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MY RATING: 9.5

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

CREATED BY: Gene Roddenberry

PRODUCED: Gene Roddenberry

STARRING: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: "Space. The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. It's continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations...to boldly go where no one has gone before."

PROS: Excellent choice of characters and actors; Stories are well-thought out; Some major improvements from the Original Series in the budget and design.

CONS: Some writing a little cliche; it gets a little predictable by the end.

BOTTOM LINE: The Next Generation is another genius creation to come out of the mind of Gene Roddenberry

After the success of the films based on the original series, the creators thought the time was right to try again at the television industry. Twenty years after the original television show, The Next Generation became nearly just as popular. Much of the general plot and style of the show is similar to the original series, though The Next Generation is not quite as daredevil, and not every problem they encounter is life threatening. This is good, because how many times can you be in a life threatening situation and get out alive. Those space people sure have a lot of luck.

The best part about The Next Generation like the original series is the choice of actors. My personal favorite is the choice of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. His Shakespearean presence was perhaps the most professional element of the show. The choice of Brent Spiner as Commander Data was also a good choice. The character of Data is "intriguing." Unlike Spock in the original series, Data is trying to become as human as possible but has difficulty doing it. Among the other well conceived are the Klingon, Worf, Counselor Troi, Geordi La Forge, and Second Officer William T. Riker.

The budget for The Next Generation was obviously much bigger than the original series. The network must have learned from the success of the original films and contributed a little more faith to this show. The design for the Enterprise-D is therefore very sleek and modern. It looks a lot more like we would expect a futuristic Earth space-ship to look like.

For some of the episodes, especially towards the end of the series, the writing can get a little cliche. By this I mean that sometimes the characters are given lines that seem very convenient and get to the heart of the problem without any trouble, very unrealistic. Also, some of the episodes can get a little predictable over time. It's basically the same situation over and over again. The Enterprise finds some anomaly in space, they go to investigate, something happens, and they figure it out just before it's too late.

The Next Generation is a suitable sequel to the original series. In almost every way it does the original series justice, while adding a number of elements that are uniquely its own.