Editing Star Trek (section)

==''The Next Generation''==
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[[File:Enterpris D.jpg|thumb|400px|left|USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D: battleship, scientific research center and luxury hotel rolled into one]]
Here's where it starts getting a little deeper and a little darker, although with a lot of left-wing political subtext turned up to 11. The USS ''Enterprise-D'' (the original and C were destroyed in action while A and B were retired) is, like its predecessor, tasked with going where no-one has gone before, but this time around the problems are less likely to be solved in a single episode. Jean-Luc Picard is the captain and he plots and negotiates his way to victory; Mr. Data is cold and unemotional, though not by choice - as an android, he'd very much like to change that; Riker takes over the captain's "sleep with alien babes" duties since Picard is married to the job; Worf the Klingon gets beaten up by monsters to show how tough the monsters are, meaning that Worf winds up looking incredibly weak by the end of the show's run and doesn't regain his badassery until his run on ''DS9''; Dr. Beverly Crusher is good old Bones minus his temper; Dr. Pulaski is Bones ''plus'' temper; Counselor Troi is so badly written she becomes a running joke; and Geordi LaForge [[gets shit done]]. Only two things need to be said about helmsman Wesley Crusher: he was [[Mary Sue|Gene Wesley Roddenberry's shitty self-insert fanfic character]], and his sueness got to the point that even his actor started to hate him within the first season of the show.

Due to the massive success of The Original Series in syndication (and Paramount being [[Rage|pissed off]] by broadcast networks treating their most valuable IP like any other show), TNG was aired through syndication from the beginning. Although the first two seasons were laughably bad, the quality began to improve dramatically after an increasingly cocaine-addled Gene Roddenberry got too sick to keep ruining it and his partner-in-crime Maurice Hurley was thrown out on his ass, a moment often pinpointed via looking for when [[Meme|Riker grew a beard.]] The later seasons are widely considered to represent the apex of the franchise's episodic formula on the small screen (although ''DS9'' gave it a run for its money with a more serialized approach); sadly, this series only got one good movie.

The Next Generation started and ended on one of its skubbier elements, that being Q, an omnipotent trans dimensional alien that starts testing Picard in the first episode and is finally persuaded to go away in the last.  The entire multi-season run of the show is set up with the subtext that the Q are judging whether humanity is worthy of its implied lofty destiny.  What should have been a stifling deus ex machina was carried entirely by the performance of Q's actor; the dialogs between Picard and Q were some of the show's most entertaining, even as the Q episodes tended to be the obligatory season silly story.

*'''Outstanding Episodes''': "The Measure of a Man" (is Data property or not?), "Q Who?" (introduction of the Borg, Q at his dickish best), "The Best of Both Worlds" (epic Borg 2-parter with plenty of action and drama), "Family" (companion piece to Best of Both Worlds, Picard has to deal with the trauma of being assimilated), "Darmok" (Picard learns to communicate with an alien captain on far-away planet, all of TNG's strengths), "The Inner Light" (I am not crying, you are crying), "Sarek" (excellent Picard and Sarek character piece)
*'''Episodes to Avoid''': "Code of Honor" (racist and stupid), "Angel One" (sexist and stupid), "Shades of Grey" (half-assed money-saving clip show), "Up The Long Ladder" (annoying Oirish stereotypes wind up on the ''Enterprise'', shenanigans ensue), basically any episode from the first five seasons that focuses on Troi, her mom Lwaxana, or both (not Majel or Marina's fault, they were handed shit writing and had to make do)

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