It may be hard to believe, but there was a time, not that long ago, when science fiction TV shows were, to be blunt, pretty lame. The occasional good one would slip through, but those didn’t last long. For the most part, sci-fi TV was filled with cheap special effects, over the top or, even worse, bland writing, and pretty lame characters. The one show that really stood out as something special was Star Trek which, even though it only lasted three seasons, continued to impress viewers for decades. But nothing really connected in the same way.

Most of the 1980s TV was torture for sci-fi fans, with shows like Automan, where a guy turned into a car, and Benji, Zax & the Alien Prince, where Benji the beloved dog teamed up with an alien prince and a robot that looked like a hamburger. Even the amazing miniseries V ended up becoming a lackluster TV series that lasted just a season. But in 1987, everything changed. It didn’t happen all at once. In fact, it could be argued that it wasn’t until 1988 or 1989 that the real shift began. But it was mostly due to one show; Star Trek‘s sequel, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Took Sci-Fi Seriously

While many of the people who made science fiction TV shows before 1987 usually fell into the same trap: they tried to make shows that resembled the modern day while also winking at the audience that quite a few things about sci-fi are inherently goofy. Star Trek: The Next Generation, under the supervision of Gene Roddenberry until he lost control. The show, with a beautifully crafted Enterprise model, an amazing set for the ship’s deck, and costumes that looked unlike anything else, played things straight and trusted that the audience would understand.

Perhaps more importantly, Roddenberry, who had no problem relying on lots of action for the original Star Trek, wanted the new version to be more cerebral, focusing on conversations between smart people who needed to find smart answers to get out of problems. This isn’t to say the original Star Trek didn’t have this, just that TNG relied on it more. And, in doing so, the series wasn’t reliant on lasers and space fights that usually didn’t look that good. The show was built around the characters.

And, when the show did have the crew whip out their phasers or get into a battle with the Borg or whoever, the special effects were far better than any other sci-fi show around. Like the writers and actors, the FX crew took the work seriously, building amazing models and going to extremes to create something that looked amazing for its time, even better than some sci-fi movies that were released when TNG was on the air.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Showed Networks That Sci-Fi Could Go Mainstream

Star Trek: The Next Generation’s approach to sci-fi TV was a gamble, but it paid off in spades. The series turned Star Trek into a massive TV franchise with Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise rounding out the golden age of Star Trek. But, more than that, it proved that smart sci-fi could find a big audience on TV. And while not every attempt proved successful, 1990s shows like X-Files and Babylon 5 kept the ball rolling while expanding the types of stories that could be told in the genre.

By the 2000s, sci-fi was taking over TV, with LOST being one of the biggest shows of the decade and Battlestar Galactica, itself a reboot of a lackluster ’70s sci-fi show, becoming a cultural phenomenon. The decade also saw the return of Doctor Who which, like TNG, pushed away some of the goofier aspects of the franchise in order to make it more intellectual while not sacrificing the sense of adventure. And Stargate became a wide-spanning franchise in itself.

Today, Star Trek is finishing off the franchise’s third era of TV with the end of Strange New Worlds on the horizon, but sci-fi TV is even more of a powerhouse than ever before. For All Mankind, co-created by Ronald D. Moore, who came up through Star Trek, has its own spin-off with Star City. Foundation, based on the novels by Isaac Asimov, is entering its fourth season. Even Star Wars has become a constant presence on TV with Ahsoka, Andor, and The Mandalorian all being fan favorites. There are so many great sci-fi shows right now that most people can’t even keep up with all of them.

All of this starts with Star Trek: The Next Generation. By focusing on the character dynamics and offering sci-fi that didn’t talk down to the audience, it proved that viewers were more than willing to invest their time in watching shows that dared to be a little different. Shows that gave them cool spaceships, clones, and aliens along with emotionally relevant tales that made us look into ourselves and hope that we too could become more than we currently are.

Release Date

1987 – 1994-00-00

Network

Syndication

Showrunner

Gene Roddenberry

Directors

Cliff Bole, Les Landau, Winrich Kolbe, Rob Bowman, Robert Scheerer, Jonathan Frakes, Robert Wiemer, Gabrielle Beaumont, Alexander Singer, David Carson, Paul Lynch, Corey Allen, Patrick Stewart, Chip Chalmers, Joseph L. Scanlan, James L. Conway, Robert Lederman, Tom Benko, Timothy Bond, Robert Legato, Adam Nimoy, Robert Becker, David Livingston, LeVar Burton

Writers

René Echevarria, Maurice Hurley, Richard Manning, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Tracy Tormé, Hannah Louise Shearer, Stuart Charno, Ira Steven Behr, Sara B. Cooper, Peter Allan Fields, Herbert Wright, Frank Abatemarco, Burton Armus, Hilary Bader, Morgan Gendel, David Kemper, Michael I. Wagner, Philip LaZebnik, Robert McCullough, Susan Sackett, Nick Sagan, Fred Bronson, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Sam Rolfe