“Encounter at Farpoint”
Written by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Corey Allen
Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2
Original air date: September 28, 1987
Star date: 41153.7
Mission summary
Captain Jean-Luc Picard has been assigned command of the USS Enterprise-D. Headed to Deneb IV to round up the rest of his shiny new crew, the Enterprise thumps right into a supernatural barrier. The space net won’t budge and Picard and his bridge officers are visited by Q, a seemingly omnipotent being who accuses the human race of being a violent, savage race of puppy-drowning kitten-snatchers. He demands that they turn tail and run back to Earth or he will kill them all.
Picard tries to protect the civilians by separating the Enterprise, allowing the saucer section to escape while the stardrive section lures Q towards them. Q catches up and transports Picard, Yar, Data, and Troi to the spitting image of a World War III-era courtroom. He appears as a robed judge and demands that Picard answer for his race’s “crimes.” Picard, with his officers at gunpoint, pleads guilty–“provisionally”–and suggest that whatever humanity’s past, Q should judge based on how they behave now. Q agrees and lets them continue to their destination so that he may observe.
Meanwhile, on Deneb IV, first officer William T. Riker is weirded out by the local custom of his wishes and desires magically appearing before him. There’s something off about this space station and its leader, Groppler Zorn, who likes to talk to himself when the room is empty. Riker beams up to the Enterprise but Picard gives him the cold welcome of an unpleasant in-law and says he should watch some videos of the Q encounter before they meet further. Once he does, Picard berates Riker for his record of disobeying orders, but the beardless wonder takes it all in stride and manages to impress the old coot after all. Group hug!
This episode has been interrupted by fan service, in which Data escorts the 137-year-old McCoy around the new Enterprise. We now return you to your regularly scheduled episode.
Picard introduces Riker to Troi but they seem to know each other rather intimately already. (Deja vu of TMP is entirely justified.) The trio beam down to visit Zorn but the leader freaks out at the presence of a Betazoid. Troi, meanwhile, is picking up feelings of intense pain and suffering, proof that she must be able to see these episodes before we do. The meeting collapses, so Riker goes wandering to find Data in a forested holodeck and then runs into Gary Stu Crusher before finally deciding to get back to work and lead an away mission with Yar, Data, La Forge, and Troi down to Farpoint Station.
They discover a network of complex underground tunnels entirely unlike anything any of them have seen before. It seems improbable that the Bandi–the locals lead by Zorn–had anything to do with its construction. But before they can get too comfortable, an unknown space entity nears Farpoint and begins firing on the Old Bandi City (but deliberately avoids hitting the station). The away team beams back up to the Enterprise to find out what’s going on.
Q turns up to taunt Picard into firing on the unknown ship, but Picard doesn’t need Admiral Ackbar to tell him what’s really going on. He sends an away team to the ship, where Riker realizes that the corridors are exactly like the tunnels found below Farpoint station. The ship is a living being, and it’s reaching out to its mate–held captive by the Bandi for its ability to create matter from energy.
Picard uses the Enterprise‘s deflector to free the trapped animal/ship, and the two lovesquids float off happily ever after. Q grudgingly grants Picard this one, but promises in so many words to appear again.
PICARD: All stations?
DATA: Ready for departure, sir.
PICARD: Some problem, Riker?
RIKER: Just hoping this isn’t the usual way our missions will go, sir.
PICARD: Oh no, Number One. I’m sure most will be much more interesting. Let’s see what’s out there. Engage.
Analysis
“Encounter at Farpoint” is a child of two worlds. On the one hand, it’s trying to present a kinder, more noble, and diverse future. On the other hand, it’s trying to pay all of its debts to the original series. I think it relies too heavily on the latter without fully realizing the world of the former. Roddenberry is repeating the same old shtick (a space douche tests humanity!), with the same writer (D.C. Fontana), even. I admit I smiled when Picard said, “No, the same old story is the one we’re meeting now. Self-righteous life-forms who are eager, not to learn–but to prosecute to judge anything they don’t understand or can’t tolerate.” It’s the same old story to us Trek fans–but we want new stories, don’t we? Instead, I felt like we’d seen it all before and the episode didn’t really offer any surprises. We’ve come to expect the unexpected, and there’s no allowance for that, no accounting for familiarity.
“Farpoint” is strangely, uniquely terrible. Everything feels very stiff and artificial, grounded tenuously by Patrick Stewart’s innate gravitas. Each of the characters shows up for his or her trademark, paraded before the audience to tell his or her one joke and sit back down. Troi senses something obvious, Data provides “comic” relief by misunderstanding something, Wesley is a little rascal, etc. The music is awful, the effects are mediocre, and the sets look as cheap as the TOS ones. It’s a mess, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a veritable miracle that this dreck turned into one of the most beloved shows of all time.
What bothers me most is that we get the “answers” to all of the characters right away. Everything is told and nothing is shown. Troi is half-Betazoid and senses emotions but can’t read thoughts. Geordi’s visor causes him pain. Worf is too Klingon to be a good bridge officer (or is he?). Data wants to be human. Crusher and Picard have a specific event in the past that’s weird between them. I mean, there are no secrets, nothing to discover, nothing to reveal. One of the things I did really enjoy about DS9 was how slowly you came to know each of the characters, and how many secrets (minor or major) each had. In real life, other people are always a little bit of a mystery. They don’t open up right away. We shouldn’t be getting the whole story so quickly, spelled out completely in the first episode. Even Riker and Troi’s relationship is out in the open from day one. Wouldn’t that have been more interesting if it had been hidden for at least a full episode?
There’s also just no solid sense of who these people are, and no depth to their outward character types. Picard’s opening voiceover, full of curiosity and promise at the upcoming mission, contradicts the capriciousness on display when Riker comes aboard. I feel his “testing” of Riker would have been more effective if we hadn’t been in Picard’s head and hadn’t already known that it was just a ploy to feel out the new recruit. Instead the captain just seems like a dick, a bitter old man threatened by a younger one (TMP much?). Riker is a kind of cipher, and it’s clear he was meant to be the man the audience could identify with, who would command away missions and do awesome saucer unification and strangle a man with his bare hands–yet he can’t hold a candle to Stewart, whose mere presence commands attention in a way that a young Frakes just couldn’t. And how can Riker manually dock the two ship sections but not know how to locate Data and has never seen a holodeck?
There’s so much else that just doesn’t work. Picard is surprised that Dr. Crusher has a son… yet they had already established that he had met him when he brought the father’s body home. And wouldn’t he know that Dr. Crusher had requested the assignment? How is it that Riker and Wesley know each other, down on Deneb IV? Why does Data spend his time in a forest simulation? And ye gods, why does the holodeck let other people in when you’re in the middle of your little holofantasy? Talk about a place I wouldn’t want to be walked in on…
One of the worst parts is, I’m sad to say, DeForest Kelley’s cameo. That sequence feels shoehorned in to please the old-timers. We get a Vulcan joke and a transporter joke, and again you get the sense that they felt the need to go through this old song-and-dance rather than try something new. All that make-up hides Kelley’s expressiveness and he just looks like a really old muppet wearing bell bottoms. It’s sad and it’s out of place. I have always been weirded out by McCoy’s line about treating the Enterprise like a lady, because then she’ll always bring you home. What is that even supposed to mean? So if you pick up the tab you’ll always score? A TOS cameo is just a box to be ticked off on the “Tropes Fans Expect” list, like the slow saucer separation and then saucer unification sequences (which feel straight out of TMP: slow, pointless, unimpressive). And let’s not forget that in the heat of battle they strain the engine’s limits, except this time you don’t even have Scotty (or anyone like him) to make the tension feel more real.
