“Encounter at Farpoint”
Written by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Corey Allen
Season 1, Episode 1
Production episode 40271-721
Original air date: September 28, 1987
Stardate: 41153.7
Captain’s Log: The newly commissioned U.S.S. Enterprise-D is heading to Deneb IV, beyond which lies “the great unexplored mass of the galaxy.” En route there to investigate Farpoint Station, an impressive base built by the Bandi on that world, they meet Q, an all-powerful being much like those encountered by Kirk and his crew, except considerably more obnoxious. In a lengthy bit of exposition, we see the ship separate the saucer, an effect so awesome and practical that it would only be seen two more times in the show’s run.
With most of the ship’s complement in the saucer, the stardrive section confronts Q, who puts four of the five people on the battle bridge on trial in a late 21st-century “post-atomic horror” court. (Hey, something to look forward to in 70 years…) Q condemns humanity as a savage race, but Picard insists that the charges do not apply to humanity any longer and suggests that Q judge them based on how they are now. Q likes this idea, and so sends the Enterprise off to Farpoint Station to evaluate them on their current mission.
At Farpoint, Commander Riker reports and is told to manually reattach the saucer in order to prove his manhood. They then investigate Farpoint to try to figure out why the station is so amazing. Groppler Zorn, the leader of the Bandi people, is evasive on the subject.
A ship enters the system and fires on the city around the station before kidnapping Zorn. Q returns to be snotty for a little bit before Riker takes a team over to the other ship, where Zorn is being tortured—by the ship, which is alive, and wants its mate back. The Bandi kidnapped one of these living ships and enslaved it to be a station. The Enterprise frees it, and the couple are reunited in a scene that is straight out of cut-rate hentai.
Q decides humanity isn’t savage—for now. And the Enterprise goes off to explore strange new worlds, and all that other stuff….
Thank you, Counselor Obvious: Upon seeing Lieutenant Torres being frozen, Counselor Troi declares: “He’s frozen!”
Can’t We Just Reverse The Polarity? “Something strange on the detector circuits.” We will never hear from the “detector circuits” again, which is probably for the best.
No Sex, Please, We’re Starfleet: Both leading men have pasts with women on the ship. Commander Riker and Counselor Troi were an item years ago, and Captain Picard ordered Dr. Crusher’s husband (and Wesley’s father) to his death, yet she requested assignment to his command. Also, a female ensign totally checks out Riker’s ass after she gives him directions to the holodeck.
The Boy!? Upon Wesley Crusher’s first trip to the bridge he shows aptitude for both using the ship’s controls and pissing off the captain.
If I Only Had a Brain… Data hangs out in a forest on the holodeck while trying to whistle “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
There is No Honor in Being Pummeled: Worf gets emasculated right off the bat by Picard ordering him to command the saucer section rather than serve on the battle bridge.
Welcome Aboard: John deLancie makes his first of many appearances (on three different Trek series) as the all-powerful, all-snotty Q. In addition, Colm Meaney appears as an unnamed conn officer (the fifth guy on the battle bridge) who would get a name (O’Brien) in the second season, graduating to being a recurring character as the show progressed, becoming a regular on the spinoff Deep Space Nine. And then there’s DeForrest Kelley….
I Believe I Said That: “Well, this is a new ship, but she’s got the right name. Now you remember that, you hear? You treat her like a lady, and she’ll always bring you home.” Admiral Leonard McCoy to Data as they amble slowly down the corridor.
Trivial Matters: Riker and Troi’s backstory is almost exactly the same as that of Decker and Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, also written by Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry. David Gerrold wrote the novelization of the episode, using several concepts that were part of the original conception but later abandoned (Worf having a more aggressive personality, Riker being called “Bill,” a woman from Picard’s past named Celeste). If you read his novel Voyage of the Star Wolf, you can see some of what he had in mind for the show before he was let go early in the first season. (He later repurposed a first-season script called “Blood and Fire” as a Star Wolf novel…)
Make It So: This two-hour premiere is bogged down a bit by a languid pace, way too much exposition, and a plot that isn’t actually all that interesting. The acting from many of the regulars is stiff. The episode also spends a whole lot of time distancing itself from its predecessor. There are away teams instead of landing parties, on which the captain does not go; a captain who is cerebral and asks his officers for their opinions, and who also surrenders the ship in the very first episode; and a Klingon in a Starfleet uniform.
For all that, there are acknowledgments to the past: when Worf walks through engineering he passes a human male in gold talking with a Vulcan male in blue. Plus, of course, there’s Kelley’s delightful cameo as an elderly admiral being escorted through the ship.
Where this pilot does work, though, is in the non-stiff performances. Patrick Stewart has a tremendous gravitas in the role of Jean-Luc Picard. You never doubt for a moment that he’s in charge, and that he’s twelve steps ahead of everyone else—even the omnipotent guy. Speaking of whom, John deLancie is a revelation, as the screen lights up when he’s on it (and drags to a halt when he isn’t). And Brent Spiner is delightful as the android Data.
