My 90's and 2000's Experience: Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987, CHRO and Space Channel)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had originally planned on doing a post on the lore of Star Trek today, like I did with Star Wars on Wednesday, but as I thought about it, I realized that I didn't have very much to say on it, because the lore of Star Trek is different from show to show as the writers of each show didn't necessarily take the time to find out what something was in a previous, or even concurrent, show before tossing it out and starting fresh. So, instead, I'm just going to be talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation as a whole, my history with it, and the merchandise that it had, as well as anything else I can think of to talk about in this post. You'll also notice that I've placed it under the "My 90's and 2000's Experience" heading. Well, TNG is a show that I watched when I was a kid in the 90's and as a teenager in the 2000's. But, I've decided to include things that I experienced in the mid to late 2000's as well, because I only just hit my mid 20s in late 2010, so I was still relatively young from 2005 to 2009. So let's get into it.

You all know by now that Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. It began in September, 1987, when I was only nine months old. I had VHS tapes, toys, comics, books, and other merchandise that came out in the 90's, it was my Star Trek, as much as the original series was my parents's Star Trek. 

It aired reruns every weeknight at 6:30 pm on CHRO, and then aired the new episodes on CHRO on Saturday nights at 7 pm. We would have dinner, well, my family would have dinner, I wouldn't always be able to eat with them, either because it was a period where I'd be strictly tube-fed, or I'd be in the hospital, and then at 6 pm my parents would turn on the TV and change the channel to channel 7 for CJOH News (CTV News) so they could watch the headlines and the weather forecast with Max Keeping, Carol-Ann Meehan, and J.J. Clark, and then once J.J. had finished the weather, they'd change the channel over to channel 6 so we could watch TNG on CHRO. Of course, on the big news days, the weather forecast wasn't right at 6:20, so my parents wouldn't change the channel until right at 6:30, so we would miss the first couple of minutes of the episode. Of course they were reruns so it didn't matter as much. 

On Saturday nights we'd have CJOH News on at 6, then at 6:30 was a local program called Regional Contact, and then Mom or Dad would change the channel to CHRO for that week's new episode of TNG. I mostly remember the new episodes from the sixth season which aired from 1992 to 1993, but I have a VHS tape that contains the first airing of the season 3 finale and the season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" two parter from 1990 so I know.

In the summer of 1993 we moved out of the city, into an old, refurbished, log farmhouse. We didn't have cable and for whatever reason we didn't get CHRO over the antenna/the rabbit ears on our TVs, even though back then CHRO was broadcasting from Pembroke, Ontario at the time, and I'd get the channel on the rabbit ears of the TV in my bedroom, even before broadcasting went digital in the mid 2000's. As a result I missed season 7 of TNG during its original broadcast run. My grandparents, who lived about five to ten minutes away from us taped all the episodes onto VHS tape and my parents watched them, but, aside from the series finale, "All Good Things..." in 1994, I don't remember seeing any episode from the seventh season until the series began airing in reruns in the late 90's. 

Speaking of which, from 1987 to 2001, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired on Citytv as well, though by the time I got my own TV in my bedroom and started watching Citytv, TNG had just stopped airing reruns on that channel, leaving DS9 reruns on there, and the final season of Voyager, before that was replaced by Enterprise in the fall of 2001. However, when Space Channel launched in 1997, all four live action Star Trek shows at the time, began airing reruns on there. TNG is still airing on Space Channel, now known as CTV Sci-Fi thanks to that rebranding a few years ago. Space is how I saw the seventh season of TNG, but even then, I haven't seen every single episode of that season. Just whichever ones I happened to catch whenever they were airing season 7 episodes.

Besides watching TNG on TV, I also watched it on VHS. I had most of the first season and I think that's why I like the first season of TNG so much, even though many people find it a difficult season to get through. I had the entire season except for three episodes on VHS, and I watched those episodes over and over again. Especially earlier episodes from the season like "Haven", "Lonely Among Us", "The Last Outpost", and "Where No One Has Gone Before". And while I also had episodes from seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5, they became fewer as VHS began to wind down in favour of DVD. So season 1 is very nostalgic for me because, even though I didn't have TNG on TV anymore, and didn't have access to the reruns on TV, I still had those season 1 episodes on VHS and I loved watching them.

