I had grown up on the writings of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, but I had watched the original 1960s Star Trek only in reruns. During freshman year, I had fought for the dorm lounge television with people who preferred The Late Show With David Letterman over some old show with people wearing colorful pajamas, odd makeup, or both. But we were a small but dedicated band, and we made it to the stars. Among the friends I met then was my future wife.

Over the course of many late nights and foosball games, I learned about the United Federation of Planets, its Starfleet, and the Prime Directive that forbade its explorers from interfering in the internal affairs or development of alien worlds. The so-called "Wagon Train to the stars" combined Westerns with ray guns, and mythology with scientific speculation.

By the time TNG began, I was indeed a Trekkie — or "Trekker," as some prefer — having learned the cant among the franchise's fans: phasers, warp speed, and the Vulcan nerve pinch and salute. Of the eventual six movies with the space opera's original cast, the best two — Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and IV: The Voyage Home — had already been released. Thanks to magazines such as Starlog and various "technical manuals," I learned about transporters and Jeffries tubes (the access tunnels throughout starships, named after an original series art director). Around Thanksgiving of 1987, I would attend my first science fiction convention, one run by Creation Entertainment in New York.

It's also worth remembering the context into which this Enterprise was launched — that, despite the success of multimedia franchises such as Planet of the Apes and Star Wars, there was little genre entertainment on television at that time. As we look forward to 2007's premieres of Heroes, Lost, or Battlestar Galactica: Razor, among others, note that 20 years ago, there was only Stephen Spielberg's anthology Amazing Stories, horror drama Friday the 13th: the Series, and another Earth-based movie spin-off, Starman. Weak visual effects, even weaker writing, and a lack of interest among mainstream viewers and networks had doomed all but the U.K.'s Doctor Who to short lifespans or syndication.

Fortunately, syndication gave TNG the time it needed to develop, unlike many shows until The X-Files. Many fans of the original crew and earlier Trek films had difficulty accepting a new cast and style. The captain was now a bald Frenchman rather than a Kennedyesque Canadian-American; the jumpsuits and military uniforms were now spandex (later with 1980s shoulderpads); and the acting and scripts/dialogue were a bit stiff. I found the first episode, "Encounter at Farpoint", to be slow, preachy, and not particularly promising.

But it soon grew on me, and at a time in my life when I wasn't watching much TV, I was pleasantly surprised to see TNG and, by extension, science fiction working its way back into mainstream consciousness. The strength of the show was not its pyrotechnics (which were better than in the 1960s) but in the heroic ensemble cast.

Patrick Stewart as the noble Capt. Jean-Luc Picard solved problems more often with diplomacy than with fisticuffs. Other memorable characters included Brent Spiner's Asimovian android Data, who yearned to be more human, and Michael Dorn's warrior Worf, who wanted to be more Klingon. LeVar Burton, as eventual chief engineer Geordi La Forge, was actually the best known actor at the time.

Despite the occasional bad writing, I came to appreciate creator Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of the future, in which the best and brightest from hundreds of inhabited planets came together for the shared goals of exploration and defending galactic peace. Over time, even supporting characters became like family, and many episodes revisited humanistic themes and even specific plots from the original series, strengthening archetypes that nearly every genre show has followed since then: time travel, alternate universes, court martials, and so on.

But there can be no drama without conflict, and TNG reintroduced the classic adversaries of belligerent Klingons and scheming Romulans. While the mercantile Ferengi turned out to be better for comic relief, the nearly omnipotent "Q" (John de Lancie, following a long line of godlike beings in the otherwise agnostic or atheist Star Trek), martial Cardassians, and cybernetic, collective Borg transcended a mere TV show where the weapons were really made of plastic and the sets of plywood. Just as Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock are now part of popular culture, so too are the nightmarish Borg, which columnists for Computerworld still refer to.

By its third year, TNG became a worthy successor to Roddenberry's legacy, even as the "great bird of the galaxy" was in failing health. The introduction of the Borg, the Klingon civil war, and incremental character development (including the return of Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher) started a balancing act between purely episodic plots and longer story arcs that continues to this day. Yes, TNG is in hindsight rather static, but it laid the groundwork for the more arc-driven shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and the aforementioned Lost and Heroes.

