1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“The Last Outpost”@2Next Generation episode #7
Production No.: 107
Aired: Week of October 19, 1987
Stardate: 41386.4
Directed by Richard Colla
Teleplay by Herbert Wright
Story by Richard Krzemien
GUEST CAST
Letek: Armin Shimerman
Mordoc: Jake Dengel
Kayron: Tracey Walter
Portal: Darryl Henriques
DaiMon Tarr: Mike Gomez
History is overshadowed by danger as the Enterprise is readied for the first direct Federation meeting with the Ferengi, the supercapitalists of the galaxy. The ship is hot on the trail of a Ferengi vessel suspected of stealing an outpost’s T-9 energy converter.
The chase ends when both ships find themselves immobilized over a distant planet. A stymied Picard is ready to try anything, even pretending to surrender, when he and his opponent, DaiMon, realize it’s the world below and not the other’s ship that is the source of the mysterious power drain holding both vessels captive.
The planet is an outpost of the ancient but unknown Tkon Empire, now extinct. A cooperative landing mission to investigate is arranged, but the deceitful Ferengi double-cross Riker’s team and stun them.
An automated Tkon “portal” guard then emerges from his centuries-old sleep and challenges the two sides. At first, Data tries to reason with Portal and informs him that his time and his empire are long gone.
The childish Ferengi tire him, but Riker’s wisdom and the philosophies of the Federation finally impress Portal and he allows the two ships to go their way.
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This episode was a dramatic, if sometimes confusing, introduction of the Ferengi, but ultimately it did not live up to all the advance hype for the Federation’s new alien threat. As developed by Herb Wright and Gene Roddenberry, the Ferengi first appeared in furlike wraparound outerwear and used blue energy-bolt whips, which were never seen again. According to Zimmerman, the Ferengis’ poor eyesight accounts for their beady eyes and brightly lit ship interiors; their huge ears help to compensate by providing them with better hearing.
Their ship, described in the script as resembling a horseshoe crab with an extendable neck, was designed by Andrew Probert; the earwiglike pincers on the forward ends were his idea. Greg Jein built four models for different uses, the largest being 2=4 feet long. The rear area is cargo space; a boarding ramp and a shuttle can be seen on the underside.
Richard Krzemien’s initial story concerned a planetary caretaker named Dilo, precursor to Portal, as the latter-day Rip Van Winkle who slept while his empire fell. Riker’s concluding request to beam over several replicated Chinese finger puzzles to the pesky Ferengi echoes Scotty’s solution at the end of “The Trouble with Tribbles” ­ transporting the prolific fur balls detested by Klingons to their ship. The Tkon Empire seal that appears in the revolving holographic display is also seen as the blade design on Portal’s staff.
Deja vu sets in when the Enterprise attempts to rescue two Federation engineers lost on the late Tasha Yar’s planet, Turkana IV. There they are surprised to discover her sister, Ishara, involved with one of two warring factions.
One faction, the Alliance, has taken the ship’s engineers hostage: their rival, the Coalition, offers to help retrieve the engineers and volunteers the services of Ishara as a guide.
Ishara beams aboard the Enterprise, where Picard tries to reverse Ishara’s view of her sister as a runaway and a quitter, and Data finds his memories of Tasha rekindled by Ishara, who shows some interest in joining Starfleet.
What Riker and Picard don’t know is that the plan Ishara helps them devise is also meant to defeat the proximity detectors both Turkana factions agreed to years ago, so Ishara can disable the Alliance’s power plants and cripple their defense.
Ishara leads the rescue effort but is stopped by Data at the reactor, where he dares her to shoot him. She is about to do so when Riker stuns her, then tells Data he’s just learned about betrayal.
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An allegory on gang warfare with added complications provided by Tasha’s previously unknown sister, Joe Menosky’s first script for the series will forever live in the annals of TNG trivia as the eightieth episode ­ the one that broke the record of the seventy-nine-episode run of the original series. To help mark the milestone, the cast and staff wrapped the filming with a party, reported by Entertainment Tonight, and a cake adorned by the art staff’s special congratulatory logo.
