Ye Olde Staging Point

I just finished watching the second part of "Chain of Command," one of several recent Star Trek: the Next Generation episodes that is causing me to re-examine my long-held dislike for the series. This episode (and the 2-part "Redemption" episode) was excellent--almost everything I like about Star Trek, with very little of what I dislike.

I grew up a rabid Star Trek fan, and when Next Generation first came out, I greeted it with the level of loathing you would expect from someone enamored with the original series and first several ST movies (OK, not counting the first one). My suspicions that the Star Trek franchise had been totally ruined were confirmed in the first episode of TNG, in which we learned that the Enterprise is a happy fun ship with hundreds of families and happy children running around in it, presumably at the expense of the extra phaser banks and photon torpedoes that belonged on any self-respecting Federation starship. Familes and children on board? Do US Navy crews bring their families and household pets with them on aircraft carriers or submarines? And how did the Enterprise expect to effectively dispense indisciminate iron-fisted intergalactic justice if it insisted on diplomacy with such alarming frequency? And when the saucer section separated from the engine section and began flying around under its own power, I just couldn't take it any more; the shame of what they were doing to Star Trek became too much, and I refused to watch the show during its original run except when nothing else was on and I needed a sci-fi fix.

All this to say that now, years after TNG has come and gone, I am finally starting to warm up to it. The characters--a few of them, at least--are at last growing on me, and I thoroughly enjoy those episodes in which galactic politics play a prominent role. I still find Guinan, Crusher, and Troi to be as annoying as ever; but it's hard not to appreciate the characters of Picard, Riker, and Data as they are developed over the course of the series and movies. And many of the complaints I had about the Next Generation universe--that it was too clean and antiseptic, with too few real problems--seem to have been dealt with in Deep Space Nine. And the Borg, it must be admitted, are some of the best antagonists in the history of sci-fi.

So maybe it isn't too late. Maybe there's still time for me to join the millions of nerdy Americans who fell in love with this show years ago. Maybe I can learn to like--even love--TNG without feeling like I'm betraying the original Enterprise and its crew of worthies. Maybe this cranky old-school Trekkie can stumble overlate into a Star Trek franchise that everyone else accepted over a decade ago. Maybe... it's not too late.