Star Trek - The Next Generation - Episode by Episode discussion

I watched Farpoint last night. It was the original pilot and introduced a new Star Trek to a world filled with fans who were loyal to Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy. I think I enjoyed it more, seeing it all these years later than I did the first time around. I had a different perspective. I orignally popped it in to watch the scene with Dr. McCoy in it, and let it run while I became re-acquainted with the entire show. There was so much in there that we had never seen before. The holodeck, Saucer seperation and the Battle Bridge, A klingon in Star Fleet?, Doesn't Riker seem to remind me of Kirk?, A female doctor, that bridge on this new ship is amazing, Q - really??? Somewhere, I think I have on an old VHS tape of Star Trek TOS with a preview of this new version. And I guess to top it all off, I already know that this new version lasts 7 years, and spawns 2 sequels.

What are your thoughts on the original pilot of The Next Generation?

 

"Encounter at Farpoint" is a mixed episode. Almost all of the ingredients are there—a strong ensemble cast, elaborate sets, great FX for tv (by ILM no less), some good writing with challenging themes—and yet it has some of the most awkward scenes in the whole show. The actors and writers were still learning the characters and how to do the show. But it's an essential foundation to the show on which they could later build. The single greatest part of the show, and the key to its success imho, was the casting of Patrick Stewart at Jean Luc Picard. What a contrast with Kirk! And yet he really makes the show work. He lifts up the sometimes clunky dialogue into something somehow worthwhile. One of my favorite parts of the episode is the beginning, which gives Patrick Stewart almost a movie star introduction. It made him into the star that he is today. And now, remastered for blu-ray, it looks great. Here are the first ten minutes in HD to refresh you and show you the good, the bad, and the awkward of this first voyage of The Next Generation.

 

PS Thanks, white wolf, for starting this thread!++

Anyway, in terms of a grade, I think I'd give Encounter at Farpoint a C+.

 

Yay! I just started the season one blu-ray so I can read along to this thread as I watch.

 

The blu-ray releases for this series will be completed when Season 7 comes out Dec. 2nd...can't wait...and thanks for starting this thread...will be returning to it frequently!!!

 

Glad to see this thread. TNG had some great (and some not so great) moments and will enjoy seeing them talked about here.

 

I like TNG. A great show. It took awhile to find its legs. The first season was very spotty.

That said, the premier was decent. Accomplished the job of introducing the characters, and setting up the show well.

I just wish Roddenberry would've allowed the occasional episode showing infighting amongst the crew. A little more realism there would've spiced it up.

Maybe that's why I liked the new BSG so much.

 

The first season was certainly wobbly and the two hour pilot was no exception.While the cast is introduced in an interesting way (especially Data) and Q is a terrific bad guy, the episode was flawed by the ending and I think that the Q story portion could have framed a far more interesting story. Everyone is too nice to each other.

 

Decent first episode, but Deanna Troi drove me absolutely buggy early on.

Her wardrobe's very high hemlines looked to be another example of "Roddenberry being Roddenberry", and her 80's-era perm was like something out of aerobics programs of the day.

Marina Sirtis overplayed the empathic abilities as well, so Deanna came off more whiny than she would later become.

I liked Deanna quite a bit in the later seasons, but if her character remained as it was in the pilot, I would have rooted for her to be written out.

 

The highlight of the episode for me.



Thanks for Starting this thread.

Darryl

 

In the first episode the women were the weak point. I fault both the acting and the writing for this. You could have eliminated all the female roles and I wouldn't have missed a single one of them. Mcfadden and Sirtis both really improved throughout the season and throughout the progression of the series. This first episode was cringeworthy in many areas, but there was a diamond in the rough quality to the whole first season. Picard, Riker, and Q saved this episode as well as the sci-fi premise of the last part of the episode.

I have never seen any show have such amazing season to season improvement as Next Gen had from seasons 1-2, 2-3, then again 3-4. Season four on just completely eclipsed season 1.

 

Thanks for starting the thread!

I have never understood why ST:TNG started so rocky. There had been a LOT of experience with Trek by this point. Roddenberry pretty much recycled ST:TOS characters, yet the first season was very weak for the most part.

Thankfully the characters would settle in.

