“Lonely Among Us”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Story by Mike Halperin
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 1, Episode 7
Original air date: November 2, 1987
Star date: 41249.3
Mission summary
Enterprise picks up delegates from warring planets in the Beta Renner system, the animal-like Anticans and snake-like Selay, unlikely new candidates for Federation membership. En route to planet Parliament, where their guests can hopefully work out their issues peacefully, perhaps over a nice home-cooked meal, they happen across an unusual energy cloud. They swing by for a closer look, and a powerful electrical discharge from a sensor panel envelops Worf, knocking him out.
In Sickbay, the blue energy transfers from the unconscious Klingon to Dr. Crusher. She begins acting strangely and displays a sudden fascination with Enterprise’s navigational controls. Worf wakes up with no memory of what happened to him, but Dr. Crusher is no longer interested in her patient—she would rather visit the Bridge and study helm control at a science station. Electrical energy leaps from her body to the computer and she experiences a memory blackout just like Worf. The console is soon inoperable and warp drive and transporters malfunction, which shouldn’t be possible since the new ship is still under warranty.
For someone who enjoys mysteries, Captain Picard only wants solutions to their mounting problems. Careless remarks from him and Riker lead Data to assume the role of consulting deductive. He launches an investigation into the seemingly disconnected occurrences on board, annoying his crewmates with an exaggerated Sherlock Holmes impression as he slowly murders them with secondhand pipe smoke.
Troi does what she does “best”; she hypnotizes Worf and Dr. Crusher—really—to confirm what we already know: they were possessed by an alien intelligence. But it’s too late, because their strange visitor manages to take over Picard, who orders they reverse course back to the space cloud. His suspicious behavior alerts the Bridge crew that someone else is controlling his mind, but even when he admits as much, there’s nothing they can do because of Starfleet regulations. Besides, he hasn’t done anything really out of line, like assign rank and duties to a teenage boy with no Starfleet training.
The alien mind delivers some exposition, apologizes for accidentally killing one of the engineers, and says Picard agreed to the energy being’s offer to explore space together. “Picard” resigns from command and zaps everyone on the Bridge with blue energy, then escapes to the transporter room to beam himself back into the space cloud as energy only.
There seems to be no way to track or recover Picard, so they don’t sweat it, until there’s a tiny glimmer of hope: a P flashes on the navigation console. “P for Picard!” Riker blurts out, remembering his favorite alphabet book from childhood. Gambling that the captain is hanging out in the ship’s circuits and will make his way to the transporter console, they energize the beam. He materializes from his most recently stored pattern, having forgotten the entire incident. Riker convinces Picard to skive off work early and report to Sickbay for an examination–but only after the captain learns that the Anticans have hunted and killed a Selay delegate for dinner during all the excitement.
PICARD: Riker, with the peace delegates and all, I think I do need a rest. Take charge, Number One.
Analysis
This episode is comprised of a series of near and total misses, elements that don’t fit together or add up to anything approaching a satisfying plot. The B-plot surrounding the Anticans and Selays is offensively simplistic, a storyline that only barely ties into the main plot and seems an attempt to add either humor or tension, but utterly failing at both. It reminds me of the worst of Babylon 5—a diplomatic altercation that might have been interesting had the alien races not been so transparently modeled after Earth animals, and been treated as another opportunity for Picard to celebrate human superiority or for the crew to show their disdain for other cultures.
PICARD: But do you understand the basis of all this nonsense between them?
RIKER: No sir. I didn’t understand that kind of hostility even when I studied Earth history.
PICARD: Really? Oh, yes, well these life forms feel such passionate hatred over matters of custom, God concepts, even, strangely enough, economic systems.
Tasha and Riker clearly show their surprise and disgust at their guests’ culture and beliefs, and while the reverse is also true, they are playing host to the delegates and rarely demonstrate appropriate levels of professionalism in their dealings. Though it isn’t necessary for the subplot to fit thematically with the A-plot, it shouldn’t feel like a story from a completely different episode either. However, I did like the makeup for the Selays, so that’s something.
