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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

That's one aspect, but TNG never had multi-season or even more than two-episode story arcs, and while the characters develop from season to season, you rarely see a character appear to remember anything from past episodes, as syndication usually aired episodes out of order.

I remember many complaints about B5 being incomprehensible because broadcasters were airing episodes randomly.

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You're generally correct about TNG, but I think that Worf's development and the machinations within the Klingon High Council roughly constitute a story arc that ran through the series.

Thank you, Ron Moore, who probably deserves at least a fractional share of the credit for the evolution of genre TV from the episodic structure of the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s to the serialized structure we take for granted today.

Hard to believe now, but at the time shows that embraced multi-episode character arcs and season-long plots ran a risk of being tarred as soap operas.

ahhh that would explain why Twin Peaks embraced the soap opera thing

The closest thing that TNG has is the Lore and Borg episodes. Picard’s assimilation and the Battle of Wolf 359 has resonated across episodes and series. “The Best of Both Worlds” arc doesn’t fully end until s4e2’s “Family”.

I can play devil's advocate to the syndication approach, to some extent. The current season of Picard is actually fun and it's continuing story arcs and providing all the member berries anyone would want....

But it isn't about ideas or ethical debates like the first 5 Trek series were. So while I'm happy to see so many characters come back, I definitely miss the old concept of self-contained episodes.

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