Many of my favorite episodes — "Yesterday's Enterprise", "Sins of the Father", "Sarek" and "The Best of Both Worlds" — are from Season 3. (Yes, we Trekkies like to refer to specific episodes by title.) Unlike some of its descendants, the crew of the starship Enterprise (registry NCC-1701-D) was composed of the best and brightest who were able to rise to the greatest challenges and still be sympathetic people.

As the Cold War ended in the real world, Star Trek continued exemplifying SF as social allegory. On the other hand, Roddenberry's direction of the franchise relaxed, the story arcs and character development got stronger, if not always successfully. Star Trek, and indeed much genre fiction, has shown few happy families, competent admirals, or foes who don't eventually get watered down.

The eventual trend toward a "darker" tone was offset in TNG by lighter character studies, allowing even underdeveloped characters such as Marina Sirtis' Counselor Troi and Wil Wheaton's ensign Wesley Crusher to evolve past a touchy-feely pseudoshrink and an annoying child genius, respectively. Author David Brin has lauded the Federation's meritocracy, which has made the novels and various books and games based on Star Trek (one of the largest shared universes in SF, if you count all the contributors) especially accessible.

The show was further strengthened by guest stars: from Whoopi Goldberg as recurring bartender Guinan, to physicist Stephen Hawking as himself in a holodeck scene, to members of the original cast (most notably Mark Lenard and Leonard Nimoy as ur-Vulcans Sarek and Spock, respectively). In fact, like its later peers, Quantum Leap, Highlander, and Lois & Clark, many actors passed through TNG on their way to later success.

By the time TNG wound down in 1994, it had earned its place among the best SF shows of all time. Its seven-year lifespan has guaranteed many years of reruns in syndication, and it launched spin-offs Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Star Trek: Voyager. The Enterprise-D continued its voyage on the silver screen, though I feel that the movies featuring the Next Gen cast focused too much on conflict rather than on crew's strengths of diplomacy and friendship, but they each had something to offer the fans.

The seventh Star Trek film, Generations, finally had Captains Kirk and Picard meet, even if the plot was a bit muddled. First Contact was the best, using the Borg and the Enterprise-E. Insurrection and Nemesis tried to bring back some intrigue and family, but weren't strong enough to retain interest from the general audience.

DS9 continued Roddenberry's ideals as it continued to explore post-Cold War uncertainty and conflict with an even stronger ensemble. The Odyssey-inspired Voyager and retconning Enterprise were weaker, to the point that Trek is now taking a break before Paramount and J.J. Abrams attempt to reboot it with the eleventh movie in 2008.

Fortunately, TNG's influence can still be seen. The story arcs of non-Trek space operas Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Serenity/Firefly, and the revisionist Battlestar Galactica all share ideas and sometimes writers and actors from Trek. While this subgenre of SF is not as popular at the moment as cyberpunk, comic book superheroes, or alien conspiracies, I continue to be inspired by the intrepid cast and crew of The Next Generation.

To my fellow Trekkers, may you Live Long and Prosper –

— Gene

GeneD is a lifelong science fiction fan and a copy editor at Computerworld magazine near Boston. As "Ensign Barney Blintz" and "Capt. Tzu Tien Lung," he participated in various Star Trek RPGs. Read his blog at http://360.yahoo.com/edemaitre.

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• To Everything, There Is a Season
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

However, not all was breathless anticipation. All our favorite characters were gone. (Or so we thought!) How could it be Star Trek without Spock? And what on Earth(!) was this rumor that a Klingon was part of the crew!

Nevertheless, when the big night finally arrived, wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from the TV! In the opening sequence, I mourned the loss of the haunting theme from the original series and groaned at the politically correct change to, "Where no one has gone before…" And as the episode progressed, my fears deepened as it turned into the type of episode I always liked least — some omnipotent being ("Q") was playing havoc with the laws of time and space. I wanted science fiction, not fantasy!

