Wow, “All Good Things…” is 20-years old. It’s still a shining example of what Trek in the mid-90’s could be. It’s quite telling that Brannon Braga and Ron D. Moore excitedly hammered out this loving wrap-up to Next Gen in a matter of days, while with Generations they spent much more time on it, fretting about the motion picture debut of the TNG crew, and it is hardly the unanimous success that “All Good Things…” is.
“All Good Things…” is great TNG-era Trek.
While I’m talking about Star Trek...
It’s hard for me to say that All Good Things is the absolute best episode of Star Trek, but it’s up there with the best of them. It’s an irony too in that it follows up on what happened in the pilot episode, acting as the other book end to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and yet the pilot is awful. All Good Things is perhaps the best series finale I have ever seen for any TV show and it is highly recommended, although, as a finale, it does not stand on its own. You need to be generally familiar with the rest of the show.
I will say that one thing that has always bugged me related to what happens here, is that in the films, they ignored the fact that Worf and Deanna were falling in love and put Deanna and Riker together. That was never a present tense thing anywhere in the series, it was a past tense thing and it was over. I really loved the romance between Worf and Deanna that we see really moving to the next step in All Good Things, and they just sort of destroyed it.
Of course, since Worf went to Deep Space Nine and married Judzia Dax I suppose it would have been difficult to work through, but it still makes me sad.
But all of that is an aside. All Good Things is a fantastic episode and a great finale and I’m glad to see it getting such treatment.