The Next Generation

Husband and I recently introduced our next generation to Star Trek: The Next Generation.  We all watched Encounter at Farpoint for our family movie night.  The older kids enjoyed it a lot.  I'm not sure Bekah cared much one way or the other.  There was popcorn, and we were all together, so she was happy.

Cliche, I know, but Husband the engineer loves Star Trek.  I'm not sure if I had watched it prior to watching it with him many years ago.  I became hooked, and now we are hooking the junior geeks.  We are always on the lookout for family friendly movies or tv shows that we can all enjoy.  If you are very familiar with TNG, you know that not all of the episodes fall into that category.  Fortunately, Husband and I have most of them memorized, and know which ones to avoid ;)

When we were newly married in the early 1990's, the show ran in reruns every night after the 10:00 news.  Husband was in the Navy, in nuclear power school, and he didn't get home in time to watch it.  I would watch, VCR running, remote in hand, and take out all of the commercials.  For years we had dozens of VHS tapes, all carefully labeled, with the episodes in order.  TNG is responsible for me being able to properly use the word "conundrum".  Yes, I was married and more than half way to a college degree, and had never encountered the word until I saw it as an episode title.  Then I had to break out the dictionary.  Because I'm old, and when I was in college we didn't have the internet.

                                 co·nun·drum     /kəˈnəndrəm/

                                 Noun:  A confusing and difficult problem or question.
                                            A question asked for amusement, typically one
                                            with a pun in its answer; a riddle.

We agree on most aspects of the show.  Namely, that Picard is awesome, Troi incredibly annoying, and Data and LaForge the ones we'd most like to hang out with (at least that's what we thought in 1992 when we weren't old enough to be their parents).  Also, Riker with the beard looked enough like my Dad to freak me out a little initially.

 

I look forward to more family movie nights with the crew of NCC-1701-D.  Datalore is a classic, and Time Squared and Timescape should freak the kids out enough to amuse me.

Are you a TNG fan?  What about the original and all of the later permutations?  What's your favorite TNG episode?  Let me know in the comments.