Plus, there’s a guy walking around the corridors of the Enterprise in a minidress. Whole episode’s worth it for that.
It set up what was to come, but isn’t a lot of fun to watch, especially when you know the show’s going to do better.
Warp factor rating: 4
Keith R.A. DeCandido has been writing or editing Star Trek fiction since 1999 in novel, short story, eBook, nonfiction, and comic book form. His work has covered all five TV shows, as well as the prose series The Lost Era, New Frontier, Corps of Engineers, Myriad Universes, Mirror Universe, and I.K.S. Gorkon/Klingon Empire. His acclaimed novel A Singular Destiny served as the transition between the best-selling Destiny and Typhon Pact series. Follow him online at his blog or on Facebook or Twitter under the username KRADeC.
I was a Freshman at college when this series started and I thought the espisode was good overall. ‘Course, I do agree it hasn’t aged well compared to episodes from later seasons.
The problem my friends & I had with this episode at the time , and the first few seasons, was the tendency of the writers to go out of the way to macke Picard the ‘anti-Kirk.’ Didn’t work well for me honestly. When they realised Picard could be cerebral & ‘take charge,’ that’s when the writing for the character got good.
I always felt that Tasha Yar & Worf were the same character really. I know they had their different traits obviously. But they seem to be the same archetype, if you will. Maybe they would’ve gone with a female half human/half klingon tactical officer if the new universe had been developed further.
Still it is interesting to note that if Denise Crosby hadn’t wanted to do other things, Michael Dorn’s Worf would never have developed.
I did think Q was the best part of the episode, aside from seeing the ever cantankerous Dr. McCoy one last time. Anyway thanks for posting this.
Kato
PS – I had forgotten about the male ensign miniskirt. Too funny.
I love “Encounter at Farpoint.” It’s my deep dark secret. When I watched this the night it aired, I was just starting kindergarten and I was hooked. I guess it couldn’t have been that boring and expositional if it kept a five-year-old interested. On the other hand, kindergarteners don’t exactly have unerring tastes either.
Because I loved it at such a young age, I can’t be objective about this episode, or a lot of the others in TNG season 1. I adore them. Twenty-four years later, I admit they haven’t aged that well, and in any objective sense they aren’t nearly as good as some of the later episodes of TNG. Frankly, we’re lucky the show didn’t get canceled after the first season — it probably would have been if it weren’t for the 1988 WGA strike gutting new show development for the 1988-89 season. But none of that matters. Love is blind. If you gave me a choice between watching “Encounter at Farpoint” or the series finale, “All Good Things…”, I’d take “Farpoint” any day. Watching this episode makes me see the show’s potential. Watching “All Good Things…” just makes me see the ways it failed to live up to that potential in its last few years.
I recall trying to defend this episode with my roomate after watching this junior year of college:
Me: They had cheese outerspace aliens in the first series.
Him:Yeah, but they didn’t hold hands!
. . . or tenticles as the case may be,
It doesn’t stand up now as the best episode of the series, but I remember being thrilled out of my mind the night it first aired. I had been very skeptical that “Star Trek” could be recreated with a new cast and a new ship set in a new era … but darned if they didn’t pull it off! “Farpoint” will always get high marks from me, if only for sentimental reasons.
My other very vivid “Trek”-related memory of autumn 1986 is eating box after box after box of Honey Nut Cheerios in an attempt to win that guest role on a TNG episode. (I also spent too much money on stamps sending in 3 x 5 cards to the Cheerios people for additional chances at winning. Didn’t get on the show — needless to say — but I did win of the 5000 little plastic Enterprises. I still have it, too!)
picard storms into admeral’s office
Picard “Sir what did I ever do to you?”
AdMERIAL “Whatever do you mean?
Picard 200 children? the first Klingon and the Helmsmen, the man who DRIVES the ship is blind? That’s not a crew it’s a punchline!
aD relax think of Data as a one of a kind lifeform!
Picard “Great so when the kligon guts it we won’t find spare parts
Oh, how I wanted to love “Encounter at Farpoint”. I was soooo hyped for the new series. I suffered through the arguments over the cast and new look. Watching it, however, was a miserable experience for me.
I never was a huge fan of ST:TNG after that, but I will admit that it got much better (and worse a few times).
Warp Factor 4 for “Encounter at Farpoint”? 4/10 perhaps, but certainly not more than that.
The first 3 seasons of TNG are pretty much a right-off, with less than a handful of exceptions. I remain surprised to this day that TNG managed to not get cancelled.
It’s so hard to seperate what I thought then from what now
I liked the captain best (like every series) Disliked riker disliked Data (i’ve NEVER liked “Robots longing to be human. LIKED Worf (boy that changed.) Liked wESLY (That changed show by show) but in the first Wesly’s not bad
LOVED Q
“The first 3 seasons of TNG are pretty much a right-off, with less than a handful of exceptions. I remain surprised to this day that TNG managed to not get cancelled. ”
I think you need to rewatch Season 3. It (along with Season 4) are TNG at its peak. The momentous jump in quality between the drek of season 2 to season 3 is phenomenal.
