So, like, while The Next Generation was going on while I grew up, I never watched it. (Enterprise was my first Trek, friends. NO REGRETS.) I feel like I've learned much about it through osmosis, but who knows what surprises this watch shall bring?
Logline
A bunch of awkward nerds and a belligerent Frenchman command a spaceship filled with science families into unnecessarily permeable conflict zones.
Dramatis Personae
Starting at the back row, from left to right:
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- Wesley Crusher, acting ensign, wunderkind of the aw, shucks variety, never wears sweaters that fit
- Tasha Yar, chief of security, and who the hell is she, nobody told me about her
- Worf, dude on the bridge for unspecified purposes, Klingon adoptee, does not register that Tasha Yar is DTF
- Data, third-in-command, yes, he's an android, yes, he's a sentient being with agency, we're all impressed can we move on
- Geordi La Forge, pilot extraordinaire, blind to the visible light spectrum, but that visor, my dudes
- Will Riker, "Number One" AKA second-in-command, deeply in love with Jean-Luc Picard and isn't ashamed that everyone knows it
- Deanna Troi, half-Betazoid ship's counselor, will stare at you until you agree to share your feelings
- Jean-Luc Picard, captain, hero, inexplicably terrified of children
- Beverly Crusher, chief medical officer, not-so-secretly in love with Picard even though he let her husband die that one time
Episode Rundown
These are some graphics, boy howdy.
- 1.01 & 1.02 Encounter at Far Point, Parts 1 & 2
First, THIS is how Q first appeared? THIS?
Second, who the hell is Tasha Yar?
- 1.03 The Naked Now
Wait, they went Alien Sex Pollen on their SECOND episode? Dang, TNG, y'all weren't playing.
And I ask once again, WHO IS THIS TASHA YAR WOMAN? But congratulations to Data on getting laid?
This episode is almost offensively heteronormative, geez. (They honestly could have settled most of my complaints if they had run with Tasha Yar, WHOEVER SHE IS, committing to coming on to Troi as she obvs wanted to do.)
- 1.04 Code of Honor
We open with trade negotiations--some Black folks wearing silk turbans, vests, and loose trousers beam up, then express shock that Tasha Yar is a woman, so I start with an, Oh nooooooooo, it's a horrific racism in order to boost white feminism episode!
Then the people of Ligon gift the Enterprise with a rare vaccine, and Picard gifts them with a friggin' Sung Dynasty artifact, like, do y'all just have museum pieces in a cargo bay somewhere?
Anyway, this episode is some bullshit.
- 1.05 The Last Outpost
It's FERENGI TIME, baby! Vilification of late-stage capitalism for all! Anyway, giving chase to a Ferengi spaceship fleeing a space heist, the Enterprise gets caught in a power-draining force field of some sort. Just as they're ready to surrender to the Ferengi, the Ferengi surrender to them, so...Picard has a slightly amusing beat of, WTF is going on before the episode proceeds.
Then there's, like, a techno-magician or something at the last planet left in a solar system after a supernova? Then there's more folderol about what "civilized" means, yadda yadda yadda.
So when are Picard and Crusher going to make out? That's gonna be a thing, right?
- 1.06 Where No One Has Gone Before
When everybody on the bridge just looks at Picard after he disregarded everybody's concerns about the suspicious engineering miracles, and Picard almost sheepishly mutters, "Comment is invited"?
*chef's kiss*
Also, this may be the hottest of hot takes, but I find myself pro-Wesley here? Like, sure, nobody wants a kid to futz everything up, but we're at a point where everyone's conceded Wesley is competent enough to be given run of the place. If the kid's smart enough to be there, he's smart enough to be heard when he's concerned about something. (Was I pleased when he was made an acting ensign? Yes, indeed.)
The dreams and nightmares coming real are interesting, I guess? I'm pretty charmed by the dude who imagined himself into a string quartet. Meanwhile, all Riker wants to do, all he ever wants to do, is give Jean-Luc a big ol' hug. Which is a nice complement to the chastened Kosinski, whose wistful, "You need me" to the Traveler is actually pretty sweet.
