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Star Trek The Next Generation
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alt title(s): The Next Generation; Next Generation 
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 man one has gone before.
—Captain Jean-Luc Picard, title sequence voiceover
Star Trek: The Next Generation is a science fiction show created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Set in the 24th century, about eighty years after the original series, the program features a new crew, new perspectives on established cultures (a Klingon Empire as a semi-friendly ally against a Romulan Empire emerging from decades of isolation), new antagonists and a new Enterprise (Galaxy-class starship, registration NCC-1701-D).
After struggling for a few seasons trying to establish itself apart from the Original Series, it exploded into one of the most well respected television shows ever made, partially because of a change in direction (its creator had health problems starting around season two of the show's run, forcing him to appoint life-long Trek fans Brannon Braga and Rick Berman to be the new standard bearers) and an increased willingness to experiment with the format and scope of the show, and science fiction as a whole. At 176 episodes in length, it is the longest running Star Trek series to date, and won many awards.
Although much of the show shared the premise of the Original Series, there were also well-placed Story Arcs: the omnipotent trickster character of Q would show up to put Humanity On Trial (becoming a Book End storyline epitomizing the series) or to amuse himself at the expense of others, there were various encounters with the Borg (cybernetic organisms with a hive-mind consciousness and the intent on enslaving all humanoid life, which created the series pinnacle moment, cliffhanger The Best of Both Worlds), several episodes with Wesley that developed his character, defining moments for several of the main cast and the odd minor character in addition to plenty of development for the Romulans, the Vulcans, the Cardassians and the Ferengi.
The series formed the basis of the seventh through tenth Star Trek films - Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002). The success led to an expansion of the franchise and is single-handedly responsible for the creation of Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Though fans will usually agree that the quality of the episodes vary wildly, the best make for compelling and thought-provoking viewing.
It now has a tool for gathering and voting for the Best Episode(s)
Character profiles and roles in the script:
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart): The Captain, Team Dad
- Cmdr. Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes): Number Two, The Kirk
- Lt. Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner): The Spock, Robot Buddy, Tin Man and Crouching Scholar Hidden Badass
- Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge (Levar Burton): Mr Fixit, Twofer Token Minority
- Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden): The Medic, Team Mom
- Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn): Proud Warrior Race Guy
- Counsellor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis): The Empath, Ms Fanservice
- Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton): Teen Genius, Marty Stu, The Wesley (Trope Namer)
- Chief O'Brien (Colm Meaney): Ascended Extra, who later became a main character on Star Trek Deep Space Nine
- Ensign Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes): Face Heel Turn (sympathetic one)
- Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg): The Bartender
Is the Trope Namer for:
Notable trope-based episodes include:
- Acting For Two: Time Squared. Any episode with Data & Lore or their "father" Dr. Noonien Soong. (Also see the episode Brothers which was Acting For Three (including one stint in enough make up to make a Klingon's actor cry.)
- Ain't Too Proud To Beg: Q Who
- Alternate Universe: Yesterday's Enterprise
- All Cavemen Were Neanderthals
- Amnesia Danger: Conundrum
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Starship Mine. Absolutely.
- Big No: Timescape, said by Picard while suffering in temporal narcosis.
- Chained Heat: Attached
- Clarke's Third Law: Devil's Due
- Noteworthy in that the technology isn't even sufficiently advanced; it's just been dressed-up to look more impressive than it really is.
- Clone Degeneration: Up the Long Ladder
- Costumer (Several times; mostly holodeck adventures, although the most famous was "Q-Pid", which is decidedly not set on the holodeck)
- Cuckoo Nest: Frame of Mind
- Day In The Life: Data's Day
- Die Hard On The USS Enterprise-D: Starship Mine
- Dropped A Bridge On Him: Tasha Yar in Skin of Evil, Captain Kirk in The Movie.
- Enemy Mine: Darmok, also (shockingly) The Enemy
- First Contact: First Contact (the episode and the movie. The first one reverses the polarity by having the aliens be the ones experiencing first contact with humans.)