The show was still good in season 5 and 6, but definitely not as consistent. Season 7 is as hit or miss as the first two seasons, and is only saved from being the worst season of all by the improved production values, the performances of the regular cast, and a handful of the very best episodes of the entire series (which includes the finale).
I was working in the electronics department of a department store when this premiered. Of course, I turned all the TVs to that channel, took off my badge so I wouldn’t look like an employee and spent the next two hours watching.
There wasn’t any Internet (ok, not like we know it today and I didn’t have access anyway :) ), so no spoilers, published casting sheets, “leaks”, etc. The only info I had on the show were what showed up in TV Guide, Starlog, etc. STIV had just garnered a lot of goodwill with the fans (I think the story might have been completely different if STV had come out before TNG premiered) and we were READY for weekly ST episodes.
However, I wouldn’t say it wasn’t without controversy – those jumpsuits (tip to those men who like to cosplay 1st season – guys, we REALLY don’t need to know what religion you are when you wear them), the oddly-shaped yet familiar looking ship (and curvilinear entered my vocabulary :) ) and Gurney Halleck’s the captain?
I enjoyed the first episode and, maybe because my critical palate wasn’t as refined, enjoyed all but the most stilted and cliched of the 1st season because man, it was STAR TREK! ON TV EVERY WEEK AGAIN!!!
The biggest problem with this episode, like most of the first and a good bit of the second season, is that it doesn’t hold up very well to time. Add to that the subpar stories that we got until the third season and one can’t look as fondly at these episodes as one does the three seasons of the original series.
WHOOPS! My bad, we forgot to change the intro post. We decided to change the warp rating scale to out of 10 rather than out of 6 for TNG.
So yeah, it’s 4 of 10, not 4 of 6.
Also, TNG was a massive ratings bonanza for Paramount, especially since the whole concept of the first-run syndicated drama was brand-new. The 1988 writer’s strike had nothing to do with it–it was making beaucoup bucks from jump, and was never in any danger of being cancelled.
Amusingly, TNG started a revolution that has since revolved into something else. Nobody did first-run syndicated drama until TNG, and then there was a metric butt-load of it in the 1990s. But with the advent of new networks, the increase of original programming on cable networks, and the death of the independent local station, by the middle of the previous decade, the concept was dying and now no longer exists.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
It took some time for the show to hit it’s stride, and it never got the level of character interaction of TOS, mostly because there were weak characters that never got that great. Specifically Troi and Wesley were very weak and Riker only had a few moments where he wasn’t a stick. The major problem was there were too many major characters, and not enough minor ones. They kept trying to make storylines to make them all happy, and thats a lousy way to design a series.
I agree with johntheirishmongol, with the additions of the severe overuse of the holodeck and Wesley Saves The Day.
I thought I remembered the premiere of this, but a quick calendar check reminds me that I was in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. I am sure this was the first Next Generation episode I saw, and I was super exited to watch on the crappy mess deck TV after we returned.
I was disappointed. Two hours was too long for the plot.
(I may be premature for this re-watch, but) Most of the first two seasons was dull, 3 picked up some, 4-5-6 TNG was fully in it’s stride, 7 was a bit self-indulgent but okay. I look forward to the rest of your re-watch!
Just to follow on Keith’s comment @12: The Warp Rating of 4 is a result of me getting confused regarding when we’re implementing the 10-scale.
For those interested, the episode was given a rating of 2 out of 6 on the Warp 6-scale that we’ve been historically using on the Original Series rewatches!
I was an eight year old fan of TOS, and LOVED this episode, because it was giving me a Star Trek that was MINE! No longer could my older brother hold it over my head that he’d been a fan of TOS first. :) Also, this was the same year that Tiny Toon Adventures came out, and I thought “YES! A Star Trek for me, AND a Looney Toons for me!” Heh.
I will always and forever love Q. John De Lancie in this episode is a big part of what kept me watching. That, and I loved Data.
And had a crush on Wesley. Shut up.
I was 32 (a fan sinceTOS) and the first thing I hated were the uniforms and the bloated guppy look of the Enterprise D.
The show was slow starter for me, the first season was really bad mainly because Gene kept running off the writers. Second Season had a few very good eps. Things picked up in the third season.
One of the reasons I don’t own this series on DVD is because there is a lot of stuff I wouldn’t care to set through.
My family started our own STNG re-watch so the younger generation could catch-up and we’re already through The Lonely Among Us. You aren’t just writing up one episode a week, are you?
USSWylie: As you may have already noticed by now, it’ll be two a week, as “The Naked Now” just went up today. There’ll be new rewatches every Monday and Thursday. Look for “Code of Honor” on Monday….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I guess I’m a little late to the party.