- 1.07 Lonely Among Us
Y'all, what are these knee-swoopy coats Our Heroes are wearing in the intro? Is this Starfleet's version of dress blues? Why so voluminous?
Everybody is surprisingly chill about one group of peace talk delegates HUNTING DOWN and EATING a delegate from another group. WTF.
- 1.08 Justice
The Enterprise takes shore leave in the land o' Extremely Aryan Orgies or something. What could possibly go wrong? Surely we won't have to reason through the stupidest iteration of the Prime Directive!
(Meanwhile, the multi-dimensional beings experimenting with the evolution of the Edo are 100% Ascended Ancients from the Pegasus Galaxy, let's not even play.)
- 1.09 The Battle
Wherein Picard gets hardcore gaslit by the Ferengi.
I am really, really confused about this whole deal about the Ferengi being a fearsome and mysterious foe because, like, I've watched DS9 and wow, that is not at all what the Ferengi are, y'know? I mean, have you met Quark?
Anyway, the Picard Maneuver--doing maximum warp between two relatively short points so that the vehicle seems to appear in two places at once--sounds impressively badass.
- 1.10 Hide and "Q"
They went to Tatooine, right? Two moons, rocky surroundings, but at a quick glance, I totally thought it was Tatooine. Anyway, apparently Q's area-of-effect is, like, a holodeck and also, he totally cockblocked Tasha Yar because she was 100% going to go for it with Picard. Meanwhile, Q absolutely wants to get down with Riker.
- 1.11 Haven
Oh hey, it's arranged marriage time! I'm actually not anti-arranged marriage, but man oh man, the Tragic Romantic Theme for Troi and Riker, geeeeeez. And Picard ending an in-law spat by just saying, "I hereby declare all disagreements resolved!" The BALLS on this man. Anyway, I like Wyatt.
The conundrum with the Tarellians is FASCINATING, though. An entire planet's population forced into wandering because they risk infecting the residents of any place they stop. Yowch.
- 1.12 The Big Goodbye
OH HEY it's one of those wacky holodeck episodes! And how weird, at this point, to see Picard get all giddy and stuttery! Then they're in a staff meeting and Crusher wipes lipstick off of Picard's lips barehanded and everyone just, like, watches. Lordy.
When Picard goes back in, he's joined by Data, Crusher, and a supposed history buff named Whalen. Unfortunately, however, Data doesn't pick up on the nonverbal cues when Crusher and Picard are, I presume, about to go bone in Detective Hill's office. Then, alas, Whalen gets shot.
This is one dang impressive Room of Requirement, though. But seriously, Wesley and Geordi are the only techs qualified to fix it? Really?
- 1.13 Datalore
The thing is, I see what they're doing, trying to make us chuckle at Data "practicing" sneezing, but if he's supposedly a gigantic repository of knowledge, he knows how sneezing actually works. Like, I'm willing to pretend he wouldn't have an entire tome's worth of idioms, but c'mon, guys.
"If it feels awkward to be reminded that Data is a machine, just remember that we are merely a different variety of machine, in our case, electro-chemical in nature." And here is where I first was like, oh, I think I might really like Picard.
- 1.14 Angel One
I cannot even with this storyline. Though this moment is lovely:
- 1.15 11001001
Riker somehow convinces himself he has seduced a holodeck avatar programmed to be seduced. "I could really fall for her," he tells Picard, his boss, who seems not at all concerned about this minor symptom of psychosis.
The ship is temporarily hijacked by some tiny computer aliens or something. It's fine.
- 1.16 Too Short a Season
A dude in extremely bad old age makeup--wait, no. That's unfair. The makeup is halfway fine; it's the fake eyebrows that push beyond belief. (Listening to an episode of The TNG Podcast, it turns out the makeup artists had three weeks to do six months of work, and then got their time cut in half when the episode started filming. So, given the circumstances...not bad.)
This dude, Admiral Jameson, gets requested for hostage negotiations or something, so he beams aboard the ship and handily takes over the entire mission. He gets progressively younger over time due to some Faustian pharmaceuticals. Yadda yadda yadda, he obvs dies in the end.