The biggest problem is that characters don’t behave believably, and I’m not referring to alien possession. The worst offenders are Dr. Crusher, who fails to report a mental blackout immediately even though she should know better, and Counselor Troi, who is even more useless than usual when her telepathic abilities make her uniquely suited to tip them all off about what’s going on. Even so, she has to rely on hypnosis to provide evidence that someone has been pulling the crew’s strings. Worse still, the crew responds ineptly to the possibility that the captain is being influenced by a dangerous alien entity, even after hearing a full confession that he has been possessed. No Starfleet protocol can be that shortsighted. Cadets on a training mission would have handled this situation better. The only people who keep it together are Geordi, who reports his observations via the VISOR right away, and Wesley Crusher, when he helps out Engineer Singh. (Who, by the way, dies later. That’s what he gets for taking credit for the boy’s work!)
Speaking of Wesley, this is only his first episode as acting ensign, and they’re already pointing out how ridiculous his role is:
DR. CRUSHER: Hi. Solve any new problems today?
WESLEY: I was starting to, maybe. Mister Singh sent me off to class.
DR. CRUSHER: Wes, you’re only an acting ensign. You’ve got to let the commissioned officers do some of the work.
I can’t quite tell if she’s humoring him or if she’s serious. I’m worried it’s the latter.
Nearly every attempt at levity in the episode is strained and the comedic timing is off, centering mostly on Data’s role-playing as Sherlock Holmes. It’s a little fun, but it wears thin quickly, and it’s inherently outlandish really. Fortunately, his affection for the role will be revisited later, more successfully, as will Picard’s fascination with crime solving and mysteries.
The alien energy being itself isn’t even consistent or believable. It first possesses Worf, but knocks him unconscious, then it successfully enters Dr. Crusher’s body—without killing her. It spends some time in the computer console before accidentally killing Singh, and once again manages to not only assume control of Picard, but also—supposedly—communicates with him and gets his permission. It also immobilizes the entire crew on the Bridge without any serious effect. It seems like it can do whatever the plot needs it to do, just like everyone else in the episode, whether it makes sense or not. The alien also seems capable of communicating what happened to it, either through a human or the computer, but fails to explain itself until the very end. But I suppose there wouldn’t have been much of an episode if it had simply asked for their help to return it to its space cloud.
I’m not even going to dwell on the idiocy of Picard’s mind surviving in the Enterprise computer and yet another magical transporter solution, which is still new to TNG, but not Star Trek. Boy, will that change, and we’ll see plenty of alien possession plots too. Stay tuned.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 1 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: This surgical cap or whatever it’s supposed to be looks like a cheap Borg Halloween costume, or maybe it’s something Wesley made for his mother in art class. It seems designed to allow Dr. Crusher to see something that her medical tricorder or the bed diagnostic monitors can’t, or maybe it’s just supposed to appear futuristic. At least it isn’t made of gold lamé. Either way, we won’t see this gadget too often, for obvious reasons.
Best Line: DR. CRUSHER: Yes, concerning your memory blackout.
WORF: I still don’t remember having one.
Trivia/Other Notes: Marc Alaimo, who plays the Antican leader Badar N’D’D, would reappear in three other roles on TNG before assuming the part for which he is best known: Gul Dukat on DS9.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 6 – “Where No One Has Gone Before.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 8 – “Justice.”
Wow, it got worse before it got better, didn’t it?
Every episode we look at, I wonder what the hell kind of dark rituals G-Rod was pulling to keep this show on the air after the first season. DId a lot of goats go missing around this time from his neighbourhood? Chickens, maybe?
A truly awful episode. I think the only thing I remember liking at all was the reaction of the one diplomat to being told about replicated food. The characters are all off, the story makes no sense, the B-plot is pointless. Just ugh!
(I wonder what we’ll wind up talking about this week instead of this episode?)
This episode is so bad that it almost manages to make some of the earlier episodes look better. It certainly allows me to think warmly of Encounter at Farpoint.
You’d think, after the encounter Eugene quoted between Dr. Crusher and Wes, that Roddenberry would have gotten a clue about just how little people think of the brilliant boy character. Maybe he just didn’t watch the episodes any more, or read the scripts? This whole episode looks like a test to see how much Roddenberry is paying attention. Given the way the rest of the season goes, I’m imagining that Roddenberry spent the whole week kicking back in his office chair, counting his money and thinking how much the Data action figure complete with pipe and hunting cap is going to bring in.
This one isn’t as bad as the next one, so I’m tempted to call it a Warp 2, but let’s be honest: Warp 1.
There are at least four promising ideas in this episode, all squandered by terrible writing, a lack of foresight, and bad performances.
Idea #1: Warring species who both want admission into the Federation.