The first set of toys from TNG that I had were the original 1988 toyline from Galoob. My dad got me Commander Riker and the diecast Enterprise-D with the detachable saucer section from this barber shop that also had a small hobby store in the front. The other three figures that I had were Picard, Data, and Tasha Yar, but I didn't get them until 1992. The summer of 1992 to be exact. I got them from a very special person too.

So, in the summer of 1992, there was a Star Trek convention that was going to be happening here in Ottawa. Unfortunately, I was in the hospital and I couldn't go. This was the same summer that I got my first Star Wars comic and the vintage Kenner Star Wars action figures from the 70's and 80's, and saw the first five Star Trek movies for the first time. Anyway, because I wasn't able to go to the convention, the Starlight Wish Foundation arranged it so that the guest of the convention, Nichelle Nichols, could come visit me in the hospital. She gave me those three Galoob TNG figures, as well as my original Nintendo Game Boy, which I'll be talking about in another post, later on down the road. I still have all four figures plus the diecast model

I also got many of the TNG figures put out by Playmates Toys starting in 1992. I had almost the entire first wave of figures, including the entire Bridge crew, though for whatever reason Doctor Crusher and Tasha Yar didn't get their figures until later waves. I also had the lights and sounds Enterprise-D, shuttlecraft, tricoder, phaser, and the transporter. While I got rid of most of the figures I owned, I kept the entire main cast, as well as Q, Guinan, and Ensign Ro. I also kept the phaser, Enterprise-D, shuttle, and transporter, having given my tricorder to a friend of mine in high school before he moved away.

I also had, and still have, a ton of the trading cards. Including the 25th Anniversary set that were sold with the TOS trading cards (shown above), and the Inaugural Edition cards (also shown above). Like I said, I still have all of them. Some are in a binder with the TOS cards and some are in the original box, without any wrappers on them. 

I also have some TNG Pogs, or Stardiscs as they're called on the packaging. In fact, I actually still have all of the Pogs that I got in the late 90's. They're in my bedroom, on my bookshelf. I haven't looked at them in forever. I'm gonna do a full post on Pogs at a later date, but I wanted to talk about my TNG ones for a little bit.

I even have the original AMT Enterprise-D model kit that my dad bought for me way back in 1991 or 1992. It took him 20 years to build it, but he finished it just before we moved in 2016. Right now it's sitting on the shelf above my TV, along with my other Enterprise-D toys and models. It looks amazing on that shelf. 

My dad also bought me the TNG comic books that were published by DC from 1989 to 1995. I've talked about this comic book series alot on the blog over the years, so I won't say more about them here. This was how I got into comic books though.

I also had a bunch of the novels. Though most of these were ones I got second hand from a friend as a teenager and as an adult. I did talk about my early Star Trek novel collection last week, so I did have a few TNG novels when I was a kid.

And finally, I've been able to get the first five seasons of TNG on DVD. I got the first two about fifteen years ago or so at this point, and since then I've been able to pick up seasons 3, 4, and 5. These are the original releases from the early 2000's, not the slimmer re-releases from the early 2010's that came out around the time the show started getting released on Blu-ray. I haven't found seasons 6 or 7 yet though. Which is almost poetic in a way, because seasons 1-5 are the seasons that I watched on TV when I was a kid, and are the seasons I've seen the most times.

I'd love to own either the complete series Blu-ray set or the complete series DVD set, just so I could have seasons 6 and 7 that way. Both sets are pretty expensive, and the DVD set is simply the content from the individual season DVD sets, without any of the remastered elements that were done for the Blu-ray releases, or any of the extra bonus features that are on the Blu-rays either. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is still one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I still have "Encounter at Farpoint" on VHS, and the first five seasons on DVD, so I love putting those on from time to time to watch an episode or two. I watched it so often when I was a kid, and it truly was a comfort show for me. I might talk about this in another post, but TNG was the last really popular Star Trek series with general audiences, as DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all struggled with their ratings throughout their runs. Those three shows had less merchandise commercially available as well. The toys for DS9 and Voyager weren't available here in Canada even though Playmates Toys still released the toylines for Generations in 1994 and First Contact in 1996 here. But for whatever reason their DS9 and Voyager toylines weren't available here, so people had to go to the U.S. to get them. 

I think that's it for me for today. I'll have another post out for you on Monday. Next week is an interesting week because I have appointments on both Wednesday and Friday. So I think I'll do my "My Star Wars Experience" post on Thursday. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be writing about yet, but I do have some ideas in mind. I also have my topic for Monday's post decided on too. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.