“The Last Outpost”
Written by Herbert Wright
Story by Richard Krzemian
Directed by Richard Colla
Season 1, Episode 5
Original air date: October 19, 1987
Star date: 41386.4
Mission summary
Enterprise pursues a Ferengi starship to recover a stolen T9 energy converter, with the hope that they will also be able to establish first contact with the mysterious race of space traders. Things are off to a rocky start when they face off in the unexplored Delphi Ardu system and the Ferengi open fire on them.
Enterprise easily resists the attack, until they are inexplicably pulled forward and immobilized by what seems to be advanced weapons technology they didn’t know the Ferengi possessed. Power drains from the Federation ship at an alarming rate, possibly due to the fact that there’s no Chief Engineer minding the store. Picard sends La Forge down to Engineering to straighten things out, but only because Wesley is busy.
La Forge discovers that the forcefield holding them adapts to their power usage and counters with equal force; he and Riker come up with a plan to abruptly shift into warp nine and break free before it can respond. La Forge is very enthusiastic about it.
It doesn’t work.
They’re still stuck, but now someone is also illegally downloading every file in the ship’s database, even a copy of “Encounter at Farpoint.” On a hunch, the Enterprise crew turns its attention to a nearby planet as Picard hails the Ferengi ship and offers to negotiate their terms. DaiMon Tarr responds—and refuses to surrender. He throws in some insults about their appearance while he’s at it. The Ferengi aren’t much for diplomacy.
Realizing that the Ferengi are somehow trapped by the planet too, Picard bluffs them while they study the planet that holds them hostage. Their limited research reveals that the planet was an outpost of the Tkon Empire, an ancient and powerful civilization that supposedly was “capable of actually moving stars.” In an ironic twist of fate, the Empire was wiped out when their sun went supernova, and this planet is all that remains… their “last outpost,” if you will.
With both ships still losing power, and Enterprise life support failing, Picard proposes an unlikely alliance with the Ferengi to share their knowledge and investigate the planet together. Unsurprisingly, the Ferengi betray them and zapping the Federation away team with remarkably bad special effects from their energy whips. The Ferengi cavort around their captives for a bit until the planet wakes up and produces a humanoid guardian named Portal 6-3.
Riker breaks the bad news that Portal’s civilization is dead, and the Ferengi try to convince Portal that the Enterprise crewmembers are barbarians. Portal isn’t fooled by their convincing display of civilized behavior. Riker charms him by correctly answering a trivia question about Sun Tzu, which is less impressive since Portal pulled it from his mind. Riker’s new BFF restores power to Enterprise just in time to prevent everyone from suffocating and/or freezing to death. Portal and Riker bond over their moral superiority before the aged guardian goes back to sleep. Picard commends his first officer on his manly performance.
RIKER: One final request, sir. Permission to beam a box of Data’s Chinese finger puzzles over to the Ferengi. A thank you for all they tried to do.
PICARD: Make it so.
Analysis
This episode is a marked improvement over the last two installments—about half of it is actually pretty good. The opening is interesting and the encounter with the Ferengi ship provides some genuine tension. Engaging a faceless enemy and making first contact with an alien culture in the midst of a dangerous situation is the stuff of good drama. In fact, the setup is reminiscent of some of the best hours of TOS, like “The Corbomite Maneuver” and “Balance of Terror,” without seeming too derivative. For the first time, TNG is starting to feel like Star Trek: The ship is in jeopardy from an unknown, incredible force in an unexplored region of space; Picard must negotiate with their opponents; and the crew works together to find a solution and unravel the mystery of the planet that holds them captive. I had forgotten all of these interesting elements of the episode, because it’s memorable (or notorious) for only one thing: the Ferengi.