But there were highlights, too. It almost brought tears to my eyes when Admiral McCoy came aboard, providing a physical, connecting link to the past. (Little did we know that Spock and Scotty would also reappear.) The new Enterprise was a work of art, much more streamlined than the old model (so very important in the vacuum of space…), though it still suffered from the same inexplicable ability to provide seatbelts for the bridge crew! The computer still had the same wonderful "voice", another link with the past. The computer consoles were beautiful, as was Counselor Cleavage, err, Troi.

Eventually the episode ended, and for all my misgivings about the changes (Data was no Spock!), I knew I would be back next week. Well, mostly. I'm ashamed to admit I missed some of the early episodes, but a strange thing happened as the series progressed. I found I was growing to like the new characters in their own right, and I was enjoying their interactions and personalities. And an even stranger thing happened. My wife, a profoundly non-SF person, was also enjoying the series. (It didn't hurt getting to watch Will Riker each week!) They had managed to make the show appeal to more than just the Trekkies out there.

The rest (of the future of the future) is history. The Next Generation (and the other Star Trek spin-offs) were not the prime-time success in Australia that they were in the USA, leading to unusual broadcast schedules. I was often forced to watch or record episodes at midnight (or later!) — but watch them all I did. I grew to love the show, and like many people I believe it was the best of all the Star Treks. Certainly I grew to feel that the crew members were part of a family, one I was almost a part of myself. I laughed with them, worried for them, and yes, even cried with them. Picard was an outstanding captain — far better than Kirk, IMHO. Worf taught us all about "honor". And Data was a wonderful character for the scriptwriters to "play" with.

But he never did supplant Spock as one of my favorite non-humans of all time.

Peter Watson is old enough to remember watching the original Star Trek at home in Australia in glorious black-and-white. As a software engineer he gets to hang out with other people who know something about Star Trek. Visit his Web site at http://www.peter-watson.net/

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• To Everything, There Is a Season
• The Human Condition
• The Voyage Continues
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

There are many ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. Various fan collectives offer thematically-related content, so if you like time travel or Q, you're bound to be satisfied — unless you dwell on what these packages miss, such as "Future's End". For my money, The Jean-Luc Picard Collection is the best value, as I prefer episodes that offer not an anomaly of the week, but significant, focused character development. "Tapestry", "Darmok", and "The Inner Light" are worth their weight in latinum, and with the former two both coming from season five, perhaps that is the series' best season. Other fifth-season episodes "I, Borg", "The Perfect Mate" (another Picard episode, and one which first unites Patrick Stewart with Famke Janssen, prior to their X-Men team-up), Spock's return in the two-part "Unification", and the first half of "Time's Arrow" supports this theory.

But only with the new, complete DVD collection can you get all the above along with gems like "The Best of Both Worlds", "Yesterday's Enterprise", and "Relics" — so if you have money to burn, take the good with the bad and splurge on all seven seasons (plus exclusive features and documentaries). But if you don't, then what season (or fan collective) do you recommend, and for what episodes?

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• T-Minus One Week and Counting
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• The Voyage Continues
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

The first of these factors is the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. Most of the surface of the earth has now been explored and men now turn on the exploration of outer space as their next objective.

"Where no one has gone before…" Gene Roddenberry took these words to heart, and less than a decade later, he went there — and brought the world with him.

His original Star Trek, which turned 40 last year, may not initially have been a commercial success; but its successor, true to its title, inspired the next generation of television viewers to look up. The passion the Star Trek franchise has stirred in its audience has proven timeless, and its impact on not just our popular culture, but on our scientific progress, is immeasurable. One space industry executive wrote, "We are in the commercial space flight industry and would like to testify that at least one out of two of all the actual entrepreneurs involved in this industry has been inspired by Star Trek."

Though Kirk, Spock, and McCoy marked the beginning, it was Picard, Riker, Data, and company that cemented the franchise in our hearts and souls. And we here at Showbits cannot fail to observe the beginning of that golden era.