- Fish Out Of Water: A Matter of Honor
- Former Teen Rebel: Picard in Tapestry
- Future Imperfect: Episode of the same name. An interesting Alternate History arises and thanks to a Trauma Induced Amnesia Riker (now Captain of the Enterprise) can't recall any of it.
- Ghost Ship: The Naked Now, Night Terrors, Hero Worship, Booby Trap
- God Emperor- The Klingon treatment of Kahless the Unforgettable.
- Government Drug Enforcement: Symbiosis
- Groundhog Day Loop: Cause and Effect
- Humanity On Trial: Encounter at Farpoint and All Good Things...
- In Another Mans Shoes
- Invisible Main Character: The Next Phase
- Just A Machine: "Measure of a Man" Fortunately for Data, they decide that no, he's not.
- Kangaroo Court: The Drumhead
- King In The Mountain
- Laser Guided Amnesia: Conundrum again
- Let Us Never Speak Of This Again: The Naked Now
- Lower Deck Episode: Lower Decks
- Made Of Evil: Skin Of Evil
- Manchurian Agent: The Mind's Eye
- Mind Rape: Violations
- Moral Myopia: Coming of Age and Chain of Command
- Naked Sally: Picard's Baldness, Riker's Beard, Geordi's Blindness, etc
- Nightmare Fuel: Night Terrors, which actually did give this editor (then twelve years old) nightmares for days after watching it.
- The Poseidon Adventure: Disaster
- The Puppet Masters: Conspiracy
- The Rashomon: A Matter of Perspective
- Snapback
- Strange Syntax Speaker: Darmok
- The Virus: The Best of Both Worlds, Identity Crisis
- Two Plus Two Makes Five: Chain of Command, with lights instead of fingers. (Done well enough that memetic quote of the episode has been made an honorary redirect to the trope.)
- What Measure Is A Non Human: Measure of a Man
- Wonderful Life: Tapestry
- You Are In Command Now: The Arsenal of Freedom, Disaster, Descent
Tropes used by this show in general are:
- Absentee Actor: Some episodes struggle to include all the actors, even with the Mandatory Line.
- Alternate Universe
- Bald Of Awesome (Picard)
- Applied Phlebotinum: Star Trek runs on this and all the subset variants, justified with heavy heaps of Techno Babble.
- Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Data, though his Character Development starts to negate this towards the end.
- The Bus Came Back: Tasha in "Yesterday's Enterprise" by way of a retcon.
- Catch Phrase: Many, including:
Picard: Make it so.
Data: It is possible.
Troi: I sense that...
The Borg: Resistance is futile.
- Character Development: Part of the reason the show came into its own was building up the origin stories and social habits of the crew, which served to make them more real.
- Clarke's Third Law
- Continuity Nod: One of the most commendable aspects of the show. TNG is excellent at making references to previous events in a variety of contexts, and not always just within it's own canon.
- Dan Browned: In "I, Borg", Guinan and Picard are fencing. They are wearing epee costumes, using epee rules, however, the two are clearly using foils. Especially annoying because the writers did their research the last time Picard fenced in-show and had the correct weapons.
- Darker And Edgier: The episode Conspiracy was jarringly graphic, and featured Moral Dissonance on the part of several characters to the point of Character Derailment.
- Death Ray: The Varon-T Disruptor, capable of painfully killing rather than just disintegrating
- Deus Ex Machina
- Double Dont Know: The Battle
- The Dutiful Son: Robert Picard
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Both Data and Worf came to share the spotlight with Picard among fans. Originally the series focused more on Picard, Riker and Dr. Crusher.
- Evil Twin: Lore, which usually gave Brent Spiner a chance to show off more of his range as an actor outside of the stoic Data character.
- Brent Spiner actually stated in an interview that he preferred playing Lore to playing Data. Why? Because "we have more in common."
- The Evils Of Free Will
- Face Framed In Shadow: For a surprise revelation about long lost Tasha Yar's fate.
- Facepalm: The best known picture happens to feature Picard facepalming.
