Retro ReView – Star Trek: TNG (S1: E6) “Where No One Has Gone Before”

Might as well retitle this one to “Wonder Boy Wesley Saves the Day”. Ugh. The premise is solid, actually, and the guest stars do some solid work. The main plot is that Enterprise takes on a propulsion expert (Mr. Kosinski), along with his assistant (The Traveler), who’s there to optimize Enterprise’s warp drive for better performance. He’s had solid success on a couple of older vessels (which also gives us an excuse to see another Excelsior-class ship, the USS Fearless at the start of the show), so now it’s time to try with the Federation’s flagship.

Kosinski turns out to be an arrogant ass, completely convinced of his own infallibility, and utterly shocked when his experiments on Enterprise turn out to be not only wildly more successful than expected, but also completely unreproducible. Naturally, only Wonder Boy notices that The Traveler seems to be the one doing the actual work, and also growing more fatigued with each attempt to get home.

A good chunk of the episode involves Enterprise sitting at the edge of the galaxy. Apparently, this is a place where thought can easily become reality. Fortunately, no one imagines the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man while trying to empty their minds. Picard just sees visions of his mother and nearly falls out of a turbolift into space.

At the end, Wonder Boy saves the day, by helping The Traveler get Enterprise back to Federation space. The Traveler reveals that he’s part of an ancient race who searches for prodigies like Wesley (that’s not weird or creepy AT ALL…) and tells Picard that he should mentor him. Which is how we get the start of Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher (and that goofy rainbow uniform thing) starting in the next episode.