It's so bizarre to read this in the present, knowing how incredible TNG was, but I get it - the original crew WAS Star Trek to them.
The dedicated fans revived this series in syndication, well after it had gone off the air in 1969, and felt attached to the characters that they had obsessed over between then and the 1980s. Like modern fans, they thought that departure from what they knew would ruin it.
I wish I could go back in time and tell them that TNG is going to rock.
"unknown British Shakespearian actor..." Wow, I never thought I'd hear Patrick Stewart described that way.
I think he was just an extra in the movie Excalibur before TNG, outside of stage.
Edit: """"extra"""" in extra quotes forgive me it's been over a decade since I saw the movie.
lol he wasn't an extra.. he had a hugely important role.. he was Guenevere's father for crying out loud, they fought a huge battle at his castle and everything.. he tries to draw the freaking sword itself!!
edit: i'm sorry i love that film a little too much
Wasn’t he also in the original version of Dune?
yeah and he's awesome
TNG > OG series any day, everyday.
It took me a long time to reach this conclusion. I love TOS, and the characters are cultural icons, but when I want to fanboy over the whole "philosophy" of Star Trek, I'm thinking of TNG every single time.
I'll probably get wrecked in here for saying this,but I never liked TOS. It's so campy and hokey. Even the movies with the original cast don't interest me all that much. I respect them for paving the way for TNG, but I'll never choose TOS over TNG.
TOS is fun to watch in an ironic, cult classic, campy, laughing-at-it-not-with-it way. TNG was the first actually good star trek.
Unfair advantage, TNG has Picard.
Picard is definitely the top card there, but seriously the rest of the cast was damn good too.
Had a rather large crush on Beverly and Troy. Hubba hubba
Season one of TNG was compared to TOS and TNG didn’t fare too well early on. The Naked Now? A copy of The Naked Time. Data trying to be human was compared to Spock. LaForge wasn’t like Scotty. Picard was stuck up and by the book compared to Kirk rushing into battle and brawling with aliens with his bare hands.
It wasn’t until the show developed into its own thing that it became great.
It's also funny that the article suggests that Laforge is the new Spock, and not obviously Data.
I mean let's be real here they had every right to be concerned. TNG had serious problems in the beginning and had some pretty big flaws even as the show got going. Off the top of my head
I'm watching TNG now with someone who's never seen it before, and that's making me 'see' the show with fresh eyes. The first few episodes are so hard to get through. Some are straight up cringey. Many remember Code of Honor and Last Outpost as being horrible, but Naked Now is awful in its own way. Don't get me wrong: TNG goes on to be an excellent, culture-defining show. When people talk about how good it is, they're probably thinking about Measure of a Man, Inner Light, Darmok, and Best of Both Worlds.
Let me add that DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise got to build on the risks that TNG took. Those shows were more consistently good at their starts.
Hey Naked Now has Data laying android pipe and therefore is fully functional in terms of canon.
Completely irrelevant to the topic, but my personal head canon is that Janeway admired Worf's S1 Hair and copied it when she was given Voyager to command.
It's always funny looking back at stuff like this. I remember looking at old articles about Catherine Tate becoming a companion in doctor who and people were furious - and in retrospect not only was she one of the best companions, but that was probably the greatest era of the show.
Heath Ledger is another classic example. I remember the Internet being so confused and mad about the choice. ‘The 10 Things I Hate About You guy!?’
Same thing with Michael Keaton as Batman. He was still Mr Mom at that point.
Nobody dislikes Star Trek as much as Star Trek fans.
LOL. The TNG hate was ridiculous, but one other thing - nobody ignores a Star Trek fan better than other fans of Star Trek.
There were Star Trek fans at the time screaming from the rooftops about how TNG would ruin Star Trek. Before TNG even aired. But, there were also Star Trek fans who, while disappointed to not have the TOS crew back, were curious about what TNG was going to bring to the table. And, really happy to have a Star Trek series again. But, "Curious Trekkies Wait to See What's What with TNG" wasn't going to sell as many papers and stir up as much drama.
I’ll bet that any TOS fans who were furious at the time probably did not go on to like the show. If they were looking for that witty love/hate triangle of Spock/Kirk/McCoy they didn’t get it.
But as the name suggests, TNG reached a totally new generation of fans. American culture had changed a LOT between these two shows and anyone attached to the old one was either old themselves or hooked on reruns.
TNG didn’t slap big right away, either. It took time to get good and find its audience. But I’m so glad they succeeded.
I say all this to point out that angry fans weren’t actually wrong. The Trek they knew was never coming back. It became a whole other thing for a whole other group of people.
The difference between this and, say, the Star Wars sequels is that those sequels disappointed fans AND failed to find a new audience that was just as dedicated and even larger.
People like to use this article to show that angry fans are just idiots- always there and usually wrong. But the TNG miracle hasn’t been repeated many times, if ever, by any of these other franchise rehashes that a Hollywood has shoved out to grab for cash.
Help Geordi is staring into my soul.
LeVar Burton has striking eyes to begin with. When a person is used to seeing him as Geordi with his visor on, seeing him with it off is like he has 100 watt bulbs screwed into his head.
Were you really a Trekkie if you thought TNG was going to be good in 1987?
Kidding, sort of. I remember thinking it was going to be a cash grab, and I still think I was right to think so at the time. Keep in mind, you couldn't go on the Web and instantly know everything about an upcoming TV show. I think I learned it was in production from the back of a cereal box. I didn't even know Gene Roddenberry was involved. The Enterprise-D design was pretty weird, and the cast of characters was more than a bit out there--a Klingon? On the Enterprise crew? Come on.
As a kid, I saw a contest on a box of cheerios(?) where you could be an child extra in one of the first TNG episodes. So for most of the first season, I sincerely thought Wil Wheaton/Wesley was the winner.
Anyway, the first few episodes during season 1 were not great, but I was content to finally get some new material. I'm glad TNG had enough time to "find its own groove".
If you've seen the original Battlestar Galactica you'll know why they were worried.
Only good thing about that show was that in space, bras were unpopular.
The only thing I wish TNG did from the get go, or kept from season 2 onwards, was Dr. Pulaski. She was simply a much better character and doctor than Crusher, she fit in with the rest of the crew much better as well.
She was so reminiscent of McCoy
Including, most importantly probably, naturally having the believable ability to stand up against the captain. There's natural chemistry in that sort of dynamic, you're almost waiting for a plot line to come along that splits them against each other.
Angry neckbeards never change. Check out the reaction to the casting of Burton’s Batman
Honestly, those people, or rather their opinions, can all go to hell.
A new star trek series then or now won't take away, alter or affect in any way TOS and their ability to enjoy it. Not to mention how incredibly un-Trek like it is to literally avoid "explore[ing] strange new worlds" like the plague.
I get that Trek is comfort food for many of us, and that probably creates a strong form of protective nostalgia, but staying in the past to the exclusion of the future is just awful (not to mention that I'm personally bothered at the extent to which this has happened with modern Trek and it's proclivity for reboots and prequels, SNW becoming increasingly both).
Also, is that picture of Stewart from Dune (1984)?!
I wish I could go back in time and tell them that TNG is going to rock.
Don't worry, they know now.
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