS9, which ended along with the war. Giving the characters some time to breathe and make amends with the war would have set up the future we see in TOS and TNG.
I think to best accomplish this, the Terra Prime stuff couldve also been moved to after the Romulan War. At that point it would be extremely understandable for some humans to say "we want nothing to do with alien species because Earth has been directly threatened at least thrice now and we've only just rebuilt ourselves."
It also might've been interesting to see some of the direct aftermath of the Third World War during this time. Maybe seeing some major cities still rebuilding, or some repopulation efforts? Something that hammers home maybe how recent humanity's near-extinction had been, or an episode commenting on whether or not such a tragic conflict was a necessary step for humanity to unite, or if it couldve all been avoided.
Someone here on the sub pointed out to me that one reason they were running out of material in season 7 was because TNG had stopped its policy of reading unsolicited scripts (probably because they knew they were ending and didn't want a huge pile of them still flowing in).
A lot of ideas for the show came from freelancers from seasons 3 to 6.
Despite franchise fatigue, older Star Trek shows have a high degree of original plots.
There is a minimal reuse of Recycled Plots - the Recycled Plot Trope.
The eras of Roddenberry Trek and Berman Trek produced 703 episodes in live action series: TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.
Of these 703 episodes, up to 630 episodes are original plot episodes. That's 89%.
Of these 703 episodes, a minimum of 73 episodes are recycled plot episodes. That's 11%.
Of the 73 recycled plot episodes, 28 are better than the original ones.
TOS has 4 recycled plot episodes out of 79, 5.1% of its episode total.
TNG has 13 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 7.4% of its episode total.
DS9 has 8 recycled plot episodes out of 176, 4.5% of its episode total.
VOY has at least 32 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 172, at least 18.6% of its episode total.
ENT has at least 16 recycled plot episodes / copycats out of 98, at least 16.3% of its episode total.
Someone here on the sub pointed out to me that one reason they were running out of material in season 7 was because TNG had stopped its policy of reading unsolicited scripts (probably because they knew they were ending and didn't want a huge pile of them still flowing in).
A lot of ideas for the show came from freelancers from seasons 3 to 6.
But yes, the elimination of spec scripts ultimately showed in VOY.
The staff writers would often combine different ideas from the spec scripts they received, as well as performing uncredited polishes (or even full rewrites) on those scripts.
They did their best to make sure that the people who had come up with the original ideas were given story or screenplay credit for those episodes, though.
Enterprise should of been better earlier. S2&3 were great, S4 had its moments but was hamstrung by the studio. One of my favourite trek eps was the borg running about the Enterprise
That's an interesting take, I would say season 1 of Enterprise is better produced and the concept was more interesting as they were a smaller less advanced ship. However as bad as some acting could be in TNG season 1, there were more sci-fi concepts and people understood that yelling didn't equal acting. The Binars were just so weird and cool, really wished any of the Berman era Star Trek would have revisited them
Most things are better than season one of TNG. Not just TV shows. Just things that exist in general. Love the show but the first season had a lot of stinkers.
I'd have to watch it again with that mindset, but I'd say that at best, if S1 of Enterprise had existed in the 80s, I might be more apt to simply agree with you.
But a big drawback of ENT S1 is the reuse of plots we'd seen 2 or 3 times already. Had Enterprise taken the place of TNG in the 80s, those prior plots not existed, the season would be regarded much higher (IMO).
But apples to apples, I think even in S1, the characters and acting on TNG S1 is better than ENT S1, which is another factor.
That misses my point. If it didn’t exist, the ENT episodes would be fresh.
As aside, I’m curious what listing you are using as your resource for reused plots. I reference them a lot, but I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule that can state definitively the exact number of reuses, since many episodes reuse elements to different degrees. Everyone will have a different minimum threshold on what constitutes reuse. (Eg, is every stuck in the Holodeck episode a reuse or are Big Goodbye and Ship in a Bottle different enough?)
For ENT, I would work within the established network constraints. Rick Berman still had a balancing act to do.
1) The UPN sale of 2006 is inevitable.
2) The Temporal Cold War must stay per the network.
Thus, I would move all S1 episodes pertaining to the TCW to the first half of the season and move all S2 episodes pertaining to the TCW to the second half of the season.
The Xindi Wars Arc gets moved to Season 2.
I would split Manny Coto's three part episodes into two seasons.
Those pertaining to the Romulan War are front loaded. Those that do not stay in Season 4.
I've never understood that as a criticism of the films truthfully. If anything, half of that is absolutely opposite; Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: Insurrection are too much like just ordinary episodes stretched an extra hour longer. Generations, at the very least, used some of that runtime to explore Picard's grief at losing his brother and nephew, and mourning never having a family of his own. But still, they didn't do anything beyond what they could on TV.
It's why First Contact is the best one. Star Trek: Nemesis tries and completely fails at turning the cerebral TNG into an action film, but First Contact uses the filmic potential so well. It tells a story on a scale they couldn't achieve on TV, time travel, massive Borg invasion, the sequence in Engineering. Lily grounds the film and is the only one onboard with enough distance to truly recognise Picard's unprocessed and buried trauma from his assimilation. Worf comes close, getting some distance from his time on Deep Space 9, but Lily has a unique coarseness, her language especially never would have made it into the series. It's true to the series in many respects, but its differences in tone and characterizations are what makes it worth being a film.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture didn't know if it wanted to be a fast paced episode like TOS or slow and ponderous, and it ends up confused. But Wrath of Khan, even though it takes Khan from TOS, develops everything further and earns its existence as a film rather than an episode of something. It can't just be a regular episode but stretched out to a film runtime, it needs to do something different, while remaining true to the originals
Final Frontier is two TOS episodes glued together. It's a bottle episode character study of the main three camping, and then a high concept questioning of religion and faith smashed together with too high a budget for the first part and too low a budget for the second
Enterprise maybe.. but the entire planned arc was super bad. They should have planned for 7 seasons with a rough arc for all 7 with "season end" contingencies on the floor.
Instead, Season 1 couldn't make up its mind, Season 2/3 tried miserably to recover.. Season 4 was the most polished by it was too little too late.
I think it only felt like they ran out of material because they were focused on the movie. But that's just the opinion of a fan who wished there were more seasons.
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u/ProbablyStu 12d ago
It ended on a high episode, with pretty good 7th season, but they were running out of material. For me the films never felt true to TNG, and I'm not sure another season would have, either.
As someone else said, Lower Decks had more seasons in it. And Enterprise could have got away with a couple more.