The only moments that feel right in the whole two hours are the scenes with Q. He has a puckishness we’ve come to expect from space douches and more energy than the rest of the cast combined (who occasionally manage to be less kinetic than bingo night at the senior center). I had never realized that Picard himself is the one who suggests that the ship’s mission be the triable evidence of their progress as a race. The idea that the actions of this crew on their various missions are going to determine our worth as a race is the diamond in the rough (…very rough) at the heart of this series. It allows me to forget the cheesy costumes and stilted dialogue and terrible narrative structure and remember what Star Trek is all about: embodying the goodness and idealism that could define humanity if we just gave them the chance.
I’m going to have to try and remember that through “The Naked Now” and “Code of Honor.” You’ll help, right?
Torie’s Rating: Warp 2 (on a scale of 1-6)
Best Line: PICARD: If we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are.
Trivia: Deneb IV is obliquely referenced in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” when Kirk tells Gary Mitchell he’s been worried about him “ever since that night on Deneb IV.”
Previous post: Introductory Post.
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 2 – “The Naked Now.”
In some ways, this episode was doomed from the start. The expectations were just too high, as was the hype. It was a let-down overall, but it felt like it had promise. Thank goodness we didn’t know how long it would take to meet that promise. The worst part was probably the introduction of a theme that would be all too common in the early years, especially the first season: the All-Powerful, Pan-Dimensional Energy Being (APPDEB). We actually get not 1 but 2 of them! (OK, the critters at Deneb IV aren’t quite energy beings, but they might as well be.) I really disliked Q here and for a long time afterwards. I think I first started warming up to him in the episode where Picard dies during surgery and experiences his life if he had been more cautious when he was younger.
What’s kind of odd here is that the two best known actors at this point were probably LeVar Burton and Wil Wheaton. Burton was, of course, young Kunta Kinte and the Reading Rainbow guy. Wil Wheaton was still pretty well-known for Stand By Me. Most of the really important crew members had been in soaps and little else. OK, MIchael Dorn had been on Chips, but there wasn’t a whole lot of name recognition for the target audience. If you paid attention to that sort of thing, you might have known Brent Spiner from his recurring role on Night Court or Patrick Stewart from I, Claudius or Dune, but a lot of people first though Frakes was Anson Williams.
But really, none of that mattered much. Star Trek was back on TV!
My favorite bit of that episode is the emergency saucer separation at maximum warp. Because you are clearly thinking of the safety of all the civilians on board when you put them on a disc hurtling thru space at over 1000x the speed of light without any warp drive, and thus no real way of slowing down.
@ 1 DemetriosX
APPDEB did become a problem, but I think the real weakness of the first season (just scanning the episode titles) is how many of them were supposed to be “updated” versions of TOS episodes. I mean “Angel One” could have been made in ’68.
Good point about the actors, and I had forgotten that Shatner and Stewart were both I, Claudius alums! I have to re-watch that.
@ 2 Thiess
I also love that his first idea is risk the entire ship’s complement by taking the engines past safety limits. You don’t even want to try something else, first?
@ All
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As a kid, I loved Encounter at Farpoint. Yes, it does have a lot of things we’ve seen before in the original series, but I’d guess that most people watching at the time hadn’t seen TOS. I was in high school when TNG went off the air and even then when you mentioned “Star Trek” everyone my age assumed you were talking about TNG. People my age who had seen the orginal series were rare, so anything taken from TOS was new to us.
The first officer being the star of the show, going on dangerous away missions while the captain stayed on the bridge, made perfect sense. Right from the start, things like this made it clear to the audience that TNG was going to be more of an ensemble show than TOS was. I’m one of the (seemingly few) fans who really like Riker, so I thought it was a shame that he became less important as the show went on.
I also like the design of the Enterprise D. It was close enough to the original ship that anybody could recognize it as the Enterprise, but it was still very distinctive.
It’s very difficult for me to watch this while mentally setting aside how much I love this series, just as it’s hard for me to watch it without filling in the gaps a bit knowing how the series would get better. And to be fair, it was a pilot, a first shot for the writers and the cast; you don’t always hit a home run your first time at the plate.
I would be very interested in the amount of resources invested in this (relative to the size of Paramount’s budget and to other TV budgets generally) compared with, say, pilots on the major cable channels now. Or even network dramas now, which would be a more appropriate comparison (except I’m not sure there are that many!) How long was the production time on this ep vs. the stellar (har har) pilots of today, like new!BSG? Would any of those factors account for part of the awkwardness? Or is it just Rodenberry rehashing the late-TOS rut, and the show got better as he stepped back?
It is also hard to watch this without thinking “Wow, the 80s happened.” Particularly with the Engineering set (boy did that change over the next two seasons) and Troi’s hairstyle (which… kind of didn’t).
Can’t wait for the next one. (Well… okay… maybe skip the next one… and the one after that. But still!)
@JohnSteed7
Aww, I like Riker too! He’s not my favorite, but I’ve never really understood the widespread antipathy to him. (Which I suppose is a comment that also serves to sow low opinions where none may have existed before, like “I never understood why everyone says he’s so mean to puppies,” but still…)
I was there in front of the TV set on September 28th 1987 (ye gods, it’s been a long time) watching this for the first time and I was delighted to see McCoy show up. At the time, it was my favorite part of the episode.
The holodeck was pretty amazing and Data struck me as very cool, albeit too clearly Spock’s replacement. Like DemetriosX suggests, Wil Wheaton and LeVar Burton were the only ones I knew of very well, though I did recognize Denise Crosby from somewhere too. Wil Wheaton I knew best of all because of Stand by Me and I remember thinking they should have gotten River Phoenix instead.
Anyway, I was definitely disappointed with the episode. All the excitement I’d had as a Star Trek fan was dulled considerably by the dullness of the “mystery” at Farpoint and even though I liked Q because he reminded me of the Squire of Gothos, the whole trial thing irritated me.
Having a Klingon aboard the ship pissed me off because I still thought of Klingons as evil barbarians who killed Kirk’s son. And his makeup looked really awful though not quite as bad as Yar’s hair.
One other thing I remember from watching the show for the first time: I hated the look of Enterprise. She reminded me too much of Excelsior except whereas the latter reminded me of a pregnant whale, the former looked an awful lot like a duck with an overly large bill.
Good analysis and observations.
A good drinking game would include a double shot every time Troi uses her magic powers to state the obvious.
Dare I say this, I dislike the deus ex machina of Q (while liking actor de Lancie quite a bit) as much as the wish fulfillment aspects of the holodeck. Hated nearly every episode that included either of these elements, and the fanboy base that apparently loves them. Both Q and the holodeck exist mostly as props to explore stories the series couldn’t explore otherwise (Robin Hood, potboiler crime fiction), to essentially violate the science-fiction premise, in which case what’s the point?
The series sets up the premise that this ship will operate “where no one has gone before,” suited to long missions on the unknown frontier of space. But, if anything, the Enterprise operates throughout the series mostly as a truck hauling the crew around the centers of a familiar Federation. Not the worst violation of the series premise in the Star Trek franchise (*cough* Voyager *cough*), but a lost opportunity nevertheless.
Similarly, the pilot goes to great pains (and I use that word with deliberation) to “show off” the E-D’s groovy ability to separate—its battle bridge, etc.—an ability virtually never used again in the entire run of the series. Probably some test audience laughed at how silly the ship looked when separated—hard to be straight-faced cool when it looked so dippy.
I continue to wonder just how much GR’s early concept intended to put hunky he-man Riker at the center of the action with the mature captain standing off in the wings, second fiddle, for the occasional rescue… and how quickly that concept got dumped on its head as writers discovered Stewart was the really dynamic and interesting force to write dialog and stories around.
@5 DeepThought wrote
The parallels amaze me between GR and George Lucas, their uncanny and perplexing inability to understand the very elements of their creations that make them resonate and make them popular. Their stuff is always best when these creators stay far away from it.
