The Best and Worst of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Sci-Fi Optimism
 

I agree with most of that, but I do like "The Schizoid Man" episode more than they seem to.

Doing anything to get laid and being able to rationalize it as respecting another culture.

I'd agree with most of their good and bad picks. Never was a fan of 'Phantasms' or 'A Fistful of Data's' myself, but 'Aquiel' is definitely one of the worst ever TNG's. I also quite like 'The Schizoid Man' to this day. I used to like it when Spiner could play Data with some menace.

Interesting how it's mostly season 1 episodes that are looked on badly.

Ethics was poor, Force of Nature was poor... which are both 'philosophical' episodes.

Am pleased Frame of Mind got a mention, has always been a personal favourite.

Oh, season 1 always gets a bad wrap.

I dunno, sometimes it feels like it's the easiest season of TNG to rip on while ignoring plenty of equally good 'bad' candidates over the final two years of the show.

Season 7 certainly has a fair number of duds. I've always liked series 6 though, I thought the only dud was Aquiel, there's a good number of really great episodes to more then balance out the few mediocre ones like man of the People and Rightful Heir.

There are more S6 episodes that I like than S7 I think, because for me S7 wasn't that strong at all but I feel that S5 was the last season of the show to be broadly and consistently stronger on average. I think it was one of the peak seasons around that general peak of S3 - S5 that TNG had.

But on balance I would always take the first two years over the final two for the most part.