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Amazon.co.uk Review
After Star Wars and the successful big-screen Star Trek adventures, it's perhaps not so surprising that Gene Roddenberry managed to convince purse string-wielding studio heads in the 1980s that a Next Generation would be both possible and profitable. But the political climate had changed considerably since the 1960s, the Cold War had wound down, and we were now living in the Age of Greed. To be successful a second time, Star Trek had to change too.
A writer's guide was composed with which to sell and define where the Trek universe was in the 24th Century. The United Federation of Planets was a more appealing ideology to an America keen to see where the Reagan/Gorbachev faceoff was taking them. Starfleet's meritocratic philosophy had always embraced all races and species. Now Earth's utopian history, featuring the abolishment of poverty, was brandished prominently and proudly. The new Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, was no longer a ship of war but an exploration vessel carrying families. The ethical and ethnical flagship also carried a former enemy (the Klingon Worf, played by Michael Dorn), and its Chief Engineer (Geordi LaForge) was blind and black. From every politically correct viewpoint, Paramount executives thought the future looked just swell!
Roddenberry's feminism now contrasted a pilot episode featuring ship's Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) in a mini-skirt with her ongoing inner strengths and also those of Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) and the short-lived Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). The arrival of Whoopi Goldberg in season 2 as mystic barkeep Guinan is a great example of the good the original Trek did for racial groups--Goldberg has stated that she was inspired to become an actress in large part through seeing Nichelle Nichols' Uhura. Her credibility as an actress helped enormously alongside the strong central performances of Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard), Jonathan Frakes (First Officer Will Riker), and Brent Spiner (Data) in defining another wholly believable environment once again populated with well-defined characters. Star Trek, it turned out, did not depend for its success on any single group of actors.
Like its predecessor in the 1960s, TNG pioneered visual effects on TV, making it an increasingly jaw-dropping show to look at. And thanks also to the enduring success of the original show, phasers, tricorders, communicators and even phase inverters were already familiar to most viewers. But while technology was a useful tool in most crises, it now frequently seemed to be the cause of them too, as the show's writers continually warned about the dangers of over-reliance on technology (the Borg were the ultimate expression of this maxim). The word "technobabble" came to describe a weakness in many TNG scripts, which sacrificed the social and political allegories of the original and relied instead upon invented technological faults and their equally fictitious resolutions to provide drama within the Enterprise's self-contained society. (The holodeck's safety protocol override seemed to be next to the light switch given the number of times crew members were trapped within.) This emphasis on scientific jargon appealed strongly to an audience who were growing up for the first time in the late 1980s with the home computer--and gave rise to the clichéd image of the nerdy Trek fan.
Like in the original Trek, it was in the stories themselves that much of the show's success is to be found. That pesky Prime Directive kept moral dilemmas afloat ("Justice"/"Who Watches the Watchers?"/"First Contact"). More "what if" scenarios came out of time-travel episodes ("Cause and Effect"/"Time's Arrow"/"Yesterday's Enterprise"). And there were some episodes that touched on the political world, such as "The Arsenal of Freedom" questioning the supply of arms, "Chain of Command" decrying the torture of political prisoners and "The Defector", which was called "The Cuban Missile Crisis of The Neutral Zone" by its writer. The show ran for more than twice as many episodes as its progenitor and therefore had more time to explore wider ranging issues. But the choice of issues illustrates the change in the social climate that had occurred with the passing of a couple of decades. "Angel One" covered sexism; "The Outcast" was about homosexuality; "Symbiosis"--drug addiction; "The High Ground"--terrorism; "Ethics"--euthanasia; "Darmok"--language barriers; and "Journey's End"--displacement of Indians from their homeland. It would have been unthinkable for the original series to have tackled most of these.
