I'm up to season 5 and DS9 is my favorite Trek. It would be if just for the positive quoting of the Communist Manifesto in a pro-union episode, but also because it has the most consistent narrative vision and quality.
Yes there's cheese and cringe but - and I've decided this is a key factor - there's only one Q episode (having what amounts to Mr. Mxyzptlk be the defining bookend of TNG [and also the cause of its supposedly most serious storyline] is key to why it fails for me). And Sisko punches Q in the face (which I think hints at how that show felt about him). DS9 embraced the original mythos but stood outside it at various removes, from playful to critical.
I don't think it's completely unfair to say that TNG was the fluffy reset button show, at least by and large, and it certainly does look that way when you compare it to DS9. But there is a great big "but" that should come after that, and it has to do with the context of its times. DS9 came out at a time when the television landscape was changing rapidly, and it ended up doing things that would have been essentially unthinkable a decade or so before, in terms on ongoing plot arcs and such. Whereas TNG, well, ultimately it came out of and was very much part of the old episodic tradition, the kind of television that was designed for viewers who couldn't be assumed to be capable of watching every episode, because they could only watch if they happened to be home in front of their TV when the broadcast signal went out. (Even if that was no longer entirely true by then.)
But TNG, in its way, was making some significant first steps in that transition. I still remember how utterly stunned -- and how utterly delighted -- I was when the
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Yes there's cheese and cringe but - and I've decided this is a key factor - there's only one Q episode (having what amounts to Mr. Mxyzptlk be the defining bookend of TNG [and also the cause of its supposedly most serious storyline] is key to why it fails for me). And Sisko punches Q in the face (which I think hints at how that show felt about him). DS9 embraced the original mythos but stood outside it at various removes, from playful to critical.
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But TNG, in its way, was making some significant first steps in that transition. I still remember how utterly stunned -- and how utterly delighted -- I was when the ( ... )
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