Tasha Yar was given even more background history in this outing. We learn that her parents were killed in cadre crossfire just after Ishara was born, about four and a half years after Tasha. Also, Picard says he asked Tasha’s former captain to transfer her to his command when the new Enterprise was about to be launched.
The starship Potemkin, the last to have contact with Turkana IV, was a former assignment of Lieutenant Riker’s mentioned in “Peak Performance”, and a namesake of a Kirk-era starship seen in “The Ultimate Computer.”
As his predecessor had done in season one, production designer Richard James made the precious budget for sets go farther by ingeniously re-dressing the Borg ship interiors, left standing on Stage 16’s Planet Hell, for use as the Turkana underground tunnel complex. He would also make good use of them in several episodes to come, as would happen with the hostages’ escape pod off the Arcos, a Sternbach design that would be re-dressed often (“Family”, “A Matter of Time”).
Written by Ronald Wilkerson & Jean Louise Matthias
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Commander Nella Daren: Wendy Hughes
Computer Voice: Majel Barrett
Lieutenant (j.g.) Marques: R. Cox
The captain’s usually solo personal life suddenly becomes a duet when his new chief of stellar sciences, Lieutenant Commander Nella Daren, checks in aboard his ship.
The lovely, intelligent woman is also an accomplished pianist, and after a concert Picard tells her of his Ressikan flute and the odd way he learned to play it. Their duets quickly lead to love: Troi assuages the captain’s guilt about his command image, while an unintended incident between Nella and Riker leads the captain to remind her that in any choice between her and the ship, the Enterprise must come first.
But that credo is more than put to the test when the ship arrives to study the firestorms of Bersallis III. The scientific excitement turns tense when the storms threaten the UFP outpost earlier than expected, and Nella goes down with the teams when she and La Forge create a shield to cover the evacuation.
But Picard finds himself ordering Nella to her possible death when the teams must remain to control the shields manually. When she and her crew are presumed dead, it is all he can do to keep life going, but even her miraculous reprieve with a team member leads them both to realize they cannot remain lovers while working as commander and subordinate.
Nella opts for a transfer, noting that they must remain apart to keep their love alive.
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A complete contrast from the Picard story just prior, this slice-of-life plot Michael Piller dubbed “Brief Encounter on the Enterprise” sparkles from the chemistry between Stewart and actress Wendy Hughes, most recently seen in Homicide: Life on the Streets. Ironically, Picard is seen wearing a shirt from “Captain’s Holiday”, but unlike Vash, this time around the captain is given a real peer and equal in Nella Daren ­ a quality that Jeri Taylor felt gave the match-up “true substance and genuine warmth” the actors could play from. “The script was a pleasure and we had really turned-on performances,” veteran TNG director Robert Weimer said. “If we’d had only moderate performances it would have fallen flat.”
Because it was so much a part of the relationship’s growth, the music recorded and played for this episode received extra special attention. Series composer Dennis McCarthy had dubbed a tape of professionals playing the music needed, but Taylor knew that such a straight treatment wouldn’t work for the dramatic build and she called a Sunday huddle with him and producer Wendy Neuss. “The music had to reflect that she was making him feel comfortable and letting him kind of test these strange waters and being gentle with him, not overwhelming him with a `look at me ­ see how good I am!’ kind of attitude.” The final product portrays what Neuss called “a real synergy, a constant feeding back, growing, getting better at what they do.”
