Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season One

As I write these words, there are two Trek shows in ongoing production and another movie on the way. Sooner or later. And yet, for too many reasons to get into, I find myself not really jazzed by any of it. This isn't an unfamiliar scenario for me with in-production Trek; usually I have to come back to it years later to properly appreciate it. Perhaps the same will be true of Discovery and Picard. For now, though, I find myself rewatching The Next Generation. 

TNG is the sort of thing that's been rewatched and blogged up in plenty of places. As a result, I won't be going too in depth on any one episode or much writer's room/ behind-the-scenes stuff. Anyone who read my Voyager season-to-season write-ups knows what to expect. 

Here's my least to most favorites from season one of the first new Trek to appear in primetime since TOS went off the air.

25.

Attempting rescue of a crashed shuttlecraft, an Enterprise away team encounters a malevolent lifeform known as Armus. Tragedy strikes when the alien kills Lieutenant Yar in cold blood.

Where were you on the night of April 25, 1988? I was at home, all of thirteen years old, watching this steaming piece of crap.

Can we talk about the dumbness of the title? Is it an allusion to something? I googled but found nothing. Armus refers to himself as such in one part ("I am a skin of evil left here by a race of Titans who believed if they rid themselves of me, they would free the bonds of destructiveness") but that makes no damn sense. Who cares what Armus thinks? He is disagreeable for many reasons. Here’s three: (1) Awful visual. (2) Awful voice performance. Whether that’s on the voice actor (Ron Gans) or the director (Joseph L. Scanlon) who knows. Why is he such a loud and wheezy breather, though? Even when communicating telepathically? (3) He has the kind of banal supervillain lines that never go anywhere or mean anything, and he has way too many of them. Whether that’s on the writers (Joseph Stefano and Hannah Louise Shearer) or Roddenberry and Maizlish re-writing them, I don’t know.

Denise Crosby wanted off the show, so the decision was made to give her the type of redshirt death typical for a security team member. Some have objected to that, but of all the things I dislike about this episode, that’s hardly near the top. I agree with Crosby that her character was never very interesting. Outside of TNG and Pet Sematary and her voice work on the Nitpickers audiobook alongside Lt. Barclay and Gowron, I don’t know too terribly much about her subsequent career. I did see Trekkies, which I didn't like too much, and her turn on Star Trek: New Voyages, which I did. 

24.

The Enterprise makes first contact with the Ferengi when both ships are stranded in orbit of a mysterious planet which is seemingly draining all their power.

You can tell I must really hate “Skin of Evil” because holy moley, this episode. They were trying to make the bigface viewscreen happen and the Ferengi a credibly menacing race at the same time. Combined, the effect is ridiculous.

Something jumped out at me on this re-watch of Season One that had occurred to me previously (as it has certainly to several others – this is not an original insight on my part) but not the extent of it: every episode can be reduced to one or two pre-existing TOS episodes. This was likely done deliberately (I think it’s said as much in one of the special features somewhere) but there’s a disadvantage. Take this one, which clearly harkens back to “Arena”. This is a much inferior but practically beat-for-beat retread of an iconic episode; why bring THAT up unless you’re bringing anything but your A game?

Roddenberry had several go-tos, and this all-powerful guy at the end, with the Ferengi hopping around like monkeys for some reason, is one of them. It’s tough to overcome a bad first impression, and the Ferengi made one of the all-time worst. (All praise and credit to Armin Shimerman for singlehandedly changing this in DS9.) 

23.

When the Enterprise rescues four stranded freighter passengers, Captain Picard soon becomes embroiled in a dispute between neighboring worlds and faces the possibility of breaking the Prime Directive.

This is one of those prime-directive case-law episodes. And like all case law for the prime directive, it’s destined to be ignored or flat-out contradicted with no case for appeal by some other prime directive case law episode. So what are the stakes? Nothing.

I guess such things are only meant to provoke discussion on this side of the screen, not necessarily make consistent case law on the other side of it. But it can rob an episode of drama. It can enhance it, too, certainly – it doesn’t here, for many reasons. Mainly it’s just a very confused episode altogether, in tone (compare the Bill and Ted interaction of the beginning with all the heroin stuff later on), approach, performance, everything. And once again it seems to artlessly reference TOS episodes (“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and “The Cloud Minders”) And the contrivances don’t help. (Beverly can synthesize space methadone but not space morphine? Isn’t one derivative of the other?)