Why it’s stupid: They behave like children. Lizard children.
Idea #2: Computer being possessed by an alien entity.
Why it’s stupid: It doesn’t actually DO anything while in the computer, except flicker some lights and turn off the engines.
Idea #3: Crew is possessed by an alien entity.
Why it’s stupid: Everyone acts like an idiot. I cannot believe that Dr. Crusher does not IMMEDIATELY report her blackout. And why does Singh die but everyone else is fine?
Idea #4: Picard being seduced by the prospect of limitless exploration, without corporeal form.
Why it’s stupid: It’s not entirely clear whether or not he consented to this, and looks a lot more like a kidnapping. Plus we just don’t know enough about Picard at this point to tell if it’s something that would actually entice him away from his duty and station.
As I mentioned in the last comment thread, I was particularly irritated that Troi spends the entire episode in the dark about what’s going on–until the hypnosis, which seriously???–and then at the end “senses” an alien presence. Where the hell was that sense 45 minutes ago when Crusher was on the bridge? And the dilly-dalllying about removing Picard from command is absurd: he admitted to the possession.
The worst part, though? The Sherlock Holmes stuff. It’s not cute or funny or interesting, it just makes you want to deck Data (and Riker, too, who actually seems AMUSED by this business).
Plays more like Lost In Space: The Next Gen, only the new Robot is more ridiculous and annoying.
On the upside, Lemnoc, no flailing hooks.
I don’t remember this one at all. I’m sure it is from the period when I stopped watching back in the day, and I now regard myself fortunate that I haven’t come across it in syndication.
Which makes me wonder- do they show the terrible episodes in syndication still? I would pull 5-10 episodes of TNG for, like, EVER, because they could discourage any new viewers from trying out any of the rest of the franchise. Kirk and Spock never had an episode so bad that I would stop watching the series, but this?
@4 Torie
Where the hell was that sense 45 minutes ago when Crusher was on the bridge?
I’ll give them the smallest credit that they attempted to address this with Troi explaining that she thought it was typical human “duality,” but that had the air of the writers adding it at the last minute to head off the question from viewers, instead of acknowledging it as a serious oversight and fixing the story properly. Even a half-Betazoid should be able to pick up an alien consciousness, if not in a close co-worker and friend, then in the computer where it doesn’t belong, or, you know, in the cloud itself.
The Sherlock Holmes stuff. It’s not cute or funny or interesting, it just makes you want to deck Data
You know I love Holmes stories and I probably did enjoy this fan service when I was younger, but this time it was annoying and highly unprofessional. That crap should stay on the Holodeck.
@7 sps49
do they show the terrible episodes in syndication still?
I’m not sure, and don’t even know where it might be syndicated right now, aside from local stations; however, when BBC America aired the show, they only bought and broadcast seasons 3, 4, and 5. They are clearly smarter than us, or have a lower pain threshold. You guys want us to keep this up, right? :)
Conversely, I just discovered that Syfy is currently showing only seasons 1 and 7 of TNG. Can’t say I’m surprised. http://www.syfy.com/schedule/?search=star+trek
It’s weird in retrospect that TNG Trek took forever to get back to the idea of having a chief engineer as a permanent major crewmember. Surely they must have known that one of Montgomery Scott’s appeals was that he was always an engineer first and foremost? (Indeed that was the subtext of one of TNG’s best later episodes, “Relics”.) And yet for the longest time TNG gave the job of chief engineer to a disposable nonentity. I just don’t understand why.
@Etomlins #10
Indeed, literally disposable in this episode! I wonder if that was an attempt to discourage future writers from using a chief engineer character… see what we do to engineers around here??
@Eugene #8 re: “typical human duality”
silly humans and their lack of monomaniacal obsessions! Remind me later to start indecisivehumanoralientakeover.tumblr.com…
@10 etomlins @11 DeepThought
At one point, they even mentioned Argyle, but he didn’t show up once! Instead Singh goes to the staff meeting (they really do meet a lot, don’t they?), where the chief engineer’s importance is further minimized:
PICARD: Have you spoken with Chief Engineer Argyle about this problem?
SINGH: With all the Engineering staff, sir. They’re just as puzzled.
On this re-watch I am most surprised that Geordi is doing more than I expected. I tend to think of him as the helm officer for first season, but they have him doing routine maintenance, with Worf no less! Those two characters just didn’t have much to do in these early episodes, I guess. Getting rid of Yar and making Geordi chief engineer solved a lot of problems.
