"Encounter at Farpoint" by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry (TNG 101/102) Date: Stardates 41153.7 to 41174.2 (2364) The adventure truly gets underway as we're introduced to the Enterprise's new captain, Jean-Luc Picard, and his intrepid crew. A simple mission to investigate Farpoint Station on Deneb IV as a possible base for Starfleet operations takes on a more dangerous edge when Picard and his crew are put on trial for the very future of the human race by the omnipotent being known as Q. What further mysteries await at Farpoint Station? A very confused episode which underlines the behind the scenes struggles between Fontana and Roddenberry and whether TNG's opening episode should be a 1 hour or a 2 hour show. Q and the resulting trial feel very much grafted on to the overall mystery of Farpoint Station, yet I feel that without those elements, the story would have been very underwhelming as a premiere episode for a new Star Trek show. At this very early stage the characters have a lot of potential, but they're a far cry from the characters that we know and love, with very little nuance. It'll be interesting to see how they become more fleshed out as the series progresses. Considering that this came out while the TOS movies were at the height of its prowess and the excellent characterisation given to the lead characters, it was quite jarring to return to 1960s broadstroke characterisation. Not the strongest series opener and had I seen this in 1987 I would seriously reconsider watching the show. It has potential though, and that's a throughline to keep me going. Next Destination "The Naked Now"
Rather, 90-minute or 2-hour. The added Q subplot only takes up about a quarter of the runtime. And yes, the Q plot feels very tacked on. After making his initial threats, Q doesn't really affect the story at all, just pops in and kibitzes from time to time. It's an interesting question -- would it have been a worthwhile pilot without the Q plot? It's sort of reminiscent of "The Corbomite Maneuver" -- the crew probes into the unknown, gets in trouble, resolves things with an act of kindness and encounters a new form of life. But I guess it doesn't have as much tension, since there's not as much peril for the crew themselves, or as much of an emotional stake for a main character as there was for Pike in "The Cage" or Kirk in the second pilot.
I did see it in 1987. And I had that reaction. I was underwhelmed to say the least. I did like John De Lancie as Q. That was probably the high point. Though I agree, that angle of the episode seemed like an add on to make the episode longer. I thought to myself I'm not sure this is going to last. I was still trying to get used to the idea of a Star Trek without Kirk, Spock, McCoy and company. And it's funny to think now but I hated the Enterprise-D when I first saw it. The special effects were poor I thought, surprising considering ILM did them. I always hated the 'roaming starfield' in the background that they used in the first 2 seasons. Who's stupid idea was that? The Blu-Ray cleaned up the special effects a bit, as best they could. I kind of wished at least for the first 2 seasons that they redid them like they did for the remastered original series. But the stories did improve and even by the end of the first season I started seeing more potential in the show. The special effects would eventually improve, the actors settled into their roles, the stories got better and I came to love TNG and found it to be a worthy successor to Star Trek. And I even came to love the ship and I was sad to see it destroyed in Generations.
They weren't as good as feature-film effects, but compared to other contemporary TV shows, they were exceptionally good. Most other shows had rather crude video effects -- when I rewatched TNG's syndication partner War of the Worlds: The Series some years back, I was startled at how terrible the effects and production values in general were compared to TNG. Frankly, the 1980s were not a great era for TV production values; I'm currently rewatching The Greatest American Hero from 1981-4, and its effects are generally pretty crude. So early TNG looked really good in comparison to its contemporaries, as limited as its FX are in retrospect. Also, just to be clear, ILM only did effects for the pilot; I believe a company called Image G did the regular series. ILM was credited in every episode because their FX were used in the main titles, and because they created a library of stock shots of the Enterprise and other ships that were recycled throughout the series, including the three "stretching" warp-entry shots that were practically the only ones they ever used. (They were created with the same "slit-scan" technique used in the 2001: A Space Odyssey Stargate sequence, a way to make a flat image appear to stretch out into the distance, which was very complicated and difficult, so they couldn't create any new ones. The only other warp-entry shots seen in TNG were the one in "Where No One Has Gone Before" where the ship was seen in full profile, making it easy to stretch the image sideways, and the occasional shot of the ship rushing straight for the camera as it went to warp, which was probably just speeding up a standard ship-passing shot. It got easier to create new warp-stretching FX in the later shows and films once they switched to CGI.)