Glad I’m not the only one who disliked this. I don’t like superpowerful characters in any case, finding Superman boring just like Q: if you can do anything, then there’s no such thing as a meaningful challenge to you, which makes you BORING as a story-generator.
I stuck with it until I saw the episode with the bouncy-hissy-Ferengi with their laser whips, and then I turned it off, not to revisit the show until well into syndication – probably after it was finished, honestly.
It’s truly astonishing that after the first season, they were able to keep this show going. There are a couple of gems, but it’s otherwise just turtles all the way down.
Hm, now I know what I’ll be watching later on today, just to refresh my memory.
When did it become fashionable for television shows to waste an hour or two painstakingly introducing us to everybody in the cast? TV shows just used to dump us in medias res with maybe a few lines of exposition to set things up. The original Star Trek took that approach; the show hit the ground running. Now you almost have to resign yourself to a TV series’s pilot episode being lame and loaded down with unnecessary scenes of introduction and explanation.
The space douche plot was already done to death in the original show…and they decide to use it again? And again and again? Yeah, I’ll admit grudgingly that John DeLancie is good at playing a smug jackass, for what that’s worth (not a heck of a lot) but reheating this hackneyed plot device in the very first episode augured badly for the series as a whole.
Troi is horrible in this, but that rather goes without saying, since she was horrible in almost everything.
“Aww, I like Riker too! He’s not my favorite, but I’ve never really understood the widespread antipathy to him.”
Count me as one who mostly loathed Riker. I think the problem was that, when they were creating TNG Trek in the first place, they really desperately wanted somebody to be able to deliver the kind of self-complacent, superficial assertions of moral superiority that were Capt. Kirk’s stock in trade, but they’d already decided that the caption should be a wise and moderate diplomat, so the job of delivering infuriating speeches fell to Riker. And he was no bloody good at it. Kirk could get away with it because, well, he’s Kirk. By comparison Riker’s just some little squirt pretending to be badass. Just watch him in that episode where he tries and fails to outsmug Q–it’s painful. I loved it when Ronny Cox smacked him down in his role as Capt. Jellicoe.
Although I agree with many of Torie’s points, I think I’m a little more forgiving. Many of the visual effects look terrible by today’s standards (that net always seems like a poor man’s Tholian web to me), but the Enterprise-D still looks terrific, nearly 25 years later. I think you just can’t beat filming with models, and I loved that our first glimpse of the ship mimics the rare “beauty shot” that we only see a couple of times in TOS. I think the Bridge and shipboard sets all look good too–this is obviously where all the money went. I felt like the production was calculated to impress viewers, and compare favorably to the ongoing Star Trek films; most of this episode still looks better than what we got in Star Trek V, and on a TV budget!
If anything, the show was probably trying a bit too hard, with the long, unnecessary separation sequence, and yes, the inclusion of Admiral McCoy. A cameo was expected, and gratutitous, but it still left me smiling, as it was meant to.
As for the clumsy, forced characterization, I’ll give them some credit for trying. Unlike TOS, this pilot tried to show the crew coming together for the first time, closer to J.J. Abrams’s movie than either “The Cage” or “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Thus the relationships we got in TOS evolved, surprisingly consistently, over many episodes of TOS. In a way, I viewed “Encounter at Farpoint” the same way the time-traveling Picard does in “All Good Things…” How far they have all come! It’s rough around the edges, but I’m still fond of it, and I know I liked it a lot more the first time I saw it, when it didn’t seem so derivative from TOS. And if you think of the entire series as one long human trial, bookended by the finale… Well, that’s marvelous!
Points about the holodeck are also valid, but on this rewatch I was struck by the idea that it was included to set up the idea of the Farpoint alien, which also creates matter from energy, and engages in its own brand of wish fulfillment. It seems like a potential clue to the mystery, but not a well-developed one.
What bugged me most about this though, is the way it was shot–a lot of low angles, and all the close-ups in the courtroom scene look like something is blocking the lens in the corners. What is that? Why is the camera so shaky whenever they’re in Engineering? The lighting also seems much darker–stylish, but dark–than it does later, except on the Bridge. Picard as a grump doesn’t work for me, and his strategy of selflessly moving the ship to block the alien attack seemed to be just for Q’s benefit. See? Humans are nice! And in the end, the crew doesn’t really figure much of anything out. Good thing that other alien showed up and basically explained what Farpoint was!
One interesting note: Worf starts out in command red in this season, which he finally returns to later in DS9.
I’m tempted to rate this higher for nostalgia, and because some much worse episodes are ahead, but I’ll settle with Warp 3.
When I judge this episode, I have to tell you something ahead. I don’t have a television, and so I never followed any series. Really, any. TOS was my first ever series to watch (in my laptop), and as such, TNG became the next. And I liked its pilot. Well, I disliked Troi and Riker (and my dislike remained intact throughout the series) and the doctor a bit, and I thought Wesley was very annoying, but still, the whole setting seemed fresher to me than TOS. More lifelike. More real. Not that overly futuristic hype of JJAbrams’ Trek, nor that technicolor horror of TOS, but normal and believable. Even the relationships. And I guess every crew has stupid and/or appalling members, so that’s also okay. :-)
My rating is like Eugene’s, a nice 3
And, you know, I watched it after third season TOS. So even the story wasn’t THAT cheesy.
#1: “If you paid attention to that sort of thing, you might have known Brent Spiner from his recurring role on Night Court or Patrick Stewart from I, Claudius or Dune.”
I’m ashamed to say that I actually watched Night Court a bit when I was younger and I’d totally forgotten Brent Spiner was in that; I had to look it up. He was reasonably good at playing a rube, I guess. (Better than he was at playing a villain.) The scary thing about Patrick Stewart in I, Claudius is that he basically looks about the same age as he did in TNG Trek and, really, he doesn’t look all that much older even now. The guy was born middle-aged and never got any older. He’s quite good as Sejanus although it’s not a huge part.
He’s painful to watch in Dune, though. All his lines throughout the movie are in the same strident monotone. I guess the weak material didn’t give Stewart a lot to work with.
I’m down with Bones. I know its superfluous and unecessary, and I’m freaked out by the worse than Deadly Years old man makeup (soon to be topped in awfulness by Too Short a Season)…but its Bones!
This was my very first Star Trek, and while I loved it when I was nine (I saw it on VHS a year or two after its premiere), it really is quite awful. Compare it to “Where No Man Has Gone Before” or “The Cage”, and it seems all the more awful by comparison, since those two pilots stand as excellent examples of what was good about TOS.
That being said, the model shots of the new Enterprise do look pretty great, though many of the other visual effects are pretty dated. Picard comes off quite the jerk in some spots, but it was obvious even at this early stage how awesome Stewart was going to be. And while I came to adore Q, I never have liked him in this episode…his charming rascal nature was buried here, only to be unearthed in later episodes.
I think the razzle dazzle of this episode at the time is what kept people watching…and its always important to re-adjust your mindset to the time in which something was released to understand it. Though I must say when I did my rewatch of this and the rest of season 1, I found it really really hard to do that.
I’m not a huge fan of the D Enterprise design, but it is certainly unique. It was designed by Andrew Probert, who was the same guy that reworked Mattt Jeffries basic ‘refit’ design for Star Trek The Motion Picture…I guess Probert had actually come up with the ‘D’ design on his own several years before TNG was a reality…he had already created several images, and when the show was being developed he presented his funky ideas to Rodenberry et al and they loved it. As an aside, I read somewhere that Probert hates Rick Berman, and left TNG when he started growing in influence after TNG’s first season.
A quick refresher over at Memory Alpha just reminded me that this episode was originally intended to be only one hour long, but Paramount asked Roddenberry to extend it, and it was billed as a TV movie (which is why it has different credits from the rest of the series). Q was added to pad out the plot, which probably explains why Roddenberry fell back on such a handy idea from TOS, and several other scenes were added late.
