Wow. How do I conclude 25 articles about TNG? I’ve talked about pretty much everything, haven’t I?
The day before I wrote this conclusion, I went to a meeting at my daughter’s school and it reminded me of how, when I was still a student, a lot of chapters or books had suggestions for further reading. Thing is, I’ve already told you about the tie-in novels. But where can you go if you haven’t had your fill of TNG?
I’ve got some suggestions.
Before I get started on the second part here, I want to make sure I give an Honorable Mention to “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (3.15). Remember how yesterday I said I had this other list that somehow had eleven episodes on it not corresponding to my main top-25 list? And how I showed you that list a few days ago? Well, somehow “Yesterday’s Enterprise” didn’t make it on either of those lists, and the worst part is, I’m not sure why. It’s one of my favorite episodes.
So, instead of redoing everything, I’ll just give it a spot right here at the top of the article before continuing the countdown.
Well, this is it: my top-25 list of TNG episodes. You may not agree with them all, but that’s why this is my list — emphasis on the my. And if you’re wondering why any of the expected episodes are missing, here’s a partial explanation.
Here we go.
So, what episodes are left that could possibly be worse (or at the very least “less good”) than the 15 I listed yesterday? Let’s find out.
It’s pretty easy to just say “oh, yeah, that episode was terrible”… but why? Why was it a bad episode? How bad was it compared to others? Was it just that opportunities were missed, or was it truly a cluster of massive proportions?
TNG had all of these — in spades — and it was a lot of fun for me to put together a list of the 25 “worst” episodes of the show’s seven-year run. There were some surprises on the list, as well as several you’re probably expecting.
Let’s take a look.
So here’s a weird thing that happened.
I’ve been writing these articles in sort of a piecemeal fashion — which is to say, I’ll write a little of one, move to another, move back, and so on. Well, somewhere along the way, I apparently misplaced my original list of what I’m calling my top 25 episodes. What you’re about to read was titled “Top 25 Episodes Part 1” in my cloud drive, but judging from the list at the bottom of the original document, it actually isn’t. That list doesn’t have any of these episodes on it.
But I still like them. And now you get to read a little about eleven episodes I really liked but somehow didn’t make it onto the top 25 list.
This article contains major spoilers for all TNG relaunch novels up to and including the Typhon Pact series.
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Even though Star Trek canon says that, after Nemesis, there was no more official Trek until Spock attempted to save Romulus, I think we all knew the intellectual property was too valuable to just be left lying there. The TNG novelists — old and new alike — were given free reign to do whatever was necessary to keep the story going, and they certainly did that.
The relaunch novels can, at this point, be broken down into three main story arcs.
Following the TNG season finale, I think it was already known that a film was in the offing. At least one. Turns out we got four, all of which you’ve probably seen, and most of which have both good and bad parts. Like these here.
I’m not sure when exactly we knew that the seventh season of TNG was going to be the final one, but as far as final seasons go, it didn’t really blow me away. Compared to other final seasons — House, Buffy*, and Deep Space Nine, to name but a few — it was decidedly lackluster… but there were a few high points.
As I was researching the tie-in novel articles, I realized just how many of the TNG tie-ins I didn’t read. Not that I’m going to go back and read them now; it’s just interesting to me. But even with missing some of them, I can confidently say that the following list are ten of the best tie-in novels TNG has to offer.
The same caveats from the previous article apply to this one.