After the Enterprise arrives three days early for a scheduled rendezvous, La Forge persuades Sherlock Holmes fan Data to use the extra time playing the role of the detective on the holodeck, with the engineer as Watson.
But Holmes’s original cases are no challenge to Data’s memory, so Dr. Pulaski ­ who has yet to accept the android as anything more than a machine as a real entity ­ challenges him to solve a new, computer-generated case. La Forge obliges by programming a case that’s a challenge match for Data: a Professor Moriarty who takes on consciousness. Holmes’s archenemy not only kidnaps Pulaski in a bid to become real, but also threatens to take over the Enterprise with a Victorian gadget that can control the ship from within the holodeck.
In top hat and tails, Picard enters the program to confront Moriarty and convinces him his plan is useless because of the construct’s true nature. A mellowed Moriarty, already transcending his character’s fictional bounds, relents but asks to be recalled if a process for solidifying holodeck creations into real matter is ever found ­ and the captain agrees.
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Data’s initial fascination with Sherlock Holmes (“Lonely Among Us”) goes a step further here, as does the planned Pulaski-Data friction. The ending originally filmed was dropped from the version aired: the paper with Moriarty’s sketch of the Enterprise is significant not because of what he’s drawn but for the fact that it exists off the holodeck. Picard is then aware that the character can somehow be saved, as opposed to the gone-awry holodeck images of “The Big Goodbye”, and so his explanations to Moriarty were seen as a lie by Gene Roddenberry, who didn’t want Picard to stoop to deception. The climax leaves the ship’s fate purely up to the captain’s persuasiveness and Moriarty’s newfound good sense.
To make up for having lost “The Big Goodbye” the previous season, director Rob Bowman grabbed this period piece when offered a choice of early-season shows. The wondrous Victorian London set was built on Stage 16 in just three days. Workers toiled around the clock with fiberglass and plaster to build the street, two side alleys, the warehouse, a wharfside, and the entrance to Moriarty’s lair, and after two days of filming the over-budget $125,000 set all came down again.
Sadly, the popular Holmes milieu will likely not be used again on TNG for legal reasons. After this segment aired, Paramount received notice that the Arthur Conan Doyle estate still owns a percentage of the rights to the Holmes character, after nearly a century, and would require a usage fee if it was ever used again.
Anne Elizabeth Ramsay’s character, Engineer Clancy, turned up again later as a command-division bridge ensign at the conn in “The Emissary”.
Sent to assist the Enterprise in stopping a pre-alliance Klingon sleeper ship that could awake to prey upon helpless UFP worlds is a special envoy from the Klingon Empire ­ a half-human, half-Klingon female named K’Ehleyr.
K’Ehleyr, whose advice to destroy the ship is rejected by Picard, turns out to be a former lover of Worf’s. He resists her playful advances, finally revealing his pent-up feelings left over from their last parting.
Later K’Ehleyr tries out Worf’s holodeck combat program to relieve her mounting stress. Finding her there and joining in the fight, a battle-roused Worf grabs K’Ehleyr and they consummate their passion.
The couple’s newfound intimacy is shattered, though, when she storms out after refusing Worf’s marriage proposal traditionally offered after making love.
K’Ehleyr’s original mission finally brings the two back together. The cruiser’s crew awakens before being intercepted, and Picard lets Worf and K’Ehleyr masquerade as the Enterprise’s commanders.
Worf doesn’t blink in the ensuing standoff and pulls off the ruse, winning kudos from his captain. Seeing K’Ehleyr off privately to take command of the ship, he at last agrees with her that neither will be complete without the other.
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Worf’s well-ordered life is disrupted by the first in a long series of complications when Suzie Plakson’s dynamic K’Ehleyr steps back into his life with this story. Credit director Cliff Bole with the Klingon’s crushing hand-holding, which draws blood. The popular Plakson played a Vulcan doctor earlier in the series, in “The Schizoid Man” and would return as the ill-fated K’Ehleyr again, in “Reunion”.
Footage of the Klingon K’t’inga-class vessels is recycled from the first Trek movie, which makes sense: a seventy-five-year-old ship would still have been in use four years after the events of the Star Trek II-III-IV trilogy, in 2286, using TNG’s years as mentioned in “The Neutral Zone”. K’Ehleyr arrives in a probe that was re-dressed from Spock’s photon-torpedo coffin from Star Trek II and III.
