While waiting to meet the Ferengi, Picard is amazed when his old ship, the Stargazer, turns up.
But the unusual headache he’s having increases when DaiMon Bok of the Ferengi welcomes him as the hero of the Battle of Maxia, the incident in which Picard had to abandon the Stargazer after it was mysteriously attacked.
To his own’s crew’s amazement, Bok presents the derelict starship to Picard as a gift ­ most unmercenary for a Ferengi. But there’s method in his madness: at Maxia, Bok’s son was the other captain, who was killed after attacking the Stargazer. Bok has forged log tapes on Stargazer showing Picard firing first.
As Riker, Data, and La Forge work to clear their captain, Wesley finds that energy waves from the old ship match Picard’s brain scan. He has stumbled onto the other part of Bok’s trap ­ a mind-control device planted among Picard’s old belongings.
Aboard his old ship, Picard is reliving the Battle of Maxia, and is about to use the acclaimed “Picard maneuver” ­ but with the Enterprise cast as the enemy ship. Data devises a defense for the tactic, and Riker breaks through to Picard, who destroys the device.
Before leaving, they see Bok removed from command for insanity ­ demonstrated by his giving away the Stargazer.
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The Ferengi do better in their second appearance, but their “silliness quotient,” as Rick Berman put it, made them a “disappointment as a major adversary.” Larry Forrester’s first story outline included several scenes aboard the Ferengi ship, but the scenes were dropped and the chance to provide some insight into their culture was lost. No mention has ever been made of the nine years in Picard’s life between the Stargazer abandonment and his taking command of the Enterprise, although several incidents are mentioned as having occurred in that era ­ in “The Measure of a Man” and “The Wounded” ­ including Jack Crusher’s death “Family”.
In his second directorial outing Rob Bowman particularly enjoyed working with Stewart, who had the stage all to himself during filming of the ghostly Stargazer battle scenes. The director used a Steadicam in these sequences to evoke an unsteadiness ­ the first such use on TNG ­ and Legato shot each of the Stargazer bridge crew separately with fog and filters, which were video-composited in later.
The Stargazer bridge was a re-dress of the Trek movies’ original bridge, previously seen in “Farpoint” as the battle bridge. The starship’s four-foot filming miniature was built anew by Greg Jein from Probert and Sternbach’s design after they persuaded the producers not to use the movie-style 1701-A’s design; this model would turn up often as other ships.
A long-running joke had its roots in this episode: the gesture Stewart makes as he pulls his uniform’s shirtwaist down when rising soon came to be called the “Picard maneuver.” The episode also provides one of the most offbeat moments in the first and only “blooper reel” of outtakes to be leaked so far. While exploring a darkened corridor of the Stargazer as Data, actor Brent Spiner shines his light across that starship’s dedication plaque and stammers in his best Jimmy “It’s a Wonderful Life” Stewart voice: “For God’s sake, Mary, they built this thing in Bedford Falls!”
~1:[7,#b],8:[2,#i]@1“The Best of Both Worlds, Part I”@2Next Generation episode #74
Production No.: 174
Aired: Week of June 18, 1990
Stardate: 43989.1
Directed by Cliff Bole
Written by Michael Piller
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Commander Shelby: Elizabeth Dennehy
Admiral J. P. Hanson: George Murdock
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
The Borg are suspected of having caused a Starfleet colony’s utter destruction, and Starfleet sends its best tactician to deal with the threat.
Lieutenant Commander Shelby, who proves to be as smart and ambitious as she is beautiful, lets Riker know she wants his job. Riker refuses the latest command offered him, setting the stage for mounting friction, which heats up when Shelby tells him he’s gone soft and lost his edge.
Meanwhile, the Borg finally appear and demand that Picard personally surrender to them. Thanks to Shelby’s quick-witted strategy, the Enterprise breaks away and hides out in a sensor-blinding nebula to buy time for repairs and strategy.
La Forge and his team devise a weapon using the main deflector, but the ship will have to drop out of warp to use that power supply. The weapon is only part finished when the Borg find the ship, beam over, and kidnap Picard. The aliens then set course directly for Earth.