I'll give "Encounter" - 3 cups of earl grey...hot

 

It has to be difficult to update a story concept that originally takes place in the future. I didn't like Troy's character at all. That hair looked really bad, however she was after all an alien, and not truly human. Patrick Stewart was an excellent choice for the captain. It would have been easy to put a vulcan on the ship as a main character, but I am glad they did not try to clone Spock. Instead they created something new - an android named Data. He eventually became as popular as Spock was back in the 60's. New views of aliens. A Klingon on the bridge is an interesting concept. And we hear about the Ferengi, but we don't actually see one till episode 4. The romulans re-appear much later in the series. We can move on to episode two if you would like.

 

I remember watching this from the original broadcast...

Picard
"Commander, signal the following in all languages and in all frequencies: we surrender."

...and thinking Kirk doesn't surrender.

Darryl

 

Even without the context of TOS, watching Encounter at Farpoint is a slightly bizarre experience just because so many minor things changed during the show's run that make the aesthetic and overall presentation so different. By the third series all of this was pretty well cemented but the first two are certainly stand out a bit. Wasn't Encounter at Farpoint the only episode to feature a man-skirt too? Or maybe it made appearances in later series 1 episodes too, can't remember. A bit too far ahead of its time I guess but those little things just make you double-take. Otherwise, the story is pretty good and to introduce Q in the very first episode was a great move IMO because it made him a centrepiece of the show immediately and most of the Q episodes are very fun.

Those piddly phasers were crap though.

 

I believe it was the only time it was shown.
Basically if you blinked, you missed it.
I think it was before the saucer separation.

Also... From Memory Alpha

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Encounter_at_Farpoint_(episode)

DeForest Kelley's cameo as an aged McCoy was a late addition to the script and was devised by Gene Roddenberry. "It came about as a result of, I think, a meeting between him and De," remembered producer Robert Justman. "I think it had been on Gene's mind and he invited De to lunch and he says, 'How would you feel about it?', expecting De to say, 'No. NO'–and De said, 'I'd be honored.' And not only that, not only did he say 'I'd be honored,' but he refused to take any more than SAG scale [salary]. He could have held us up for a lot of money, and he didn't. And it was just great; it really got to me, the way he did it [the scene]. It really got to me; it was a beautiful, beautiful scene."

Darryl

 

A decent introduction to the new series.

Fortunately it got better and better. The old show kinda just fizzled out with silly ideas, low budgets etc.

Next gen if given more time to do the episodes and even more budget could have come off as world class mini movies at times.


What got me with Next gen, was, after a while, the characters started to seem semi-real.

The old show did once in a while, but often it came off as very comic book type stuff, with bones saying the same thing over and over, and spock evoking the word logic, and kirk always being daring.

Next gen I felt like I was among a crew that got along and were real people many times.

 

Gene Roddenberry butted heads with the writers in the first season, and a few of them quit. Apparently, Roddenberry rewrote most of the episodes.

Season 2 was hit by the writers' strike. If memory serves, they had to go with the original drafts of the episodes.

 

Does the 'hostile' in this episode look the Firefox logo?

Darryl

 

Best quote from the episode...

Picard : If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for what we really are.

Darryl

 

That was SOP for "Star Trek" with Roddenberry and (when Gene L. Coon was there) to do rewrites of episodes to fit the continuity of the "Star Trek" universe (and to earn writing fees/credits as well).

I think Coon was one of the best writers on the original series and, when he left, it took a major hit but, more importantly, there wasn't a Gene L. Coon on the first two seasons of "ST:TNG". The closest we had was D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold who both left fairly early on in the series as I recall. Gerrold deserved co-creation status for ST:TNG since he wrote the series bible, created characters and helped develop many of the protocols for the new universe. While there's no doubt that Roddenberry was a major talent with vision, his ego often got in the way of his creations and damaged the show as much as it helped it particularly during ST:TNG.

Some of the episodes for ST:TNG during seasons one and two were leftovers from the aborted series that eventually became the movie for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".

 

TNG didn't hit its full creative stride until Michael Pillar came in and took charge of the writing staff in Season 3...the first 2 years were inconsistant, but had amazingly good episodes in spite of the writing turmoil behind the scenes...

 

That aborted series was known as Star Trek Phase-II.

Darryl

 

Thanks. You'd think that a simple title like that would stay in the brain. I wonder how things might have been different if STII had come to pass.

 

The two episodes that I've heard were specifically adapted from Phase II scripts are S2's "The Child" and S4's "Devil's Due."