And unfortunately the Ferengi is where this episode crumbles apart. From the moment the two crews beam down to the weird planet, the quality drops considerably. The episode feels drawn out as Riker tries to locate the missing members of the away team, and we discover that the grand new enemies of the Federation are ridiculous, sniveling monkey men. This is the first major race to be introduced to Star Trek in twenty years, and they pale in comparison to the Romulans, Klingons, and even the Andorians. It’s difficult to take the Ferengi seriously as a threat and they remained the comic relief of the franchise until DS9 fleshed out their culture a bit; even so, electric whips notwithstanding, it’s remarkable how many qualities of the Ferengi were established in this first episode, such as their distaste for “hew-mans,” extremely sensitive hearing, blatant sexism, cowardice, greed, and natural protection against Betazoid telepathy.
This is the first of many TNG episodes where Enterprise stumbles across the remnants of a lost and/or legendary civilization that possessed advanced technology, but it is far from the best. Portal does a fine impression of the Wizard of Oz before assuming the most cliched appearance possible. Then he presents a simple challenge designed to allow Riker to show his worth before handily solving Enterprise‘s problem–a problem that he caused in the first place. And all just to test the crew! Imagine that.
You can basically write off the last twenty minutes of the episode, but there are some nice moments in the first half. The crew’s reactions to Data throughout, particularly Picard’s, are priceless. The characters–and actors–are beginning to cohere into a functional and distinct group, but they still have a long way to go. One extremely laughable moment is Geordi’s exclamation over Riker’s suggested escape plan–some of the worst acting LeVar Burton will ever commit in the series:
Ah, I see where you’re going. We shift down and then kick hard into warp nine. Yeah! Come back fighting! Whooey!
One begins to see why he, Wesley, and Data are friends, since they’re the most pathetic nerds on the entire ship.
I liked the reminder that there are children and families on the ship; Riker shooing a little boy from the conference room feels realistic to me, as do the kids running and playing in the corridors. I actually did enjoy Data’s little struggle with the Chinese finger trap, however embarrassing it may be that he couldn’t a) figure out how it works or b) break the damn thing with his mighty android strength. At first I thought it was very clever to use the toy to parallel the situation Enterprise was in, something I had missed the first time I watched it. Then I thought perhaps it was too cheesy and obvious. Then I swung back around to thinking it was a slightly subtle and appropriate exploration of the theme. (Let’s face it, subtlety is not TNG’s strong point, especially this season.) I think the gesture of sending over the toys to the Ferengi doesn’t really make much sense, another example of trying too hard to be like TOS, since it was intended to mimic the end of “The Trouble with Tribbles.” On the other hand, it might have been funny if the Ferengi began trading the finger traps and this was their true introduction to doing business with the Federation.
There’s another odd, but strangely satisfying moment, when Picard responds to Dr. Crusher’s forced attempt at feminism:
PICARD: Is there anything else we can do, Doctor? Where’s Wesley?
CRUSHER: He’s in our quarters. I was tempted to give him a sedative.
PICARD: You shouldn’t.
CRUSHER: I know, but he’s my son. I love him.
PICARD: He has the right to meet death awake.
CRUSHER: Is that a male perspective?
PICARD: Rubbish.
But the biggest surprise of the episode is that Troi actually makes a good suggestion: to tell the Ferengi what they want to hear in order to open a dialogue with them. Even more noteworthy because it comes at a moment when she is unable to offer her usual Betazed “insights”!
But even if we ignore the Ferengi, and how I wish we could, there are so many other flaws. Picard continues to lapse into preachy moralizing:
Colors representing countries at a time when they competed with each other. Red, white and blue for the United States. Whereas the French more properly used the same colors in the order of blue, white and red.
But his bizarre French nationalism is totally worth it when he curses a bit later! In French!
It’s also interesting that as early as this episode, the writers knew the lack of a Chief Engineer was a problem, and that they worked around it by using Geordi to fulfill that role in a limited capacity. It’s weird that this junior navigation officer is suddenly so adept at engineering. And there’s just no explanation for why no one is in charge in Engineering and why people aren’t running around trying to figure out why the ship is losing power. Ultimately, the episode is guilty of sloppy writing, embarrassing acting, and silly special effects, but it was not quite as bad as I recalled. It’s an important despite its weaknesses, simply because of its historic value as the first appearance of the Ferengi.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 2 (on a scale of 1-6)
Best Line: TARR: We will return your worthless T9 device and we offer the life of our second officers as required by the Ferengi code.