- 1.17 When the Bough Breaks
The people of Aldea are pretty chill for a planet that hasn't made contact with the outside galaxy for thousands of years. But I guess if they want to buy the Enterprise children, they're going to be pretty welcoming. Though, after the immediate refusal, they decide to just, like, STEAL the kids, like, WTF.
Luckily, I suppose, the Aldeans decided to kidnap a bunch of child geniuses. Wesley's the ringleader and teaches the kids how to do passive resistance in the face of relentless encouragement. Those cute, genius li'l moppets.
- 1.18 Home Soil
It's a terraforming whodunit! A crew of four is plagued with mysterious accidents until somehow one of them is killed in a mysterious hydraulic laser accident. Luckily, the Enterprise has dropped by, checking in due to the station's sporadic communications.
Why does Riker always look at the ladies like he's about to offer them a martini?
Delightfully, this episode is championed by Data and Geordi, SCIENCE BROS. And they discover the Federation's first (I guess) evidence of non-carbon-based life! And they are PISSED. (Picard, on behalf of the "ugly bags of mostly water," gets the crystal-life-thing back to negotiations by starving it of light for a bit.) MAN, what I wouldn't give to see the face of whoever gets the official reports from that terraforming team.
Y'know, the fact that so many people evince skepticism about Data being, y'know, a fully sentient being, it seems weird that he's the third-in-command of the ship. Nobody's gonna convince me that Starfleet's a pure meritocracy.
- 1.19 Coming of Age
Once again, a pushy admiral decides to interfere with Picard's ship, this time with a dude from Starfleet's version of Internal Affairs. Except it's totally unclear why? The IA dude, Remmick, is annoyingly squinty at everybody, and Riker freaks the fuck out. Everybody CALM DOWN. (Hilariously, Remmick then tells Picard he'd like to join the Enterprise.)
Meanwhile, Wesley competes for entrance into Starfleet Academy, which feels unnecessarily competitive but also, did anybody really want Starfleet: The College Years? I thiiiink we're supposed to feel bad for Jake, the kid Wesley beat out for the finalist spot, but given he subsequently steals a shuttlecraft and almost immediately jams up his engine and panics, he CLEARLY isn't cut out for the fleet anyway.
Anyway, Admiral Quinn beamed away and I sang, "That dude's getting murrrrrderrrreed."
- 1.20 Heart of Glory
We get some Geordi-vision and it's super-cool.
Everybody's constant worry about Ferengi feels really weird, given what we learn about the Ferengi as time goes on. They just don't seem like, y'know, aggressors. The Klingons, however, are intensely Klingon, and the death ritual is awesome. "They are warning the dead, sir: Beware, a Klingon warrior is about to arrive."
While I imagine Worf has had some interaction with Klingons in the past, it does seem very much like he hasn't had any one-on-one meetings since joining Starfleet, at least. Perhaps even since before his adoption? (Why wouldn't the family that found him, like, see if any Klingon families would take him in? How does this all work with interplanetary systems?) Anyway, that little girl who ran up to the Klingons was remarkably calm.
"What burns in their eyes fires my soul. I hear their words and I see it all as it was. Part of me longs for that time."
- 1.21 The Arsenal of Freedom
Whoa, Riker was offered his own ship and he turned it down? This is a dude who spent most of his Academy time idolizing the textbook version of Picard, isn't he? They head to another planet ~*~mysteriously~*~ devoid of life. Riker runs into a holo-version of an old friend and, sensing a trap, he tells the inquisitive facade his ship is The Lollipop and readers, I LOLed.
Anyway, to hell with the Chief Engineer who tries to usurp Geordi's command. Get back to the engines, sir! I also really like the pep talk Troi gives Geordi: You're doing great; the younger officers need some encouragement now.
Meanwhile, Picard and Crusher spend some quality Hurt/Comfort time together. Thankfully, her multiple injuries don't prevent her from solving the core problem: Just turn the weapons system OFF.