This isn’t an excuse, of course, but it certainly helps to explain why all the pieces don’t quite fit.
Another late change was the theme music, recycled from TMP because Roddenberry didn’t like Dennis McCarthy’s original score. What did viewers think when they heard that familiar music when it was broadcast? (Odd that the same theme was then used two years later for STV…)
I neither liked nor loathed Riker. In fact, he was always just sort of there, generally being smug for no good reason. The beard did help, though I couldn’t say why, unless it’s just that it covered up his baby face.
@14 etomlins: Apparently, Wil Wheaton thought Spiner’s role on Night Court was hilarious (OK, it was) and things got to a point where Spiner could crack him up just by mouthing “Bob” where only Wil could see. Patrick Stewart was also in Excalibur (Guenivere’s father) and he played Karla in the two George Smiley movies they did with Alec Guinness. I forget which one it is, but there’s a scene where Karla has been captured and Smiley and another guy are interrogating him. He sits a table in a bare room while they walk around and hurl questions at him. He just sits there and glares, and Patrick Stewart totally dominates the scene. A scene with Alec Guinness in it!
Like Toryx, I was sitting in front of my TV watching this episode when it was first broadcast, and yes, it has been a long time. I didn’t just watch it, I videotaped it! And I held onto that VHS tape for over 20 years, until I bought the DVDs.
I didn’t watch it very often, though. I think this may only be the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen this episode. I liked it better when I first saw it than I do now, because it suffers so much in comparison to the later episodes. It suffers a LOT compared to the replay of the Farpoint mission in “All Good Things”. Did anyone else feel the urge to pop that into the DVD player?
There’s lots to talk about in this episode, but I’d like to focus on the trial scene. Troi maintains that what’s happening to them is real, so presumably Q took the four of them back in time to 2079. That stoner soldier Q ordered killed was a real person who actually died. (And does anyone else think he looks like the pepper spray cop from UC Davis?) If Q wants to put humanity on trial, then why is one of the defendants half-Betazoid, and another an android? (The answer of course being that the four of them are the only regular characters on the Enterprise stardrive.) The trial scene doesn’t advance the plot at all; it’s just a lot of verbal thrashing around as Q baits Picard. Memory Alpha says that the Q subplot was added to the Farpoint Station subplot to expand the episode from one hour to two, and boy does it show, especially here.
One final oddity from this episode. Near the end, Riker wants to beam over to the alien ship/being, and Picard agrees. It’s a very tense moment, and Picard’s going to need to give the away mission his full attention. So what does he do? He ducks down to sickbay to ask Beverly if she’d like to transfer off the ship. Huh? What a weird place to put that scene.
I remember watching it when it premiered, and being underwhelmed. That feeling lasted for the next two years and change.
Re-reading, I think I was a bit ambiguous on how I said this:
It’s truly astonishing that after the first season, they were able to keep this show going. There are a couple of gems, but it’s otherwise just turtles all the way down.
I meant specifically the first season had only a couple of gems. The show improved dramatically in the third season, and the second was okay.
My reaction to this episode is that they over-reached. They – in their rush to match the expectations of Star Trek – didn’t discard enough ‘wouldn’t it be great if . . .’ ideas. While the holodeck did establish the matter from energy concept for when the viewers would need it later, couldn’t the food and supply replicators have served a similar purpose? And separating the ship sections had all the excitement of a chase scene in CHiPs – long, drawn out and could have been staged better. Additionally, did it really have to be in this episode?
Despite the over-reaching, I did like the mystery involving a ‘new’ life form. Not that different from the kind of stories James White wrote. I remember thinking after first seeing this pilot ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if they borrowed from more of James White’s ideas?’ In the Sector General universe we saw a life form that occupied an entire continent and in treating it’s illness the doctor used a small fleet of warships as his scalpels. Another species from the same story lived in turbulent seas and had to reproduce that turbulence in the interiors of its space craft. A species in another story would, when they felt threatened, resort to uncontrolled rioting to destroy a threat. New species to the Federation could have presented challenges like these. We did, from my point of view, see a few stories with a James White feel through the run of TNG, but not as many as I’d have liked.
As pilots go this one was about average. The actors may have understood the story but it’s clear that they didn’t really know their characters. And etomlins @11 commented about the time taken to introduce each member of the ensemble cast. I blame the pilot episode for testing system for that. You have to squeeze a sampling of all that you want to do with the series and you have to try to make the audience like, or at least understand, your characters within a Twenty to Twenty Five or Forty Five to Fifty minute pilot. With shows like Dave’s World or Home Improvement character introduction time is easier. Characters C & D or C, D & E are the kids. They are cute. That’s it. We’ll watch them make cute mistakes while growing up. Characters introduced and understood in a minute or so. Having a large ensemble cast of adult and teen characters is not that easy.
Think about how much better the stories could be if the character introductions could be spread out. What if Worf was not going to show up until the third episode and maybe not have Wesley show up until the second or fourth episode. They could have used that time to explore – through a character or two – the question of right or wrong in having a Klingon on the bridge crew. (Worf could have been still on the ‘lower decks’ and Wes had been staying with a friend until his mother got settled in on the new ship.) The delay with Wes could have been used to help shape Picard’s unease with having children around. I’m sure we could all come up with ways the first season could have been made better.
Deep Thought mentioned the pilot for the new BSG but I don’t think that one compares to this pilot. Despite all the changes, the BSG pilot was still a retelling of the original series pilot. Encounter At Farpoint was all new with only the promise that it would be part of the Star Trek universe.
@5 DeepThought
Larry Nemecek’s excellent The Star Trek: The Next GenerationCompanion says each first season episode was budgeted at $1 million, but this was upped to $1.5 million an episode by the end of the season. I assume that means the pilot got twice that amount, or even more given that they had to build so many sets and create costumes and props meant to be used for the entire series; on the other hand, they cannibalized a lot from the films and aborted Phase II project, so they saved some money there.
Watching “Encounter at Farpoint” again, I’m reminded of why I stopped watching “Voyager” immediately after its pilot episode but gave “Enterprise” a bit longer of a chance. It had to do with my immediate impression of the crew from the pilot episode. Watching that first episode of “Voyager” I got the immediate impression that this was the biggest pack of losers ever put in charge of a starship and I didn’t want to spend a moment longer with them than I absolutely had to–and I didn’t. Watching “Enterprise” I got the impression that, OK, this show’s off to a weak start, but the crew at least seems like they might be good in a good script. It didn’t quite work out that way but it kept me watching “Enterprise” for almost a whole season while I consigned “Voyager” to the rubbish tip after the first try.
Watching “Encounter at Farpoint” I find myself thinking of that first experience with “Voyager”. These guys are idiots–except for Picard, but then was there really any other reason to watch TNG other than Patrick Stewart for at least the first season or two? No wonder they had to goose things up with a semi-competent character actor like DeLancie; otherwise there would have been nothing to watch at all.
When I watched this recently I liked it more than I remembered doing the first time around – but then, that’s not saying much.
There was less ‘Q’ stuff than I remembered, which was a blessing (I am so with #7 re both Q and the holodeck); and as a hard-core TOS fan I can’t help but love the McCoy scene.
The characters at this point were pretty much cut-outs (and some of them never really moved on), and I never took to the Enterprise-D design – none of the graceful elegance of the original – but still…. There was just enough of the old Trek philosophy to keep me interested.
@4 JohnSteed7
I always liked the immediate acknowledgment that yeah, all of your senior crew probably shouldn’t be beaming down to dangerous planets every chance they get. I actually do like Riker as well, at least once he has a beard, and thought he was a suitable Kirk stand-in. Plus, his presence really made the episodes where Picard was more involved extra special.
