When Star Trek: TNG said goodbye on May 23, 1994

Star Trek: TNG came to an end on May 23, 1994

We knew it was coming. Star Trek: The Next Generation couldn’t go on forever, but we’d had such wonderful stories for seven seasons, and we weren’t ready to let it go. Each and every Star Trek fan dreaded May 23, 1994 as that would be the last time we’d get a new television episode of the series. We’d have the movies later, but it wasn’t the same as looking forward to that weekly episode. But fans didn’t get a vote, and the series wrapped with the unforgettable two-parter, “All Good Things,” which saw the return of Q and wrapped up the trial from the first episode “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Here we are, twenty-seven years later, and none of us could have ever guessed that TNG would still have this kind of impact. We’ve seen the characters on other series, listened to the actors share stories at conventions, and were happy to see the return of Jean-Luc Picard, now Admiral, in his own series.

It’s been twenty-seven years since TNG left our screens

Still, it isn’t the same. Data is gone, having sacrificed himself in Star Trek: Nemesis. Later, in Picard, he asked Picard to terminate his consciousness. So we’ll never see Lt. Commander Data again. Captain Riker and Counselor Troi now live on a planet with their daughter, and except for a brief return to space to help Admiral Picard, Riker is retired from Starfleet. We don’t know much about the lives of the rest of the crew from the Enterprise, and while one or more may show up on Patrick Stewart’s current series, things will never go back to the way they were when everyone was together.

We know that life moves on. People change. Actors take different roles, become new characters, but we will always miss our weekly dose of The Next Generation. Twenty-seven years later, we still talk about, watch it, and read everything we can about it and the actors because the series meant something to us. It still does.