I agree, John De Lancie as Q certainly steals the show and proves to be an excellent foe for Picard and the gang to go up against, and has great chemistry with Stewart. Its a shame that his presence in this story is to serve as a literal road block to stop the Enterprise from getting to Farpoint to quickly. As Christopher comments, his function is to pop in occasionally, spook the crew and be proven wrong at the end of the show. As Picard later comments in "Hide And Q", he's just a flim flam man, but we know he becomes more. Eventually. As for the visual effects, I've always been rather impressed with them on early TNG. They're certainly not cinema quality, but there's some beautiful visuals throughout the first two seasons. Though, as you say, the blu-ray clean-up worked wonders, I remember those old VHS copies and they were ugly as sin. I suppose being a Brit helps too, seeing the types of visual effects used in our (sadly few) sci-fi programs in the late 1980s such as Doctor Who and Red Dwarf, there is really no comparison. Indeed, the effects seen in TNG and other American imports were continually used to beat Doctor Who over the head with by the Press and the heads at the BBC and was a factor in its cancellation in 1989.
Granted, I'm not British, but I was under the impression TNG didn't begin airing un Britain until after Doctor Who was taken off the air in 1989. It always gets brought up in the old "Star Trek and Doctor Who can never co-exist" thing outlining how Star Trek and Doctor Who never air/release new content at the same time, which actually was true up until 2020.
The thing I really hated the most was the 'roaming stars' effect behind the planets and ships shown in the first 2 seasons. I don't know why they would do that. I always thought that looked ridiculous. If they had simply fixed that I think the effects would have looked a lot better. The Blu-Ray sort of helped that a little bit. The starfield still moved but it didn't seem as noticeable. Later seasons thankfully corrected that. But it's something that always drove me nuts.
De Lancie was a great 'foe' for Picard and company (and later in Voyager). I always like sarcasm and a dry wit and he was always good for some comic relief as well. Somehow, at the same time though, he can be deadly serious and dangerous. I always loved his response to Picard in "Tapestry" when Picard asks "so I won't die then?" and Q responds in his acerbic way that only De Lancie can do "of course you'll die, it'll just be at a later time." You couldn't quite tell was Q being serious, or sarcastic. De Lancie was one of the highlights of the otherwise, in my opinion, horrific season 2 of Picard. I didn't really care for how they wrote Q in that season at all, but De Lancie did his usual good job with what he was given. I have finally come across a Star Trek that I never care to see again or own in some hardcopy. Thank God for season 3, LOL. I almost didn't continue on after season 2 (I almost stopped watching a few episodes in that season, in fact). But I decided to see if season 3 was any better. Thankfully it was. De Lancie, and Marc Alaimo as Dukat, were two of the best supporting characters and best written and acted out villains in Star Trek (though sometimes it's hard to think of Q as a villain in the traditional sense, more like a pain in the ass usually, LOL).
Hmm, that's a point, I believe TNG began airing in 1990. I know that TNG and other American programs were referenced by Michael Grade and other higher-ups by the BBC, but that was in interviews recorded after the fact. The memory cheats, I guess, then again, I suppose they may have been at least aware of it when looking at imports for the coming years.