TNG could so easily have been a failure, but it wasn't. It survived a writer's strike in its second year, the tragic death of Roddenberry just after Trek's 25th anniversary in 1991, and plenty of competition from would-be rival franchises. Yes, its maintenance of an optimistic future was appealing, but the strong stories and readily identifiable characters ensured the viewers' continuing loyalty. --Paul Tonks
Synopsis
Nearly two decades after the cancellation of the original Star Trek television series, creator Gene Roddenberry launched the first of what was to be four phenomenally successful spinoffs with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Set in the 24th century (nearly 100 years after the stewardship of Captain Kirk), the series introduced an all-new cast of intergalactic travellers exploring the farthest reaches out of outer space on a mission to chart new planets and alien civilizations. Ship commander Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) anchored the crew of the Starship Enterprise-D with a sensitive reserve that marked a distinct contrast to his trigger-happy predecessor, whose role was assumed by the Kirk-like second-in-command, William Riker (Jonathan Frakes). Rounding out the cast were the Spock-like android Data (Brent Spiner); blind officer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton); Klingon officer Worf (Michael Dorn); ship doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden); her teenage son, Wesley (Wil Wheaton); and psychic psychiatrist Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). Considered one of the best Star Trek spinoffs for its intelligent writing and superb sci-fi special effects, The Next Generation lives on in cult fandom with this collection of all seven of the show's series.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
A review of Star Trek The Next generation would seem almost pointless. If you're even reading this review then you are mostly likely a fan and will already have a very strong opinion.
With this in mind my score of 2/5 is not directed at the quality of the series but at the quality of the package as a whole.
All in all I don't think this represents good value for money. I don't know why paramount use these awful grey plastic boxes...they are truly awful...and £300 quid is FAR too much for a 15 year old series.
At £14.99 a series Frasier (also a paramount release) DOES reflect value for money, and at £150 for NINE series, so does the X-Files. This does not and reeks of "Rip Off"
63 of 65 people found the following review helpful
Best consider this a 'budget' set thanks to it's low quality, poorly considered packaging.
17 May 2008
Format:DVD
I'm going to assume those who are interested in this set are familiar with the series itself and will already have an opinion about it, my concern in this review is for the packaging - put simply it's a cheap and lazy effort.
I can only conclude those who've defended the packaging in previous comments started out with pretty low expectations, but if I'm forking out over £100 for a box set I expect a little bit of effort to have gone into the design. When you consider the production cost of the entire boxed set is probably negligible (I'd be surprised if it's much more that £10, all in) and that the production costs of the series itself have been recouped many times over, it's hard to see the combination of high price and low effort as anything other than naked profiteering by Paramount. For what is being pitched as a '20th Anniversary Collector's Set' it is, quite frankly, taking the mickey.
So, what do you get for your money...
- The DVDs are 'presented' in three sets of double-sided trays joined by way of an adhesive strip down one edge to form a sort of book. The plastic is coloured a shade of green that is far more lurid than the photo suggests, almost neon, only adding to the slightly tacky feel. There are three 'books' in total holding the seven series in sequence (but undifferentiated by anything other than the DVD graphics). The trays themselves are an 'off-the-shelf' mass-produced design and the only customisation made for the set is the poor choice of colour, they feel cheap and the centre DVD grip/release looks like the type that will likely break easily - short of sticking them on a spindle I don't think you could spend less on packaging a set of DVDs. The individual 'books' don't even have front and back 'covers' - the first has a cover of a sort, a blank tray that holds what passes for a booklet (more on that later) but the remaining two are uncomfortable and clumsy to handle and feel ill-considered.
- The DVDs themselves appear to be identical in content to those in the slimline boxed sets available for each individual series, the title screens and menus are the same and it appears that the episode distribution matches. So all Paramount seems to have done for this 'Anniversary set' is print different graphics on the DVD face and chuck in an extra DVD of 'special features' (I won't comment on this as I've not watched it yet, so far all the actual video content is fine). The DVD print graphics themselves all follow an identical basic design with each season differentiated by featuring a different character's face, the season name and a disk number. Each disk is also printed with the names of the episodes it contains. This is the only means by which you can find a particular episode
- All of this is held in a cheap metallic silver plastic tray (you can get a fair impression of this from the photo) which is covered in a flimsy thin plastic cover. This is simply a printed plastic sheet that has been folded and glued in a manner usually reserved for disposable packaging - there is nothing 'premium' about this at all.
- The 'booklet' is just an insult and consists of a single side printed poster that has been folded (un-printed side out) to fit within the tray of the first 'book' of DVDs. The graphic design is terrible, I'd expect better of an unqualified amateur; awful '20th Anniversary' logo motif, poorly considered layout, dull typography, choice of cheap paper -I could go on... The content is pretty pointless too, consisting of a single paragraph of copy for each series summarising the episodes and a few bits of trivia - the sort of thing a professional copywriter could sling together in an hour or so. Completely useless and utterly forgettable. The one thing that would be useful - a breakdown of episodes by series and an index method of some sort to find the appropriate disk in the set - is not included, although you do get a big graphic showing you other Paramount product you can buy, and a completely incongruous and ugly 'plaque' listing assorted production luminaries.
