Despite once seeming doomed to fail, "Star Trek: The Next Generation" remains one of the best entry points for new fans open to trying out a "Trek" of their own. The Enterprise D, with its carpet floors, body-hugging uniforms, and a thoughtful, almost philosophical mid-'90s liberal approach to exploration and society is showing its age, but it remains less of a time jump than the original series. While "Deep Space Nine" is finally gathering the audience it deserves for its prescient (and better handled than "Section 31") commentary on the deeper issues hiding under the Federation's facade of utopia, it's still a show that rests on what "The Next Generation" prepared for them.

Above all else, it's the crew that makes this show so cozy a landing zone. That's not to say Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) and the rest of his adoptive family are perfect -- as the...