Due to some fortuitous factors, I was able to complete my season six overview in one day. One day! I believe that’s a first. Click the above photo or right here to read my full season six overview. I’ll provide some excerpts and summaries below.
More than one writer and actor on TNG considers season six to the best season they ever did. Usually by season six of a television series the decline is quality is starting to become apparent, but not here.
Season six was a season of some trepidation, at least initially. This was the year that the contracts for all the principal actors was up. This was the year a new Star Trek spinoff was slated to begin. Gene Roddenberry, the great bird of the galaxy, was dead. Would this be the last season for TNG? Would this new series be any good at all? The question of whether TNG would continue was not officially settled until April of 1993, when Rick Berman–the showrunner now–announced that there would be a TNG movie coming out by Christmas of 1994, following the seventh and final season of The Next Generation.
It was high times to be a Star Trek fan. In January of 1993 Star Trek Deep Space Nine began, and ushered in an unprecedented age, an era in which there were two Star Trek shows simultaneously on the air. The ratings for DS9 was a syndication-high of 18.8 for the season. Meanwhile, TNG’s numbers were so strong that they beat the World Series in 1992! There began to be actual camps to teach folks Klingon! The studio-estimated sales of all Trek products up to that point hit $2 billion, and the majority of the over-100 Star Trek novels written at that point were New York Times bestsellers.
Season six is overall one of the very strongest in terms of the number of high quality episodes. The Next Generation wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, but fans were shown that a series in its sixth season could still churn out some of the very best writing, acting and directing on television.
Looking forward to your reviews of season six episodes, thanks!