Shelby leads an away team to find Picard, who is already being assimilated by the Borg. As Locutus, he will serve as the cyborg race’s speaker with humans.
Shelby’s team does enough damage to force the Borg to drop out of warp, but they cannot retrieve Picard. Returning to the Enterprise, they find Geordi’s jury-rigged weapon ready at last. The engineer insists they must fire on the Borg immediately or lose their only chance to destroy the invaders.
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This spectacular movie-quality offering, the first true two-parter in this series, is still perhaps TNG’s proudest achievement. Michael Piller, who says he didn’t know how the saga would end when he first sat down to write it, began with the need for a cliff-hanger and came up with the Borg plot to kidnap Picard ­ after having tried all season long to work up a new story about the cyborg race.
Needing a so-called Queen Bee among the Borg collective for dramatic storytelling needs, Piller came up with the idea of Picard’s abduction. Originally, he intended for Data and Picard to be “Borgified” into one unit. The later addition of Riker’s career-advancement quandary gave Jonathan Frakes a chance to do some of his best work as Riker. For Piller personally, the subject matter was timely, coming as it did at his own contract-renewal time.
“When [Riker] talked to Troi about ‘Why am I still here?’ and she’s telling him, ‘because you’re happy,’ that was a conversation I had with myself several times during the course of writing that show,” Piller confided. He elected to stay on in the seat he still occupies as the series enters its sixth season.
The exceptional guest cast includes Elizabeth Dennehy, the daughter of actor Brian Dennehy, and George Murdock, a veteran of years of character roles. Trek fans may recognize Murdock as the “godhead” from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; he was also the doctor on Battlestar Galactica.
The freighter USS Lalo was first heard from in TNG’s first season when it reported the time loop Manheim effect (“We’ll Always Have Paris”); the Melbourne, which became the third command Riker has turned down, was one of the ships unable to give chase after the Byinars (“11001001”). A nice continuity touch that would be repeated later is the addition of Riker’s trombone to his cabin, but a continuity gaffe has Riker and Shelby leave the main bridge for the battle bridge by way of the normal forward turbolift instead of the direct connection to starboard. We also learn here that Picard recruited Riker to be his first officer and promoted him from lieutenant commander.
All in all, so great was the impact of “The Best of Both Worlds” that even the hardest of the hard-core original-Trek fans had to concede that TNG had finally arrived. Over that summer of 1990, fan debates raged, computer bulletin board lines hummed, and fanzine letter-writers argued, fueled by rumors that Stewart’s contract talks with Paramount had stalled: Would Shelby die while saving Picard? Would Picard die heroically? Would Riker be promoted to captain? Would Shelby become his first officer? Paramount’s publicity department ran its first-ever promotional campaign for a single TNG episode since “Fairpoint”; ads and radio spots were specially prepared for the season opener.
Now only one question remained: could anybody write an ending that would live up to all the hype?
~1:[7,#b],8:[2,#i]@1“The Best of Both Worlds, Part II”@2Next Generation episode #75
Production No.: 175
Aired: Week of September 24, 1990
Stardate: 44001.4
Directed by Cliff Bole
Written by Michael Piller
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Commander Shelby: Elizabeth Dennehy
Admiral Hanson: George Murdock
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Lieutenant Gleason: Todd Merrill
Hopes are dashed when the Enterprise’s jury-rigged deflector-dish weapon fails to stop the Borg, who go on to obliterate a Starfleet armada on its way to Earth.
At the same time, Borg have tapped into Picard’s knowledge of Starfleet defenses and human nature. A single tear is his only reaction to the DNA rewrites and bio-implants that have transformed his body.
Now captain of the Enterprise, Riker at first can’t shake off the feeling of doom pervading the ship. But, inspired by Guinan’s advice to turn the tables on the Borg by using their own hostage, he and Shelby, now serving as his first officer, design a daring plan. They kidnap Picard so that Data can try to tap into the Borg collective consciousness.
The going is slow, but just as Riker is prepared to give up hope and ram the Borg ship directly, Picard fights through to give Data one simple Borg network command: “Sleep.”
