The Best of Both Worlds, followed by A Call to Arms in the top two spots. Yeah, I’m on board with that.
Chain of Command isn’t a season finale but it deserves mention as well. Those final two seasons of TNG are setting the stage for DS9 and Chain of Command was the last episode before DS9 premiered, which really let us see what the Cardassians were about for the first time.
Chain of Commend is a weird one for me as I feel rather conflicted about it. On one hand, you want to hate Capt. Jelico for being an inflexible hardass and side with Riker out of loyalty, and this gets worse when we see Jelico make tactical errors and generally act like an insecure jerk with the Cardassians and Riker calls him out for being so cavalier and careless with regards to the lives of Picard, Crusher, and Worf, but, in retrospect, Riker is subordinate and intentionally bad at his job out of stubbornness and Jelico is right to discipline him, regardless of being a bad captain, which he kind of is, despite his successful negotiations with the Cardassians, which, itself, seems more like a combination of luck, the good work of the Enterprise crew, and good timing combined with catching the Cardassians with their pants down than any single thing Jelico did. His so-called “specialty” at handling the Cardassians amounted to mostly yelling at them and making them wait in the observation lounge while he unsuccessfully tried to convince Counselor Troi what a badass he was in his ready room.
The Best of Both Worlds, followed by A Call to Arms in the top two spots. Yeah, I’m on board with that.
Chain of Command isn’t a season finale but it deserves mention as well. Those final two seasons of TNG are setting the stage for DS9 and Chain of Command was the last episode before DS9 premiered, which really let us see what the Cardassians were about for the first time.
Chain of Commend is a weird one for me as I feel rather conflicted about it. On one hand, you want to hate Capt. Jelico for being an inflexible hardass and side with Riker out of loyalty, and this gets worse when we see Jelico make tactical errors and generally act like an insecure jerk with the Cardassians and Riker calls him out for being so cavalier and careless with regards to the lives of Picard, Crusher, and Worf, but, in retrospect, Riker is subordinate and intentionally bad at his job out of stubbornness and Jelico is right to discipline him, regardless of being a bad captain, which he kind of is, despite his successful negotiations with the Cardassians, which, itself, seems more like a combination of luck, the good work of the Enterprise crew, and good timing combined with catching the Cardassians with their pants down than any single thing Jelico did. His so-called “specialty” at handling the Cardassians amounted to mostly yelling at them and making them wait in the observation lounge while he unsuccessfully tried to convince Counselor Troi what a badass he was in his ready room.