@sps49 Kirk and Spock never had an episode so bad that I would stop watching the series, but this?
Never seen Spock’s Brain, huh?
Are you kidding? I swear, if “Spock’s Brain” had been the first episode ever of TOS I’d seen, I’d love to see what happened next. TNG only wished it could be that engagingly bad.
I’d forgotten that they started indulging Brent Spiner’s shameless mugging this early (as though there have been moments in previous episodes where he can’t keep an incongruous hint of a grin from his face.) But I’m a Holmes fan–albeit one who is eternally glad that Jeremy Brett rescued the role from the comical deerstalker-and-calabash-pipe image that Data perpetuated–so as much as I’m disposed to contemn Data normally I’ll give him a pass here.
What really annoys me is how helpless the crew acts in the face of the captain’s manifest incapacity. It’s bad when your subplot compares poorly to one from “Turnabout Intruder”. Heck, it’s not like mutiny is that horrible a crime in the TNG world. Someone did it at least once a season with no lasting effect.
And…fighting over mere economic systems, hurr hurr, how quaint! Would you want the sanctimonious first-season Picard anywhere near a diplomatic mission? (Well, he’d been better than Capt. Archer.)
I had managed to forget this episode. Now I have to forget it again.
@16 Ludon
We are here to serve.
After thinking about it, that shot of Picard you used at the top is also something I remember from this episode. I couldn’t have told you where it was from or what happened, but the shot itself was sort of in my memory.
As with so much of the first season, we are told, rather than shown, Picard’s interest in exploration and sensawunda. And it falls utterly flat and unbelievable. Over the years, we see enough of him that we might think he could be tempted by joining with the cloud, but it doesn’t really seem to fit him. Maybe because they shifted his interests to archaeology, but somehow he just doesn’t seem the sort. Frankly, none of these explorers of the unknown seem all that interested in it.
DemetriosX @ 18:
Well the thing is, considering how little they actually explore the unknown, it seems like it’d be the wrong kind of job for a genuine explorer to take.
I never really believed the energy lifeform thingy when it said that Picard agreed to travel the universe with it. A lifeform that possesses people without invitation just isn’t the sort of lifeform I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to.
@19 Toryx
Agreed. The fact that Picard’s consciousness was stuck in the computer suggests either the alien abandoned him there or he escaped somehow and held onto the ship.
Come to think of it, this is a really weird notion. Trek does seem to ascribe to the idea that noncorporeal existence is humanity’s ultimate fate, something to aspire to. Several times in TOS and TNG we see people who are able to transfer their consciousness from body to body, or body to machine. This is more fantasy than science fiction, isn’t it? Given that Picard survived the experience, that his personality, essence, soul, whatever was truly separated from his body and then reunited, you’d think there’d be some research into it, right? And again, no one seems troubled by the fact that the transporter can just churn out copies of you willy nilly. There should at least be some kind of override or juryrigging to allow them to rematerialize a person from the pattern buffer–or it should really be erasing the pattern as soon as someone’s molecules are reassembled.
I wonder: just how is Enterprise supposed to function as an exploratory vessel? Who decides where it should go? When the ship is performing a military function it is Starfleet who gives the orders but what about scientific work? Is that supposed to be also within Starfleet’s domain?
I can rather imagine that various Federation scientists and institutions might submit proposals, petitioning for a slice of Enterprise’s time the way astronomers compete for the use of the world’s great telescopes. It would have been nice to see an angle like that, and (by the by) it would help explain why the Enterprise crew can seem so unenthused about exploring. If they’re really just like lab technicians managing a ship full of instruments at the behest of researchers back home, then I can understand getting a bit blase about it all. But too often in the show it seems like the captain decides what to look at, like a guy on a long roadtrip deciding on a whim to stop at a diner that happens to catch his fancy. If that’s how it works then permit me to speculate whether the scientific utility of Enterprise is all that great.
Blame Childhood’s End perhaps for the “pure energy” or “pure thought” notion of human advancement ? But Clarke doesn’t make such a future look all that attractive–although that may not have been his intention.
@21: I think the show is meant to be modeled on the adventures of Hornblower, to a reasonable extent (though of course HH was a reluctant hero, something they left out of the JTK mould): the free-roving concept for which the word “cruiser” was made. It’s not a coincidence, that she ship is a “heavy cruiser” – if she’s the flag, we would have expected a carrier or a battleship, but a heavy cruiser says something about the society that picks that as their flagship.
