If there’s anything truly, fundamentally wrong with Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s the holodecks. The rest I can stomach.
Holodecks were a terrible idea. They eliminated the need for shore leave on a real planet, where a cabin fever-ish crew can get off the ship and provide the plot with whatever they encounter on the planet. They quickly went from a crude simulation that could be disrupted by throwing a rock against the back wall to a representation so convincing that you couldn’t tell it from reality even if you were an android or you could see a broad spectrum, and the people in it go from little more than animatronics run by algorithm to pseudo-people who ostensibly possess sentience. (If a computer-generated person is sentient, doesn’t that more to the point mean that it’s the computer that is sentient?)
It’s not that there aren’t a lot little things wrong with Next Gen. It always bothered me that they didn’t have any weapons designed for starship hallway combat. Endless shots of two-way gun-battles, and I’m thinking, how about throwing a gas grenade around that corner?
Perhaps on a more thematic level, Star Trek:TNG’s biggest negative can be summed up in a one-word line of dialogue: “Conference.”
Picard has just encountered the Borg for the first time. These monsters, described by Q and Guinan as the biggest, scariest boogeyman they’ve ever encountered, have just had their ship disabled and significantly damaged by the Enterprise. Picard knows that they learn from encounters and are tougher to defeat after that. Picard knows they cannot be negotiated with.
The Borg ship is, like, 20% damaged.
For God’s sake, DON’T HOLD A CONFERENCE!