Some TWOK reunion-ing going on with Judson Scott and Merritt Butrick (up there with Riker) guest-starring. 

Has anyone ever sampled or mashed-up that “Drugs can make you feel good” speech? I say this so much I should open up a business to directly market to such but: some enterprising junior higher out there should get on this.

22.

When Q returns, he offers Riker the same godlike powers that he uses. When the crew are put in a deadly situation, Riker must use his new found powers although Picard has other ideas.

Some of the Napoleonic monkey soldier shots have a TOS Mummenschanz quality that I like. That’s about it. Q is in two of my favorite TNG episodes, so I’m not 100% anti-Q when used effectively (‘Tapestry,’ ‘All Good Things’). Everywhere else, it quickly gets silly.

21.

When the Enterprise becomes infected with a strange intoxicating virus, Dr Crusher must race to find a cure before disaster strikes from an oncoming stellar fragment

On paper, I can almost see how this might have seemed like a can’t-miss idea.  In execution/ hindsight, it’s difficult to see how anyone thought this would work. It’s a good example of the confusion that reined in s1. No character comes off particularly well.

But “The Naked Time” was a bit of a misstep, as well. I forgot that it was one of the first episodes of the new series, just as this one was. Symmetry is cool, at the very least.

20.

When the Enterprise is ordered to transport a Starfleet Admiral to a hostage negotiation, Picard realises the Admiral has overdosed on an illegal de-aging drug which could jeopardize the whole mission.

The make-up on this guy and his old-face performance is just too much. 

It's almost as if he's escaped the Dark Crystal set. 

Feels like a TOS 3rd season episode. The cast is mainly along for the ride. The guy playing Karnos (Michael Pataki) is fine, but Clayton Rohner just doesn't pull it off as the de-aging Admiral. 

Whenever I see things like Yar and Worf phasering their way through the door, I wonder why they don’t just vaporize a circle in the wall, like we saw over and over again on TOS. Maybe those phasers were banned. I bet that’ll be a plotline in Picard or Discovery one day.

19.

The Enterprise is transporting two parties of rival alien races to a peace summit when it encounters a consciousness which is trying to escape the ship to return to its home.

Another one where you start to feel like hey, is Roddenberry working from the same list he had in 1976? He probably was. That’d be fine if so many of the ideas on it weren’t already out there in some way, shape, or form before or after 1976, but they are, in abundance.

The biggest problem with this one is the implication of the Captain’s recreation from his transporter pattern. This is by no means the only problematic (from a storytelling POV) thing about the transporters in TNG, just the first, I guess. But this seems like a big deal : so long, death! hello, endless perfect-transporter-duplicates!

18.

Picard confronts his past when the Ferengi Daimon Bok presents him with the U.S.S. Stargazer - but little does he realize that his old ship is only one piece of a puzzle that Bok is using as a tool of revenge.

It’s sometimes difficult in these early seasons to reconcile the characters as you see them vs. whom they later become. Everyone acts so crazy in this episode.

I can’t recall how much they revisit this ridiculous notion that the Ferengi caused the destruction of Captain Picard’s first command. This is like finding out he once lost a starship at a Juggaloes convention or something similarly tonally impossible. I prefer to think the entire idea was implanted in the Captain’s head by Bok. 

17.

Picard must bargain with the primitive Ligonians for the antidote to a terrible fever, but is unprepared when the leader of the aliens kidnaps the Enterprise's Chief of Security Tasha Yar.

If any episode of the show feels like a Buck Rogers episode, it’s this one.

At times the Federation and Starfleet can feel a little too British Empire-ish. This might be one of them – it’s kind of written into the concept to be a little British Empire-y, and I’m not saying I know where the tipping point is, nor am I saying anything regarding the quality of the British Empire. Different topic, only that Trek can sometimes feel like the colonial literature of the early to mid twentieth century, and the further you get away from the real world context of that, the more that quality can stand out. 

16.

During a routine overhaul, the Enterprise is hijacked by the Bynars. Picard and Riker, the only crew left aboard, soon realize what has happened and have no choice but to initiate auto-destruct.

Someone might have thought of these Bynars to help make sense of the Borg, no? I should be careful what I wish for, or someone will make dreadful hash out of it.