But if recording the music was one thing, shooting it was another. Keeping his filming angles simple and conservative to reflect the tone of the story, Wiemer still worked in tricks to disguise the live musicians playing for actors Stewart and Hughes: the unbroken piano pan and the up-through-the-clear-table shot disguised the likes of pianist photo-double Natalie Martin, who also recorded the music for Nella’s instruments. Her husband Bryce has done the same for Picard’s Ressikan pennywhistle “flute” ever since its debut in “The Inner Light”. Stewart did much of his own flute fingering in the “teaching” scene, with inserts photo-doubled in his quarters by Noel Webb and by John Mayham in the Jefferies tube, where Wiemer used a wide-angle lens in the crammed junction; an enormously long dolly he filmed retreating down the crawlway until the duo was just a spot had to be cut short for time. Webb also hand-doubled for Data’s violin playing with Spiner’s face onscreen as he, Nella, and musician extra Jan Kelly “performed” Chopin’s “Trio in G Minor” ­ as a joke take, Neuss recalled, Webb’s unused hand reached in as Data’s “third” one to scratch the android’s nose!
Picard’s love of fencing (“We’ll Always Have Paris”, “I, Borg”) and his early piano lessons (“The Perfect Mate”) are already known, as is Crusher’s interest in ribosomal replication (“The Enemy”, “Ethics”). Some of the weapons used are a variation on Kivas Fajo’s Varon-T (“The Most Toys”), and “Frere Jacques” harks back to “Disaster”.
Echoing the show’s simplicity, Dan Curry and Ron Moore used a “low-tech” means of creating the Bersallis III firewalls by spilling liquid nitrogen onto black velvet draped over a big table and blown from behind by an air hose for the shimmering effect. It was later enhanced by computer before being painted into the background of the live-action “Planet Hell” trench. Look for the blooper of stars at rest outside Picard’s quarters during a time of warp drive: the FX staff caught it in time but decided it wasn’t worth the cost of a late fix.
As part of a cultural exchange, Picard greets two Iyaaran ambassadors aboard ship before departing in their shuttle to meet with their leader.
Worf, already uncomfortable in diplomatic settings, is upset to be chosen as a host by Byleth, a surly type who comes to blows with the Klingon over poker. In contrast, Troi finds herself escorting the gentle Loquel, who seems to be gorging himself on pure sensations of food and drink.
En route to Iyar, Picard’s shuttle crashes on a hostile world, and the Iyaaran pilot Voval is knocked out. After stumbling outside and collapsing outdoors, Picard awakes to find a human woman, Anna, caring for him inside a downed freighter. Apparently a crash survivor for seven years, a moody Anna ruins the shuttle’s com panel when sent to retrieve it and then confides she loves Picard.
Initially sympathetic, Picard rails at the woman after he realizes he is not injured badly and that she seeks to keep him captive. She flees into the murky night just as Voval, very much alive, shows up at the freighter shelter and they set out after her.
Not until the “lovesick” Anna appears and threatens to jump off a cliff does Picard discover the truth: Voval took Anna’s form to learn about love, a concept alien to the Iyaarans ­ just as his shipboard cohorts wanted to study pleasure and antagonism.
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Sixth-season interns Fauci and Rich took this teleplay out of the season’s most arduous break session, building on Eschbacher and Greenspon’s straight homage to Stephen King’s Misery. “She” initially became a very balanced Starfleet officer, but Braga suggested hiking the character’s angst a few notches to create more tension.
Originally the script had Taylor’s B-story about Troi earning her commander’s pips, but when the two plots didn’t gel that line was ejected and saved for later (“Thine Own Self”), while Braga created the aliens’ “testing” events in an uncredited rewrite done in just eight days. Taylor was surprised Braga’s odd humor didn’t make the episode more popular, but for veteran director Bole the episode was “just flat not my favorite show,” citing the many rewrites as deadlines loomed.
Actor Pierpoint became the second regular from the onetime Fox SF series Alien Nation to guest on TNG (“In Theory”) ­ his craft being the redressed “alien shuttle” (see “Birthright, Part I”) ­ while “Eric,” who appeared twice again (“Masks”, “Firstborn”), was named for Braga’s nephew. Propmaster Alan Sims recalled how, after he had bought chocolate-covered raisins for Loquel’s poker-game snack, actor Eiding confided he was allergic to chocolate and caused a wee-hours run to an open candy store for an alternative snack. “He said he broke out in red hives but offered to eat it anyway,” Sims said. “Now there’s an actor who’s grateful to be working!”
