The success of the original Star Trek over the years had prompted Paramount to try to revive the series for Television; a Star Trek II television series was proposed, with the original crew, but this was scrapped when it was decided to make feature films.

Paramount therefore approached Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, and asked him to create a new series for them. They also decided to try a whole new technique of production and distribution in which they produced the series independently without the aid of or finance from a Network, and sold it directly into syndication. They decided to offer it directly to the stations that had taken the original Star Trek over the years.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, often abbreviated to ST:TNG, started in 1987 and finished after a phenomenally successful seven year run in the summer of 1994. In that time, ST:TNG has progressively climbed in the viewing ratings to become one of the most popular series on US television.

At the beginning of season 5 of ST: TNG

Paramount started filming the third Star Trek series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in parallel with ST:TNG. The two series are set at the same time. On occasion, cast from one series have guest-starred in episodes on the other.

Immediately after finishing the final ST:TNG

All Good Things the cast of TNG started filming the first Next Generation Star Trek movie - called Star Trek: Generations, and including the cast of both the Next Generation and the original series. This film opened at cinemas in the USA in November 1994, and February 1995 in the UK.

In April 1996, filming commenced on the second ST:TNG

ST:TNG movie, called Star Trek: First Contact. This will be released in November 1996.

In the UK, despite it's non-prime time slot it often came in the top 10 ratings for BBC2, and was sometimes the highest rating show on the channel. Both BBC2 and the satellite TV channel, Sky One, still regularly show ST:TNG episodes from various seasons..

The ship has a regular complement of just over 1,000 people, many of them families. The series is set in the years 2364-9, some 80 years after the time of the original series; by this time only 12%-15% of our galaxy has been explored.

As with the original Star Trek series, the Enterprise's mission is to explore strange new worlds and meet new lifeforms and civilisations.

The Enterprise-D is commanded by the best Star Trek Captain of all, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The First Officer is Commander William Riker, the Second Officer is Lt. Commander Data, the Chief Medical Officer is Dr. Beverley Crusher, the Chief Engineer (after the first few episodes) is Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge and the Ship's Counsellor is Lt. Commander Deanna Troi.