"The Naked Now" by J. Michael Bingham (story by John D.F. Black and J Michael Bingham (TNG 1x03 [103]) Date: Stardates 41209.2-41209.3 The Enterprise rushes to respond to a distress call from the science vessel SS Tsiolkovsky which is monitoring the collapse of a star. Commander Riker leads an away team over to the stricken vessel and discovers that the crew had died in a variety of bizarre ways, from triggering the emergency hatch and blowing the bridge crew out in to space to switching off environmental controls and showering in their clothes. As the strange behaviour begins to wreak havoc aboard the Enterprise, Riker (and the audience, I'd imagine) have a serious case of deja vu. Our first regular episode of TNG and its a sequel to an excellent Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "The Naked Time". Considering the ethos of TNG was to be about moving into a new era and not acknowledging the past, the two episodes that we've watched so far have strong TOS connections. Whether it was DeForrest Kelley appearing as character as Admiral Leonard McCoy in "Encounter at Farpoint" or the direct references to Kirk's Enterprise and the events of "The Naked Time". Not really a case of the series standing on its own two feet, but I suppose they were designed to draw the audience in. Unfortunately, in all areas this script pales in comparison to its TOS counterpart. Many have mentioned the fact that we don't know the TNG characters well enough to see them acting out of character, however, I would rebut that by saying that "The Naked Time" aired fourth in its original run, but was more successful as an episode because it had stronger characters to draw upon in the first place. Whereas the original had Kirk overcome the infection because of his love of his ship, we had Spock lament that he was unable to express his love for his mother and other strong character moments; in this we had Picard and Crusher flirting, Data demonstating that he was fully functional and Wesley Crusher completing a more inept version of Riley's takeover of engineering. That's not to say I'm a humourless viewer, Riker trying to keep everything together as everyone else falls apart was a great moment, as well as his teasing of Data when he stated he was listed in several biomechanical texts. The interaction between Worf and Data about not understanding human humour was also a great character moment. However, these moments don't make up for a very sub-standard of Star Trek. Next Destination: Double Helix: Infection
That's missing the point of the virus, though. It doesn't make them act out of character; it reveals the parts of their characters that they normally keep hidden, by taking away their inhibitions. It's along the lines of the old saying that you don't really know someone until you see them drunk. "The Naked Time" revealed so much we take for granted about the TOS characters -- Kirk's loneliness in command, Spock's struggle to control his emotions, Chapel's crush on Spock. That's not out of character, that is their character. And that's the reason they did "The Naked Now" so early in TNG -- to establish the characters' personalities and desires and drives so we could get to know them better. Though I agree that it could've done a better job of establishing interesting character traits. But Roddenberry was eager to take advantage of the lessening of censorship since the '60s, so he wanted a story geared more toward sexy antics.
Thanks Christopher, you've made me see the episode in a slightly different light. We both agreed that the execution wasn't perfect, but it did highlight that Picard and Crusher were deeply attracted to each other; Wesley who was sick of being ignored and forbidden from the bridge; Yar's desire to be more feminine at outgoing; Geordi's desire to have "normal" sight; and touches on Data's potential to be more human and enjoy normal human interaction. While it doesn't make me enjoy the episode anymore, seeing it in this way, does make me appreciate what they were trying to do in establishing these new characters. Perhaps if a different macguffin being deployed to allow this character exploration, then perhaps I would have been less harsh on the episode. The direct references and parallels to "The Naked Time" just enforces what a better episode that was.
And most of that was downplayed, changed, or ignored later on. Wesley's arc was developed as set up here, but P&C's attraction was a 7-year tease not resolved until Picard season 3, Geordi's VISOR was mostly downplayed in later seasons except as a means of compromising or torturing him, and the emotional capacity Data showed early on was retconned into nonexistence in season 3. Also, the strong female security chief wants to be more girly and seduce random male coworkers, and the guy with vastly superior artificial vision wants to trade it in to be "normal." Ugh.