- 1.22 Symbiosis
The Enterprise travels to a system to do some up-close examination of some solar flares and ends up rescuing some cargo and four inhabitants of a freighter. Two are Ornarians seeking a "vaccine," and two are Brekkians selling it.
DAMN IT, KHAN.
Turns out the vaccine is also a narcotic--Ornan, for all intents and purposes, is a planet of drug addicts. Brekka, on the other hand, bases its entire economy on manufacture of the drug. Lordy. Picard won't let Crusher produce a version of Methadone, basically, BUT he also refuses to fix the two space freighters that allow for trade between the planets, because I guess the Prime Directive makes it okay to send an entire planet into withdrawal and another into economic collapse? Or does it? I don't know, man.
If it's not clear yet: DRUGS ARE BAD, KIDS. SAY NO TO DRUGS.
The episode ends with Picard, hilariously, letting Geordi decide where they'll go next, which I'm pretty sure isn't how this is supposed to work.
- 1.23 Skin of Evil
RIP Tasha Yar, we knew ye not at all. And done in by a petulant oil slick? Helluva way to go.
Troi, being held hostage in a crashed shuttle, spends most of the episode arguing with the oil slick--Armus--about self-sacrifice, basically. So Armus decides to torment Riker a li'l bit.
Armus just wants people to be miserable, because he is literally made of misery. I guess.
- 1.24 We'll Always Have Paris
I saw the title of the episode and was dreading a holodeck plot, so time distortions is a nice surprise. (I mean, we get the holodeck when Picard reminisces about ghosting Mannheim's wife back in the day, but it's not a ~*~weird fluctuation~*~ or whatever, so.)
Mannheim's wife, Jenice, is a what-if that Picard has held in the back of his mind. As a result, he's unusually off-balance--he twitches, he stutters, he confuses the heck out of the bridge crew.
Whatever time-gravity experiments Mannheim has been conducting, they've trapped him in a series of seizures, and some intense deja vu keeps happening. The second time around, I yelped, "OH CRAP." And then we switched POVs to...back...in...time?
Also, Crusher gets remarkably explicit with Troi about the situation and, like, her feelings. "I can't compete with a ghost from his past. No one could." Girrrrrrrl.
It's also sweet and sad that, when Picard asks Data to go plug the dimensional gap, Data assumes it's because he's dispensable as a machine. In reality, Picard explains, Data's ability to process time as a constant, rather than perceiving it as flexible, means he's better able to cope with the mission. Data, my dude, embrace the value of your self!
- 1.25 Conspiracy
Paranoia, ahoy! Picard is sent a non-recorded message and asked to make a non-logged trip for a non-acknowledged meeting. (Given that these four captains are in charge of thousands of people, I'm not quite sure how this meeting is supposed to be a secret, but go on.) Something has gone terribly awry with Starfleet and top officers seem to be either amnesiac or otherwise compromised. Or dead.
And then one of the other ships--the one captained by Picard's and Crusher's buddy Walker, gets blown up. They head back to Earth and, well. Things progress.
BODY-SNATCHERS. But more like the Goa'uld symbiotes from SG-1.
Like, there's a whole scene where everybody's eating worms and I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS.
Poor Remmick gets infected by the "mother" parasite so, alas, Picard and Riker end up phasering the dude's head off. And killing the parasite thing killed the little parasites, but someone sent out a homing beacon, sooo…
Further reading on the internet tells me this never comes up again, except in a DS9 novelization, like, WHAT. Way to fizzle out a serialized story, guys.
- 1.26 The Neutral Zone
What...is this? We've got some twen-cen cryogenics hijinks, so I guess that's fun?
In other news: Romulans! Or, the possibility of Romulans, and Worf and Riker think everyone should be battle-ready. Meanwhile, everybody else is like, But why? There's lots of debate before the actual Romulans show up, and then...nothing happens, really.
It is extremely unclear why this was the season finale, but it was fine?
The Bottom Line
From all I've read, this isn't a beloved season or anything, but I kind of like how goofy it starts out. And the seeds of awesomeness are certainly here. I shall press on!
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