So it doesn’t make sense much, because they posit the Enterprise drifting around on the fringes of civilization – which in Hornblower’s day, meant “the New World” where Western civ was just beginning, but in the 24th century means visiting many places where other peoples have been “civilized” in the Western sense for many generations. It’s a failure of the attempt to transplant, because Space is Not an Ocean, and Planets are not Islands.
CaitieCat: I’m not familiar with the Horatio Hornblower stories so I defer to your better-informed explanation. It does make sense. But, as you say, it actually seems a bit rare that Enterprise comes across something truly new. Dozens of alien species that are new to us viewers are paraded before us but, judging from Captain’s Log entries, they never seem entirely unfamiliar to Enterprise.
There’s something I only just now recalled from “Where No One Has Gone Before” that might be relevant here. When Enterprise accidentally end up near M33 Data suggests that, so long as they’re there, they might as well have a look round. He indicates that there is a protostar near at hand to study. (TNG accidentally gets something right: the rate of star formation in M33 is significantly greater than in our own galaxy or in M31 according to Burnham so it actually would be a good place to look for protostars.) Picard approves of the sentiment but then says that if they can duplicate the feat of travelling that distance then a properly fitted scientific vessel can then be sent. Hence Enterprise isn’t really a dedicated research laboratory but more like a scout.
@ 7 sps49
I caught this in syndication and they definitely still showed the terrible episodes. Same goes for the other Treks. I’ll never forget how they kept re-running this Voyager episode where Neelix is shadowing the engineering department… *shudder*
@ 17 Eugene
Here to serve… man.
Re: the whole exploration thing, I never saw it that way. Its mission, to my mind, isn’t to go out into the boondocks of uncharted territory, but rather to follow up on those missions that already have with diplomatic relations. The “unknown” is who these people are, not what’s around them or where they are on the starchart. Most of the time the Enterprise has some information, just not the whole picture.
Granted, Picard has been extraordinarily bad at it so far, but that does improve.
Re the science stuff, I’d say the model here is the British navy in the age of sail. Generally while they were sailing around, showing the flag and maintaining the Empire, the Royal Navy would also engage in various scientific pursuits, from astronomical observation to acquiring biological specimens. You can see this not only in the Hornblower books but also the Aubrey and Maturin series (not sure if it comes up in the film version of Master and Commander or not). Of course, a lot of that actually had to do with ways of developing a means of determining longitude or otherwise improving navigation. Actually, the US navy performs the occasional scientific experiment or survey, too.
There are some occasional mentions of Enterprise being ordered to go look at some phenomenon or other, though it’s usually secondary to the storyline of the week. I always had the impression it was basically that the ship was going to be passing close by and wasn’t in any great hurry, so Starfleet could send them to take a few readings or whatever as a preliminary study. And occasionally they get a science team that wants to test something or send a probe somewhere. That’s essentially what was going on in the last episode and I can remember an episode where Dr. Crusher wound up flying the ship into a star that had the same set-up. The science is generally secondary to the primary mission, which seems to be mostly diplomacy and showing the flag, but it is part of what they do.
Considering how often dangerous things happen to starfleet ships that go poking their noses at a shiny bits of science, sparking in the dark sky like a diamond tempting a jewel thief, it is amazing that Starfleet would ever allow a ship with diplomats aboard to go of course to ‘investigate.’
What happened to the Throg ambassador?
Possessed by aninect energy cloud and killed trying to abscond with the ship.
Third time this week, be careful, man!
@25 DemetriosX
Yeh. But once they designated Enterprise as the flagship (ship of the line), it really precluded Enterprise from performing in a Cap’n Cook style of far exploring, ala Resolution or Discovery.
I think Torie’s analogy holds, that Enterprise is a big-gunned dreadnought under white flag, patrolling the interior fringes of empire.
If I’m bored enough I may have to watch the first couple of minutes of all TNG episodes and categorize Enterprise’s missions. I remember more of them being explicitly scientific than is probably actually the case. Probably most are either diplomatic or search-and-rescue.
