Why is no one on Star Trek: TNG ever surprised/shocked by anything?

[Thaluikhain]

It's because nobody tends to get excited for anything.

You'll also note, whenever someone calls for security or medical help or something, the people will very, very slowly walk through the corridors? Nobody ever comes at the run, they don't teleport 20 people in to deal with the problem or anything.

 

[Lobster9]

In the early days of TNG there were a lot of arguments between the writers and Roddenberry over how much personal drama was allowed to exist in his vision of the future. He believed that a lot of emotional reactions to things would have been replaced by logic and reason, so there is virtually no conflict amongst the crew.

One good example is the episode "The Bonding" where the kid loses his mother to a landmine and then encounters an alien duplicate of her. Originally the script had the kid being so utterly torn apart by grief that he creates a hologram of his mother and refuses to leave the holodeck. Roddenberry had the story changed because he felt that humans (including children) would have become so accepting of death, that they would just deal with it and move on.

It's kind of ironic when you consider that one of the most popular recurring subplots of the series is Data's wish to experience human emotions.

The show still has a whole bunch of wonderful episodes though, and it's worth sticking with.

 

[Sarge034]

From what I have seen Picard and the rest of the officers put on a stoic face to show calm leadership in times of crisis. The show rarely ever telegraphs the emotional drama of those situations like most current shows do. You have to see it in their eyes and on their faces before they get to dealing with the situation. I prefer that approach though.

 

[Thaluikhain]

If it was obvious what people was thinking, there'd be no reason for Troi to inform us.

 

[Pandaman1911]

You want surprised? Go watch pretty much any episode with a junior officer in it. Hell, go re-watch all the ones with Lt. Barclay in them. He's about as panicky as it gets for a Starfleet officer. The other guys have seen so much shit that things going wrong or doing bizarre stuff just kind of irritates them or confuses them a little.

 

[zxvcasdfqwerzxcv]

The show is set in the future; in the future humanity has long since evolved away the necessary neurones and glands for surprise!

 

[J Tyran]

So I actually just started watching this... and I have just one question.
Why are they never surprised?

Did you start with season 1?

The first two seasons of TNG are fucking awful. Gene "Children in the Future don't cry when their parents are killed" Roddenberry, massive hack that he was, had a huge influence over the show during those two seasons. The characters all act like massive assholes and stoic douche-bags the entire first two seasons.

During season 3, Roddenberry had the good graces to start dying and the writers started to turn it around. By season 5, the show was actually good.

So, long story short, it is probably because of the utter awfulness of the scripts during the first two seasons. If you can stomach your way through them, the show gets a LOT better during seasons 3 and 4. People actually get to have emotions then.

**pause**

And yeah, seriously, Roddenberry may have had a cool idea for a TV series or two, but the man himself was massively fucked up and had some honorific ideas about how humans should behave to one another. Several other Sci-Fi series have used the same philosophy as the "Prime Directive" as motivation for their villains.

Edit: I'm kinda amused by all the answers of "because they're well trained officers". A lack of emotion isn't good training - it's being a robot. Just ask the Borg.

The OP didn't comment on a "controlled emotional response" - which is what good training gives you. He commented on a complete lack of emotional response. Which, in this case, is most likely due to bad writing during the first two seasons.

The problem with the early TNG seasons was that for decades everyone was telling Roddenberry what a "visionary" he was and how he was the "great bird of the galaxy" and he started to believe it, so many elements where taken away like the moments of drama and conflict between the crew because "they had perfected themselves so much they beyond conflict" and other foolishness like that. He forgot that some of the most memorable episodes in the ToS involved plots like that.

 

[Gary Thompson]

The problem with the early TNG seasons was that for decades everyone was telling Roddenberry what a "visionary" he was and how he was the "great bird of the galaxy" and he started to believe it, so many elements where taken away like the moments of drama and conflict between the crew because "they had perfected themselves so much they beyond conflict" and other foolishness like that. He forgot that some of the most memorable episodes in the ToS involved plots like that.

Yeah, basically, which is why Deep Space Nine was so good, they deconstructed Roddenberry's "utopia" to the point where they were actually feeling like real characters instead of super perfect "evolved" humans.

They had humans being bigoted, and even mention how having a money-less society is probably a stupid idea.

This was all after Roddeberry was gone too.

Too bad after DS9 we had Voyager and Enterprise... those were all kinda of awful.

 

[RoonMian]

It's because Picard is just too bad ass to be surprised.

 

[J Tyran]

The problem with the early TNG seasons was that for decades everyone was telling Roddenberry what a "visionary" he was and how he was the "great bird of the galaxy" and he started to believe it, so many elements where taken away like the moments of drama and conflict between the crew because "they had perfected themselves so much they beyond conflict" and other foolishness like that. He forgot that some of the most memorable episodes in the ToS involved plots like that.

Yeah, basically, which is why Deep Space Nine was so good, they deconstructed Roddenberry's "utopia" to the point where they were actually feeling like real characters instead of super perfect "evolved" humans.