Braga also conjured up one of TNG’s infamously confusing “T”-aliens, the Tarellians, with Picard’s comment that Anna could not be of that race “unless you’ve lost two of your arms” ­ indicating it’s possibly the species of bar pianist Amarie (“Unification II”), since a two-armed Tarellian was filmed but cut from the finale for time (“All Good Things . . .”). The plagued Tarellians (“Haven”) and warrior Talarians (“Heart of Glory”, “Suddenly Human”) are confusing enough, even without Dathon’s Tamarians (“Darmok”), but Braga would later concoct the Tarellian “death syndrome” (“Genesis”) and “plague” (“All Good Things . . .”).
After seven years, Worf, Deanna, and Beverly are finally seen in their dress uniforms; Worf’s added Klingon sash scene evokes both Scotty’s dress kilts and McCoy’s dress-blues fussing (1967’s “Journey to Babel”). Continuity hounds will also notice references to the Ktarians (“The Game”, “Birthright, Part I”, “Timescape”, “Phantasms”, Generations); Troi’s chocolate habit (see notes, “The Price”); papalla juice, red here instead of clear (“Imaginary Friend”); a Tarvokian powder cake, rather than “pound cake” (“The Game”); Worf’s battle “calisthenics” (“Where Silence has Lease”, “Emissary”, “New Ground”); Deck 12’s stellar cartography (“Lessons”, “Homeward”, Generations) and Deck 8’s unfinished nature, taken from the TNG Technical Manual. In a cut scene, Byleth had awakened Worf at 0500 for a tour of the arboretum, while later in a minor blooper he actually takes three poker chips during their game ­ not two as Worf claims.
Built by modelmaker Tony Doublin, new to TNG but a longtime associate of FX supervisor David Stipes, the freighter exterior scene was a six-by-sixteen tabletop model with crash-skid furrows and forced-perspective mountains only five feet away; Richard James’ live interior featured a slanted “crashed” floor. The cliffs were another Doublin model, combined at Digital Magic with a Dan Curry computer matte painting and the filmed actors, smoke, and stage ­ with Picard being a late addition to clarify the scene. Anna’s transformation to Voval came from an unused test element Curry had shot years before: the end result of a laser beam shot through melted plastic and bounced off white cardboard.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Lonely Among Us”@2Next Generation episode #8
Production No.: 108
Aired: Week of November 2, 1987
Stardate: 41249.3
Directed by Cliff Bole
Teleplay by D. C. Fontana
Story by Michael Halperin
GUEST CAST
Ssestar: John Durbin
First Security Guard: Colm Meaney
Assistant Chief Engineer Singh: Kavi Raz
The spat between two neighboring planets would be almost comical if it weren’t for the Enterprise’s serious task of transporting their ambassadors to Parliament, a UFP diplomatic outpost.
En route there, the ship passes through a strange energy cloud, and puzzling malfunctions start to occur. Worf and Dr. Crusher then show bizarre personality shifts while attending to them.
After an assistant engineer is murdered while inspecting the malfunctions, Data adopts the methods of Sherlock Holmes. But Troi’s hypnosis of Crusher and Worf reveals that they have accidentally taken aboard a long-lonely life-force. The creature is now looking for a host body to return it to the energy cloud.
The crew is shocked when the being chooses Picard as its host. After apologizing for the damage it caused, the alien has Picard resign his command and divert the ship back to the cloud ­ where it beams out as pure energy.
Just as Riker is about to take over the stunned ship, Troi senses that the union did not work. Sure enough, Picard uses the transporter circuits to rematerialize in his human form.