- Fighting From The Inside
- Fling A Light Into The Future
- From A Single Cell
- Genius Bonus: In "The Icarus Factor", the Japanese characters written on the side of the anbo-jyutsu ring are mostly martial-arts relevant elemental characters— 火 (fire), 水 (water), etc. But there isn't really a good explanation for "ユリ" ("YURI")...
- Sure there is. It's a Shout Out to Dirty Pair. There's a few of them scattered around the show.
- Good Troi Episode: Trope Namer.
- Government Drug Enforcement: The former plague cure that became a narcotic in Symbiosis plus the 21st-century drug-addled supersoldier Q conjures up in Encounter At Farpoint.
- Great Gazoo: Q
- Hyper Awareness: Data, due to being an android would see more into events then was actually relevant.
- I Am X Son Of Y: "I am Worf, Son of Mogh."
- I Love You Because I Cant Control You
- Informed Ability: Pretty much everything about the outrageous Okona's character. Which incidentally leads to...
- Instant Seduction: Okona again.
- Jerk Ass: Q and most of the Cardassians that show up
- Just Between You And Me: A lot of enemy plots are foiled when their plans are revealed, only to have the crew member in question escape and foil the whole thing.
- Just Ignore It: A device that can kill anyone with a single thought. However, being a Vulcan invention, it only works on the aggressive.
- Lights Off Their Eyes: The Soong androids.
- Limited Advancement Opportunities: The reason why any promotions were token, or short-lived, or part of
- Magnificent Bastard: Q in all his appearances, to one degree or another, often with very entertaining results.
- Mega Manning: The Borg have the ability to assimilate technology and knowledge from other species. It is at the very core of their philosophy.
- Memetic Mutation: Picard has become an image for the Face Palm (Gallifrey Base actually has a Picard facepalm smilie) and general disbelief on the stupidity of a situation.
- Mexican Standoff: A staple of later seasons. There is plenty of exposition at gun/disruptor/phaser-point.
- Milky White Eyes: Geordi's blindness, later averted in the second (or eighth, depending on how you count) movie.
- Mind Screw: Several episodes, with "Frame Of Mind" being an outstanding example with a standout performance from Jonathan Frakes as Riker. Not so much a case of Breaking The Fourth Wall as breaking the fifth, sixth and seventh walls.
- Also occurs with the back-and-forth dialogue between Gul Madred and Picard in "Chain Of Command (Part II)" too, along with some Mind Game Ship.
- Mr Exposition
- Mysterious Past
- Near Death Experience
- Negative Space Wedgie
- Noodle Incident: Despite her showing up a lot throughout the series, we never do find out just what it is that Picard did to so completely earn Guinan's trust and vice versa.
- Not Even Bothering With The Accent: Jean-Luc Picard, a Frenchman played by an obviously English actor using Yorkshire idioms - Grand.
- I belive they said at one point the UK took over France in WWIV to explain this.
- Fun with the almost last-minute additions of exclamations like "Merde!" during the first season, dropped partway through.
- Not Named In Opening Credits: Dr. Pulaski
- Not So Harmless: Q in some instances, but especially after the Enterprise's first encounter with the Borg (which he engineered).
- The Nudifier: One Ferengi transporter does this when transporting women.
- Ontological Mystery
- Out Of Character Moment
- Pals With Jesus: Q, to Picard's chagrin.
- Psycho Prototype: Lore.
- Replacement Scrappy: Dr. Pulaski in season 2 for Dr. Crusher (Crusher was Put On A Bus with a stint at Starfleet Academy). Disliked not so much for the fact that she was not Dr. Crusher as for her abrasive, unsympathetic and arrogant personality despite characters regularly claiming otherwise. She had her moments, though.
- Requisite Royal Regalia: Lwaxana Troi brags she's "Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed", among other boasting of her position, which likely means she's high nobility at the very least.)
- Rescued From The Scrappy Heap: Wesley; he went back and forth after he left the show.
- Ron The Death Eater: Riker is often treated... unkindly... by certain sections of the fandom. It's like a dashing, handsome, charismatic ladies' man is somehow offensive to the sort of science fiction fans that write Revenge Fic, who knew?
- Rubber Forehead Aliens: So much so that it is often difficult to tell alien species apart.