@6 Toryx
The interesting thing about Data is that they were able to use him to deliver exposition while making it seem like dialogue. It makes more sense to ask your Lt. Commander something like “Could a storm of such magnitude cause a power surge in the transporter circuits creating a momentary interdimensional contact with a parallel universe?” instead of the ship’s computer (though Data is basically a walking computer). But yes, he’s too obvious a Spock stand-in, but you really need that on Star Trek, and it worked to have someone different enough to fulfill that function, as opposed to say, Tuvok, who just seems like a weak substitute because he was also Vulcan.
@7 Lemnoc
Good point about E-D’s fairly mundane duties, but that’s interesting too–so many years later, it makes sense that there would be less immediately accessible regions to explore. (Like seaQuest!) They probably should have done a show that spent more time in the Gamma Quadrant via DS9, or done a better job with Voyager, which admittedly was less interested in making contact than it was in finding people who could help them get home. If Voyager had been more like BSG, in terms of limited resources and cumulative damage to the ship, it would have been brilliant.
@23 etomlins
Voyager had such a great setup, putting the Starfleet and Maquis crews together, if only they could have stretched out the conflict more instead of forcing them to play nice more or less right away. (I wonder if they ever thought of bringing Tom Riker in as a Maquis and a regular crewmember–that would have been interesting. But I’m not sure of the timing with his DS9 appearance.) I’ll have to see how the Enterprise pilot compares when I rewatch it, but I have to say, I think the DS9 pilot was probably the best of the lot.
Eugene @ 16:
Another late change was the theme music, recycled from TMP because Roddenberry didn’t like Dennis McCarthy’s original score. What did viewers think when they heard that familiar music when it was broadcast?
I really liked it. I recognized it right away and thought it was a neat way to really show that this was Star Trek we were watching, even if it was a totally different cast. It made me really excited about the new series.
Good point, by the way, about Data being the ship’s computer they could actually talk to. That worked out pretty well. Data actually turned out to be one of the bigger surprises for me after the pilot in that he was the character I was initially most uncertain of but he eventually really grew on me to the point where I can’t imagine TNG without him. For someone dressed up to be a Spock clone, Spiner did a great job of making him something completely different which I don’t think they ever accomplished with Tuvok.
Riker never particularly bothered me, though I did like him a lot more with the beard. Troi and Yar were the two that irritated me the most.
@ 4 JohnSteed7
Me too. TNG has always been what I think of when I think of Star Trek. For that reason, I love the Enterprise-D, especially the exterior and the models. I think the interiors look pretty shoddy until they revamped them in what, the second season? Third?
I like Riker well enough. He’s kind of a nonentity for the first few years, until they fleshed out his backstory and interests a little more.
@ 7 Lemnoc
I’m sure I’ll get into this again at the series finale, but I don’t believe TNG is about exploring where no man has gone before. The title sequence lies! I feel the show’s goal was to say, okay, here you have this Federation with its ideals and moral superiority–but what happens when you have to work with cultures that don’t share those views? I think it’s a different kind of show, about negotiating the implications of such an idealistic society with the realities of a less-than-ideal universe, and trying to strike a balance between respecting others while still holding true to what you feel is right.
@ 10 Cait
That Ferengi episode (“The Last Outpost”) is one of the absolute worst episodes of the series. I’m glad Eugene got it! Mwahahaha.
@ 11 etomlins
It’s ridiculous, right? I can’t think of ANY other ensemble show that did the whole “let’s introduce EVERYONE” thing. You know why? Because it’s bad storytelling.
@ 18 Johnny Pez
I don’t think they went back in time. I think it’s just “real” in the sense that it’s physical, not psychological, and that consequences there (like, say, death) would be real. And I thought it was weird that Troi and Data are there, too, but I realized that Troi is still half human, and Data wants to BE human, so there is that.
@ 25 Eugene
About Data’s role: did you notice that when they first beam down underneath the station, Data says, “That’s odd, I seem to be commenting on everything!” A very clever self-referential nod.
@ 26 toryx
I thought reusing the title music for the saucer separation scene was one of the worst choices of the episode. Cartoonishly cheesy.
@27 Torie / @11 etomlins: I can actually think of 2 ensemble shows that managed to introduce most of the main cast successfully in the pilot. Both were from Steven Bochco, though. Hill Street Blues and LA Law managed it using the morning briefing/partners’ meeting. TNG could have done something similar, but they would have had to settle on either Picard or Riker being new and giving him a quick introduction to his bridge crew. It strikes me, that having both the CO and the XO be completely new to the ship and crew is a bad idea. It seems awfully disruptive.
Data’s comment on commenting. I wonder if that was a Spiner ad lib that they decided to leave in.
Sorry I’m late to the party. The day ob has gotten really busy and it’s been so bad I;ve had to ice my poor fingers at night.
Anywho, TNG pilot comments. It originally had no Q? Really? Wow what a dull episode that would have been. Snooze fest.
I watched this during its original broadcast and I remember ebing happy that Trek was back but hoping it would get better. This suffered from a lack of real human characters. Riker/Troi how many break-us do you know that end up with both parties so balanced towards each other? Sure it happens, but it is rare. Geneerally someone feels slighted, or betrayed, or left out in the cold and that would have added spice to the spice. Picard/Crusher (the elder), same problem. Imagine working with the person who killed to the love fo you life, the person whom you had decided to spend all of your life with and raise a family with, that’s real conflict. (And a reason why military setting are cool, cuase people who don;t get along HAVE to work with each other.) Instead we get more bored gruel and everyone is perfect and that get along and are so ever understanding. Bleh
Data – well I lived through the 70’s TV SF wasteland so I recognized data right off, he’s Questor 2.0. Roddenberry just couldn’t come up with much new could he?
The rst of the crew seemed just cardboard cutouts, the Geek, the sympathic minority, the anrgy woman and the angry man.
The plot itself was laughably predictable and the crew didn’t so much as solve a problem as stand back and watch things happen.
Q – what saved Q was the same thing that save Trylane, the performance. Otherwise it’s not only another god-alien incompetently testing teh crew, it’s a gid-alien taht makes no sense within its own framework. (You are a savage, violent species and we hate that so we’re going to kill you. Yeah that tracks.)
How inhumand are these characters? One of the most popular holodeck programs is woodlands. Yup, that’s how me and my friends would use the damn thing. We’d sit and listen to birds and fall in streams and oh so relax, just like people do at Vegas.
#27: “Me too. TNG has always been what I think of when I think of Star Trek. For that reason, I love the Enterprise-D, especially the exterior and the models.”
Something about the TNG design of Enterprise has always bugged me but I can’t quite put it into words. It looks…I don’t know, ill-porportioned or something. I think I’d get the same feeling of unease if I met someone whose head was just a bit too large to suit his body. That huge saucer looks overlarge and somehow fragile.
The TNG Romulan ships look, by contrast, as though they mean business. The Klingon designs are a little silly but everything about the Klingons in any Star Trek series has always been just a bit difficult to take entirely seriously.
#28: “TNG could have done something similar, but they would have had to settle on either Picard or Riker being new and giving him a quick introduction to his bridge crew. It strikes me, that having both the CO and the XO be completely new to the ship and crew is a bad idea. It seems awfully disruptive.”
Would it have had to be Picard or Riker who was new? I’m thinking of the introduction of the 1954 movie The Caine Mutiny (which I know is familiar to at least some persons here since it’s come up in discussion) where we’re introduced to the crew of Caine through the eyes of a young, freshly-minted officer.
That reminds me of something about “Encounter at Farpoint” that I only just took note of last night. Wesley Crusher is treated to something very special, a lengthy subjective shot from his point of view with what seemed to be a SteadiCam. The irruption of this rather striking camera movement into a television show that otherwise was shot in an unremarkable, conventional manner clearly showed that we were meant, right from the start, to regard Wesley as our audience-identification figure. They should have picked a better one.
