Like everyone else’s diary, my childhood journal is utterly terrifying. Full of awkward cursive letters, run-on-sentences, and way too much speculation about girls who barely knew I existed, it’s hard to believe the person I am today emerged from this goopy mess of over-earnestness and crippling insecurity. Oh wait. Maybe it’s not that hard to believe! Tucked in the pages of my journal, near the end of 1994, is my brief review of the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, written a few days after it originally aired. The scanned pages are below, complete with the transcription.
5-29-94
From The Personal Log of Ryan Britt
Age: 12
Monday was a normal day at school. Nothing new happened, but that night was series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The two-hour finale entitled “All Good Things…” was very good, and it dealt with Captain Picard shifting back and forth through time to the past, to the first mission of the Enterprise, the present, and the future where he is an old man with a disease.
Data is a professor at Cambridge, Riker is an Admiral, Worf is a Klingon Governor, Geordi is a writer, Dr. Crusher is a Captain and Picard’s X-wife and Troi is dead, for reasons unknown. Q also made an appearance in the episode trying to help Picard through his troubles of time shifting and the end of humanity.
The end was very good with Picard sitting down with this crew for the last time playing poker.
It was a good way to end the series.
Back to reality….
There’s so much I love about this review, but I’m mostly impressed with how understated and concise I am here. Pretty light on spoilers, too! I’m also relieved that I made sure we all understood that Worf was a Klingon governor, since it would be weird if he had suddenly changed species in the future. Let’s also give a shout-out to Beverly being Picard’s “X” wife, which I think is fairly prescient considering that Patrick Stewart’s involvement in X-Men was still several years away at this point. Somewhere in this diary are also my ravings about his one-man A Christmas Carol show, which I owned on cassette tape.
Was I destined to write about science fiction from an early age? Maybe. Just a few years later I was sending the Star Wars comics people letters complaining about the dialogue in Shadows of the Empire….
Ryan Britt is a staff writer for Tor.com and can still rock a SeaQuest DSV hat, even in the East Village.
