I have started to rewatch TNG as a reward for the relentless studying I (try/have to) do. Starting out with the first season and the pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint". I should state, that TNG is by a long shot my favorite Trek series. I have grown up with the german version of the series and holf it very dear. The DVD rerun is presented in original language.
I realised how very different the first episodes are from what I have become used to in later seasons. I don't think too highly of EaF, I don't see it as a very good pilot, but that is not the point of this posting.
Here I want to talk about Data first. How he is characterised and sometimes used as a comic relief (See the chineese finger trap in "The Last Outpost" or his discovery of Sherlock Holmes (the pipe, the speech, the reasoning). Or the nice talks Geordi and Data use to have. Data seems to be like a child, grasping new things every minute of every hour. I like that very much and wonder if it is acutally there in later seasons of TNG or was dropped. This surely is what became the basement of the huge liking the fans took for Data and his character during the course of the show.
From an acting point of view, the gestures and mimics Spiner displays are much more intense than I remember them from later seasons. There are more smirks, funny faces and so on. Spiner is doing great work!
From an acting point of view I am impressed at the 'young' Patrick Stewart and extremely dissapointed of what Gates McFadden displays, especially when she has to act near or with medical instruments.
So far I have re-discovered:
Enounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now (funny to place such a storyline at the very beginning of the first season of a new series...)
Code of Honour[The One With Lutan...(added the right name)]
The Last Outpost
Where No One Has Gone Before What sort of Rank pin does Kosinsky have?
Lonely Among Us (and Picard, after deciding to leave everything behind on a whim, is allowed to keep command of the flagship? Really? Aside from that, nice episode. Has the character of Mr. Singh the dubios honour of being the first casualty of the new Enterprises missions?)
Just rumbling, more to come, sooner or later.