I tend to agree that the Yar angle in the episode was a bit cringeworthy. I suppose I could maybe understand some of the 'being more girly' aspect of it. Some women do want to be seen as more feminine, without giving up their strength. So I can see that being a latent desire possible. The seduction part though was definitely over the top. For Geordi I can get more on board with that. The whole episode was about latent, hidden desires coming to the fore. I can see part of Geordi wanting normal vision, even at the expense of his superior vision. Superior doesn't always mean greater happiness. I can reasonably see some small part of Geordi just wanting to have vision like everybody else. Sober...it may be just something passing. Intoxicated? That could possible bring that out more in him as it did here. Definitely was never satisfied with the whole Picard/Crusher angle in the series. It would pop up now and again but they just never resolved during the show's run. It was almost totally ignored in the movies. The novels finally tackled that, and of course as you noted, season 3 of Picard. Data's characterization did change as the show went on, probably owing to new showrunners taking over and deciding to take his character in a new direction. Though I never totally bought the idea that he 'lacked' emotions. At times the show did hint that there was something more. Data cared about his friends. He showed affection towards his cat. I can't buy that he had no emotions. Different, yes. More subdued than it seemed early on? Yes, no doubt. But there was something more there, though the show didn't seem to quite resolve that either. At the end of the day I did come to love TNG. And I always felt later season episodes were far stronger that the 1st and most of the 2nd season. There were aspects of characters they could have explored more for sure. Things hinted at early on that were dropped were unfortunate in many cases. But overall the show was well done despite those misses. So I can't complain. I enjoyed the characters of the show ultimately despite some of those misses.
I always hated the sci-fi cliche of "Robots can't have emotions, just programming!" and I hated it when they incorporated it into Data in season 3. I mean, emotions are programming. They're hardwired reactions to stimuli, not learned or chosen but automatic. Animals have emotions, so they're simpler than conscious thought and would presumably be much easier to replicate artificially than consciousness would. What makes human emotions complex is their interaction with conscious thought and choice, our ability to resist impulses that an animal would just give into, like choosing not to run from danger, being torn between our desire for someone and our moral beliefs saying we shouldn't sleep with them, going on a hunger strike in the name of an ethical principle, etc. Also, research has shown that even the most dispassionate, logical decisions, such as choosing the right answer to a math problem, stimulate the emotional centers of the brain. Without desire and aversion, we have no incentive to favor one choice over another, so emotion is a component of all decisions. The old myth that logic and emotion are separate or contradictory drives is false; they're inseparably intertwined, and a mind without emotion couldn't function. At most, a digital intelligence might have subdued, understated emotions without hormones to drive them to the level of overwhelming passion; that's how I portray them in my original fiction, and it's pretty much how Data was portrayed in seasons 1-2 before the silly "emotionless" retcon. And really, Data's whole "aspiring to be human" arc is incredibly ableist in retrospect, since Data's behavior is pretty much identical to many people on the autistic spectrum, so TNG was basically saying those people are less than human. It's aged very badly, along with TOS's treatment of Spock.
Double Helix: Infection by John Gregory Betancourt (Pocket TNG #51) Date: Stardate 41211.0 (2364), one month after “Encounter at Farpoint”. Archaria III is a Federation colony world inhabited by Humans and Peladians. For centuries these two societies had overcome their differences, had found love among each other and established a thriving society. However, a mysterious General and his Orion Syndicate minions have created a deadly plague which is targeting mixed blood Humans and Peladians. As the planet’s hospitals begin to flood with the sick and the dying, fanatic elements within Archarian society are keen to play on the fear and suspicion to forward their own aims of a pure blood, Human, society on the planet. The Enterprise along with her sister ship USS Constitution race to Archaria with a drug to help treat the population while Doctor Crusher and her Constitution counterpart work with the Archarian doctors to find a cure for this deadly plague. Infection is a peculiar beast. I first read the novel back in 1999 when it was first released and was happy with it as far as stories of the era went, at the time Pocket and the regime at the time were keen on stretching out the story over as