The Okudagram seen here gives K’Ehleyr several other holodeck exercise options: scuba diving, Hanauma Bay, Earth; Klingon Rite of Ascension Chamber, mentioned in “The Icarus Factor”; Shi-Kahr Desert survival, Vulcan, from D. C. Fontana’s animated Trek episode, “Yesteryear”; carnival celebration, Rio de Janeiro, Earth; racetrack, Longchamps, France, Earth; and two Dixon Hill mysteries, “The Long Dark Tunnel” and “The Black Night.” Worf’s calisthenics are seen in two other episodes, “Where Silence Has Lease” and “New Ground”.
Anne Elizabeth Ramsey, who plays Clancy, was earlier seen as an assistant engineer in “Elementary, Dear Data”, although the actress’s name there was “Ramsay.”
~1:[5,#b],6:[2,#i]@1“Encounter at Farpoint, Part I”@2Next Generation episode #1
Production No.: 101-102
Aired: Week of September 28, 1987
Stardate: 41153.7
Directed by Corey Allen
Written by D. C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
Music by Dennis McCarthy
GUEST CAST
Q: John de Lancie
Groppler Zorn: Michael Bell
Admiral Leonard H. McCoy, retired: DeForest Kelley
Conn Ensign: Colm Meaney
Mandarin Bailiff: Cary-Hiroyuki
Main Bridge Security: Timothy Dang
Bandi shopkeeper: David Erskine
Female computer ensign: Evelyn Guerrero
Drugged military officer: Chuck Hicks
Ensign Torres: Jimmy Ortega
The USS Enterprise, NCC 1701-D, the first new Galaxy-class starship, is launched, with veteran Jean-Luc Picard in command. The ship’s first mission is a puzzling one. While picking up new crew members from Deneb IV on the rim of explored space, they must figure out how the low-technology Bandi there could have built the gleaming new Farpoint Station they now offer to the Federation for use as a base.
The new ship is almost sidetracked permanently by a being claiming to be part of an all-knowing super race known as “the Q.” This Q, who considers humanity too barbarous to expand further, hijacks Picard’s command crew and sentences them to death in a kangaroo court. Picard is able to save their lives only by offering to prove humanity’s worth during his ship’s upcoming mission to Farpoint.
Freed by Q and allowed to arrive there, the crew can find no explanation for the Bandi’s mysterious new technology until a vast alien ship appears and opens fire on the old Bandi city. Q tries to goad Picard into firing on the newcomer, but the Enterprise away team finds that the attacker is actually a sentient life-form trying to free its mate from the Bandi’s clutches. Farpoint Station, it turns out, was built entirely by this enslaved creature. As the freed aliens leave the planet, a disappointed Q vows he’ll be back to test humanity yet again.
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For the first time, a Trek pilot had been presold as a series, shifting the pressure from selling the show to introducing the characters. But that by no means simplified the work of the writers.
Fontana’s more action-oriented original outline concerned a being captured by a simian race known as the Annoi. The captors built an orbiting gun platform around the alien, intending to use it to fuel their dreams of expansion, while feeding their prisoner just enough of the mineral balmine to keep it alive. The USS Starseeker arrives with the Enterprise, but is destroyed after opening fire when the Annoi demand the two crews beam down, surrender, and become balmine gatherers. As part of an away team sent to disable the platform, Troi makes mental contact with the captive entity and persuades it to crash-land on the planet, where her people will help it to free itself by leading a prisoners’ revolt. In later drafts the people would come to be called the Annae and the starship opening would be deleted, but many of the plot points and character introductions can be seen in this earliest concept.
Gene Roddenberry added the Q subplot, partly because of indecision over the length of the pilot. “Gene wanted an hour show, but the studio wanted a two-hour movie,” as originally announced, Berman recalls. “They tried to get him to agree to a ninety-minute show as a compromise, but they eventually won out.” According to Justman, both the ship separation sequence and a touching scene in which an aged Admiral McCoy meets Data were a help in filling out what Fontana had intended to be a ninety-minute script.
“As I had feared, the show was woefully short when we cut it together,” Justman said. He added that director Corey Allen’s typically faster-than-usual scene pacing increased their difficulties. “In order to make the show two hours we had to skillfully edit it and cut it not as tight as we ordinarily would for pace. So at times that two hours drags a bit here and there.
Despite that, the final version is missing a short scene that was included in the final draft script dated April 13. In that scene Riker is introduced to Geordi and an enthusiastic ensign named Sawyer Markham. Riker overhears the ensign calling Picard “the old burrhog” when the Enterprise is overdue.
Other slight changes from the final draft script: Torres, the crewman frozen by Q, was initially named Graham; Troi, too, was frozen by Q after rushing to Tasha’s aid; and Picard’s tag line, “Let’s see what’s out there,” was added.