But I found that ST:TNG is on Netflix now, so I’m a happy camper. All I wanted to say was that I also caught the “detector circuits” dialogue. …I cringed. I guess circuits were new enough to mainstream TV back in ’87 that they were called out as something fancy that “detects” things, haha.
I, too am late to the party, but I should catch up rather quickly. I loved Farpoint when it first aired, not for the episode in and of itself, but because I saw great potential in the characters of Picard, Data, Worf and (at the time) Wesley. I knew it would get better and it did (except Wesley). Also, I was a big fan of David Lynch’s Dune, so I was very excited that the new Trek starred Gurney “You Young Pup!” Halleck as the Captain. I was 20 years old in 1987 with much older brothers who also held their TOS fandom over my head (same as they did with The Beatles). I finally managed to convert my eldest bro when I showed him “The Measure Of A Man.” But that’s a story for another day.
2 LOLs: “Worf is emasculated right off the bat” – indeed he was. Captain Sisko would put him to much better use.
Also, the mini-dress guy made at least one encore performance in 11001001. Looking confused as ever.
Also late to the party :) Although I was pretty geeky, I never watched Star Trek TNG growing up, but my mom was a big fan and so were my friends. The first episode I distinctly remember watching with some friends is ‘Cause and Effect’ – still one of my favorites to this day.
Anyway, my husband was a big Trek fan, and had a few DVD collections I enjoyed with him. From the start my two favorite characters have always been Data and Q (imagine my glee when we found the Q DVD collection!). Anyway, we just got the entire TNG series on DVD so I am pretty excited to read through this :) This will actually be my first time watching the series too – aside from the episodes on the Time Travel collection and the Q collection and a few other favorites my husband recorded off of TV, I really haven’t seen that many episodes.
I can understand the nostalgia factor coming from some of the previous commenters – I also own the entire series of Full House on DVD. Objectively, I know it’s not the greatest show ever. But I still greatly enjoy watching it even now.
I love all the little ‘moments’ outlined in the episodes and I look forward to the re-watch.
Also, just going to say – I’ve heard a lot or bad press regarding Wesley, but I’m about halfway through the first series and he doesn’t grate on me that much – yes, he overplays the precocious genius kid trope a bit, but he hasn’t gotten on my nerves. I am certain I would have had a huge crush on him had I watched this when it came out, haha!
Two things stick out to me about this episode. They should have kept Marina Sirtis in the blue mini with her hair down.
She looks terrible with her knotted up like that.
Compare here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adSE_Sgl-lg
The other is, as an action romp, most of Part 1 works. Getting trapped by the Q net, the chase, saucer separation, and then the trial all flow. Things slow down needlessly after that. It’s like how Brannon Braga and Ron Moore discussed Generations. It was good, but, it got lost when the two captains started cooking eggs. It’s all well and good to have them together, but, cooking eggs?
Things don’t quite open up again until the second entity arrives.
I have to say, this reimagining is pretty funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIeMJSVNAgo
I just got Netflix and see they have all 7 seasons. I had watched the series on BBC America but for some reason they don’t have Season 1, so I’m interested in finding out if it has aged as badly as I suspect. So I just watch Farpoint, and I find it a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I cringe at some of the awkwardness of the actors who haven’t yet figured out what to do with their roles, and Picard almost bursting into tears when he says “Guilty” makes me shudder – but I kinda dig the machismo when Riker successfully manually docks the saucer section with the rest of the ship, and the backstories of the characters, sometimes only hinted at, give some indication this is going to be a series with some depth to it. I’d give it better than 4 out of 10 – maybe a 6.
I’ve always quite liked “Encounter at Farpoint”. It’s not the strongest Star Trek spin-off pilot by any means – in my book, that would probably be “Emissary” – but it has some great moments, most of which concern Q, and it does a pretty good job of introducing the main characters. Picard is certainly right though when he said most of their later missions would be much more interesting!
“Nobody did first-run syndicated drama until TNG”
The people at Ziv would be very surprised to learn this.
Regarding the cringe-worthy “detector circuits” line. Perhaps it was an homage to the first ever line of dialogue in Star Trek (although not the first line seen by the public, since I’m referencing “The Cage” here):
Spock: “Check the circuit!”
I don’t science. I am a Star Trek fan primarily because I find the characters and the interplay among them in the shows and movies to be intriguing. That said, sometimes even a dullard like me has questions. So, in the event anyone is still reading these rewatches, I have a question about warp drive. It’s supposed to be speed of light, right? Warp 1 equals the speed of light? If that’s the case, is there some way within the show’s premises to explain things like what happens here when they try to outrun the shiny round pulsating thingie which not only matches them at warp 9+ but begins to overtake them? They do the saucer separation thingie and then circle back to await the shiny round pulsating thingie. They are at full stop, yet on screen they can see it approaching. The thing is coming at warp 9+ or whatever. How can they see it on the screen. Shouldn’t it arrive instantaneously? What am I missing here?