In use the set is frustrating for doing anything other than watching everything in sequence or picking an episode at random. If you're a fan of the series and want to watch a particular episode all you have to go on is the episode titles printed on the DVDs themselves - which means taking the entire set out and flicking through the trays until you find an episode name that jogs your memory, you'll then need to play the DVD to see if you got it right. Useless. How hard would it be to provide a decent booklet with a single line episode summary (as you get with the slimline boxed sets) and a simple reference to help you quickly find the right DVD? How hard would it be to split the 'books' of DVDs into individual series rather than just shove them into three so you don't know which 'book' to thumb through to find even a particular series, let alone episode? (Season 3 starts in 'book' one, ends in 'book' two, for example) - it's seems evident that no-one at Paramount has considered anything beyond 'how cheaply can we repackage what we already have and shove them together so they look pretty and we can maximise our profit' - either they're that cynical or they're just incompetent.
So, in summary, it's not unusual to find food packaging that has a higher production values, and the menu you'll get from your local takeaway has probably had more spent on it than the 'booklet' that you get. For the sort of profit Paramount will be making from this set it would have been inconsequential to produce something far superior and worthy of the Star Trek label.
Still, it does remain the cheapest legitimate way to get the entire Star Trek TNG series on DVD and if you consider it a 'budget' set you're expectations will probably be more realistic. If you expect anything special from what is billed as a celebration of the '20th Anniversary' of the franchise though you'll likely be sorely disappointed.
Disgraceful.
I can only conclude those who've defended the packaging in previous comments started out with pretty low expectations, but if I'm forking out over £100 for a box set I expect a little bit of effort to have gone into the design. When you consider the production cost of the entire boxed set is probably negligible (I'd be surprised if it's much more that £10, all in) and that the production costs of the series itself have been recouped many times over, it's hard to see the combination of high price and low effort as anything other than naked profiteering by Paramount. For what is being pitched as a '20th Anniversary Collector's Set' it is, quite frankly, taking the mickey.
So, what do you get for your money...
- The DVDs are 'presented' in three sets of double-sided trays joined by way of an adhesive strip down one edge to form a sort of book. The plastic is coloured a shade of green that is far more lurid than the photo suggests, almost neon, only adding to the slightly tacky feel. There are three 'books' in total holding the seven series in sequence (but undifferentiated by anything other than the DVD graphics). The trays themselves are an 'off-the-shelf' mass-produced design and the only customisation made for the set is the poor choice of colour, they feel cheap and the centre DVD grip/release looks like the type that will likely break easily - short of sticking them on a spindle I don't think you could spend less on packaging a set of DVDs. The individual 'books' don't even have front and back 'covers' - the first has a cover of a sort, a blank tray that holds what passes for a booklet (more on that later) but the remaining two are uncomfortable and clumsy to handle and feel ill-considered.
- The DVDs themselves appear to be identical in content to those in the slimline boxed sets available for each individual series, the title screens and menus are the same and it appears that the episode distribution matches. So all Paramount seems to have done for this 'Anniversary set' is print different graphics on the DVD face and chuck in an extra DVD of 'special features' (I won't comment on this as I've not watched it yet, so far all the actual video content is fine). The DVD print graphics themselves all follow an identical basic design with each season differentiated by featuring a different character's face, the season name and a disk number. Each disk is also printed with the names of the episodes it contains. This is the only means by which you can find a particular episode
- All of this is held in a cheap metallic silver plastic tray (you can get a fair impression of this from the photo) which is covered in a flimsy thin plastic cover. This is simply a printed plastic sheet that has been folded and glued in a manner usually reserved for disposable packaging - there is nothing 'premium' about this at all.