They had humans being bigoted, and even mention how having a money-less society is probably a stupid idea.

This was all after Roddeberry was gone too.

Too bad after DS9 we had Voyager and Enterprise... those were all kinda of awful.

Very true, although I did like Voyager as it brought back a lot of the mystery of blind exploration we got in ToS and TNG even though it had its flaws. As good as it was DS9 did tend to be a bit grim at times for my taste, plus at the time I much preferred Babylon 5 and DS9 always seemed to be playing catch up with that.

I hate to bag on Roddenberry so much, he did bring us a great series and some really memorable and genre defining sci-fi. It is just a terrible shame he started to believe in his own press the last decade or so before he passed away.

 

[Signa]

Ugh, I can't believe how many people here are hating on Star Trek. I just rewatched it all, and it's still a great show. It's no wonder why there isn't a single good sci-fi show on TV right now, if this is what people are expecting.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I thought DS9 was utter rubbish, personally. TNG had problems, but had a number of very good eps, and a lot of decent ones.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

This guy looks pretty surprised:

Or his brain could be melting. Either one works in my case.
That was my extremely limited knowledge of the series for the day.

I see gifs like that and II like to make up little stories to go with them. Like in this case, Ensign Redshirt is checking his SpaceBook profile, and he has just seen the his girlfriend, Ensign Blueshirt, had a late night hookup with her ex-boyfriend Ensign Goldshirt.

Back o.t; There is no toilet on board the ship, so they are feeling a little backed up. If they express true surprise, it might open a floodgate that even Wesley Crusher would not be able to deal with.

 

[Ninjamedic]

The OP didn't comment on a "controlled emotional response" - which is what good training gives you. He commented on a complete lack of emotional response. Which, in this case, is most likely due to bad writing during the first two seasons.

Bara fucking nailed it here, speaking as someone who always believed in the optimism of the show, Roddenberry's ideas for the Federation in TNG were just counter what the made the series so inspiring in the first place if not horrific when thought about.

"Any emotion, petty or otherwise, is at the core of good drama and creates conflict between characters. But Gene didn't want conflict between characters. 'All the problems of mankind have been solved,' he said. 'Earth is a paradise. Now go write drama.'" - Michael Piller

that.... would explain the large amount of sexism I'm seeing on display. I got one female security officer who's suppose to be a tough cookie but she gets bested all the time, and Troi... and then theres troi.... aug.

To further the criticisms on Season One, a lot of the blame rests on Maurice Hurley, the director/showrunner for the first two Seasons. It's said he was responsible for a lot of the misogyny and some racism in the early seasons. Also I'm guessing the episode you're ranting about was "Code of Honor"? Yeah, IGNORE THAT. The director was fired immediately after it for a reason.

Overrall, Season 1 is horrific save for ONE episode (Conspiracy, which I really like) and there are individual episodes in Season 2 that are good.

You can skip over to Season 3 if you want, but PLEASE watch "The Measure of a Man" and "Q Who?" first. The former is a fantastic story and just short of being among the series' best. The latter introduces the Borg and finally sets up Q right.

 

[Silverbane7]

yep, ninjamedic is right. (about the 'code of honour' ep being the problem)
unfortunately for her, poor Lt Yar wasnt allowed any room for growth of the character. hence some of the worst security work seen in trek.
seasons 1 and 2 are..for shits and giggles in my mind lol.
better to watch Babylon 5...the aliens hate eachother...they have dirty people, homeless people. gready people, conflict ect...hell, it even has cross spieces mating/love and lesbians way to go UK tv
(but i also like DS9 befor anyone PaL at me and calls me biased)

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Edit: I'm kinda amused by all the answers of "because they're well trained officers". A lack of emotion isn't good training - it's being a robot. Just ask the Borg.

Actually, good training is supposed to make you act like a robot. A well trained infantryman shouldn't need to think about how to fire a rifle, a well trained NCO shouldn't need to carefully consider how to deal with an ambush etc. Training, when done properly, makes such responses as automatic as possible because in a mortal crisis you can't trust yourself to be logical and rational otherwise. For example, while it might not seem rational, your best chance of surviving an ambush is to assault your way through it - that is, turn your entire element towards the enemy and go on the immediate offensive with all the firepower you can muster. From an individual perspective, that's a remarkably stupid idea because it has them advancing towards even greater danger with every pace thus the personal survival response has to be overridden.

Thus, if considering the idea of a well trained group of military personnel, a lack of emotion during a crisis for which they were trained is both desirable and expected. After the crisis is done (or appears to be done), an emotional response would be expected as the combination of the physiological response to the crisis as well as the exact events of said crisis ought to overwhelm anyone's emotional barriers.

I mean, if someone starts shooting at you and you have to shoot back and the events lead to wounds and death in close quarters around you and you don't want to cry when you're done, then you've got a god like control over your emotions or you have some sort of crippling mental illness.