Interesting take about TNG “standing on its own”. Sure that’s valid. But the first few seasons on TNG aired concurrently with the TOS movies. It’s never occurred to me that TNG is anything but a continuation of TOS, it’s Even in the name, not a spin-off, not a reboot, not an alternate timeline (until many movies later), a continuation of a story about imperialism struggling internally with morality and existential philosophy (vs. evil empire fighting rebels). New shows are welcome to be spin-offs, reboots, and alternate timelines, but (for me) not TNG.
Well, it’s a different ship, different crew, 80 years later. It may carry on from TOS thematically in a lot of ways, but they also did a lot narratively to keep them in their own respective sandboxes. And I think that was for the best.
I’ll compare it to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Those films are very concerned with showing us what happened to Han, Luke, and Leia, and with replicating the backdrop and villains of the original films, and I think it’s largely to the detriment of really establishing the new characters as the stars of their own films. I think the TNG approach, keeping its distance to a much larger extent, was healthier.
Interesting take about TNG “standing on its own”. Sure that’s valid. But the first few seasons on TNG aired concurrently with the TOS movies. It’s never occurred to me that TNG is anything but a continuation of TOS, it’s Even in the name, not a spin-off, not a reboot, not an alternate timeline (until many movies later), a continuation of a story about imperialism struggling internally with morality and existential philosophy (vs. evil empire fighting rebels). New shows are welcome to be spin-offs, reboots, and alternate timelines, but (for me) not TNG.
Well, it’s a different ship, different crew, 80 years later. It may carry on from TOS thematically in a lot of ways, but they also did a lot narratively to keep them in their own respective sandboxes. And I think that was for the best.
I’ll compare it to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Those films are very concerned with showing us what happened to Han, Luke, and Leia, and with replicating the backdrop and villains of the original films, and I think it’s largely to the detriment of really establishing the new characters as the stars of their own films. I think the TNG approach, keeping its distance to a much larger extent, was healthier.