DATA (to La Forge): Fortunately, Starfleet has no such rules involving our second officers.
Trivia/Other Notes: Armin Shimerman was one of the three Ferengi seen in this episode. He would later play the most famous Ferengi of them all, Quark, on Deep Space Nine and TNG–with a lot more depth.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 4 – “Code of Honor.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 6 – “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
hmmm Powerful aliens, a test for the crew, the ship suffering from inexpicable tech failures, and a laughable new species, frankly it is surprising that the the series survived isn’t it? This is so devrivative and uncreative. Frankly I had hoped whne that aired that we might get a new and interesting threat race in the Ferengi but these guys were pathetic. If you judge a protagonist by his opponett what di these bad guys say about our heros?
All these years later, I’m still trying to figure out what they were thinking when they came up with the Ferengi. The only real answer I’ve been able to come up with is that somewhere along the line, the producers of Star Trek decided that they had to have an Urkel.
I was also surprised at how good this episode was . . . initially. Of course, it may be that it only seems good compared to the last two episodes. You get the feeling that despite the 18-year gap, the production team was still off-balance from the third season of TOS, and was struggling to recover.
You mentioned the echoes of “The Corbomite Manuever” and “Balance of Terror” in this episode, but what I was mainly reminded of was “Arena”: the same basic set-up of the Enterprise chasing an alien ship, and both of them being captured by space douches. Members of both crews beam down to a nearby planet and start fighting. And in the end, an Enterprise crewman wins the sympathy of the space douche and magnanimously persuades him to spare the alien ship.
In the Internet age, this episode would have been the last straw that killed the show forever. Even back in 1987, they managed to generate some hype that they were going to reveal the new bad guys who would play the role the Klingons did in TOS. Instead we got refugees from the opening sequence of 2001. It was just awful.
Then there was the fact that Ferengi is basically a version of a word common throughout the Muslim world for Westerners. It comes from Franks, so basically the Crusaders. Throw in Data’s Yankee traders analogy and the whole thing was more annoying than anything else. Thank goodness they came up with the Borg later, because these guys just couldn’t cut it.
Like so many episodes in the first season, this one had potential, as Eugene points out. But as they say in baseball, potential is the worst thing you can have, since it means you aren’t achieving what you’re capable of. Which really sums up the first season of TNG pretty nicely.
So LaForge was the second officer?
The phaser whips were cool- for 1/10 of a second. Evangelion would finally meet my expectations for these with the angel Shamshel.
And ow, the acting. Even Stewart has to deal with crap lines. And opening surrender negotiations? for reals? Kirk only did that as a ploy!
Data’s the second officer. La Forge is just a helmsman who evidently didn’t have enough to do.
To me the reveal of the Ferengi was a redo of the gag with Danny DeVito in the first episode of Taxi.
I had a different take on the finger puzzle bit. I did notice the analogy to the overall situation and Data’s action and reaction with the toy did make sense. That scene suggested that while Data’s programming provided him with knowledge, he still lacked in experience. Also, he didn’t break the thing with his android strength because of his values. He knew that it was a child’s toy and the boy might want it back. That silly little scene gave me a lot of insight into his character.
Let me indulge in a bit of complete fiction. I can imagine Herbert Wright, who wrote the teleplay for “The Last Output”, calling upon Gene Roddenberry once he finds out that the great man had made some changes to the script.
[WRIGHT enters RODDENBERRY’s office. Sitting on RODDENBERRY’s desk is a thick typescript liberally marked with blue pencil, a quart of Wild Turkey, and a bottle of Miltown. RODDENBERRY is playing with a Chinese finger trap.]
WRIGHT: Mr. Roddenberry?
RODDENBERRY: Just a moment. [He tugs on the finger trap and fails to free himself, then looks up at WRIGHT.] Good afternoon, Mister…uh…
WRIGHT: I’m Herbert Wright, Mr. Roddenberry. You may remember that I called you up this morning about the script for “The Last Output”.
