
I’ve been watching over the last few months, the first five seasons of Star Trek, the Next Generation on blu ray. And I have seen a bit of season six on DVD. Boy, have I enjoyed this.
First, the difference between the sound and pictures between the DVD and blu ray are remarkable. The blu ray is sharper, more colorful, more detailed and much better put together. The difference in sound (DD 5.1 to DTS) is also incredible. The way they handle the deleted scenes is far better, making them very easy to assess. And every disc has old and recent features about the series.
There is a downside to seeing a TV show’s episodes so close together. You can get bored (I did a bit at times, then I stopped watching) and you can see some flaws.
For example, for a “ship of peace” the Enterprise is in a lot of battles. And it is armed to the teeth. But what got me is why they have “settlers” on board, a thousand passengers and their children. Where are they going? They describe Earth as a paradise, yet they endanger themselves and their children on these voyages to neutral zones, war areas, contaminated planets, radioactive space and so on. But they never had an episode about settlers settling anywhere. And where does the Enterprise go, “where no one has gone before?” Who would remove themselves from their families, doctors and cable TV?
Why would you have children running around the ship?
By the way for 175 episodes the Ship is in danger about 250 times. At the beginning of each show the Captain, in his opening log, mentions the dangerous mission they just came away from.
Everyone on the ship is overly competent. Everyone is assigned an impossible task that no one has ever done before and they can do it, usually 5 seconds before disaster. This was especially true when Wil Wheaton solved everything.
They all can figure out when they are put into various time loops and how to get out of it. I guess the one type of show I don’t like is when they are threatened by some ridiculous thing that causes ridiculous results (invisibility, aging, explosions, baldness) and they talk techno-babble to explain the cure for it. (Except for baldness.)
All that aside, the show was often a different one each week. A sci-fi adventure, mystery, a western, a pulp detective story and a comedy. I liked, but was not thrilled with the first two years. But, actually, as Roddenberry’s influnce diminishes in the fourth season, the stories got better and less formulaic.