My Main Criticism of TNG is......
I'm watching Star Trek TNG for the first time, and I'm midway through season 3.
I love the show, but my main criticism is that it's almost entirely made up of standalone episodes, versus story arcs that extend over many episodes. Both approaches to storytelling have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Having standalone episodes allows for far more stories to be told, so the diversity is really appealing. Some stories don't need multiple episodes to be told, so the standalone format is perfect for them. But the problem comes with stories that DO need multiple episodes, but are only given ONE. The end up feeling rushed and shallow, with so much glossed over, all so that it can come to a tidy conclusion by the end of the episode. It feels so unsatisfying sometimes.
Longer story arcs spanning multiple episodes really draw you into the show, and gives a sense of gravity to the events that occur because you've watched them step-by-step as they've progressed. The drawback to longer story arcs is that (depending on the show) writers can get carried away with their imagination (anyone remember that tv show "Lost" LOL). So it sometimes just drags on and on, until you no longer care about how it ends.
I believe hybrid formats are great. You get the best of both worlds. Longer satisfying story arcs, as well as numerous self-contained smaller stories.
What really frustrated me today is I watched Star Trek TNG Season 3 Episode 16 "The Offspring" for the first time. Data creates a daughter named Lal, and we see him help her take her first steps into sentience and personhood. Almost as soon as her journey starts, it's already over! Her neural-net brain gets overloaded and fried from emotional processing spontaneously occurring. I was so disappointed to see this, I felt sad for Data, and sad to know that this is probably the last of this particular story, that's just the way this show works. I'm guessing there won't be another where he continues the experiment, this was it. And it's such a shame, because this opened up so much new territory for Data's journey. But they just had to tie it all together into a neat conclusion by the end of the 45 minutes.
Just wanted to see what other people think about all of this.
What are some standalone episodes that you guys really wanted extended and covered more in depth?