RODDENBERRY: Oh, yes, yes! Great story. Gets better every time I read it. But I do think it could use a little punching up.
WRIGHT: That’s what I’m here to discuss, Mr. Roddenberry. Particularly the changes you’ve proposed to the Ferengi.
RODDENBERRY: Hang on a second. [To himself] Maybe if I do this slowly… [RODDENBERRY closes one eye, focuses the other closely on the finger trap as though he were preparing to thread a needle, then tries to draw his fingers slowly apart. The maneuver fails. RODDENBERRY sighs and turns his attention back to Wright.] Don’t get me wrong, Herbert, I like what you’ve done, but I think you’ve made the Ferengi just a bit too intimidating. We don’t want to scare off the viewers too early on. After all, we want people to know who the heroes of this show are.
WRIGHT: I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Roddenberry, but do you think it’s a good idea to give the Ferengi…how did you put it…[WRIGHT consults his own copy of the script with RODDENBERRY’s proposed emendations.] “Ape-like mannerisms.” What do you mean by that exactly?
RODDENBERRY: Well, you know… [RODDENBERRY gets up from his chair, hunches his back, dangles his arms down, shows his teeth and makes a few “ook-ook” sounds as though he were a vaudevillian imitating a gorilla.] Like that. Have them caper about a bit and paw at things. It’ll make them seem more alien.
WRIGHT: Forgive me, Mr. Roddenberry, but I wonder whether that won’t make the Ferengi a little harder to take seriously as villains.
RODDENBERRY: It’s contrast, Herbert! It’ll make Riker and the others look tall and proud.
WRIGHT: All right. Another change you’ve made is that they talk about “profit” all the time. And you’ve got one of them biting a communicator like he’s a guy in a pirate movie biting a coin.
RODDENBERRY: [again paying attention to the finger trap instead of WRIGHT] Maybe twisting will do the trick. [RODDENBERRY twists his hands in opposite directions while tugging on the trap. He stays trapped.] Remember, Herbert, in the future we’ve gotten past wanting money and possessions. We want to stress that as much as possible. It’s about progress.
WRIGHT: But…biting the communicator?
RODDENBERRY: It’s funny!
WRIGHT: Um…that reminds me of something else. You’ve got Data making jokes…
RODDENBERRY: Isn’t it great? Brent’s really excited about getting a chance to show off a little.
WRIGHT: Mr. Roddenberry, he’s an android. He isn’t supposed to be “showing off”. He’s supposed to be unemotional and precise, not saying stuff like “something to write home about”.
RODDENBERRY [looks a little hurt]: Brent really liked that line.
WRIGHT: Very well. It’s a small matter. Let me address something more important. You wrote this new character into the teleplay, “The Portal”.
RODDENBERRY: Yeah. Isn’t it great? The Enterprise crew gets tested and show off their maturity. Really drives the point home.
WRIGHT: Mr. Roddenberry, do you think it’s a good idea to use this plot again? We already did that in the pilot with Q, do we need to do it again so soon?
RODDENBERRY: It’s timeless! Humanity on trial. Herbert, I want this show to be about big ideas! In fact, I’ve got another Q story in the works only this one’s centered around Riker. Heck, maybe I should have Q test all the other stars too. It could be an ongoing theme.
WRIGHT [before he can stop himself]: More Q…Oh, God.
[RODDENBERRY stares at WRIGHT with a trace of hostility. In a burst of annoyance he tugs as hard as he can on the finger puzzle but again does not free himself. He tugs a few more times with increasing vigor.]
RODDENBERRY: This thing is tough. I’ve tried everything. [Giving up for the moment he fumbles with the Miltown bottle with his remaining fingers and tips its contents onto the desk. Only three pills tumble out. RODDENBERRY looks glum, then shrugs his shoulders, clumsily scoops the Miltown up, and swallows them with a swig of Wild Turkey.] This is really taking it out of me. Herbert, I respect your opinion, but I’m the one with the final say. We’re going to shoot the script just as I’ve fixed it up.