September 28th marks twenty years since Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired. To commemorate this historic anniversary, we'll be blogging about Star Trek every day this week, culminating on Friday. We'll be providing news, retrospectives, analyses, and more. They'll be fun, nostalgic, thought-provoking, and who knows what else. So please join us on this wagon train to the stars… The sky's the limit!

Also in the TNG at 20 series:

• To Everything, There Is a Season
• Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Spock Gone?
• The Human Condition
• The Voyage Continues
• But Don't Take My Word For It
• A Good Day to Die

"Kirk vs. Picard" is a fanfic contest, hosted by fan site FanLib.com and sponsored by CBS and StarTrek.com. In it, George Takei and Wil Wheaton host video segments that describe four scripts (by Star Trek writer Andre Bormanis) that bring Picard and Kirk against each other. All four involve some sort of temporal travel, be it the Guardian of Forever, cryonic suspension, or even the return of Khan (but no Temporal Cold War). Once fans select script, a scene will be presented, with fans invited to write how the scene will play out. Voting will then be held to determine the best scene to adopt into the story's canon before moving on to another round. Authors of the winning scripts will be eligible to win grand prizes.

Too much effort? Simply signing up for the contest and casting your vote will enter you in a drawing to win prizes, which may include MacBooks, iPhones, and more.

Despite posting about it here, I'm not excited by this contest. The videos by Takei and Wheaton are stilted — why can't they look at the camera? — and the scripts seem forced. Besides, does anyone really care which captain would win in a fight? Certainly it isn't as important as the great Mike vs. Joel debate. Can't we already tell that the story will end with both captains cooperating to a common goal, in true Starfleet fashion, and then a giant "reset" button being pushed, returning them to their respective eras?

But just because the contest isn't for me doesn't mean it isn't for everyone. May the best geek win — and may the Schwartz be with you.

Now at StarTrek.com is a survey to determine the contents of the next two box sets. This survey was originally offered last year, and whether it's been opened again intentionally or accidentally is unknown — but it's still a fascinating look at the themes and figures of Star Trek.

The survey proposes that The Captains Collective Edition and The Alternate Realities Collective Edition will join those earlier sets that focused on Borg, Kirk, Q, and Klingons. (Apparently the Jean-Luc Collection has been retconned?) The questionnaire presents a predetermined list of Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and "other captains" (or first officers acting as captains) episodes and asks you to select your favorite five in each of the six categories, or suggest your own. The survey also accepts suggestions of alternative reality episodes to include with the eight Mirror Universe episodes.

Finally, the survey offers the open-ended opportunity to suggest themes for other new box sets. Here are mine:

Data: everyone's favorite android! This Pinocchi-like character provided some poignant and comical moments. Over the course of The Next Generation's seven seasons, we met his father, mother, brother, and daughter. He learned to laugh, whistle, paint, and tap dance. Why not compile his best episodes? They'd include "Data's Day", "A Fistful of Datas", "The Measure of a Man", "Birthright", "Datalore", "Brothers", "Descent", "Time's Arrow", "Inheritance", and "The Offspring", to name a few.

Holograms: like them or not, holodecks and their photonic force fields comprised key settings and characters throughout the series. Data's greatest enemy, Odo's best friend, and Kes' only mentor were all holograms. Let's have one package where we can watch the manipulations of Prof. Moriarty ("Elementary, Dear Data", "Ship in a Bottle"), the tips and tunes of Vic Fontaine ("Badda-Bing Badda-Bang"), and the development of Voyager's Doctor ("Author, Author", "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy").

What episodes or box sets would you most like to see? Take the survey, then share your thoughts here!

I have a love-hate relationship with the Bard — he almost kept me from graduating from high school — but I find his works more palatable when correlated with my preferred media of musical and film. Engaging in five community theater productions a year, I enjoyed my most recent experience participating in Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate — a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. (But I've not seen the more modern, less musical adaptation of his classic tale, that being Ten Things I Hate About You.)

