Star Trek: The Next Generation: After Seven Years All Good Things Come to an End

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well for a Sunday morning here in 2026. Today we're going back to 1994 to talk about the series finale of a show that defied all expectations of a spin-off from a '60s Sci-Fi show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. The POV for this post is someone who just watched "All Good Things..." the night before and is now writing about it on the early internet message boards. Let's get into it.

Seven years ago Captain Picard and the new crew of the USS Enterprise were put on trial by the entity known as Q for the crimes that Humanity had committed over the centuries. However, they were also placed on trial by Star Trek fans, or Trekkers as they are sometimes referred to. To them Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were sacred that could and should never be replaced. They were skeptical of this new show, without their favourite characters and ship in it. Yet, despite the show's rough first season, it soared, overtaking its parent series by 99 episodes and four seasons in terms of the number of stories.

As a Trekker myself, I too was skeptical when it was announced that Star Trek was returning to television, but without the familiar cast and setting. Set 100 years after the time of Kirk and Spock? A older captain? A Klingon on the bridge as a regular character? It was crazy. Yet, I had faith in Gene Roddenberry, and if he said that this is what the show would be, then it was fine with me.

"All Good Things..." does an incredible job at bookending the show with the story established in "Encounter at Farpoint" back in 1987. The writers of the episode, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, weren't even working on the show when "Farpoint" aired. Yet, they crafted an episode that feels like Picard, Riker, Data, Geordi, Worf, Beverly, and Deanna have come full circle. Which gives me great hope for the upcoming movie, Star Trek Generations as they also wrote the movie according to what I've seen in various news articles. 

It was wonderful to see Denise Crosby and Colm Meaney back as Tasha Yar and Miles O'Brien, even though O'Brien seems to be doing very well over on Deep Space Nine. I thought the cast did a wonderful job playing three different versions of themselves. Particularly Patrick Stewart as Picard, as he carries the weight of the episode on him.

This was a great end to a fantastic show. While season 7 has been all over the place in terms of quality, it still had some very solid episodes, despite the production crew also working on DS9, the upcoming movie, and the fourth show in the franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, which I believe is set to debut in early 1995, similar to how they premiered Deep Space Nine last year. 

Here in 2026 I watched "All Good Things..." on VHS to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the episode's premiere. But back in 1994, I was 7 years old and we lived in an old log farmhouse, where we didn't have cable. May 23rd, 1994 was a Monday, so we didn't actually watch it until the Saturday after the episode aired. My grandparents taped the episode off of TV for us and didn't get the tape to us until that weekend. I do remember all five of us, sitting upstairs in the play area that my siblings and I had, watching the episode together, as we would later do with the series premiere of Voyager in January, 1995.

Alright my friends, that's all for me for today. Don't forget, here at My Nostalgia Blog it's always the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s. So, whenever you need an escape from the real world, come down here and hang out for a while. Until next time, have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Peace out!