Now dormant, the Borg experience a power feedback that destroys their ship. A shaky Picard begins his rehabilitation, thankful for his escape but deeply troubled by his experiences.
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Though the logic of the Borg’s demise in Data’s lab is irrefutable, writer Michael Piller and director Cliff Bole both felt that this sequel did not live up to its setup. Piller has said he waited until he returned to the lot in late July to sit down to wrap up the story ­ and the idea of using the Borg’s interdependency as a weakness hit him just two days before filming was to start.
Despite the rumors over the summer, the talk about making the strong-willed Shelby a regular in the wake of Wesley’s upcoming exit eventually evaporated. A succession of female conn officers would follow until the semi-regular Ensign Ro came aboard in the fifth season in an episode named for her. Meanwhile, amid all the swashbuckling, hand it to the women of this crew for saving humanity: it is Beverly who discovers the Borg’s fatal flaw, and it’s Troi who realizes that Picard is fighting through his programming.
Though her background remains murky, Guinan delivers an intriguing line when she tells Riker that her relationship with Picard goes “beyond friendship and beyond family.” And Todd Merrill would be back to play Gleason later in “Future Imperfect”, though with a change in rank and duty assignment.
In another bow to series continuity, Piller’s teleplay proposes using nanites as a weapon against the Borg (“Evolution,”) and in throwaway references, mentions Barclay’s name (“Hollow Pursuits”, and “Nth Degree”). After its breakthrough use here, the main deflector dish would be utilized again in other episodes, albeit with more mixed results (“The Loss”, “Night Terrors”, “Nth Degree”, “A Matter of Time”). Data’s cybernetics lab where Picard is brought, yet another re-dress of the old movie bridge, was the site where Lal was born and died (“Sins of the Father”). And we learn that a shuttle can carry its own small transporter system.
Though less favored by Rob Legato and Dan Curry and largely unused since the appearance of its four-foot cousin in season three, the original six-foot Enterprise model had to be hauled out of storage for the ship-separation sequence in the Borg battle, since it was the only version built in two sections. The various battle effects and Borg visuals are motion-picture quality, but again TNG struck out with the Emmys for special effects. Part 2 was nominated, but it won no awards in that category. The episode did snag Emmys for sound editing and for sound mixing, as well as a nomination for art direction.
Almost lost amid the saga and special effects in Part 2 are the slew of new starship designs ­ admittedly not seen here in good shape ­ that were crew-designed and built by “kit-bashing” ­ combining parts from available kits to assemble an all-new model. Among the new ships were the Cheyenne-class Ahwahnne, the Challenger-class Buran, the Springfield-class Chekhov, the Freedom-class Firebrand, the Niagara-class Princeton, and, as mentioned by Shelby, the New Orleans-class Kyushu, the Nebula-class Melbourne (later seen in “Future Imperfect” and “The Wounded”), and the Rigel-calss Tolstoy, for the author of War and Peace but renamed the Chekhov in the final draft. Some of the dead hulks can even be seen with their hulls’ lifeboat hatches open ­ a Greg Jein touch. Rick Sternback also revealed that the Mars Defense Perimeter ships ­ basically unmanned bombs ­ were based on the submarine model used in The Hunt for Red October, and quickly dubbed the “Blue-gray October.”
In a later episode, “The Drumhead”, Admiral Satie would put Starfleet’s loss at 39 ships and nearly 11,000 lives; Shelby says it should take less than a year to “get the fleet back up,” though the loss definitely leaves Starfleet shorthanded, as we see in “The Wounded”.
Although wrecked starships won’t be found there, the site of the armada’s massacre is an actual star: Wolf 359 is the third-closest system to Sol, after Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star ­ just 7.6 light-years from our solar system or, in Trek terms, a journey of about thirty-six hours journey at warp nine.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“The Big Goodbye”@2Next Generation episode #13
Protocol is all to the insectoid Jarada, who insist that they be greeted successfully in their own tongue without fail before diplomatic relations can begin. It has been twenty years since the Federation last tried to contact them, and the demise of the Starfleet vessel that failed is a tale so horrible that no one wants Data to repeat it.