many novels as possible. Being the first in a run of six, I didn’t expect everything to be wrapped up in a neat little package, so as an opening chapter it was just fine, but nothing spectacular. Reading this novel 25 years later having lived through the horrific Covid pandemic of 2020-2022, one can’t help but see how John Gregory Betancourt was quite prescient in his depiction of humanity’s reaction to a deadly plague. Whether it be the looting and violence, to the rise of racist political factions such as the Brotherhood who stage protests and coral young law enforcement officers and political officials to their ranks. Unknowingly, Betancourt created a snapshot of our world in the 2020s which I’d like to believe was some divine gift, but was probably very much down to Humanity, despite our veneer of respectability, still being barbaric in the face of adversity. As for the story of the novel itself, my observations made in 1999 still hold up today. It’s a perfectly serviceable opening chapter, layering in intrigue which will hopefully be explored in later chapters. While the bulk of the novel is quite meandering in exploring the plagues affects, Crusher working on a cure, Riker investigating the Brotherhood; the novel suddenly wraps up in the last 50 pages or so and in quite a contrived manner. Data and Yar luckily stumble on the Orion Syndicate member who had released the plague, they take him out, then return to the Enterprise with his ship complete with all the notes and equipment which was used to transport the disease. Where the novel does excel is in giving all of our characters something to do and explore them to an extent. While you expect Picard, Riker, Crusher etc. to have a good share of the action, we get to see Troi engaging with the plague victims aboard the Enterprise before she herself contracts the plague. Worf also gets an entire sidequest where he has to lead an EVA mission to a lunar satellite to locate the family of Archaria III’s governor and ends up in a fight with Klingon mercenaries before getting down to the serious business of drinking blood wine. Wonderful scenes. One more nitpick has to be the inclusion of the USS Constitution to the story. I understand that it's short-hand to express the seriousness of the situation that two Galaxy-class starships are needed, but once the ship arrives, nothing is done with it. The virus gets loose aboard the Constitution too, but we don’t get to see any of that. Perhaps if it was used as a device to up the stakes, maybe the crew was entirely of mixed heritage and they all died. As it stands it was completely unnecessary as the plague was already loose aboard the Enterprise and one of the main characters was impacted by it. Next Destination: “Code of Honor”
COVID was far from the first pandemic in human history. Before the age of vaccines, rampant disease was more the norm than the exception. Most authors whose stories are considered "prophetic" are just aware of what happened in the past and recognize that history repeats itself.
“Code of Honor” by Katharyn Powers and Michael Baron (TNG 1x04 [104]) Date: Stardates 41235.25 to 41235.6 (2364) The Enterprise finds itself on another medical relief mission as it approaches planet Ligon II to acquire a rare vaccine for a plague on the Federation world of Styris IV. A routine mission which is soon complicated when the Ligonian’s leader, Lutan, sees Lieutenant Yar as an opportunity to solve his marital problems. What is there to possibly say about this episode that hasn’t already been said? Is it tone deaf, racist, and sexist? Yes. Would have it been more suited as a script for Star Trek: The Original Series? No, I think 60s Gene and his fellow producers would have had more sense than to let this script reach the small screen. In terms of the story, the only redeeming quality is that Yareena and Hagon got the last laugh over Lutan at the end. One has to reach around for positives with “Code of Honor” though and, I was pleasantly surprised to see there were some great character moments throughout this story that highlights that the new crew of the USS Enterprise are starting to pull together both on and off screen. Despite the awfulness of the story, Denise Crosby really shines now that she has something to do besides the day job. It's great too to see the friendship she has building with Troi as she calls her out for considering a relationship with Lutan. We finally get our first scene between Geordi and Data, a relationship that was one of the cornerstones of The Next Generation for me. It’s not one of the finest, but the “includling the kiddillies” line even made me chuckle a little. Indeed, Data has some great interactions with Picard and Riker with the “obscure language known as French” scene and Picard spouting the Prime Directive on Ligon’s surface. Overall, “Code of Honor” is one of the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made. However, as with many things, there’s always some diamonds in the rough and the character moments certainly made me enjoy this episode slightly more than I would have. Next Destination: “Haven”