I’ve already mentioned disliking Troi and one reason for that is very obvious in this episode: she’s a plot device. She’s there to tell us how we’re supposed to be reacting to a particular scene. Wouldn’t it have been more challenging and more interesting to watch if Picard & Co. had to solve the mystery of Farpoint Station without Troi supplying us with broad hints in every scene?
A last comment: when Data picks up Wesley out of the holodeck stream, why does he grin like a complete pervo?
@27 Torie
About Data’s role: did you notice that when they first beam down underneath the station, Data says, “That’s odd, I seem to be commenting on everything!” A very clever self-referential nod.
Yeah, we were discussing that on my Facebook post. Sure wish people would take the discussion here… :)
I thought reusing the title music for the saucer separation scene was one of the worst choices of the episode. Cartoonishly cheesy.
This is what reminded me most of TMP, along with the music, like a mini version of the spacedock approach to Enterprise. On the other hand, while it was going on this time, I was enjoying all the little details on the ship; at the very least, this gave people their first really good look at the new ship, so aside from the slower pacing, it might have been welcome…the first time around, anyway.
Re: ensemble shows, I think Firefly did something similar, and lots of other shows do; however, when Fox aired the series, for some bizarre reason they showed the second episode first (and the pilot episode last) and I have to say that I was able to figure things out pretty well in media res, even though I was slightly confused. And it was much more engaging trying to figure out who they all were and see them when their relationships were slightly developed already.
@29 bobsandiego
Hmm… I wonder if anyone has ever tried to edit the episode without the Q bits. (Sorry, no pun intended!)
Also, I really want to see The Questor Tapes! And I see it’s on YouTube at last…
@30 etomlins
The irruption of this rather striking camera movement into a television show that otherwise was shot in an unremarkable, conventional manner clearly showed that we were meant, right from the start, to regard Wesley as our audience-identification figure.
Whoa, that’s right! I noticed it when the camera switched to his POV, which is always jarring, but I mostly started thinking about how empty the Bridge looked instead of why they did that. That’s a fantastic observation!
@Bob #29
Re: Q incompetently testing them — see I think that’s part of the point. The test obviously makes no sense — if you view it as an actual test. Q is just bored and looking for mortals to torment. If he were genuinely trying to assay the merits of humanity, he’d not have spent the last five minutes egging Picard on into doing something violent against the lovesquid.
In any event it makes no sense at all for an omnipotent being to sit in judgment of humans; the two are not commensurate in any way — the justice of the divine is not knowable by the heart of man (or so says Job…) Picard seems to reject the idea implicitly — reminding Q and the viewer both that he is not a god, but just a space douche; implying that he should either let them go or destroy them but not engage in some mockery of a trial or pantomime justice.
We, like Picard, have to conceive of Q more as a powerful Lord of Faerie (or perhaps a boy playing with ants) than as God in Judgment. Of course that’s also hindsight, from how the character developed later, but Picard’s interactions from the beginning show that he can’t really treat this as a serious scenario — because trials and justice are ways of settling disputes among equals, and Q’s entire performance is nothing if not a resounding demonstration of inequality.
…aanyway. As for the Holodeck, I can certainly see the appeal of some nature hiking for people who are stuck forever in carpeted beige hallways. Life aboard a starship would be very sterile; who wouldn’t want a taste of home from time to time? Sure, there’s going to be all kinds of wild mayhem going on with the holodecks, but Picard’s Dixon Hill sims seem kind of like just the Most Awesome Video Game Ever — people are still going to have the tame pursuits too (I mean, I’d do that!). And a lot of the outdoorsy holosims are things like whitewater rafting — you know, adventure sports, but with more safety features. It’s like going to the gym, but cooler…
@30 etomlins. Good point about the Caine. I was thinking, though, that it would be Picard or Riker, because one of them should have been the primary focus of the show, just as Kirk was. Unfortunately, as you point out, it was Wesley. Even that could have worked if he hadn’t been a total Marty Stu (go look up Roddenberry’s middle name). I had been expecting them to do something like a Napoleonic Wars era midshipman, not boy genius with special privileges. I also think the writers really resented the Marty Stu aspects of the character and deliberately wrote him so badly (well, that and Roddenberry’s demonstrated inability to write dialog that he insisted on inserting as we saw in TOS). Wesley could have been a cool character (and I know younger viewers did identify with him and liked him), but he could have been so much more as a normal smart kid making use of an alternate route into Starfleet.
@33 Deep thought
Oh sure there’d be time everyone woudl want to see sky and feel wind on their faces etc, but telling me that woods is one if the most popular program in their libray stretches things too far. Until “Hollow Pursuits” we don;t see someone using th holodeck like a real person would.
I’d hate to be the lowly seaman[*] who has to clean up after what a “real person” is likely to do in the holodeck.
[*] Or whatever the starship equivalent is. Do they even have enlisted or non-commissioned ranks in Starfleet? Everyone seems to be a lieutenant.
@36 etomlins
O’Brien is an enlisted man — he’s nominally a Chief Petty Officer in TNG, though this may be a retcon since he wears lieutenant’s insignia.
As for the cleanup, if they can create matter from energy, they can create energy from matter… so no need, just treat holotrash the same way you do any other trash aboard the starship and
vent it recklessly into spacereabsorb it into the ship’s main energy stocks!@30 etomlins
A last comment: when Data picks up Wesley out of the holodeck stream, why does he grin like a complete pervo?
Data’s personality is a little off throughout that scene. I have a theory: maybe the holodeck scenes were shot early on, before Spiner settled on how he would play Data. Maybe they intended to go back and reshoot the scene, then found they couldn’t, so they had to go with what they had.
I remember reading once that Roddenberry envisoned the ship, in the original series, as being manned entirely by officers. Of course writers kept slipping in chiefs and so it seems starfleet has officers and chiefs and no enlisted what so ever. Totally idiotic.
Now Roddenberry wa s Bomber pilot in WW II ( Pacific theater and I think B-24s) so he was an officer, but bombers crews had a different social dynamic between enlisted nad officers than RA or Navy.
A few comments about the holodeck. If romances among crew members is being encouraged – as was suggested throughout the series – than the use of erotic programs may not have been as common as we’re thinking. Sure, someone might run one now and then but I doubt such programs would be in constant use.
While not really made clear in the show, I think the programs on the top-ten (for usage) list would have been training and conditioning programs. The BSG pilot showed Starbuck jogging laps through the halls of the battlestar and we saw that activity being accepted by the Commander. Such activity would seem out of place in all that we’ve seen of Star Fleet. If your running and jogging has to be confined would you rather do it on a treadmill, an indoor track (if your ship has one) or through the woods or on a scenic trail in the holodeck? And, as shown in at least one episode, testing and training would take place in the holodecks. You must figure that the Colonial Marines – I mean the Security Teams would take full advantage of the tactical training programs available.
My vote is that scenic programs would be commonly used among the crew. I say this from a real life experience. Many years ago I, with a group of aviation artists, went on a tour of The Mountain. What they say about doors big enough to drive a bus through in true. What they say about buildings built inside those man-made caverns is true. That large control room we saw in the movie War Games is not true. That room would not fit in any of the buildings I saw in there. With that artist’s group I’ve been on tours of a number of military air bases and a common sight was pictures of aircraft on the walls in the hallways and offices. Not in The Mountain. The halls were utilitarian – just as on a ship. In the offices we were allowed to see I saw not pictures of aircraft but photos and artistic prints of landscapes. I commented on that and was told that with no windows and not much to see out side the buildings if there were windows, landscapes became their windows. The soul needs to see some nature every now and then. So, yes. I can see scenic programs being common on a holodeck equipped starship.