Once back, the tired captain gives Riker the job of keeping the cannibalistic races’ diplomats from eating each other.
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Michael Halperin’s original story contained the final basic plot, but a dilithium breakdown on the starship was the subplot. The diplomatic conference was added by Fontana, as in her 1967 original-series script, “Journey to Babel.” Halperin’s story ended with Picard, his ship basically powerless, bringing the energy creature home by using the slingshot time-traveling effect seen in various Trek episodes and Star Trek IV.
This show was the first of many TNG treks for director Cliff Bole, a veteran of The Six Million Dollar Man, V, the new Mission: Impossible, Paradise, and every other Vega$ shot. Bole recalled that the show got mail criticizing its depiction of what amounted to cannibalism on the part of the carnivorous doglike Anticans.
Seen as a hapless security ensign chasing the ambassador was “Farpoint” actor Colm Meaney, still in an unnamed role. The “part” was not consistent with the pilot, where he had appeared as a command-division ensign, but at least here he wore the same mustard-color uniform he would sport in season two as Lieutenant O’Brien, the transporter chief.
TNG’s dress uniform, designed to evoke memories of the deck waistcoats of the eighteenth-century British navy, made its debut here. The look would be slightly altered the following season: the gold edging would be reduced in width, and the front flap would follow the collarbone panel line instead of spiraling down from the collar. Two nice visual effects are seen in this episode: the stars warping by outside the ready room window, and their reflection on the desktop.
A few odd notes: one of the scenes in which Kavi Raz could be seen as Singh in the background had to be reshot when the actor wasn’t available, so a wig on a chair was used as a stand-in! Okuda and Sternbach winced at the use of the transporter in this early story as a life-pattern restorer, so they came up with the official explanation that the system had come under the unique electromagnetic influences of the cloud-entity. A clunker of a prop that would not be reused after this episode is Beverly Crusher’s surgical cap with its bizarre eyepiece.
Teleplay by Hilary J. Bader, Alan J. Adler, and Vanessa Greene
Story by Hilary J. Bader
GUEST CAST
Ensign Janet Brooks: Kim Braden
Ensign Tess Allenby: Mary Kohnert
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
The Enterprise finds it cannot resume course after stopping to check out what appeared to be images in its path. At the same moment, Troi discovers her empathic powers have completely disappeared.
The roadblock is found to be a unique cluster of two-dimensional life-forms that have caught the starship up in their wake.
Meanwhile, Troi suffers denial, panic, and even anger at friends. Despite the protests of Guinan, Picard, and Riker that she still has her professional training to lean on, she resigns as ship’s counselor. Then Data and Riker realize the creatures are heading for a cosmic string that would doom the starship, and a desperate Picard turns to Troi for help.
After trying to warn the creatures of the danger, she realizes they want to seek out the cosmic string. When Data creates a “dummy” string to the ship’s rear, the creatures are confused and stop long enough for the Enterprise to break free.
Troi’s powers come rushing back to her as she realizes that the strength of the two-dimensional creatures’ feelings overwhelmed her powers. She resumes her job with renewed confidence in her abilities.
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“The Loss” demonstrates that the TNG writers have finally learned to create conflict in Gene Roddenberry’s perfect world by using outside stimuli. This episode gave Marina Sirtis a rare chance to stretch and shine as Troi ­ and made those weeks of almost being written out of the series in season one seem very far away indeed. Riker here calls Troi a “blue-blooded Betazoid” who’s always had a unique means of control to fall back on, giving her character a subtext that was sadly lacking in the early years. Their relationship, long shunned or even denied by the writers, revealed here how well it could survive if it was shown and not just talked about. In this show we hear the Betazoid endearment, imzadi, for the first time in nearly two years since “Shades of Gray”.
Another landmark is Troi’s conversation with Guinan. One of the few criticisms of the addition of Whoopi Goldberg’s character is that Guinan seems to duplicate Troi’s shipboard function, but in this case that “competition” is turned on its ear and used to great effect.