To relieve the stress of his preparations, Picard tries a little role-playing in his favorite holodeck program, a 1940’s hard-boiled detective named Dixon Hill. He is so excited after a short holodeck visit that he takes Data, Dr. Crusher, and literary historian Whalen back with him.
But a long-range Jaradan scan glitches the holodeck programming, and the game turns deadly: Whalen is shot by mobsters, and the party is trapped with no exit. Wesley and La Forge try to make repairs, but a wrong move would kill the players.
Finally the holodeck is opened, and the mobsters gleefully leave, intending to plunder the Enterprise, but of course they dematerialize. Hill-Picard’s police friend, in a metaphysical twist, ponders about reality for holodeck inhabitants as he watches them go.
Still in his trench coat, Picard emerges from his stressful play at last and delivers the Jaradan greeting perfectly, to his bridge crew’s applause.
Known here only as “secretary,” Dixon Hill’s gal Friday gets a name, Madeline, in their next reincarnation, “Manhunt”. And O’Reilly, playing the scar-faced “second hoodlum,” would return in a much more sinister role in “Reunion” and “Redemption (Parts 1 and 2)”. An appropriate music cue, “From Out of Nowhere,” is heard as Picard enters the holodeck for the first time.
And for those who doubt the holodeck could ever work on a spatial basis: all the sets used for the Dixon Hill scenes were actually built within the confines of the holodeck stage!
A routine mission to explore the ruins of the Koinonian civilization ends in tragedy when a bomb left over from that people’s long war explodes, killing ship’s archaeologist Marla Aster.
Now Picard and Troi must comfort her twelve-year-old son, Jeremy, who has already lost his father. The tragedy evokes emphatic feelings from Wesley and Worf, who led Aster’s away team.
But just as the shock is beginning to wear off, the boy’s mother reappears and transforms the Asters’ shipboard cabin into their old home back on Earth, bringing joy but confusion back into Jeremy’s life.
Data discovers that Jeremy’s “mother” is actually an energy being from the planet below. After it is trapped aboard ship by forcefields, the creature says it wants only to care for the boy, since the long-dead race it once shared the planet with was responsible for Marla Aster’s death.
Picard argues that humans must endure suffering and pain along with joy, while Troi points out how Jeremy can never have a full life in the artificial environment.
The alien relents after Wesley and Worf tell their stories, and the Klingon leads the boy through the “R’usstai” bonding ceremony, making them brothers.
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Aimed at showcasing the often overlooked families aboard the Enterprise, Ronald Moore’s first script for TNG shows his flair for creating characters. Here he brings together three who lost one or both parents at an early age ­ Wesley, Worf, and Jeremy Aster ­ in such a touching fashion that the science subplot of the overly solicitous alien is almost overshadowed. With very little rewriting ­ though originally, Jeremy himself programmed a holodeck to re-create his mother ­ the final version reflects the first-draft spec script that caused an enthusiastic Michael Piller first to commission “The Defector” and later to offer Moore a staff job.
Along the way, this story reveals that Worf was six years old when his parents were killed at Khitomer (“Heart of Glory”) and that Wesley was less than twelve when his father Jack was killed.
Teleplay by Ron Roman, Michael Piller, and Richard Danus
Story by Michael Wagner and Ron Roman
GUEST CAST
Dr. Leah Brahms: Susan Gibney
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Galek Dar: Albert Hall
Christy Henshaw: Julie Warner
The crew see a seldom-revealed side of Picard as the captain gleefully leads an away team to explore an ancient Promellian battle cruiser. They find the ship intact, with all hands long dead, at the site of the battle that annihilated the Promellian race and its enemy, the Menthars.
But the mystery behind the ship’s fate becomes all too clear when the Enterprise crew members realize they are being trapped by the same Menthar energy-draining device that snared the Promellians.
As ship reserves drain away, La Forge comes across the original plans by the Galaxy-class designers. He then re-creates one of them, Dr. Leah Brahms, as an interactive holodeck character to help him find a way to escape the Menthars’ trap.
La Forge, who has been a little unfortunate of late in his dealings with women, finds himself strangely drawn to “Leah” as they fight the clock in search of an answer.