Ludon makes some good points about the holodeck. We do see it being used for training a few times early on, by both Worf and Riker. Apart from getting a nature infusion, it would also be an obvious source of R&R for the crew. I suppose there’s an automated clean-up function after a program has shut down and the last person out has shut the door behind them. Mind you, Rom probably had to go into the holosuites with a mop on DS9, but that’s slightly different.
They did eventually address the potential problems of the holodeck in the (first?) Barkley episode. And it did give them a chance for a story with a different setting or to let the actors do something different with their characters once in a while. Doing something like that does help keep things fresh in the long run.
Finally, I’ve been looking at Q’s judge get-up and the costume reminds me of something from TOS. I can’t quite figure it out, but there was some Planet of Hats where they dressed a lot like that. Anybody know what I’m thinking of?
#41, DemetriosX: “Finally, I’ve been looking at Q’s judge get-up and the costume reminds me of something from TOS. I can’t quite figure it out, but there was some Planet of Hats where they dressed a lot like that. Anybody know what I’m thinking of?”
Possibly “Friday’s Child”?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/da/STFridaysChild.jpg/270px-STFridaysChild.jpg
About the holodeck, does TNG Trek ever address the question of how you can get the feeling of walking about a very large area in a room that, when “off”, looks maybe the size of a high-school gym? They even draw attention directly to this question in “Encounter at Farpoint”, when they have Data point out to Riker that they’re actually right next to a wall. Projecting an image onto the walls certainly gives the illusion of limitless space but it’s definitely implied that the wall is a fixed barrier.
Basically I doubt whether, as presented, you could simulate anything like a useful “scenic trail”.
@42 etomlins: I think that’s it. The silly hat on top of head stocking. It was bad enough the first time, they didn’t need to repeat it.
As for distance on the holodeck, I think they eventually said that when you start to walk through a point on the wall, you get beamed to the other side. It had to be something like that if Bashir and O’Brien could go whitewater rafting in a holosuite.
@42 also if you have total control over the gravity in the room and you can create matter, then your trail could wind up on the bulkhead, the overhead and back to to deck and the hiker would never notice anything amiss.
As to other points yes training would be used a lot but hardly counted in the statistics of what is popular. We can do work on the internet but what’s popular is Netflix, Facebook, twitter, and Games. people would hike trails, but active encounters would be far more popular.
I like the idea of automatically changing the room’s gravity a little more than the idea of automatic beaming, if only because we’re always shown that TNG-technology transportation takes a bit of time. I don’t think it’d be possible to incorporate into a seamless illusion. Although, if it did work that way, then the TNG writers missed a real trick in not going with the plot-generation triple play: simultaneous holodeck breakdown, transporter malfunction and Data’s inadvertently endangering the ship somehow.
@45 Shouldn’t that be Wesley’s science experiment endangering the ship? DS9 did a story that combined the first 2 elements, leaving Sisko, Dax, and O’Brien as characters in a James Bond spoof Bashir and Garak were playing, while only Rom was available to fix things.
How about this Planet of Hats getup:
http://trekkerscrapbook.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/atasteofarmageddonhd692.jpg
It would appear nutty hats are in our inevitable future:
http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/b/b0/Fabrini_guard_1.jpg
@ 28 DemetriosX
Ha, you know, I hadn’t thought of that. It is kind of weird that they’re both new.
@ 29 bobsandiego
I like that Troi and Riker and Picard and Crusher don’t get melodramatic. It’s clear that a lot has changed since Troi and Riker were an item, and that they’ve both moved on, though there’s always the chance. While I intensely disliked the Worf/Troi romance, I appreciated that Worf actually approached Riker and was like “Look, we’re friends. Are you okay with this? Do you have intentions?” And Riker said no it was fine. It was an extremely mature way to handle what could have bee a stupid, pointless melodramatic plot point. Because they’re adults, not obnoxious swingers.
The same goes with Picard and Crusher. It’s been a while but I don’t recall Picard being directly (or even necessarily indirectly) responsible for Mr. Crusher’s death. If they had made that A Thing I would’ve been really disappointed. These are mature adults–they should be able to work together.
@ 30 etomlins
I noticed Data smiling a LOT through the episode. I think it’s sort of like Spock smiling occasionally in the first season–they weren’t really sure how to play the characters yet.
@ 33 DeepThought and others on the holodeck
I don’t have a problem with the nature holo-scenario. I have a problem with DATA choosing that one. I mean, it makes no sense. I have a fondness for the Sherlock Holmes episodes not just because I’m a big SH fan, but because they make sense for Data. He should be able to instantly solve any mystery, right? Except he can’t quite understand human behavior… so I can see him playing through those. But just sitting, staring at nature? No.
Also, I assume you’ve all seen The Life and Times of A Holodeck Janitor? One of my favorite things on the internet.
@ 34 DemetriosX
I liked Wesley as a kid (I mean, aside from his sweaters) but I didn’t understand why he always saved the day. Even as a kid I thought he should be off, like, at school or something…
@ 47 Lemnoc
You know what you need to do. Create a Planet of the Hats thread in Ten Forward! Remember the hats in Spock’s Brain?
@45 etomlins
Got a taste of that dish in ST:TMP. Ulp. I don’t need second helpings or warmed leftovers, thanks!
@Lemnoc #50 no no, the kind of transporter malfunction that like, makes clones or something, not the kind that leaves a charred half-corpse.
Anyway re: Q’s costume, I think it’s mainly supposed to look like what a Renaissance scholar would’ve worn (and what German justices wear to this day):
(former) (yay Thomas More, much better than Ron Moore!):
http://www.shoshone.k12.id.us/renaissance/images/more.jpg
(latter) http://forums.watchuseek.com/attachments/f2/562890d1321983047-dress-watches-once-norm-federalconstitutionalcourt.jpg
Oh, forgot, re: the Holodeck — don’t the at some point state that the system uses very subtle force fields to move you around like a treadmill if you get too close to a wall? I seem to recall that being the case…
@51 DeepThought I should point out that those are the judges on the German Federal constitutional court, basically like the US Supreme Court. Most German judges don’t dress like that. But sure, the hat is sort of late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance, but when you couple it with the head leotard or whatever you want to call it, it just looks silly.
And the force fields is probably what I was thinking of with people being beamed back to the other side of the room.
Just finished watching it. Some observations:
1. Little bit too much posing, over-acting, over-REacting all around. Too many semi-emotions from Data.
2. Counselor Troi’s pointless terminal (what the hell IS she looking at?) still cracks me up.
3. Bones was a pleasant surprise – again!
4. Q’s early “fascination” with Riker was gratefully dropped in later episodes (it served no real purpose.)
5. Beautiful aliens.
Yep, loved it as much as I did the very first time!
#54, CaptainCurt: “Bones was a pleasant surprise – again!”
Yeah, I agree. Sure, it’s fan service. Sure, it’s crammed literally into the middle of the story for no particular reason. Sure, his advice about treating Enterprise like a lady doesn’t really make that much sense, and it’s especially ironic considering that later in the episode Picard explicitly orders his crew to push the engines way beyond the redline, which I assume is rather an unchivalric thing to do to one’s lady. But…it’s Dr. McCoy! At his contrarian best!
They really overdo the age makeup but that seems to have become a general fault with TV and movies a while back. Used to be that they how to make a guy look believably old without turning an actor’s face into a puddle of latex wrinkles (q.v. Citizen Kane).
I think what annoyed me about McCoy showing up was a few months earlier at a convention I had purchased a copy of the bible for the show. (It really shows that world building was not a concept understood by the production team.) Anywho, the bible explicitly stated no members of the originial series characters would appear in TNG, and they violated this rule in the friggin pilot. Not a good sign.
Torie @ 27:
Eww, I forgot about them using the title music for the saucer separation scene. As soon as you mentioned it, however, it all came flooding back to me. I must have blocked it out on purpose. You’re right, that was impossibly lame.
