The week of September 28th, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on syndicated television. It was the show that resurrected the Star Trek franchise, spawned several spin-offs, and inspired future science-fiction programming. It’s been twenty years, and, damn, I feel old (doesn’t help I’ve got less than a year until I turn thirty).
A Vintage 1987 Promo
(Here’s another one…, and here’s a Star Trek/Cheerios promotion…)
The Original TNG Intro: (Space … The Final Frontier…)
The Complete Episode Guide:
(This one’s really great, gotta watch it … over and over again …)
1. Remember that the Enterprise could do a saucer separation? They did it three times over the course of the series — it was one of those ideas they should’ve thought about more before writing it in, I guess – or used it more consistently (like, y’know, whenever they went charging across the Romulan neutral zone to prevent a war and got themselves ambushed by the Romulans? Yeah, that might be a good time to leave the children behind in the saucer section … just sayin’!)
2. Remember that the Ferengi — the oversized-eared, sex- and money- obsessed vermin — were supposed to be the “big alien threat” of the 24th Century? Instead, they became the biggest joke and got used most often as comic foils.
3. Remember that the Enterprise’s first security chief was a babe? I wonder, sometimes, how the show might’ve been different if Denise Crosby hadn’t decided to leave for what were clearly not greener pastures.
To celebrate, here are some The Next Generation themed posts of mine:
The Top Ten … erm, Twenty ST:TNG Episodes
What Were They Thinking? The Worst Ten ST:TNG Episodes
A Tribute to the Late Andreas Katsulas (recurring Admiral Tomalak)
I Am Locutus … of Lego.
I’d like to say “look how young they all look!” but Patrick Stewart looks exactly the same.
It would be wrong to close out this post without any mention of Gene Roddenberry, Trek’s “Great Bird of the Galaxy”, who died in October of 1991 while TNG’s 5th season was underway. Gene, this one’s for you.
Trivia Note: I wrote this post January 17th, 2007, and time-delayed it. Yep. I’m thinking ahead to the tune of I’ve been looking at this in my “Future Posts” for two hundred and fifty-three days!