The dates of the new United Nations and its demise are given as 2016 and 2049, but changed to 2036 and 2079 in the final film. The references to a “post-atomic horror” on Earth jibe with information in the original series that the planet escaped nuclear war.
The Fontana-written McCoy scene does appear in this final draft script, although the “old country doctor” is given the age of 147, not 137, and is identified merely as “Admiral” in the dialogue ­ presumably to keep the cameo scene a secret. A New York Post columnist visiting the set stumbled across DeForest Kelley and got only a “no comment” when he asked what had brought the veteran actor to the set.
“It was a late addition,” Justman said later of the McCoy scene. “I think it had been on Gene’s mind, and he invited De to lunch and he said, ‘How would you feel about it?’ ­ expecting De to say no ­ and De said, ‘I’d be honored.’ And not only that, but he refused to take any more than SAG scale [Screen Actors Guild base salary]. He could have held us up for a lot of money, but he didn’t. And it really got to me; it was a beautiful, beautiful scene.”
“I just wanted scale, to let it be my way of saying thank-you to Gene for the many good things he has done for me,” Kelley said later.
One of the background actors was Colm Meaney, an unsuccessful veteran of the original casting call who won enough points with the staff to be included here in the role of the battle bridge conn ensign. Meaney would eventually return to take up one of the most popular recurring roles, that of Lieutenant Miles O’Brien. The Dublin native was a member of the Irish National Theatre and also played stage roles in London, New York, and Los Angeles. He settled first on the East Coast, where he appeared on One Life to Live as a British thief, and then in Hollywood, where his screen career took off.
Already being pumped up as the new alien threat, the Ferengi, too, are mentioned, although they would not be seen until the third regular episode aired (and the fifth filmed).
One scene in “Farpoint” was shot on location in Los Angeles’ Famous Griffith Park: the scene at the holodeck stream where Riker and a soggy Wes meet Data.
And the cannibalizing of old Trek sets continued: part of the Klingon Bird of Prey sickbay from Star Trek III was turned upside down to become part of Zorn’s council room wall.
Interestingly enough, the end credits were on a crawl but would be listed on cards screen by screen for the remainder of TNG’s run. Also, the opening credits do not include the name of the character along with each actor’s name, as they would later.
For trivia’s sake: aside from Troi’s onetime appearance in uniform during this voyage, in the final bridge scene Tasha became the only other regular of either sex to wear the “skant” (basically a unisex miniskirt) uniform. And, possibly indicating that the time frame of the series was still not set in stone, Data refers to himself as a member of the “Starfleet Class of ’78,” but his graduation date is later established as 2338 (in “Conundrum”).
The Response to “Farpoint”
After all the pressure, work, and long hours, the pilot film pleased most critics. Ed Bark of the Dallas Morning News, writing for the Knight-Ridder-Tribune service, thought the pilot “soared with the spirit of the original,” coming off as a “fine redefining of a classic and a considerable breakthrough for non-network syndicated television.” Don Merrill in TV Guide proclaimed that TNG “is a worthy successor” to the original and said that Gene Roddenberry had “lost none of his ingenuity or his taste in selecting stories.” On the other side, while John J. O’Connor in the New York Times hoped “that things would get a little livelier in coming weeks,” he may have needed to do his homework: in discussing the “new” technology of the show he included the “doors that open and shut effortlessly”!
And then there was the most important judge of all ­ the audience. Thanks to the lure of the original series, the heavy advance promotional campaign, and maybe even the often skeptical press, “Encounter at Farpoint” beat its prime-time network competition in Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Miami, and Denver. This time around, the audience ratings would be on Trek’s side, and despite a few rough times in its early days the new series would never have to look over its shoulder again.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Ensigns of Command, The”@2Next Generation episode #49
Production No.: 149
Aired: Week of October 2, 1989
Stardate: 43133.3
Directed by Cliff Bole
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
GUEST CAST
Ard’rian McKenzie: Eileen Seeley
Haritath: Mark L. Taylor
Kentor: Richard Allen
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Gosheven: Grainger Hines
Sheliak: Mart McChesney
The reclusive Sheliak Corporate breaks its 111-year silence with the Federation to demand that Tau Cygna V, ceded to it by treaty, be cleared of a human settlement within three days.
Forgotten by the UFP, a strayed colony ship deposited settlers there ninety years earlier. They have tamed the desert and now number over 15,000. News of the colony is doubly surprising, since the settlers had to adapt to the fatal hyperonic radiation that bathes the planet.
