The costumes are still the terrible spandex things, but there were a few changes, Worf and Geordi were both made full lieutenants and with their new rank and positions they change to their more familiar gold uniforms. Worf’s Klingon sash is also changed from his gold cloth sash to his more familiar silver chain one. Troi is changed into her popular catsuit, and her hair is taken out of the bun. And Wesley is no longer wearing his rainbow number and is given something more serious to wear (sadly, his costume looks better than the rest of the cast this season).
The biggest weakness I see in this season was the introduction of Dr. Pulaski, replacing Dr. Crusher. Let us drop the interesting female with an interesting background story with Picard (oh but let's keep her annoying son!), and replace her with a Female version of McCoy. She doesn’t like transporters, she’s crusty, and she has a Spock-McCoy relationship with Data. It just feels like in the midst of taking these steps forward to try and be it’s own show this season, it took a step back in trying to capture some of the magic of TOS. I don't think Pulaski is the worst thing in the world, but I'm not a big Diana Muldaur fan. Plus I grew up watching the show with Crusher, so I'm partial to her.
Another addition to this season is the bar Ten Forward, and the bartender: Guinan. Guinan is a great voice of reason and throughout this series, and her mysterious nature makes her all the better. With the addition of a place for characters to relax, meet, and chat about things off-duty, it humanizes the show. Also a great humanizer and character/relationship developer from this season was the Officer's Poker Game, which helped develop the rapport between our characters. This is a huge addition, because our cast really sparked together from the get go, but none of that really made it to the screen in the first season, because everyone was written very dry, and no one was given any scene to showcase friendship and camaraderie. These games were the perfect chance to get us away from the sci-fi plots, and get to know the characters. Brilliant add that would go on to play a role throughout the series.
There are definitely more decent episodes this time around but I still wouldn’t say that it is consistently good week to week. But the Writers Strike that year kind of made some of the issues they tried to resolve hard to entirely fix. The strike caused episodes like “The Child” (stolen from and unused Phase II script) and “Shades of Grey” (a flippin clip show). The third season definitely changes that though.
NEXT TIME: Enter Michael Piller