@22 catiecate
I wouldn’t describe Hornblower as a reluctant hero. He’s a hero with lots of self-doubt and with unrealistic views about his fellows officers. (For those not in the know, Hornblower is always convinced during battle that he’s the only one scared out of his wits and that all the other officers have no fear in them.) Hornblower was, if I remember correctly, the son of a physician who left his comfortable middle-class home to become a midship in a time of war. He chose that life and was bitterly unhappy when put ashore by peacetime. He was not reluctant about being a naval officer, or doing his duty, or in his pursuit of the enemy.
He’s not a reluctant naval officer – he’s a reluctant hero. Two different things. Yes, he chose the life (though seasick at anchor – dreadful!), but he was never comfortable with being hailed as a hero, never viewed himself as one, and never failed to revile himself in private for all the things others lauded him for.
Reluctant officer, no. Reluctant hero, yes. :)
Roddenberry did envision Star Trek as “Hornblower in Space” (and “Wagon Train to the Stars”, but I’ve never ever seen or heard of Wagon Train ever). I think the feel of Star Trek would’ve been improved if the Enterprise was out of easy communication with Starfleet Command, similar to Hornblower usually being on detatched operations.
Hornblower may have been reluctant to be viewed as a hero- but he was always in the forefront of the action, usually either because his superiors knew his ability exceeded the norm or because he, himself, believed he was the best person for the job or saw heroic action as the best course of action open to him.
I do think he was “bitterly unhappy” because every time he was ashore, his pay was screwed up and he was dreadfully poor until Flying Colors.
@25 DemetriosX- Hornblower and Aubrey were based on the same historical figure’s exploits, and the movie Master and Commander should be compared to Beat to Quarters (The Happy Return for you wrong-side-of-the-road drivers).
@31 sps49: I wouldn’t have said that Aubrey was as strongly based on Nelson as Hornblower is. He seems to simply be closer to a generic RN officer of the period, with a little Cook or even Bligh thrown in. Hornblower’s always in the action, never roaming around the South Seas on scientific expeditions and only rarely engaging in diplomacy or espionage.
@31 sps49
It’s true this one little decision gave a “telephonic” flavor to ST different than the Age of Sail. It seems to have been a flavor that creeped on the first season of TOS, with the Enterprise clearly on a mission out of communication with easy instruction or counsel, and “Starfleet” being a rather amorphous and cloudy authority (“United Earth Space Probe Agency”) hovering in the background.
This situation endures all the way, I’d say, to “Errand of Mercy,” when it becomes more certain that ultimate authority is but a phone call away, admirals all a-subspace Twitter, whatever.
Had they stuck with the original concept, I think the trappings of the Federation and Starfleet would have been reduced. And though I like those early episodes much more than what came after, I have to admit the franchise would have been a bit impoverished for it.
@32 DemetriosX
I meant Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald; not Nelson.
@34 sps49
Oooh, I didn’t know that. I always thought Hornblower was modeled on Nelson. Interesting fellow, though his career doesn’t seem to have had as many scientific expeditions as Aubrey’s did.
@27 Lemnoc
I think Torie’s analogy holds, that Enterprise is a big-gunned dreadnought under white flag, patrolling the interior fringes of empire.
But what about all the families aboard?
@31 sps49
I think the feel of Star Trek would’ve been improved if the Enterprise was out of easy communication with Starfleet Command.
This is one of the few things I liked about Star Trek: Voyager. I think it was towards the end of the first season or beginning of the second (a line further blurred by weird scheduling by Paramount) where Janeway made the direct comparison to Kirk and captains of his time who had to operate on the frontiers of space, out of communication with Starfleet. This meant they had to make the tough calls and sometimes they would have to question their principles. It added a little more conflict and made them more interesting, which was unfortunately undermined when they reestablished regular contact with Starfleet. I really would have preferred Voyager to be more like Battlestar Galactica, at least in terms of losing people and resources along the way. Voyager looked as good in its seventh season when it returned home as it did in the pilot, while Galactica looked like it was held together with spit, wire, and good wishes. (As opposed to Cylon glue.)
“But what about all the families aboard?”
That is a good question for more than one reason. Who, when TNG was in the works, decided that there should be children and families on the ship? It might make more sense if Enterprise were expected to be away from port for great long stretches; then you can sort of make the case that crewmen with their spouses and families aboard might better tolerate the isolation. (Whether that would actually work is another matter.) But as shown Enterprise isn’t merely in constant wireless contact with Starfleet, but it’s regularly pulling in to friendly ports and even returning to Earth several times throughout the show’s run. There’s little sense even of physical isolation.