WRIGHT [sighing]: Very well, Mr. Roddenberry.
RODDENBERRY: Good man. I knew you’d see it my way. Big ideas, Herbert! [He tugs on the finger trap again.] You know, maybe I should put this in the script. Give Brent a chance to do a little more comical stuff.
[WRIGHT trudges out of the office.]
@ etomlins +1
Sigh.
Yes, I place GR’s fiat that these clownish characters would represent the galaxy’s greatest threat in about the same category as George Lucas deciding what Star Wars fans **really** wanted to see was Darth Vader as an adorable little boy playing alongside his flop-eared Rastafarian sidekick.
Cocaine flows just too cheap and mountainous in Hollywood, I guess.
Wow, I didn’t even remember the first half hour of this episode. I didn’t think it was good or even promising, though–it’s actually really boring. They stare at the viewscreen a lot.
The Ferengi ape crap is just astonishing to watch. Even though I knew it was coming, I had forgotten just how bad it is. It looks so ridiculous, I have no idea what on earth they were thinking. Is it supposed to be menacing? Alien? Why did the actors go along with it? Did no one stop, see the raw footage, and think “what have I done”?
You know what really bothers me about this one, though? It’s that the Portal (creative naming, guys) tests Riker by reading Riker’s mind and then quizzing him on something he knows. What the hell kind of test is that?! And if he can just read minds… shouldn’t he know right away that the Ferengi are up to no good?
This one reeks of trying desperately to be TOS. Warp 1.
Also… is “Yankee trader” even a thing?? Never heard of it. They sounded more like stereotypical “gypsies” to me, though of course that wasn’t even the worst of it. As the series went on they wound up looking (extreeeeeemely unfortunately) like space Jews, with the likes of Watto from the Phantom Menace.
@ 8 etomlins
*bows* Well done.
To me the most striking thing about this episode is the contrast between Shimmerman on the viewscreen and Shimmerman talking to Riker in person. The first one is seriously way more intimidating, more alien, more hostile. It’s like a different character and I was really interested in what he was doing with the part.
Then suddenly they’re Winkies or something.
I get the impression that they changed how the part was supposed to be played midway through the episode, and then didn’t have time or money to go back and reshoot the earlier scenes… would be curious to see if this is actually the case.
@ 12 Deep Thought
They were different characters. DaiMon Tarr was played by Mike Gomez. Shimerman’s character was named Letek.
@11 Torie
I think they were supposed to seem alien. I think they were supposed to seem menacing. That’s what makes it so laughable.
It’s about on par with Napoleon Dynamite’s brother becoming a blinged, do-rag rapper. #COSMIC_FAIL.
Setting these dumb apes up as “Yankee traders,” capitalists on steroids, is just more of that straw man claptrap Roddenberry soaked us in (like the rum he was evidently soaked in when produced this mess). “Look how far we’ve evolved!” Yes, indeed: from inane stereotypes, apropos of nothing.
“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” as a certain French stereotype might sooo condescendingly lecture us in these early episodes.
I guess GR thought viewers were morons that needed to be incessantly beat over the head with this nonsense—a reflective coating, as it turns out.
Thanks, Torie, bobsandiego, I have my moments.
A few more comments, nothing fancy.
First, even I have to admit that Riker improved as a character in later seasons, but there are so many moments in the first season where I just want to smack him once, he’s so unctuous and self-satisfied. He’s not as bad here as in “Hide and Q” though.
Second, I like Wil Wheaton’s tart comment on Data’s bizarre “Yankee trader” analogy: “[It’s] like when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and you say, ‘Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope!'”
Third, why does Picard lecture everyone about flags as though they’re dusty relics of European nationalism? The Federation has a flag.
@ 14 Lemnoc
I really want to know who thought they were menacing. They’re half-winkie, half-oompa-loompa.
@ 15 etomlins
The flag thing is pretty ridiculous. But at least it got me distracted for a few minutes giggling over Izzard’s bit on flags: “No flag, no country.”
