1:[5,#b],6:[2,#i]@1“Encounter at Farpoint, Part II”@2Next Generation episode #2
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.