Because of that danger, Data is sent to announce the evacuation. But he runs up against a stubborn leader, Gosheven, who shrugs off the unseen Sheliak’s threat and won’t budge despite his people’s growing qualms. Picard and Troi ask for a delay from the Sheliak, but the presumptive race is as stubborn as the Tau Cygnans.
Data gets nowhere in his mission, despite the help of a farsighted Cygnan woman, Ard’rian, until he finally shows the settlers the danger they face by launching a frightening, though restrained, show of force.
Picard congratulates Data on the creativity of his effort after achieving a victory of his own ­ beating the arrogant Sheliak with their own treaty to get the evacuation delayed.
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Though filmed first, this segment was aired after “Evolution” opened the third season. Director Cliff Bole once again came up against the budget ax as he watched his episode take a $200,000 cut at the last minute, although the impact doesn’t seem as drastic as it did on “The Royale”. In fact, a story line with more romantic overtones between Data and Ard’rian seems to have been the main casualty, leaving the issue of Data in command of reluctant charges to be explored more forcefully later in “Redemption,” II.
As happens occasionally, credit for a major guest player did not appear on screen. Actor Grainger Hines’s dialogue all had to be dubbed in by another actor, and he asked that his name be pulled. Back under the monster suit is Mart McChesney, who played Armus in “Skin of Evil”. This segment is the first of several showing Data’s progress in learning to play the violin; the others are “Sarek” and “In Theory”. Music is one of several arts he studies in an attempt to uncover the secret of human creativity; O’Brien is seen playing the cello in this episode.
In another example of intergenerational continuity, the old duotronics computers that Ard’rian refers to as her guess for Data’s control basis is the system installed aboard Kirk’s Enterprise, a contemporary of her colony ship. Invented by Dr. Richard Daystrom, it was the success he was trying to surpass with multitronics at the time of the 1968 episode “The Ultimate Computer.”
Data’s shuttlepod is named for Ellison Onizuka, one of the seven real-life astronauts who died aboard the U.S. space shuttle Challenger when it exploded after launch in 1986. During filming, Tibet’s exiled Dali Lam and his entourage of monks ­ all of them Trek fans ­ visited the sets and surrounded Brent Spiner as Data on one of the colony village’s sets to pose for a photo.
What starts out as a science project in genetics for Wes almost dooms not only scientist Paul Stubbs’s lifelong project but the ship itself.
Stubbs has come on board with a specially designed probe, set to be launched to study the once-in-a-lifetime stellar explosion of a neutron-supergiant binary. The project is threatened, though, by malfunctions of the Enterprise’s main computer core.
The reason for those malfunctions? Wesley’s science project, in which he allowed two medical microbiotic “nanites” to interact. The creatures bred and escaped into the ship’s computer core, which they are now “eating.” Attempts to placate or talk to the nanites are thwarted when an obsessed, impatient Stubbs sterilizes a core element of nanites with a gamma radiation blast.
But the nanites’ deadly response ­ they shut down the ship’s life-support system ­ convinces even Stubbs they are intelligent, and he apologizes to them after Data volunteers himself as a face-to-face communication conduit.
Satisfied with the goodwill shown them, the high-order nanites want only to keep “exploring” and ask for an uninhabited world to colonize. They even help reconstruct the ship’s computer in time to make Stubbs’s project a success.
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The script that brought Michael Piller into the TNG fold was designed as a “growth show” for Wesley, and on his own initiative Piller added the plot points about Beverly Crusher’s reappearance when it became clear this episode would actually lead off the season.
One scene cut for time’s sake included a corridor conversation between Wesley and his friends, pointing up how immersed in work and cut off from social life he’d become. Scott Grimes as Eric and Amy O’Neill as the blond Annette were to be given credit until their lines were cut, but they can be seen in the crowd Beverly eyes suspiciously in Ten-Forward at show’s close.
Piller delved into his own love of baseball to round out the similarities between Wesley and Stubbs (played by Ken Jenkins), whom he envisioned as a forecast of the hard-driven, often friendless youngster at age forty. The players Stubbs refers to brought about the climax of the classic 1951 National League playoff when Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants broke open the tie game with a homer off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, bringing in runners Whitey Lockman from first and Alvin Dark from second. Wesley’s interest in baseball was mentioned long ago in “Justice”), although we learn here that his late father taught him the game. We also discover that Guinan was married at least twice and has “a lot” of children, one of whom is several hundred years old.
Stubbs’s “egg” satellite module was reworked from the viral containment unit built for last season’s opener, “The Child”); the computer core access is built on the old movie bridge set. A nice touch is the warning sign in the shuttle bay: “Warning: Variable Gravity Area.”
