Where next after watching all six Star Trek films with the original cast? On to the next show, obviously. Actually, much like how in reality, Star Trek: The Next Generation was running for several seasons while the last couple of movies featuring the original cast ran, we started watching ST:TNG while still finishing up the movies. It’s a lot easier to slot a forty-five minute show into the family evening schedule than an hour and a half movie, after all.
So, Star Trek: The Next Generation. One administrative note, I realized when doing my retro-rewatch article on the Original series that three seasons is way too much to summarize in a single blogpost, much less a seven season behemoth like ST:TNG. Really, even a single season is too massive to do justice in a single post, except maybe as a small wrap-up at the end. Instead, I’m going to tackle ST:TNG how I should have tackled ST:TOS – one or two episodes per blog post. With all that out of the way, let’s jump in. There will be spoilers.
When it premiered in 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation had some very big shoes to fill. As the first live action Star Trek TV show in almost twenty years, expectations were sky-high. A new crew, a new ship, and a universe set a century after ST:TOS. With a modern show, the obvious choice would be to throw viewers into a massive, action packed start, but ‘80s TV was a little slower, and still very locked into the A-plot, B-plot formula with most episodes being able to mostly stand alone. In fact, looking at the episode list, I realized that my own recollections of watching ST:TNG were wildly out of the actual episode sequence, thanks mostly to syndication and the typical early bedtime schedule of an eight-year-old boy.
The first episode, “Encounter at Farpoint” doesn’t get off to a promising start. The plot revolves around the Enterprise (NCC 1701-D) being on her inaugural mission and being dispatched to Farpoint station to complete a trade deal between the Federation and the locals. That’s not the real focus though. On the way to Farpoint Station, Enterprise is trapped by a seemingly omniscient alien known only as “Q” who places the crew on trial for the crimes of humanity. Picard offers Q a deal: if Enterprise succeeds on her mission, humanity can continue to expand. If not, humanity goes through a bigger finger-snap than Thanos ever managed.
There’s an interesting introduction to a technical mechanic that was originally envisioned to play a much bigger part in the show: saucer separation. This Enterprise is a much bigger ship than past vessels. Not just an exploration vessel, it’s a Federation flagship that’s supposed to operate independently for years a time. As such, there whole families aboard. But what happens when an armed warship needs to go into battle? You put all the civilians into the saucer section, leave that behind, and zip into battle with the remaining ship. For technical and time reasons, after this episode, this separation doesn’t happen again for several seasons.
What shines in this episode are some great introductory moments to some of the characters. The presence of a Klingon on the bridge crew is just treated as a matter of fact “there’s a Klingon in the bridge crew. And?” When Riker meets Picard for the first time, he’s sent to a screen to catch up on events, as he was already at Farpoint when Enterprise encountered Q. After watching a recap, he notes with a raised eyebrow that Picard “called that a minor incident.”
Our introduction to Geordi LaForge is similarly revealing, as we first encounter him in Sick Bay being scanned by Doctor Beverley Crusher for persistent headaches. Geordi acknowledges that he’s actually suffered from headaches all his life, as a side effect of the VISOR system that he wears. He then notes that he’d rather deal with the pain than have surgery or painkillers, because he doesn’t want to mess up his brain. In short, he’s something of stoic who’s willing to live with constant pain because of what it gains him (a form of sight).
Our introduction to Deanna Troi, the half-Betazoid ship’s councellor, is rather less complimentary. Her ability to sense emotion is overplayed to the point of a joke in the first episode. “Captain! I’m sensing great joy!” It takes some time for both the writers and Marina Sirtis to figure out the character.
There’s also a touching, if brief moment with Doctor McCoy (played by a heavily made up Deforest Kelley to look about 160 years old) figuratively passing the torch in a conversation with Data. By the end of Star Trek V, we’ve seen how much the peculiar friendship between Spock and McCoy means to each of them. It’s touching to hear Bones talk to Data about Vulcans.
Another big indication that this will be a different kind of Star Trek is Picard’s approach to Q. When Kirk’s Enterprise encountered its share of godlike aliens, Kirk’s usual approach was to question them, fight them, or possibly seduce them. Picard reasons with Q, in the first of several stirring defenses of humanity and its potential.
The overall episode plot gets resolved fairly by the numbers. The denizens of Farpoint Station have a secret: the station itself is actually a huge, starfaring alien that they’ve captured and forced to become a station. Which is weird, and only gets weirder when you think about all the people living inside this shape-morphing “ship” being. But when the alien’s mate shows up, things get really messy. However, our cerebral captain figures out to not go in phasers blazing, and instead solves the problem without loss of life, thereby passing Q’s test.
“Encounter at Farpoint” wasn’t a great start to the series. But it does also serve as a good reminder that sometimes, a series doesn’t have to have a strong opening episode to become excellent.