A Poorly Edited Captain's Log

The latest edition of The Star Trek-TNG Companion is something of a disappointment. Written once again by Larry Nemecek, the book takes readers from TNG's inception, through its seven years on T.V., to Nemesis, the latest feature film. Like the previous editions, the book offers episode synopsies, season overviews, film plots, credits, black and white photos and behind the scenes interviews and trivia. Sounds comprehensive right? It's not. The basic problem I have with the book is that it has a lot of inaccurate information. As an example, the entry for The Naked Now on page 32, mentions another episode called Attached. It states that the latter was a sixth season show. But later has the Attached entry in its rightful place as a seventh season show. Clearly, this is a mistake that should have been picked up by someone, an editor maybe? I would be able to overlook one or two errors like this, however, there are several more, just like that one. Another issue that bothers me is the fact that some of the entries for certain episodes are still outdated. There is no mention of the passing of actors classic cast DeForest Kelly, or Mark Lenard. Both men appeared on the show. I know this probably sounds minor to some. But when one thinks about what these men did for Star Trek in general, you would think something more would have been mentioned as a tribute...

It seems as though Nemecek and his editors just wanted to concern themselves with updating the end of the book and the last 3 films. The book reads like "a rush job" I expected the same amount of care that went into the DS9 Companion with this book. While it does have a lot of interesting stuff about TNG within its pages, I have read better researched episode/film guides about the show. Recommended read only if you must The book has 372 pages, a new introduction by Nemecek, and several indices

Short, sweet compliment to the DVDs

The synposis of the plots are quick and to the point--which is what a synposis is supposed to do provide a brief snapshot of a film or television episode. I love having this book around as I can never remember the title (or season) many of my fav episodes are on (Hollow Pursuits was one I couldn't recall for example and this book pointed me to the right DVD). By all rights an abridged version of this should have been included for each season of the DVDs.

The pictures are plentiful and although I would have preferred more backstory on the making of each episode (as well as behind the scenes photos), the info on each episode is fascinating. While this book doesn't sweep out all the dirt on the difficulities of Next Gen (for an accurate, well rounded story of the difficulties during Gene Roddenberry's second series I'd recommend Joel Engel's informed and well researched biography of the Great Bird of the Galaxy), there are a number of comments that hint at the difficult birth of Next Gen among them the large number of writer/producers that came and went prior to the arrival of Michael Pillar.

Next Gen really hit its stride during it's third and fourth season maintaining the quality for the bulk of the run of the series. Nemecek honestly asseses some of the worst episodes and the best. His comments from many of the writers also provides insight into the community writing method used to keep the quality high on Next Gen scripts. While this could and did work against some fine episodes, it also enhanced many of the best shows.

There is an exhaustive credit list of the writers/directors and guest actors for each episode. While this isn't the perfect Next Gen companion (perhaps an unoffical one will dig a little deeper into the struggles of the show and it's creative apex), it does provide a brief overview of each episode, credits and fairly objective overview on the various episodes strengths and weaknesses.

Disappointing

I agree with one of the other reviewers. The Next Gen. Companion pales in comparison to the DS9 Companion.

The photos in the Next/Gen companion are poorly printed. The episode summaries are minimalistic.

Overall it seems the Next/Gen Compannion was rushed. I guess its good if you need to look up a quick/basic fact about an episode, but it doesn't have the WOW factor that the DS9 Companion has