- Space Clothes: The uniforms worn by the engineering staff (a tunic-miniskirt one-piece and knee-high boots, to be specific - and yes, men and women wear the same uniform) and several other crew members during the first season are truly astonishing. And the clothes worn by the denizens of the utopian paradise in Justice make them look sensible.
- Space Friction
- Space Is Cold
- Space Is Noisy
- Space Jews: In the second-season episode Up The Long Ladder, the Enterprise is transporting an entire Irish village, complete with accents, apparel, drinking problems, and chickens. So Yeah.
- SORAS
- Screaming Birth
- Stuffed Into The Fridge: K'Ehleyr. Worf avenges her almost immediately afterwards.
- Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The entire race of Q, and the mysterious creature in The Survivors.
- Tear Jerker: The Inner Light has been known to reduce grown men to tears.
- Technobabble: Teraquads of it.
- Teleporters And Transporters
- The Future Is Noir: The first two seasons often had this; the Enterprise bridge was usually floodlit, but everywhere else tended to have very minimal lighting levels. Inverted starting with the third season, when the lighting became uniformly bright and vivid.
- Tin Man
- Tinman Typist
- Touched By Vorlons
- Trickster Mentor: Q...usually. Sometimes he's just screwing with them.
- Two Keyed Lock: Used for the auto-destruct.
- The Unfunny: Worf.
Data: "There once was a woman from Venus, whose body was shaped like a - "
Picard: "That's enough, Mr. Data!"
Worf: "I do not understand their humor, either...."
- Try To Fit That On A Business Card: Lwaxana Troi, Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.
- Viva La Evolution: The Borg, by any means necessary.
- Voice Of The Legion: The Borg.
- Warrior Poet
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Tasha Yar, actress Denise Crosby felt she wasn't useful and asked to be let go. Her death was so sudden that it took a while before you realized she wasn't coming back. A Time Travel episode briefly brought her back and the subsequent timeline screw-ups resulted in a recurring enemy that looked exactly like her.
- Leading to an amusing fourth-wall break: Her parts in the episode where she died were shot before those shot in the episode that aired just before it. If you watch closely, during the prior episode, you can see her waving goodbye—that was the last scene that they shot with her.
- What Could Have Been: Robin Williams was offered the part of the time-traveling "Dr." Berlinghoff Rasmussen in A Matter of Time, but he was busy working on Hook at the time, so the role was given to Matt Frewer.
- What Measure Is A Non Unique: Many unique and rare lifeforms, Data included.
- Will Not Tell A Lie: Betazoids.
- You Look Familiar: Suzie Plakson as Selar, K'ehlyr, and the female Q on Voyager to name one.
- Look out for the future Tuvok (Tim Russ) playing a terrorist in Starship Mine.
- Marc Alaimo who would become, in DS 9, Gul Dukat, played 4 different characters in TNG, including the first Romulan seen in TNG in "The Neutral Zone".
- Robert Duncan McNeil, Voyager's Tom Paris, as Nicholas Locarno in "The First Duty." (The character of Locarno was the inspiration for Paris. The Voyager creators say they didn't plan to hire the same actor...)
- Ethan Phillips, Voyager's Neelix, as Dr. Farek in "Ménage à Troi."
- Most jarring of all is James Cromwell as the leader of a potential new Federation alliance world in The Hunted, when he later played Cochrane in First Contact.
- David Tristan Birke, who played Rene, Picard's nephew in Family, later played the young Picard himself in Rascals.
- Viewer Stock Phrases: Some things that somebody watching this show might say
- "Not bad at all. In fact, I think I like this one more!" - Initially, just the thought that a new Trek was being made minus the beloved Kirk and Co. prompted cries of They Changed It Now It Sucks. But after Growing The Beard, many accept it as the premier incarnation of Star Trek.
- "I know him/her.." - Famke Janssen appearing as an empath. Glenn Morshower (pre-Aaron Pierce) as a lieutenant j.g.
- "Best episode ever!": Best Of Both Worlds, The Inner Light, Tapestry, to name just a few. When the show was on form, it was ON.
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