Notable for introducing Minuet, who is of course the pivotal clue in the far superior 'Future Imperfect'. Otherwise, things escalate way too fast with this abandon ship stuff – and wouldn’t this be the second ship Picard had done this to, if we buy the Stargazer/ Ferengi timeline? Which, like I say, I do not. But too many auto destruct gambles in this one season alone. Then again, it's a proud Starfleet tradition to threaten to blow yourself up if your autonomy is even temporarily compromised. 

15.

When the Enterprise visits Data's home planet they discover another android of the same construction. However, when 'Lore' is activated it quickly becomes clear he is nothing like Data and the Enterprise is soon in extreme danger.

I never really liked Data’s origin story. Lore's either, I suppose, by extension. But they had to have something, and this was what they chose. I know that they’re pulling at this thread in the new show. I will only comment on things in TNG, though, and the films (when appropriate) in this rewatch. (I will say: whether it's Nemesis or Picard or even the Winter Soldier over in the Marvelverse, I resist attempts to shoehorn things into old continuity. There should be a statute of limitations on some things.)

There’s a lot of Ray Bradbury-esque synth going on in this episode. Mainly this episode suffers most from a stilted script.

14.

Wesley and other Enterprise children are kidnapped by the powerful Aldeans whose race is sterile. Picard's attempts at negotiation only result in conflict, leaving Wesley to formulate an escape plan.

Not a bad set-up, though not a very original one. The resolution is similarly been-there done-that. The “Aldea” concept is squandered, and things don’t really add up. There might've been a wrap-up between Riker and Picard about how they discovered the banal answer to a centuries-old mystery and how meeting your idols can be disappointing. Later seasons would have had this, for sure. 

Always nice to see Jerry Hardin, of course, among many other things the father of Jan Levinson (The Office). 

13.

While visiting the paradise world of the Edo, the crew runs afoul of their legal system and must rescue Wesley Crusher, who, after breaking a law the Away Team was not made aware of, is sentenced to be executed.

The California parody (particularly all the jogging, and all the rubdowns) is a good one, or that is to say, it had potential. It mixes uneasily, though, with the colonists/ God angle.

I like how Tasha and Worf say they reviewed the laws and customs and everything’s safe. Apparently they missed one or two in their initial survey. Another one where I wish there was a wrap-up dressing-down scene in the Captain's ready room. 

12.

Wesley is at Relva 7 to take his Academy entrance exams, while an inspection team board the Enterprise and it soon becomes clear they are investigating the capability of Captain Picard.

Oliana is cute. So' T'Shanik. (Is that the Sleepaway Camp chick? Can't be... it isn't - in fact, it's someone who's got a small role on Discovery - but let's start that rumor. Murdock: not so much. 

The Starfleet exam plot is better than the inspection/ overbearing popinjay plot. Wesley Crusher isn’t a bad character. He was badly written at times, and badly performed at other times, but hey, who isn’t? In real life as it is in fiction. I like the Wesley we see here. And Picard's pep talk at the end is great. These are things people need to hear, damn it. 

11.

The Enterprise is ordered to participate in engine tests conducted by the arrogant Kosinski and his mysterious companion, but is soon stranded in a distant dimension where thoughts become reality.

Some cool visuals, apparently made in Robert Legado’s basement. There’s not much else going on I like, though. The whole thought-universe is under-developed, and Kosinski’s whole deal is a big shrug.

The Traveler is played by Erik Menyuk who apparently was in the final runnings to play Data. (Both appeared on Cheers. The Trek/Cheers connections never stop.) The story, though altered substantially by Maurice Hurley, is from The Wounded Sky where a spider-like creature fiddles with the engines and sends the TOS-era crew to a similarly metaphysical part of the galaxy.

10.

When an Enterprise away-team visits matriarchal planet Angel One to search for survivors they soon find themselves embroiled in a political nightmare. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is struck down by a deadly virus and forced into a confrontation with the Romulans. (Sort of.)

‘Survivors of the Odin’ might’ve been a cooler title.

Tasha is the worst. Everyone’s still finding their way. Crusher and Picard are off, too. A set-up with potential, but unrealized. Yet there's something I respond to. It reminds me somewhat - and somewhat inexplicably - of TOS "The Mark of Gideon." 

The Elected One should’ve been played by Teri Garr and Trent by Martin Short.

Had this been a later seasons episode after the cast found their way into the roles, it'd have been better. Hindsight.