Let me be cynical: Enterprise has families and children aboard because their presence gives the TNG writers more material for potential scripts.
I think the familes came from Rodennberry. He always seemed to have a more gentle view of how service and the service should operate. (It was Roddenberry who conceived of an order of battle without enlisted. All chiefs and no indians.) I always wanted to see a Star Trek episode where a galaxy-class ship has a Mutiny because they crew refuse to endanger their families on Starfleet orders.
etomlins @ 37: “Let me be cynical: Enterprise has families and children aboard because their presence gives the TNG writers more material for potential scripts.
I’m even more cynical than that. I always thought families and children were aboard so that they’d have an excuse for a super-genius teenage wonderkin.
I think having families would make a lot more sense if Enterprise were truly set up for exploration or science. But there’s the whole added military angle to it as the Flagship of the fleet that sort of ruins that.
It makes me wonder what Star Trek would have been like if it had really been a show about exploration with the ships run by scientists rather than Starfleet officers. Really, they should have made a show about that rather than going with Voyager.
@ 39 Toryx.
Wow.
You just set off a creativity bomb in my head. S setting for a novel to rapidly coming together based on your comment. Hopefully this will work out, but even if it doesm’t, thank you.
On the notion of children aboard: I get the sense that a sea change has happened more recently than TOS, perhaps as soon as the last ten or twenty years. Picard is deeply uncomfortable with children and families aboard, so this is not something he is used to in his previous posts. We also know that as little as ten years ago Picard had to bring Jack Crusher’s body to Beverly and Wesley, who I think were on a starbase somewhere and not on a ship. (I don’t recall the details but I remember lots of references to bringing him “home” which was obviously NOT with him.) So it’s possible that the Enterprise is among the first ships to actually have families.
Personally, I think the show included this notion a) for plot fodder; b) to soften the militarism of Starfleet; and c) to make the characters more human and relatable, and thus give the show broader appeal to the average ‘merkan. I don’t think it needs to make sense beyond “people like having their families around and maybe work would be easier that way.”
@41 Torie
My recollection fo Picard’s Capttain’s log at th start of “Encounter with a borning plot’ is that the Galaxy-class ships(And why don’t we see the one named ‘Galaxy’) are the only ones with families aboard.
#42, bobsandiego: “(And why don’t we see the one named ‘Galaxy’)”
Shhh. Unfortunate accident involving a troupe of exotic dancers from Orion, an unexpected encounter with a neutron star, and a crate of Arcturan triple sec. We do not speak of Galaxy any more.
Seriously, as presented in the Star Trek universe, Starfleet is a strange, composite organization and hence Enterprise is a strange, incongruous creature. It’s partly a naval flagship, it’s partly a vessel of exploration operating on the edge of the known world, it’s partly a workaday research platform like a kind of spacegoing Glomar Challenger, it’s partly a self-sufficient “ark ship” with huge aquaria and gardens–you halfway expect Bruce Dern to appear round a corner, holding a trowel.
I don’t suppose it matters terribly much in the end whether all this adds up to something consistent, so long as good stories are told. Take the matter of why there are children on the ship. It makes little sense for them to be there but it did lead to at least a couple of good scripts; I remember, for example, liking the episode in which a young boy’s mother is killed on a mission but then an alien capable of assuming human form offers to take the mother’s place. Other times, though, the miscellaneous nature of Enterprise leads to nothing but puzzlement and incredulity. I’ve said this before but all that business with the “saucer separation” just highlights the idiocy of placing all the most vulnerable members of Enterprise‘s complement onto a section of the ship that offers a broad area to be shot at, is easily punctured and frangible, and which can’t move away from danger any faster than at impulse speed (unless I’m completely misremembering.) Also we’ve got that…thing which calls itself a “movie” implying that when saucer separation occurs it’s the ship’s psychology major who takes control of the saucer.
@43 etomlins
Also we’ve got that…thing which calls itself a “movie” implying that when saucer separation occurs it’s the ship’s psychology major who takes control of the saucer.
I haven’t seen Generations in a while, and likely won’t have to for at least a couple of years at the rate our re-watch is going, but I assume Troi was the only senior officer on board at the time. Or rather, more experienced officers were needed on the battle bridge, right? And she did earn her Command license or whatever they call it not long before that. Besides, what could possibly go wrong? It’s not like she’s going to crash it into a planet or anything…
bob @ 40:
Glad to help.