Finally they hit on the idea of using one quick blast to free themselves; then they shut off all power.
Finally, Picard takes the helm himself and deftly slingshots his ship around a last stray asteroid, after which the Enterprise destroys the entire booby trap.
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Originally Picard was to have become involved with Leah Brahms’s holodeck simulacrum, but Michael Piller changed that to the more logical choice of Geordi, whom the writer likened to the guy who fumbles around women but is “in love with his ’57 Chevy.” This was the first TNG episode directed by Gabrielle Beaumont and the first episode ever directed by a woman. Richard Danus was invited to join the staff as executive story editor after helping out on the rewrite, which foreshadows not only Geordi’s second try with Christy in “Transfigurations” but the eventual appearance of the real Leah Brahms in “Galaxy’s Child”.
This episode also provides another tiny peek into Guinan’s background: she reveals she is first attracted to men’s heads, especially bald ones, since a bald man helped her through a painful time ­ but there’s no clear indication that she means Picard. The art staff originally wanted the holodeck model to be a mockup of an actual warp engine, but time worked against that idea and yielded the compromise sliding panels seen. The Promellian ship Cleponji is a re-dress of the Husnock ship seen in “The Survivors”.
A boy’s practical joke backfires, leaving his younger brother dangerously ill. But as the ship rushes toward a nearby starbase with the medical facilities the boy needs to survive, Data inexplicably malfunctions. The android isolates himself on the bridge and changes course. It turns out that Data has been automatically and unknowingly “called home” to the lab world of his reclusive creator, Dr. Noonian Soong.
Soong has at last perfected an “emotions” chip for Data, but the android and his creator are both surprised when Lore, Data’s “older brother,” who was left to drift in space some years earlier, responds to the same signal.
Lore disables Data and tricks Soong into installing the chip in him, then goes on a rampage, fatally injuring the doctor. Help arrives, but Soong insists on being left behind after Lore escapes.
The young boy is rushed to the starbase to receive medical care, leaving Data to ponder the emotions he could have had, his late “father,” and the strange bond between him and his “brother.”
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Making his debut as a TNG writer, Rick Berman, in the relatively calm hiatus after the third season, finally had the chance he’d always wanted. Initially, he had rejected the idea of bringing back Lore (“Database”) for this story of Data finally meeting his (creator, but then, at Piller’s suggestion, he changed his mind, providing Spiner with the rare opportunity to play three roles. For a time, however, veteran actor Keye Luke ­ an original-Trek guest in “Whom Gods Destroy” ­ was considered for the role of Soong, Berman revealed.
Rob Bowman, who had directed Lore’s first story and was once TNG’s most active director, returned to the show after a year away working for series like Alien Nation, Baywatch, and In the Heat of the Night. Piller recalled that Bowman, Legato, and Spiner worked on the elaborate Stage 16 lab set for three days before shooting began, taping off the floor and blocking out the action for camera movies, as if they were preparing a stage play or a multi-camera TV show. This is rarely done on TNG, but it was needed here to avoid costly downtime with a whole crew standing by.
During the filming in Soong’s lab, Legato recalled, Spiner would shoot one day as Lore-Data and the next as the elderly scientist. Some shots, as when Soong grasped his creation’s cheeks, were done inexpensively “in the camera” without post-production compositing by placing the Soong’s bent elbow below the frame line. On “Soong” day, after four hours of makeup, Spiner was shot with his arm going down; on his “Data” day, the film was reshot with a photo double’s hand coming up to grasp his face.
“It was difficult,” Spiner recalls, “because I had to hear dialogue that I hadn’t read yet coming out of somebody else’s mouth before I would get to it. [I had] to remember where I was when I was Data, and so on.” To help him, the set was closed during the two and a half days when Spiner soloed.
True to Lore’s story of having been picked up by Pakleds, he wears one of their outfits. Among other continuity threads picked up here: Data whistles the same halting version of “Pop Goes the Weasel” he tried in the pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint”, and “Often Wrong” Soong mentions the Crystalline Entity (“Datalore”, “Silicon Avatar”), whom he refers to as the “giant snowflake.” At his creator’s death Data finally calls the old man Father.