Data’s scary smiles: I always thought that at the time, he was trying to act more human but since he doesn’t smile with emotion he always had to force it. Then at some point, someone probably told him to knock it off.
Holodeck: I’d be using that thing for all kinds of stuff. Hiking in the woods, the mountains, along the beach, in favorite cities…playing roles from novels, playing games…you name it. A forest being one of the more popular programs doesn’t sound outrageous at all to me.
bosandiego @ 56:
I got the Bible too but I always figured that was meant for outsiders. Too many people were trying to write the old characters in. Of course, using McCoy for the pilot wasn’t going to discourage this but even if stating it plainly in the Bible stopped 10% of the submissions from using TOS characters, it’d be worth it to the poor bastards who had to read that crap.
#56, bobsandiego: “Anywho, the bible explicitly stated no members of the originial series characters would appear in TNG, and they violated this rule in the friggin pilot. Not a good sign.”
But let’s be honest. Any time any member of the TOS crew showed up, any time at all, even when it was in those shitty episodes where Bing Crosby’s granddaughter was playing a Romulan, we smiled. It says something about TNG Trek that any episode in which any of the old cast turned up, even for a second, is automatically one of the best-remembered episodes, even if the episode itself was no good at all. It’s almost like a frank admission from the TNG writers that they’d cast a bunch of lightweights who could be blown away by even the briefest incursion of a real actor.
@55 etomlins
It’s weird in the middle of the 2-hour pilot, but it’s a lovely end to “Encounter at Farpoint, Part I,” when they split it up for rebroadcast. :)
@58
That’s a good point–we fans are so easily manipulated! And it continued to work even on the newer shows… I loved seeing Patrick Stewart in the pilot of DS9 and I thought it was great when Jonathan Frakes reprised his role as Tom Riker. Someone just reminded me about Levar Burton being on Voyager, which I totally forgot about. Even seeing Barclay and Troi on Voyager! It all holds true… until the last episode of Enterprise, anyway.
Just a quickie note – don’t have time to read every response right now – but, I always thought it was a poor decision to play the triumphant main title march during the saucer separation scene. It totally dilutes any tension and renders the actor’s reactions to the danger silly ( reminds me a several fan made montages to music on Youtube ). Dennis McCarthy had written a more ominous musical cue, but it was dropped and the TMP theme used instead. One of many, many stylistic mis-steps in this opener
What that segment needs is Bill Murray’s Lounge Singer character singing something like
“Hey, look at this. This is cool.
We’re doing this special effect, just for you.
Oh look at how, those things, are moving now. Isn’t that so cool? Oh yeah.”
Play with it in your head and you’ll get it to fit.
#61, Ludon: “We’re doing this special effect, just for you.”
Heh. Yeah, it probably always was just a “look at we can do with models, isn’t it cool?” moment. To me, though, it just emphasizes how badly designed the ship is, that you’ve got this huge, thin, frangible portion that houses basically everybody on board.
Okay, had a few minutes more to read comments and wanted to add my two quatloos:
– The pilot is definitely too long and padded with introductions and odd scenes. To me it actually worked better the first time it was re-run ( after the first ten episodes aired ). It was not only broken into two separate episodes, but edited and tightened up.
Some notable changes included; The extended shot of space with credits before the first appearance of the Enterprise, The removal of Worf walking through engineering after Picard sends him there ( which it was noted was added just so they’d have a reason to build the engineering set…it was feared if they didn’t do it then, it wouldn’t be budgeted later! ), tightening of the dialogue in the battle bridge scene ( removing Yar’s outburst and Picard’s gentle reprimand ), a repositioning of the scene between Picard and Beverly ( where he apologises for his churlish behavior on the bridge ) to a more logical spot in the episode, and just general editing of scenes and dialogue to make them flow better. I wish I’d kept that unique version on VHS, as it’s never been repeated. In syndication it’s just the full-length pilot split in half, which is a shame, as it really does improve the episode’ pacing…kind of like a re-redit of a movie after a test screening.
– Yar’s character had potential, but there was just too much nonsense thrown in. The rape colony backstory was an unneccesary addition. I’ve known plenty of women in security jobs or the armed forces who were neither lesbians ( the OTHER stereotypical response ) nor were they repeatedly raped. They just enjoyed the challenge and the physicality of the job.
– Wesley was problematic from the second episode on. It wasn’t just that he was “exceptionally gifted”, the problem was he was written as “Wesley Crusher…. SOOOOPER – GENIIIIIUS”. His coming in to save the day, with solutions that were sometimes so obvious the audience was shouting them at the screen, not only made his character unbearable, but made the ‘highly trained Starfleet crew’ we were supposed to admire look like complete nincompoops. I always wished he had been written more like Will Robinson from the original “Lost In Space”. Will was supposed to be exceptionally bright too, but he was also written and played as a normal boy ( who just happened to live in extraordinary circumstances, with a pet robot and probably television’s first regular pedophile character ) which made him MUCH more likeable.
– Riker became much more likeable as the series went on, but at first he was being written as Kirk…and it just didn’t work ( just think of those awful romance scenes in “Angel One” or “Up The Long Ladder” ). For one thing, Jonathan Frakes seemed a bit too…well..soft to be a Kirk clone ( now as a Will Decker clone he was damn near perfect ).
#63, Dep1701:
“Yar’s character had potential, but there was just too much nonsense thrown in. The rape colony backstory was an unneccesary addition.”
That must come from the same Screenwriting 101 class where they teach that people go into the sciences only because they’re emotionally stunted by a dead parent or an acrimonious divorce or something.
“Wesley was problematic from the second episode on. It wasn’t just that he was ‘exceptionally gifted’, the problem was he was written as ‘Wesley Crusher…. SOOOOPER – GENIIIIIUS’.”
In returning to TNG after all this time and rewatching all these first-season episodes, I’m surprised at how forcibly the show is trying to make us identify with Wesley Crusher from the very first episode. I’d forgotten, or maybe tried not to notice. He’s central to at least three episodes in the first season and even in episodes where he doesn’t have a major role, as in the upcoming “Code of Honor”, the push to give Wesley all these special privileges is always there.
And that’s another thing. He isn’t just a little Mozart (*retch*), he’s also Mom’s beautiful unique snowflake. Even if Wesley did nothing else to earn our contempt, he’d still be hated because Dr. Crusher simply will not stop trying to get her son special treatment.
The funny thing is that, back when TNG was first coming out, I didn’t really give Wesley much thought. That may have been partly because I didn’t start watching the show regularly until the second season by which time the relentless Wesley-shilling had abated somewhat. I kind of assumed that a lot of Trekkies hated him because teenaged sci-fi fans have a way of hating children on general principle.
Re-watching this really brought be back. I remember watching it on the tiny tv in my bedroom when it was first broadcast. I was thirteen and I loved it, but even then I had issues with the story. Apart from the things Torie brought up, I used to think that when Kirk said that we had the wisdom not to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons that this meant we didn’t just simply try and fail to do so, so I didn’t like a Star Trek that decided we went ahead and dropped the big one in the 21st century. I also didn’t like Wesley, who ironically was supposed to appeal to young viewers like myself. Still, I was so happy to be watching new episodes of Star Trek that I let pretty much everything slide and tuned in religiously. I know, I’m a sucker like that. I’m just really glad it got better…eventually.
25 years Nutschell. Its hard to say goodbye bcseuae TNG ended on a such an awesome high note. These guys were like family and made fans really feel at home on the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D. CBS have spent millions on remastering the original TNG negatives. We’re boldly going where no-one has gone before – AGAIN, Maurice. Hehe.He sure is Tony. Good ol’ Wesley is in season 1-4 keeping the adults on their toes.Time flew didn’t it M Pax. It seems like yesterday.