I extended this penchant for connections and adaptations a few years ago, when I took a remedial college course on Shakespeare and his work. The professor offered us a number of topics on which to write our term paper, but none of them were about Hamlet. Having learned the prince's famous monologue from watching Johnny Carson, I noticed three movies take their titles from the soliloquy: To Be or Not to Be; What Dreams May Come; and The Undiscovered Country (Star Trek VI). I focused on one and produced a paper comparing Hamlet to Jack Benny's role in his 1942 comedy (not Mel Brooks' 1983 remake). The paper, entitled "Your Country or Your Life", was fun to write and even more fun to present — with selected clips from the film — at a regional Shakespeare conference.

So I guess my qualm isn't with the material, but with the presentation. Put it in a more popular, easily consumable format, and I'll happily bear witness to the staying power of the Bard. But as originally written? Give me The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged) anyday.

My immersion in Trek lore had, unfortunately, not protected me from some spoilers. I knew some of the plots, such as that the divergence between The Original Series and The Next Generation Klingons would be explained; that there'd be a Mirror Universe episode; and of the guest stars and casualties of the finale. I can't imagine how blown away I'd've been had these stories come as complete surprises.

And speaking of blown away, it was masterful to incorporate actual footage from the Star Trek: First Contact film into the opening of the two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly". I was intrigued to see how this episode would connect to the primary universe, and it took some time for me to suspect there may not be a direct correlation; I was impressed when they carried it out. Greater familiarity with TOS would've helped, as I recognized the eponymous Tholian web, but not the Defiant (which proved to not be Deep Space Nine's little ship, though it was still a lot of fun to see the NX-01 crew on a recreated, TOS-era ship!). Though this episode had little impact on Enterprise Prime or the founding of the United Federation of Planets, I am eager to see its implications in the current trend of Mirror Universe novels.

Another neat pair of episodes were the series antepenultimate and penultimate two-parters "Demons" and "Terra Prime", which featured Harry Groener (the villainous mayor from Buffy; also a guest star on an early episode of TNG) as the good guy, and Peter Weller (the heroic Robocop) as the bad guy. It was in this episode that Ensign Sato finally showed some balls, demonstrating some believable character development after four years.

And that's probably what I loved best about the fourth season: the development of characters. This season took a different tact to storytelling, employing multiple arcs that took several episodes to tell. While TNG might've fit 22 major plots into 22 episodes, Enterprise fit only 12 — many of them more substantial than we've come to expect from the already-voluminous Star Trek universe. I felt a bit more like I was watching Deep Space Nine and its far-reaching Dominion War than Voyager's "alien/space anomaly of the week". Enterprise saw major changes not only for individuals, like Soval and Shran, but also for relationships, both personal and political: T'Pol and Trip; Phlox and Enterprise; Starfleet and Section 31; Andorians and Tellarites alike.

It all culminated in a finale that was… odd. I can see the value of the frame they gave it, but it also detracted from the series' main characters by focusing on others (and adding little to them). The situation that Archer and Trip found themselves in was completely unnecessary, predicated by foolishness and unpreparedness. So my qualm is not with Trip's handling of the situation, but with landing himself in that jam in the first place. The finale did not provide the positive closure I appreciated in TNG, Voyager, or DS9 (and not once in the fourth season was the Temporal Cold War ever resolved or even mentioned).

The finale's last ten seconds, though, were extremely moving. It created a context in which the impact of each of the three eras of Trek on each other is irrefutable, summing up this series' implications for me. Star Trek has been on the air continuously for 18 years, and I'm just finishing it now, stretching that span to 20 years — over two-thirds of my life. It's helped me define my interests, my values, my aspirations. Now it's gone, and though its return to the silver screen is predicted for Christmas 2008, Star Trek is, first and foremost, a vehicle of the television medium, and whether it ever returns there remains to be seen.

Of greater concern to me is whether humanity will ever achieve a utopia on the scale of the 24th — or even 22nd — century. Is Archer and his flawed era someone we can relate and aspire to? Can we put aside our differences and unite to realize a shared and optimistic vision of our future? Or is Star Trek fated to be nothing more than science fiction? Doesn't Gene Roddenberry's dream deserve to be our own? Don't we deserve that for ourselves?