I grew up watching Star Trek reruns, so I was very excited when the reboot, Star Trek: The Next Generation, came out. 

To be honest, the first season was pretty awful. It started by portraying the future as a socialist heaven and spent a lot of time doing something the first series didn't: a lot of woke preaching. 

If you are under the illusion that wokeness became a problem over the past decade or decade and a half, I have bad news for you: it happened long ago. And the first and last seasons of TNG were overflowing with it. 


In both the first and last seasons, TNG was all lecture, all the time, and the targets were capitalism and the assumed selfishness of Western societies. Environmentalism was the big push, and in the final season the writers actually turned warp drives into an allegory for climate change of all things. The single best innovation that made the fantasy world of Star Trek possible — faster-than-light travel — became a threat to the entire universe. 


That's the bad news about TNG. 

Recommended
NEW: Stevens Appears With Rogers After El-Sayed Snub; UPDATE: Full Endorsement Ed Morrissey Pole-r Opposites and a Mexican Stand Off Shaping Up: Nawrocki and Poland v Tusk and the EU MORE Beege Welborn

The good news is that the middle seasons were, overall, excellent. The single best episode was "Yesterday's Enterprise," which celebrated human willingness to sacrifice, and even make the ultimate sacrifice, for one's fellows. 

What made the best Star Trek episodes so good was that they dealt with conflicts and challenges realistically rather than simply moralizing. They humanized the characters and recognized tragedy and irreconcilable goods as part of life. They had depth, as any good fiction should. 

The best Picard episode, Inner Light, had multiple layers of tragedy driving the story. There was a lost civilization that made a heroic attempt to preserve itself in the best way it could; Picard was forced to confront the sacrifices he had made in order to become the commander he was — he chose loneliness in order to achieve greatness, becoming the last of his line; and the inevitability of death coming for all of us was driven home. No matter what path in life you choose, the end comes for us all, and perhaps the smaller life of family would have led to greater happiness for Picard. 

Patrick Stewart was the perfect Picard. It's hard to imagine somebody else in that role, and TNG at its best was Picard, and Patrick Stewart, at his best. Everybody else was a bit player in that show compared to him. 

RIP Patrick Stewart. If only Picard weren't French, he would be perfect. 





















































BEST OF THE BABYLON BEE:



BEST OF THE REST...



AND FINALLY...