Going from a #WestWing re-watch right into #StarTrekTNG, you see all the ways that both are kind of the same show. #competenceporn pic.twitter.com/wJslfETeIG

— Zaki Hasan (@zakiscorner) October 31, 2016

I recently finished a re-watch of the entirety of The West Wing (this time with my oldest boy), and following that, we segued right into a sequential viewing of Star Trek: The Next Generation. What struck me after going from one series to the next in rapid succession is how similar they are in their depiction of highly-skilled ensembles of characters working to improve their respective milieus. Competence porn, if you will. This in turn prompted the above observation on Twitter

Anyway, after I posted that on social media, another discussion ensued wherein various participants looked to craft character correlations between the two shows. And as we dove deeper and deeper down that well, it ultimately led my friend John Trumbull to make the similarities and differences that we arrived at between West Wing and TNG the subject of his latest pop culture column over at the Atomic Junk Shop. Check it out at this link (I get cited a few times in there as well)!