9.

Riker, Data and Yar beam down to the planet Minos only to discover a deadly robot weapon is hunting them down. Beaming down to assist, Picard and Crusher may be the only hope for the doomed away team.

Another one that feels a bit like a TOS s3 episode. (Vincent Schiaveli, the automated salesman, feels like he should've been in TOS s3 somewhere, doesnt he?) I like the idea – I bet there’ll be several centuries worth of automated spam should our civilization collapse. Imagine being some future, alien historian trying to make sense of that. Particularly when the services offered are what they are.

The Away Team concept tried out throughout the season never catches on and is always a conspicuous affair. Everyone’s always stopping to comment on it, or try something new with it. Which makes sense, as it doesn’t work from the get-go. What makes sense on paper in David Gerrold’s The World of Star Trek does not necessarily make sense on a week-to-week TV show. Anyway, of course live bodycams like ubiquitous security cameras weren’t around in the 80s - and no sane person thought that a future having at least the latter would be anything other than a dystopian one – but it’s an unfortunate the writer’s room did not anticipate them. 

Also starring Julie Nickson as Ensign Tsu. "Rambo, you not expendable." Amen. 

8.

Picard is summoned to a secret meeting with other captains who inform him a conspiracy has begun to replace the top heads of Starfleet. Picard takes the Enterprise back to Earth to investigate the newly found threat.

We move into episodes I graded at least a B-minus.

When this originally aired, I was convinced it was the best thing ever. I remember saying that to my Trek-watching friends. (Of which there were like two, and one of them was my brother.) This time around, not so much. The central premise seems unlikely to have advanced to the point it has without safeguarding it somehow against the circumstances that lead Picard to cut its head off with one stroke. Among many other things.

Anyway – aren’t there any Vulcans around? Or so many other methods of detection? I mean, there’s a little tendril sticking out of people’s necks, to make it even easier. 

Is there any follow-up to this? I’ll have to look it up. (I still haven't.)

7.

Captain Picard decides to try out the new holodeck enhancements in the form of a Dixon Hill detective story. However, when an alien probe causes malfunctions, Picard and his team find themselves in a real life and death struggle.

I rate this one in the Bs only because it’s an overreach but in the right direction. The holodeck thing is still coming together, as well as the cast, and the script is not great. (“We want the item! Kill the woman.” It's obviously meta, but still clumsy.)

Beverly, Data, and Jean-Luc seem to be enjoying themselves in the Dixon Hill portion, or the actors themselves, I mean. 

At the time I remember thinking it was a poor and pointless retread of one of my then-favorite TOS episodes “A Piece of the Action.” I’ve definitely softened on the subject since 1988. Still not a fave, but harmless enough.

6.

Data uncovers three frozen humans from the 20th century, and brings them back to the Enterprise for Dr. Crusher to revive. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is ordered to investigate a new Romulan threat.

Space debris: one of the story-prompts dealt from a deck of Trek-storytelling card. Not necessarily a bad one, either. This is one of those Community Chest cards I like.

The characters themselves and the dynamics are not the greatest. Still, wonder what happens to them? Given the amount of temporal displacements in Trek, there is probably a community of temporal fish out of water somewhere, hopefully not under the supervision of Garth of Izar. As above, it’s a step in the right direction.

Hate to be that guy, but shouldn’t the computer ask (what’s his face) to specify shaken or stirred or vodka or gin for the martini?

Anthony James (Return to Witch Mountain) and Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat) and Susan Sackett. This “We’re back” business of the Romulans is lame, though – could’ve been cool, but like so many things with the Romulans, they just never know what to do with them. There will be more than a few  – and among the only, outside of TOS – great Romulan moments to come, though.

5.

The Enterprise arrives at the Velara terraforming base to check on progress but soon discovers that an alien intelligence is responsible for murdering one of the terraformers and soon commandeers the Enterprise.

Hey, it’s General Gogol.

"I see no reason to risk war to satisfy your personal paranoia and thirst for conquest."

Of any episode of the first season, the cast seems most like their later selves in this one. It’s not the most compelling mystery, or the best-explained, but there’s no question you’re swimming in Trek waters, here. “Highly abstracted reality / lovely visions, little data / Ugly bag of mostly water.” Alien haiku.

Kind of Doctor Who-ish, maybe? I don’t know Doctor Who well enough to say. (“Must… go home… to wet sand…”) Good performances all around.