Besides that, I just watched this after doing a personal DS9 rewatch, after doing a personal TNG rewatch. Apparently I can’t get enough of this stuff. After finishing up “What You Leave Behind” I decided it would be interesting to come back to “Encounter at Farpoint” to see how the beginning of this series held up with DS9’s finale still fresh in my mind. The answer, to me, at least, is not too bad. Yes, Tasha is an impulsive brat and part of me wishes she had stayed frozen; Troi’s existence seems to be for the purpose of furrowing her eyebrows in empathic pain; and Wesley is, well, Wesley. But you can see that Picard is going to be something special, and Riker is intriguing.
First and foremost, it’s a TV show. Rules are inconsistent, bent, and broken all the time–especially for dramatic effect.
Warp speed is never codified in the show (though some varying attempts have been made in tie-in fiction). Warp 1 is roughly on par or somewhat faster than light speed as a general rule of thumb though.
Because they have FTL travel, they also use the same mechanic for FTL sensors and communications (in the show it’s called “subspace”–essentially a parallel/higher dimension where distances have a nonlinear relation to “realspace” enabling FTL by encapsulating the ship within a bubble of it). Hence why they can see something travelling at warp speed before it arrives.
All the various shows and movies are constantly putting things “on screen” that couldn’t possibly be seen from the ship by light alone. The only reasonable explanation is that what is on screen is a construct created from other sensor data and at least some of those sensors are not limited by light speed.
Yeah, a lot of what is seen on screen is an image translation of sensor data. Sensors, of course, work via technology we haven’t invented yet. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
September 28, 1987 was a historic day for me and millions of others. I was 11 when I saw that and it mesmerized me. The stilted dialogue didn’t matter, some cheesy F/X or anything else. This was Star Trek! New Star Trek! It had the Alexander Courage theme being used! The holodeck was cool! Picard was cool! Data was cool! Q was cool!
TNG would have many ups & downs all the way to the end(1994), but this episode will always have a special place.
Also I’d say that for me, Picard/Q is at least as compelling as the TOS relationships(Kirk/Spock, Kirk/McCoy and Spock/McCoy). Thanks to great writing and the 2 best actors on the show(Stewart and De Lancie).
I remember all the hype and getting ready to watch the pilot….
And then my high school friends and I SQUEALED over the amazing visual effects of the planets in the opening sequence.
Lol. What we can do now.
And then we SQUEALED again over “where no one has gone before.”
I was a child of the first space shuttle so I thought we could do literally anything in my future. I hope we still can.
The only reason I kept watching TNG through the truly sad first season was I’d fallen totally in love with Patrick Stewart. Eventually though not even he could carry the burden of the show for me.
And I hated Q.
People are too harsh with their rating of this episode. Don’t judge it with your mind but rather try to capture the essence of it and not get caught up in the minutiae. It captures the all the elements of what Star Trek is, and what it means to be human and our journey towards something greater. We are so critical of ourselves and what the future holds for us, b/c we get so caught up in the mundane and the trivial things that we lose sight on how far our species has come, but also how much more we can grow and become.
I get it, the script and plot are sub par at best, the effects are terrible, the acting is stiff as hell… all irrelevant. Stop nitpicking and trying to act like your “too cool” or “too intelligent” to feel or say something positive despite the obvious flaws of the episode. There’s a freaking android who acts more human than some of you so called humans out there, even from the get go of the series. Sad.
I am a rock and watching this episode even I can appreciate the canvas the creators are presenting. If you can’t see past your own nose, then I truly feel bad for you. Walking around being cynical all the time about everything and not seeing the good in things simply b/c you don’t have the courage to accept emotions is tragic.
Re watch this episode without any prejudice, without trying to catch all the botches in script, or the inconsistencies in the set, without judging the acting, and just enjoy the episode and try to capture what Roddenberry is trying to convey to you from the very first episode. I hope, for your sake, that there will be a newfound appreciation.
Encounter wasn’t that bad. It was Naked Now that nearly turned me off.
I can’t believe I never posted in this thread until now. I guess I came into this series late.
Anyway, while TNG’s first season looks underwhelming to us in retrospect, it’s important to understand that most SFTV prior to 1987 was so, so much worse. We’re talking stuff like Galactica 1980, Buck Rogers, Manimal, Voyagers!, V: The Series, Misfits of Science, and the like. There were a few good shows — the 1985 Twilight Zone revival, the syndicated Ray Bradbury Theater, Starman, Max Headroom — but they weren’t breakout hits.
So when TNG came along, it was so much better than the very low standard of its predecessors. We could see its flaws, but it had a lot more intelligence and substance and potential than the trashy stuff that preceded it, and much better FX and production values than most of it. For all early TNG’s problems, it set a new standard for intelligence and quality in SFTV, and set the precedent for the rise of other smart SFTV shows in the years to follow, e.g. Alien Nation, Quantum Leap, and the SFTV boom of the ’90s. People today look back and wonder what people saw in it, but that’s just because SFTV has gotten so much better now, and that’s because it’s built on the foundations that TNG laid.