Yeah, after all the buildup the Ferengi were just annoying. Not only are they not menacing, but you really just want them to go away and never come back again. I know that Quark eventually became one of the more popular characters on DS9 but I remember that seeing him on the show during the pilot actually made me want to watch the show even less.
I don’t mind the Ferengi too much when they show up later, but yeah this is a pretty wierd and bad episode. I agree with Eugene that by comparison to the first few, this one seems a marginal improvement…but man what strange choice the writers and producers made. TNG almost recovered them in The Battle as a genuine threat, but that is quickly desposed of for some reason in favor of the whole comedic angle.
Quark is actually one of the bright spots for me in DS9…while I agree that the Ferengi sort of morphed into some uncomfortable stereotype crap, there was a great deal more depth added to their species by his characterization, and his reference to their cultural codes lent a great deal to building them up into something more than comic relief.
Aaaannndd…scene. This was the curtain for me on watching TNG as-made. I left the show completely alone until after DS9 came out, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and when I realized that O’Brien and Worf were the same dudes from that other Trek I watched some years ago, I started looking at a bit more TNG. Fortunately, I encountered mid-run TNG, and decided to give it another chance. The first season, though, I still can’t watch. Just…ugh, I shudder.
Linguistically, “ferengi” also spread throughout Asia, as you’ll find it adopted into Tagalog and Thai, that I know about, and I’m reasonably sure it’d be in various Malaysian and Indonesian languages too. In Thai, it’s “pharang”, though it’s pronounced with a ‘p’ (with aspiration, hence the h in the romanization).
It basically means “foreigner”, but also tends to carry a suggestion of “and should be watched, because they’re tricksy, these
hobbitsesforeigners”. Oh, and despite the visual and aural similarity, “foreign” comes from a completely different root (eventually, Latin “foris” door). I laughed a bit when I first heard the name, because it immediately said to me that these were likely to be deceptive and foreign, and turned out I was right. I give them credit for that one, a nice little linguistic easter egg.Yankee Traders was a bit of a thing, back in the day, kind of a literary stereotype of the sharp-witted, fast-talking trader, a smuggler if the money’s right. Han Solo, Mal Reynolds, the dude who pretends to be Picard’s son later, they’re all in the same mould, basically. You’ll find them in Trollope, in Forster, all over the place in literature of the time and about the time (that being the antebellum US).
@19 CaitieCat
Too bad you left the series at this point, because the next episode is a quantum improvement and, apart from some stutters and setbacks, the series generally gets better from here… although others might not agree.
I guess I’ll save the remainder of my comments for that ep….
#20, Lemnoc: “Too bad you left the series at this point, because the next episode is a quantum improvement….”
You mean, a tiny jump in energy that could easily escape notice? (Sorry, the abuse of “quantum jump” bugs me a lot.)
What is the next episode anyway, let me see…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_No_One_Has_Gone_Before
No…no…the pain…the pain…
@etomlins
He could mean a discreet change in state without transitons through any intermediate states.
He could mean a discreet change in state without transitons through any intermediate states.
The first rule of Quantum Fight Club is that we are discreet about Quantum Fight Club. ;)
The first rule of Quantum Fight Club is that we are discreet about Quantum Fight Club. ;)
…the Fifth Rule of Quantum Fight Club is no two identical fights may occupy the same Quantum Fight Club location simultaneously?
Oh, and let us not forget that one of Roddenberry’s original ideas was that the Ferengi would have enormous wangs… and I don’t mean computers. How he planned to get this across on late-80’s family television is beyond me.
Fortunately, someone, somewhere was able to convince him that this was a reeaaalllyyy bad idea.
And, no…I’m not making this up. It’s well documented in books and magazines of the time like Cinefantastique.
Ponder how awful that would have been, and by the way, have a Merry Christmas.
Well, one year later the same would be established about the Newcomers (Tenctonese) in a scene discussing a condom found among a dead suspect’s possessions in the Alien Nation movie.
George “And that fits?”
Sykes “Well, you see, it stretches.”
George “Still, it fits?”