Torie @ 41: I think you’re absolutely right about families being aboard the ship being new. It was certainly a brand new experience for Picard. Which kind of makes me wonder why he got the ship in the first place. I’d have thought they’d want a Captain with a family in charge of a family based starship. In fact, isn’t it strange that on a starship bearing whole families, only one person in the senior staff actually had a family member on board? In a way, that doesn’t make any sense at all.
@Toryx #45
Well, it makes sense and it doesn’t (that only one senior staff member had family on board). I mean, everybody had an out — Riker and Troi were holding a torch for each other, Data’s mechanical, Tasha has PTSD, Worf’s got all kinds of issues (and gets a family later anyway!), Geordi’s pretty young, and Picard is married to the ship.
But more to the point, it seems like an accurate statement — even six hundred years in the future, the demands of family life and a serious career are going to be in conflict. You want that red uniform with more than two pips, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices. I wish the show had been more upfront about this aspect of things (well, through any means other than DS9-era “Harpy” O’Brien).
The use of the term “flagship” seems to be wholly symbolic–there’s rarely an admiral or commodore aboard, and Enterprise doesn’t seem to command anything like a squadron or task force that we ever see.
I think it’s more a tacit realization that every single member of Starfleet that isn’t assigned aboard Enterprise is incompetent and/or working against the ideals of the Federation.
i just found out a couple of days ago that on september 8th bbc america will air from 4-8 the first 4 episodes from season 6 and i looked on the next weeks schedule and it looks like the next saturday they will be airing the next 4. let’s hope it’s a sign of things to come
We always laugh about the “P for Picard!”. But the best line, in my opinion, is “Ssssssorry, wrong sssssspecies!”
Because I lived in a TV-free household for a couple of decades, I’m watching TNG for the first time, after having been a TOS fan since 1969.
Watching this horrible episode, I kept wishing for Kirk, Spock and McCoy. When the Selay guys beam aboard and ask if their quarters are anywhere near the Anticans, Riker says they’re about 100 meters apart, and Picard asks anxiously if that’s okay. The head Selay says it’s not okay and starts giving orders, which Riker and Picard accommodate. Say what? I kept imagining Jim Kirk there, telling the head Selay that they don’t give orders on HIS ship, and since the goal is to make peace, then can damn well act like civilized beings and go to their assigned quarters.
Then later on, Picard ADMITS to the ship’s doctor that he’s been taken over by an alien creature. The first officer and doctor try to do something about this, but Picard tells them to go away and stop bothering him, and they run away with their tails between their legs. Say WHAT? If Kirk had admitted to Spock and McCoy that he was possessed by an alien creature, they’d have tried to talk to it. If that didn’t work, Spock would have neck-pinched him or McCoy would have hypoed him unconscious. I couldn’t believe that Riker and Crusher just kinda shrugged and told each other that there was nothing they could do. How the hell are these people going to SURVIVE in a dangerous galaxy?
Where’s my confident, in-charge captain? Where’s my knows-everything, ready-for-anything Vulcan? Where’s my crusty, fearless doctor?
*sigh*
Friends tell me that TNG is going to get MUCH better. I’m amazed it survived long enough to do so.
Truth! I’m in a similar boat with TNG, although I caught the horrible first season during its original run (and left for college shortly afterwards, and didn’t have a TV for years after that). I suspect the truth of the matter is that the series gets a little bit better, on average, starting in Season 3, while remaining a mixed bag throughout its run. However it hung around for a very long time (178 episodes and 7 seasons, compared to 79 episodes and 3 seasons for TOS), during a time when there was initially slim competition in the science fiction realm. So people of a certain age have a great fondness for it. And there is always room for a basically optimistic, mostly nonviolent vision of the future, even if the character development and relationships within the series are whack.
I’m fairly committed to watching at this point (I have my own rewatch here, where we are currently more than halfway finished with TAS), and I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Hey, Kevin, thanks for the link to your rewatch; I’ll look forward to checking that out. It’s kinda lonely watching TNG for the first time a couple of DECADES after everyone else has, so I’m thrilled to hear that someone else is also new to this. :-)
It’s a slow process, though, only covering two episodes per week! With occasional vacation, holiday, and sanity breaks. We figure to start TNG in October, and catch up to Eugene and Torie’s current position possibly sometime in late 2015.