As for “Farpoint” itself, it was pretty impressive to me at the time, but looking at it more critically, the signs are there that Fontana originally wrote it as a 90-minute pilot and Roddenberry then tacked on the Q story when it was decided to expand it to 2 hours. Really, Q doesn’t contribute anything of substance to the Farpoint Station storyline. He’s little more than a framing device. He shows up to pad the story with the whole trial thing, then arbitarily decides to test the crew by letting them conduct the mission they were going to conduct anyway, and then he just pops in from time to time to kibitz and has no real effect on the story. It’s a pretty clumsy structure once you recognize it.
Although it’s interesting to note that the Q were portrayed as less godlike here than they were later on. The premise is that they’ve only now confronted humanity because we’re moving into their territory, so that they’re not omnipresent throughout the universe. And Q needs to use a “ship” of sorts to pursue the Enterprise. It’s a common tendency in fiction that powerful characters’ abilities tend to get inflated over time, like how Superman started out just jumping really high and able to withstand anything short of an exploding shell, but then ended up able to fly faster than light or back in time, juggle planets without breaking a sweat, and take refreshing swims through the cores of stars.
Anyway, I hate the idea of Q — he’s basically Mr. Mxyzptlk or the Great Gazoo, a fantasy character with magic powers dropped into what Roddenberry always pretended was a grounded, believable universe. But John DeLancie’s performance made the character work far better than the writing did, at least this early on.
I always liked the space jellyfish, though. I revisited them in a major way in my second Trek novel, Titan: Orion’s Hounds.
@38 – funny, but when I saw this comment in the sidebar, and realized it wasn’t in my conversations, I had the same thought!
@37. It was “Code of Honor” for me. Terrible backward stuff. And kind of boring.
Thankfully though, “Where No One Has Gone Before” came along a couple episodes later and renewed my interest. That is the true pilot. My thoughts have made it so. ;)
Another thing that strikes me about TNG was the missed potential (something I touched on in Orion’s Hounds). The premise here was that the Enterprise was starting out at the most distant point Starfleet had charted and was going beyond it into completely unknown space. Part of the original thinking, the reason there were families aboard, was that the E-D was meant to spend up to 15 years at a time in uncharted space, far from any home port, and thus had to be a completely self-contained community.
And yet they abandoned that immediately. Literally the very next episode had the ship answering a distress call from another Starfleet ship, and the one after that had them on a medical relief mission to a Federation planet, and the one after that had Deanna’s mother and fiance coming aboard at a familiar port of call, and the one after that had an engineering consultant come onboard to do an experimental upgrade. After that, they did get back to stories set in unknown space to an extent, but that original concept of going beyond the limit of known space was quickly lost.
Although the same thing sort of happened with TOS and TAS. Both had pilots/premieres written by Samuel Peeples and featuring the Enterprise literally going out beyond the limits of the galaxy, Where No Man Has Gone Before and Beyond the Farthest Star, but by the next episode they were back closer to home (or at least within the actual galaxy). I guess starting out that way was more symbolic than literal — a way to convey to the audience that the show was about exploring the unknown, without closing off the option of stories about rescue missions, diplomatic missions, or other visits to known worlds.
@41. I agree, and I guess that’s why I’m still interested in Discovery despite its many flaws. They’ve finally, voluntarily ‘boldy gone’ to the far reaches of time and space and decided to stay there, apparently. Cool!
Like in “Where No One Has Gone Before” and later in “The Nth Degree,” I wish TNG had done those kind of stories more often. There was far too much patrolling of the Neutral Zone and escorting ambassadors around for my liking. Oh, and a few too many holodeck episodes.
@42/Spike: Well, TNG had holodeck episodes for the same pragmatic reason that TOS had Earth-duplicate planets — because they didn’t have enough money to create whole new alien worlds every week and so they needed to economize by recycling historical props, costumes, sets, etc. Between the two, I find holodecks a more plausible way of doing it.
Come to think of it, that’s probably why they had the ship stay closer to home too — so that it would be easier to have them encounter other Starfleet vessels so they could reuse the Enterprise sets as other ships’ interiors, and so they could recycle miniatures and stock footage from the movies, as with the Excelsior-class Hood in “Farpoint” and the Grissom-type Tsiolkovsky in “The Naked Now,” or the reuse of ST III’s Spacedock as a starbase in “11001001.”
Oh definitely, budget strikes again.
Doesn’t seem to be as much an issue now though. Whatever writing and directorial issues I may have with the new CBS Trek, I’m continually impressed with how expensive and cinematic so much of it looks. Lots and lots of new sets, it seems. Though I do miss the visual simplicity of earlier series. There’s an awful lot of clutter in modern sci-fi.
But I digress.
@44/Spike: Well, the modern trend of shorter seasons means there’s more money to spend per episode. Also, the advantage of serialized storylines is that you get to use the same sets, costumes, etc. for multiple episodes (which is why early Doctor Who tended to have fairly long serials, typically 6-7 episodes, sometimes more).