4.

Troi's mother visits the Enterprise with news that Deanna's future husband will soon be arriving. The crew go about preparing for a wedding that is soon interrupted by a shipload of interstellar lepers.

I haven’t mentioned either of Colm Meaney’s first appearances here, not as O’Brien but unnamed background crew. But here’s Armin Shimerman as a Betazoid gift box. 

Troi gets a lot of grief for her first season demeanor. She does always seem on the edge of crying. This seems like a sensible enough way for an empath to act. I'm glad it developed from here, though.

Troi calls Riker “Bill” in one scene. Does that happen anywhere else? Is that Twitchell from Cheers as Wrenn? Sure is. Apparently he was in Insurrection, too, nice. The ol' Trek/ Cheers mojo.

3.

A team of renegade Klingons are rescued from a doomed freighter, but it soon transpires that they are not interested in peace with the Federation, and set about trying to commandeer the Enterprise.

The Picard/ visor stuff at the beginning is terrible. So awkward.

Kind of a hackneyed set-up, an erratic script, Dorn still growing into the role, the Klingons still coming together. But there’s something here. It’s also got the whole Klingon death howl, which is fantastic. If this wasn’t here, then Worf’s unleashing it in later moments (one in particular) wouldn’t have the same effect.

If it’s possible for Worf to learn so much about Klingons, wouldn’t anyone else in Starfleet? This is the whole Vulcan problem in TOS, though. It’s written into the show, practically. I like the Klingon audio cues from TMP. And so Worf’s long character arc – one with several stages of growth and adventure – begins.

2.

The Enterprise sets out to investigate strange time distortions rippling through their sector of space. Meanwhile, Picard faces an uncomfortable personal situation when he is reunited with an old flame.

There are a lot of clichés in play in this episode, but they’re ones everyone likes in drama. I like this bit of Picard’s past more than the Stargazer business. Do he and Michelle Phillips have a great deal of chemistry? Not really, but it works for the muted-feelings love triangle going on between Phillips (also starring as the one-who-got-away in the Mike Hammer Murder Me, Murder You movie) and Rod Loomis (Ziggy Freud from Bill and Ted’s.) A good Picard episode, all things considered, at least the best of the series to this point.

I forgot to mention one ground rule for this rewatch: we’ll just agree Data’s no-contractions thing is ridiculous and not harp on everywhere it’s contradicted. But it’s contradicted twice in this episode: once when he quotes “Time flies when you’re having fun” and at the end to his alternate selves when he says “It’s me!” Ai yi yi. 

I love that ending, though, with the three Datas and overlapping countdowns.

1.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the newly commissioned U.S.S. Enterprise must face an almost impossible challenge on their maiden voyage when an omnipotent being known only as Q puts the whole of humanity on trial.

The best by virtue of having the most sunk into it. I’d rather watch any of the previous four or five, really, if I was just cable-flipping, but this is a well put-together pilot. I tuned in, I recorded it and watched it again the next day and each day again until the following weekend (“The Naked Now.”) Then, not for like fifteen years. And then another ten after that and then finally just this past month. Each a different era of my life and each coming at it with relatively fresh eyes.

One thing I have not liked in each viewing is Q. It's just the price of doing business with the show in order to get the episodes I do like that need Q in them. Fine, okay. Does this? Only if an extremely long game is being played with “All Good Things” the established end. Maybe there was a box locked in Gene’s estate, do not open until TNG is going off the air, and inside was “wrap up the trial of humanity in last episode” scribbled on a Chili’s napkin or something. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The mystery of Farpoint Station/ the Bandai is a little Cocoon-y. But that’s okay. A pilot should be treated lightly, and it points everything in the right direction. Hell, Cocoon is pretty Trek-y, really, if you want to get technical, so who’s zooming whom?

One question: why are Bones and senior officers like Riker rendezvousing at the station that is the furthest out and barely under any kind of Starfleet/ Federation jurisdiction? It doesn’t seem like it’s on the way to anywhere; they keep emphasizing this. (“on the edge of the great unexplored mass of the galaxy.”) They even refer to it as a terminus in space.

A doctor, not a travel agent.

~

Wrap-up thoughts? How about some leftover screencaps instead. 

High-steppin'.

...

"It's called 'yogging.' Apparently, all you do is run!"

See you next time.

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