Then they twisted the idea a little more in the series with Albert (Full name Albert Einstein) being a Binnaum – a third Tenctonese sex. If I remember right, the Binnaums were said to have had even larger equipment. So it was done on TV back then.
Would Roddenberry have let the writers find a tasteful way to do it or would he have pushed for it to be done as crudely as everything else about the Ferengi in this episode?
They did something similar later on with B5. In the Centauri they’re sort of prehensile and Londo was using his to cheat by stealing cards from the other side of the table.
#27,DemetriosX: Ugh. Man, thanks for reminding me. Straczynski and comedy were like chalk and cheese, weren’t they?
@28, etomlins: Oh, I don’t know. He could be pretty hit or miss, OK mostly miss, but sometimes he could be pretty funny. Vir’s speech to Mr. Mordan, telling him what he wants makes me smile, at the very least. And there’s a scene early in the first season, where Sinclair and Garibaldi are going somewhere or other in a ship. Garibaldi wants to chat and Sinclair doesn’t until he realizes he’s stuck there for hours with Garibaldi, who’s just going to hum to himself and be otherwise annoying. So he agrees to chat and all Garibaldi can come up with is to ask Sinclair if he zips and then buttons or buttons and then zips. It’s a very absurd moment.
@8 etomlins
*applause* Much better than any episode script we’ve seen yet :)
@11 Torie
You’re right–that’s an awful way to test Riker, and this episode does seem a deliberate attempt to be TOS without directly ripping it off…too much.
@20 Lemnoc
I agree about the next episode being far and away the best so far, if not the best this season and one of my favorites from the entire series. But I’m going on memory at the moment–I haven’t seen it in a couple of years, so don’t hold me to that.
@27 DemetriosX
Yeah… That’s one of the most squicky moments I’ve ever seen in television. JMS’s humor was definitely hit or miss, but I remember a lot of lines fondly. My favorite is “This is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot.” But it was less funny when he recycled it in one of his Spider-Man comics.
One of the interesting things about B5 is watching JMS’s writerly tics on the screen, common lines and themes, etc. It started to annoy me when I realized he had way too many characters trying to send their enemies straight to hell, and he often went for easy jokes. Then again, considering the number of words as he had to produce over five years, I’m willing to cut him a little slack. The overall story was always much better than the writing in the individual episodes. I’m going to re-watch that show, one of these days.
@30 Eugene: Every so often lines would crop up that showed what JMS is capable of. I think my favorite is probably “My shoes are too tight and I have forgotten how to dance.” There’s a lot wrapped up in that. But the character arcs could be really impressive. Londo went from buffoon to villain to great tragedy, while G’Kar went from freedom fighter to terrorist to healer. Neither wound up anywhere near where you would have imagined early on.
@31 DemetriosX
The character arcs were surprising and rewarding, one of the biggest reasons I was happy I stuck with the show through its tepid first season. They were especially remarkable because just as most shows had minimal continuity, there was precious little character development on television at the time, other than the “will they/won’t they” variety in shows that drew out the romantic tension between lead characters. In contrast, the Sheridan/Delenn relationship is one of the most romantic I’ve seen on TV. Ah… maybe we should take this to the forum, or talk more about it later if some of us decide to watch the show again later :)
–i suppose all these tragic preliminaries have their purpose—they built the foundation of a great show—
@33 lane arnold
Absolutely–and they only seem all the more terrible because of the greatness the show would achieve later. But it seems that a lot of people turned it off early on and missed out on the better episodes until they rediscovered it later. This is kind of like looking through old yearbook photos: Did I really ever think that hair was a good idea? Wow, those glasses are dorky. What am I wearing? And so on… It makes us feel good to see how much we’ve improved since then.
I know I’m five years late to the party and what I’m about to say is nitpicking, but Picard is wrong in his colour combination for the flags bit. France was originally red, white, blue as le Tricolore is a combination of the red, blue of Paris and the royal white. It was only around 1794 when the colours were reversed, possibly to make the flag more visible at sea, the flag originally being for naval use only.
Twas the Union Jack that was blue, white, red.