Ron Moore: First Season Of Next Generation Was Weak

Television writer Ronald D. Moore has said he feels the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was ‘weak’.

Moore is no stranger to the world of Star Trek having written episodes for Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager as well producing TNG and DS9. Moore’s prolific television career also includes Carnivale, Roswell and “re-imaging” Battlestar Galactica for Syfy and creating spin-off prequel series Caprica. In a new interview with SFX magazine the producer & writer looked back on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and revealed he felt it was “weak”.

“I was watching the first first season as a fan, and I watched it religiously and recorded every single one. And even I was going, ‘This is kind of weak. It’s not working.’ You could kind of see the show trying to figure out what it was, how close it was gonna be to the original series and how different. They even repeated an episode from the original series when they did “The Naked Now” in the first season. That was a shakedown cruise for the Enterprise for those first couple of years. It was extraordinary that the audience was willing to give it time.” – Ron D. Moore speaking to SFX Magazine

The Next Generation was the first live-action Star Trek series since the cancellation of the original series in 1969. In the interim fans had enjoyed several successful feature length films starring the cast of the original series. The launch of TNG in 1987 was certainly risky given the fact it starred a brand new cast and could have easily been rejected by fans because of that fact. First seasons are notoriously difficult to pull off and so many stumble and fall at the first hurdle before being given a chance to settle down and find their feet.

Luckily despite the shaky nature of TNG‘s first season it was given time to develop and find its own identity. After all if TNG had failed there would have been no Deep Space Nine, no Voyager and no Enterprise. It’s also likely the feature films would have ended too if TNG had been a flop.

[Via Blastr]