Ah, good point. I hadn’t considered the shorter seasons.
@40, Ah yes. The one where they get to be both racist and sexist to quote Will Wheaton. I actually got excited to see an alien race that wasn’t White too.
@38 – Chris: I really liked what you did with all the cosmozoan in Orion’s Hounds.
Maybe I’m making excuses, but at least one rationale for the “stiff’ acting is that the characters in the story were also just getting used to their roles and relationships with one another. They were treading a little carefully, trying to read one another and feel one another out (even Troi, apparently, for whom that kind of thing should have come naturally!) — so it might make sense that they didn’t really look or act at east a lot of the time. But then, I’m probably just rationalizing . . .
I’m sure this has probably been brought up before by other people, but on reflection on TNG in general, I have a problem with the characterization of Data. Yes, yes, he is an incredible and rightfully popular character portrayed magnificently by Brent Spiner. My specific gripe has to do with the chronology of the character as it relates to the series (being on the Enterprise) because he acts as if humanity is brand new to him. And yet he’s a lieutenant commander and the second officer of the ship with many years of Starfleet service behind him and abundant decorations and honors from said organization. So it seems strange how we seemingly witness his first interactions with humor and figures of speech and sexuality and dating, etc. A lot of those things he should have already experienced at Starfleet Academy or on a previous ship he served on at the very least. Therefore I believe it would have made a lot more sense if we’re introduced to Data as an ensign straight out of the Academy who got his posting on the Enterprise because he’s obviously so brilliant. All of his experiences during the course of the series would still be the same for the most part but you wouldn’t have to overlook how he should already be a more human-like android by the time the series begins.
@50/GarretH: I used to think that too, but I’ve realized that Data’s behavior is basically much like parts of the autistic spectrum. Some autistic people, even as adults, have difficulties similar to Data’s in grasping figurative speech, using contractions, recognizing subtext, etc., because those all involve recognizing things left implicit beneath the surface in a way that doesn’t naturally occur to them. Just having experience with it doesn’t overcome the difficulty, because it’s a fundamental difference in perception and thought process, not just a matter of experience. (Like how colorblind people can’t just learn to see color with practice.)
Of course, this means that all that insistence about how Data’s behavior is less than fully human is really horribly ableist. Data’s behavior falls well within the range of human behaviors; it’s just in the neurodivergent part of that range.
Still, in my TNG prequel novel The Buried Age, I did address this in another way. I noticed that when we saw Starfleet characters outside the Enterprise crew encounter Data — like Bruce Maddox or that first officer in “Redemption II” — they didn’t always accept him as a person. Pulaski didn’t accept him at first either. So the E crew’s acceptance of him seemed the exception to the rule. So I posited that Data had spent most of his Starfleet career shunted into isolated, menial tasks that entailed little interpersonal interaction, because people didn’t know what to do with him or didn’t want to deal with him, and he went along with it and didn’t really question it. In my book, it was Picard who saw his potential to be more and urged him to assert himself and push harder to be allowed to fulfill his potential, and that was the foundation of their future friendship.
@51/CLB: Ah, very nice. It’s a sweet notion to think that Data didn’t find his true “family” until he served on Enterprise-D.
@51: Also, I’d like to modify my comment as not to sound ableist because I’m not insensitive to people on the autistic spectrum and I personally believe in IDIC. Rather, I was speaking more to specific experiences that I feel like Data on TNG should have already had but I get can be explained away. For instance, Data gets his first command of a ship in “Redemption II” in the 5th season but it seems rather late in his service record to finally get to do that. In comparison, Geordi, only a lieutenant junior grade, and obviously a much junior officer in contrast to Data, got to command the Enterprise way back in the 1st season in “Arsenal of Freedom.”
I haven’t watched “In Theory” in a long time but I believe it’s implied that this is Data’s first time in a romantic relationship. Of course that can be explained away but you’d think that that might have been something that he first tried during his Academy days or on a previous posting. I’m sure other beings, human or otherwise, might have tried to initiate something with him.
And on a related tangent, have there ever been any non-canon stories where Data has a romantic or sexual relationship with a man? I mean, his sexuality is programmed so why should it be modeled after a strictly heterosexual sexuality? It is the future after all!
@53 And on a related tangent, have there ever been any non-canon stories where Data has a romantic or sexual relationship with a man?
As in slash fiction? Plenty. Try a search for “Data slash Picard”.
@54: Haha. I meant non-slash fiction which I’m sure that has come up in plenty, but rather in any of the non-cannon published books.
@51 I haven’t read Buried Age. The issue I have with your hypothesis regarding Data’s previous service is, according Measure of a Man, he seems to have earned a significant number of medals for valor and achievement which would seem to be inconsistent with continuous postings in menial tasks.
I suppose the answer, since Measure was a second season episode, that he had won those awards after being posted to Enterprise. Or that they were do to anomalous incidents at those menial posts which contributed to Starfleet Command decided that he deserved a post on a actual ship.
