Star Trek: The Next Generation Original Series" in 1969, the "Star Trek" franchise had continued with "" (1973–74) and a series of films, all featuring the original cast. In the 1980s, franchise creator Roddenberry decided to create a new series, featuring a new crew embarking on their mission a century after that of "The Original Series". "TNG" featured a new crew that starred (for the majority of its seven-year broadcast run) Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Frakes as Commander William Riker, Brent Spiner as Lt Commander Data, Michael Dorn as Lieutenant Worf, LeVar Burton as Lt Commander Geordi La Forge, Marina Sirtis as
Star Trek: The Next Generation also appeared in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country". All episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" were made available on VHS cassettes, starting in 1991. The entire series was gradually released on VHS over the next few years during the remainder of the show's run and after the show had ended. The VHS for TNG were available on mail-order usually two episodes per VHS cassette. Paramount published all episodes on the LaserDisc format from October 1991 using an extended release schedule that concluded in May 1999. Each disc featured two episodes with Closed Captions, Digital Audio, and CX encoding.