- The 'booklet' is just an insult and consists of a single side printed poster that has been folded (un-printed side out) to fit within the tray of the first 'book' of DVDs. The graphic design is terrible, I'd expect better of an unqualified amateur; awful '20th Anniversary' logo motif, poorly considered layout, dull typography, choice of cheap paper -I could go on... The content is pretty pointless too, consisting of a single paragraph of copy for each series summarising the episodes and a few bits of trivia - the sort of thing a professional copywriter could sling together in an hour or so. Completely useless and utterly forgettable. The one thing that would be useful - a breakdown of episodes by series and an index method of some sort to find the appropriate disk in the set - is not included, although you do get a big graphic showing you other Paramount product you can buy, and a completely incongruous and ugly 'plaque' listing assorted production luminaries.
In use the set is frustrating for doing anything other than watching everything in sequence or picking an episode at random. If you're a fan of the series and want to watch a particular episode all you have to go on is the episode titles printed on the DVDs themselves - which means taking the entire set out and flicking through the trays until you find an episode name that jogs your memory, you'll then need to play the DVD to see if you got it right. Useless. How hard would it be to provide a decent booklet with a single line episode summary (as you get with the slimline boxed sets) and a simple reference to help you quickly find the right DVD? How hard would it be to split the 'books' of DVDs into individual series rather than just shove them into three so you don't know which 'book' to thumb through to find even a particular series, let alone episode? (Season 3 starts in 'book' one, ends in 'book' two, for example) - it's seems evident that no-one at Paramount has considered anything beyond 'how cheaply can we repackage what we already have and shove them together so they look pretty and we can maximise our profit' - either they're that cynical or they're just incompetent.
So, in summary, it's not unusual to find food packaging that has a higher production values, and the menu you'll get from your local takeaway has probably had more spent on it than the 'booklet' that you get. For the sort of profit Paramount will be making from this set it would have been inconsequential to produce something far superior and worthy of the Star Trek label.
Still, it does remain the cheapest legitimate way to get the entire Star Trek TNG series on DVD and if you consider it a 'budget' set you're expectations will probably be more realistic. If you expect anything special from what is billed as a celebration of the '20th Anniversary' of the franchise though you'll likely be sorely disappointed.
Disgraceful.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
I have been a fan of star trek since I was a child. When next generation started I was hooked. I fell in love with all the characters and have even got my children addicted. However, there is no way I am willing to pay £300-400 pounds for what is basically a re-run. The producers will loose more money marketing at this price as it will increase the temptation to make and sell illegal copies. Reduce the price and you have a buyer
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hopeless packaging
I thought this was worth buying until it turned up and I tried to watch it. Got all the way through one whole DVD, then the next one started stuttering. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Nick Alcock
49 DVDs - 49 copyright statements
Do you love watching copyright statements every time you put in a dvd or turn on your dvd player?
Then you are going to love this package. Read more
Then you are going to love this package. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Orri Tomasson
Amazing!!
In a way i am one of the lucky ones ever to watch star trek i have watched it in order ... i first discovered it with the ''enterprise'' i liked it so i went on to buy ''the... Read more
Published on 28 May 2010 by Scott
Star Trek Priceing
When I heard that Star Trek The Next Generation was going to release all 7 series in one complete box set I was jumping for joy until I saw the price. Read more
Published on 24 April 2010 by Mr. G. R. Lloyd
pity about the packaging
has everything that you might want from the series but the packaging leaves something to be desired as it's not very user friendly...
Published on 26 Nov 2009 by Rui Lima
DO NOT BUY
i believe what i have to say has already been said which is:
*the cases are weak and a horried colour
*you have to look at each dvd to find the right one as the cases... Read more
*the cases are weak and a horried colour
*you have to look at each dvd to find the right one as the cases... Read more
Published on 13 Oct 2008 by D. Rowland
The 2nd Best Series of the Star Trek Franchise
Although it was nowhere near as good as its successor, `Deep Space 9,' `The Next Generation' was still far superior to the original series. Read more
Published on 3 Jun 2008 by James Uscroft
There's probably a reason I never got this as a young lad
Never got into 'Star Trek Next Gen' as a kid but being that the wife has the DVDs and is a bit of a fan, I decided to give them a look-see. My word, it's bad. Read more
Published on 7 May 2008 by Mr. Robert Chapman
Star Trek Next Generation Seasons 1-7
Finally after years of overpriced and poorly packaged box sets, Paramount have finally released Star Trek The Next Generation as a complete and affordable package. Read more
Published on 23 April 2008 by Retard Spotter
good packaging
no need to say much about the series- having bought the box set recently- i`d like to comment on the packaging. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2007 by Tugrul Donmez
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