@56/costumer:
I haven’t read Buried Age either, so I don’t know how extensive it covers Data’s career before TNG. Maybe my take on this discussion is in the book, I don’t know. However, I think a year on the Enterprise is far too short a time to earn those four medals. Not saying it’s not possible, only that I think it’s unlikely. Your second suggestion, I think, is more likely.
My thinking is that during his time with so called ‘menial tasks’, his capacity for extreme efficiency was overlooked because the tasks were so pedestrian. Perhaps during some emergency at a post he was assigned to, he performed above and beyond, after which he was honored with his medal for Valor and Gallantry. Because of that recognition, he was accorded more respect and assigned to a post more substantial. Perhaps a tour on the USS Trieste was said post. During his time on the Trieste, maybe he acquired the other medals and was finally seen as a Starfleet officer with far more upside than originally thought. The Enterprise then followed and here we are.
Again, this is total speculation, but I think it answers the question quite effectively. How did an officer who was overlooked because of undue and perhaps unintended prejudice, have such a largely undistinguished career, yet have four medals? Just my take.
In life it happens all the time. As a loose example: Someone has a job interview and is lacking in preparedness, possibly due to something they can’t control. Someone else has a better interview, gets the job, but then proves to be a disappointment. The previous person was the better candidate after all.
@56 & 57: It wasn’t that Data’s tasks were menial; I misspoke when I said that. After all, he’d earned lieutenant commander’s rank. My intent was to explain why Data was so inexperienced with social interaction if he’d been in Starfleet for a couple of decades. The idea was that he tended to be assigned to tasks that were more solitary, less team-oriented, less visible.
Addendum: Sorry CLB, I perused over your post @51, I should have read it more carefully. I missed the part that you portrayed Picard as being the one who nurtured Data’s potential and it’s a great segue into their relationship in TNG.
sorry sir, i seem to be commenting on everything
After slogging through The Original Series, “Encounter at Farpoint” feels like a soothing balm. I hadn’t realized just how tired I had gotten of seeing Kirk, Spock and McCoy all the time that merely having a different crew with more emphasis on the whole bunch rather than just three would make me so happy. Distancing The Next Generation from The Original Series was a great move and I welcome it.
For 1980s television, these are also some mighty impressive SFX too. It looks better than the effects from any live-action SF I saw in the 90s.
About the only discordant note for me is Q’s inclusion. He should have been introduced in a later episode and his inclusion makes things confusing when the Farpoint alien creates apples and other goods Riker and Crusher wish for; I thought at first Q was doing that for whatever reason. Still, he’s a magnificent presence and I like his character so far (and de Lancie’s the only Star Trek cast member I’ve had the honor of speaking to in person).
A promising beginning to the next generation of Trek!
@61/Fujimoto: “For 1980s television, these are also some mighty impressive SFX too. It looks better than the effects from any live-action SF I saw in the 90s.”
Oh, yes. TNG’s effects and production values were top-of-the-line for ’80s TV. If you compare it to its syndication sister show War of the Worlds: The Series (1988-90), the difference in quality is astonishing, not just in visual effects but in basic image and audio quality, which were pretty amateurish all around on WotW. Pretty much the only contemporary thing I can think of that had effects close to the same quality as TNG was CBS’s Beauty and the Beast, though that was mostly matte paintings and prosthetic makeup. And I guess Amazing Stories from a couple of years before, though that was a trade-off, since it prioritized its cinematic production values and Spielbergian spectacle at the expense of intelligent or even competent writing.
The only way I can describe how awful ‘Farpoint’ is, is to compare it to the scenes in ‘All Good Things” which deal with Picard in the past. I fully realize that this is the very first time these actors were portraying their roles, but damn were they terrible. “Yelly” is probably the best word to describe most of the performances. Sirtis floats through the whole episode like she has a knife jabbed in her back – on the verge of tears every time she opens her mouth. Crosby is horrible as usual – awkward and unnatural, also very ‘yelly’. Even Sir Patrick is far from likeable here. I might actually give a pass to Jonathan Frakes here – he is the most watchable.
Now, contrast that with the performances seven years later and you’ll see what I mean. Much more natural and relaxed performances by everyone across the board. Yes, even Crosby.
It’s not fair to pick on the actors this early in the game. Characters are meant to develop with time, but man, were they extremely unlikeable in the pilot.
@63: At least Sirtis, who is not one to mince words, admits that her performance in this episode is terrible.
“Encounter at Farpoint” is very mediocre and an overlong slog to get through. However, “All Good Things” is excellent and one of my favorite episodes and ties into the pilot episode. So while “Encounter…” isn’t essential viewing to watch the series finale, I find “All Good Things” is enhanced by returning to how things began and coming full circle. It’s also fun noting how all of the actors have become much more relaxed in their roles going from Point A to Point B. John de Lancie seemed to nail the part from jump though. Q seems very much the same character from pilot to series finale, except having grown an obvious fondness for Picard, as Data amusingly refers to “like a master and his beloved pet,” or words to that effect.