"Oh Wesley Crusher, you might be able to save The Enterprise but you can't save bad dialogue."

Run, amble, bound, break, canter, dart, dash, drop, escape, fall, flight, gallop, jog, lope, pace, race, rush, scamper, scuttle, spring, sprint, spurt, tear, trot, whisk (whisk?) to the Internets and check out Wil Wheaton's Memories of the Futurecast. A long time ago Wil started reviewing old Star Trek: TNG episodes for TV Squad, he was funny and irreverent about the show which, when it started, was fairly terrible on a weekly basis, even by the relaxed standards of the late eighties. Then he decided he could do this for moneys and wrote Memories of the Future which can be purchased from Lulu. Meanwhile he's reading highlights on this podcast which I heartily recommend you capture in your pod-playing-device o' choice or by checking out at his website. I was about twelve and, as Doctor Who was dead, TNG was the only sci-fi on terrestrial telly at the time I think, we were years away from Babylon 5 or The X-Files. And in the early days every member of the crew had their own idiot ball which they could use to spread out ten minutes of story to the required forty minutes. Even when Riker grew a beard the show didn't grow a beard for quite a while after.

So, yeah, go look, enjoy. And watch the last few minutes of this clip and the first few minutes of this one from the episode Family for one of the first times I found something good in Star Trek TNG. It was something they had never really done before or since, a consequences show. Normally the ship was blown to hell and fine the following week, this time, for once, the ship was in space dock for repairs after the first big war between Starfleet and the Borg (we won BTW). Picard goes down to visit his brother's family who, like him, are all English people living in France. Picard has never got on with his brother who, seeing his feelings of confusion and guilt over the role he took as part of the Borg in the slaughtering of millions, keeps needling him to breaking point which finally comes in a scene where Patrick Stewart gives a performance that goes beyond 'genre television'.