Star Trek: The Next Generation

"Jean-Luc Picard: Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: To explore strange new worlds... To seek out new life and new civilizations... To boldly go where no one has gone before!"

"...to boldly go where no one has gone before."

"Patrick Stewart – Captain Jean-Luc Picard"

"Jonathan Frakes – Commander William Riker"

"Brent Spiner – Lieutenant Commander Data"

"LeVar Burton – Geordi La Forge"

"Michael Dorn – Lieutenant Worf"

"Marina Sirtis – Counselor Deanna Troi"

"Gates McFadden – Doctor Beverly Crusher Season 1, Episodes 2.22–7.26]"

"Wil Wheaton – Wesley Crusher [Episodes 1.1–4.9, "The Game", "The First Duty", "Parallels", "Journey's End"]"

"Denise Crosby – Lieutenant Tasha Yar [Episodes 1.1–1.23, "Shades of Gray", "Yesterday's Enterprise", "All Good Things..."]"

"Gene's hands-on involvement in The Next Generation diminished greatly after the first season."

"Given Roddenberry's goal of a television series revolving around the adventures of a space-age Captain Horatio Hornblower, it is not surprising that much of the international structure would be based upon the law as it existed during the heyday of the fighting sail. In contrast to our contemporary world, in which international telephone communications are instantaneous and where travel from any one point on the globe to any other can be accomplished in under a day's time, the planets on ST:TNG sometimes go for decades without communicating with one another, and the time to travel form one planet to another (even at warp speed) is measured in days, weeks or years - not hours. In such a decentralized legal system, there would not be enough repetition of practice to develop customary law."

"I wrote the bible for that show, not Gene. He took credit for it, of course. And the idea of the older, more mature Captain — that was mine. That way we could keep the Captain on the bridge and make the first officer the Mission Specialist."

"We wanted to get away from the heavy, preachy, moralizing sci-fi of shows like Star Trek: TNG, which in my view took all the joie de vivre out of the original series."

"Star Trek is not like any other show because it is one unique vision, and if you agree with Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future, you should be locked up somewhere. It's wacky doodle, but it's his wacky doodle. If you can't deal with that, you can't do the show. There are rules on top of rules on top of rules...Gene sees this pollyanish view of the future where everything is going to be fine...I don't believe it, but you have to suppress all that and put it aside. You suspend your own feelings and your own beliefs, and you get with his vision...or you get rewritten."

"During the years of Captain Kirk's Enterprise 4% of the galaxy has been charted -- not explored -- since exploration would have required visits to all the approximately 11,000,000,000 stars and planetary systems in that 4% of the galaxy. By the time of our 24th century stories, only 19% of it has been charted. If only one of a million of the stars in the galaxy has worlds and if only one of out of a million of these worlds were capable of supporting life, and if only one out of a million were capable of supporting life, and if only one out of a million of those bore intelligent life, there would still be millions of inhabited worlds for us to visit."

"It is hard to overstate how much of a departure the “Star Trek” franchise’s eighties-and-nineties-straddling incarnation, “The Next Generation,” was from the original series. It retained much of the nomenclature and established codes (the inscrutable techno-scientific babble, the ship’s name, the naval ranks, the canonical alien species) but swung almost entirely toward the second, more cerebral form of science fiction. It had no anchor in the present, nor did it genuflect before America’s frontier myths. “The Next Generation” was wholesale utopia, a thought experiment on how humans would behave under terminally improved material circumstances. Civilization, and the future, had won."

"“Star Trek: The Next Generation” has precious little to tell us about our present selves. Or, rather, it tells us who we are not, and who we might become someday. This is not the type of science fiction that we are accustomed to consuming, or that TV and film producers are accustomed to making."

"I was very clear about what to expect. Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to be an utter failure and I would be on my way back to England within a few months. I could make some money for the first time in my life, get a suntan and go home."