Writing intern Hilary Bader added the science subplot of the cosmic string, and Michael Piller revealed that for a time the staff even toyed with the daring idea of not giving Troi back her lost empathic sense. Sirtis has remarked that many fans with disabilities reacted warmly to her performance in this episode. Ironically, the episode that almost cost her her empathy is the one that begins by finally showing her counseling an adult crew member.
We also discover here that Betazoids’ empathic abilities lie within the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. We’re also told that the Breen and other races, as well as the Ferengi, cannot be sensed empathically. As a throwaway, Picard’s equestrian interest (“Pen Pals”) is recalled during a Kabul River Himalayan ride on the holodeck.
A major concept in warp-drive design is introduced here by Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach in a passing reference to the ship’s structural integrity field, a force that keeps the ship intact under various inertial forces and stresses when the simple vacuum and null gravity of space aren’t enough.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Loud as a Whisper”@2Next Generation episode #32
Production No.: 132
Aired: Week of January 9, 1989
Stardate: 42477.2
Directed by Larry Shaw
Written by Jacqueline Zambrano
GUEST CAST
Riva: Howie Seago
WarriorAdonis: Leo Damian
Woman: Marnie Mosiman
Scholar: Thomas Oglesby
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Warrior No. 1 (Blond Solari leader): Richard Lavin
To help settle a civil war, the Enterprise is sent to retrieve the great Ramatisian mediator Riva, whose resume extends to negotiating early UFP-Klingon treaties.
The crew is surprised to learn, though, that Riva and his ruling family were born deaf and use a three-member telepathic chorus to communicate: the Woman, the Scholar, and WarriorAdonis. The latter informs Troi that Riva is taken with her.
But an incident on strife-torn Solari V wrecks the peace mission and Riva’s self-confidence as well when a terrorist opens fire, killing the chorus.
The loss sends Riva into a fit of grief and helplessness. Data learns to read his frantic signing, but Picard cannot draw Riva out. When the mediator even refuses Troi’s attempts to help, she opts to try the mission herself.
Plying Riva for negotiating hints, she inspires him to use his own main strategy: “turn a disadvantage into an advantage.”
Reinvigorated, Riva beams down alone, determined to start from scratch and teach both Solari factions his sign language, no matter how long it takes.
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Howie Seago, who is actually deaf, met with the producers during the writers’ strike to suggest a show built around a deaf actor as a guest star. This episode is the result, and in it Seago helped to change what he felt was a dangerous myth regarding deaf people: the first draft’s premise had his character learning to speak overnight after the failure of a mechanical translator he used to communicate with his chorus. The day before shooting he suggested an alternative scenario, where after the killing of his chorus Riva stays on Solari V to teach the combatants sign language. To his surprise the idea was eagerly accepted; the supportive mail from both deaf and hearing people seemed to bear out the wisdom of that idea.
Marnie Mosiman kept her TNG guest role in the family: she’s the wife of John “Q” de Lancie. Richard Lavin had previously appeared as the second mediator in “Justice”.
LeVar Burton campaigned for a time for a story line that would let Geordi’s sight be restored so that he as an actor could utilize his expressive eyes, and Pulaski’s claim here that she might be able to surgically restore his sight seems to be a preparation for that. It would never happen, though, as Burton grew to understand that the VISOR was an advantage for the character. He also realized that Geordi had become a role model for the blind and for other handicapped people ­ much as Uhura, in the original series, became an inspiration for Whoopi Goldberg and other black women and indeed for all women.
Look quick: Riva’s “indigenous rock” table includes markings alluding to Kei and Yuri (more anime!), and one of Riva’s hand signs to Data is the Vulcan spread-fingered greeting turned sideways! The mediator’s youthful appearance is somewhat baffling, however. Like Sarek later, Riva is credited with many of the early UFP-Klingon treaties.
