What a difference a year makes.
Season 1 of Next Generation was overall pretty bad. Season 2 was better, but not without significant problems. Season 3 finally pulled it all together, and is the best season of Star Trek that I’ve watched so far.
The margin over the second season of Original Star Trek is pretty close – they had about the same number of good or great episodes. The two tie-breakers that tip this over the top are the absence of a truly awful episode this year (TOS had *Catspaw*), and the sheer brilliance of the season closer.
With just a few episodes left before the episode count for Next Generation goes ahead of TOS, it’s clear that TNG has managed to shake free of the shackles of the past and become its own thing, taking charge of the Star Trek franchise in a way that it hadn’t managed in the first two years.
That brings the rankings so far to:
– TNG Season 3
– TOS Season 2
– TOS Season 1
– TNG Season 2
– TAS Season 1
– TOS Season 3
– TAS Season 2
– TNG Season 1
That’s 181 episodes down, or 8,295 minutes watched. That’s one quarter of all of Star Trek (by minutes) watched, and just three days late.