1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“We’ll Always Have Paris”@2Next Generation episode #24
Production No.: 124
Aired: Week of May 2, 1988
Stardate: 41697.9
Directed by Robert Becker
Written by Deborah Dean Davis and Hannah Louise Shearer
GUEST CAST
Jenice Manheim: Michelle Phillips
Dr. Paul Manheim: Rod Loomis
Gabrielle: Isabel Lorca
Lieutenant Dean: Dan Kern
Edouard: Jean-Paul Vignon
Francine: Kelly Ashmore
Transporter Chief Herbert: Lance Spellerberg
While the ship is traveling to Sarona VII for shore leave, a bizarre time loop distortion causes a literal deja vu effect on the Enterprise. Soon after this, the ship receives a distress signal from Dr. Paul Manheim’s science outpost on Vandor IV.
They rescue Manheim and his wife, Jenice, who turns out to be an old love of Picard’s. But the nonlinear time experiments Manheim and his now-dead team were conducting not only ended in disaster on Vandor, but were responsible for the disturbance that the Enterprise experienced earlier. Those disturbances now threaten to spread and rip open the interdimensional fabric of space.
Manheim himself is dying, since his body can’t deal with the strain of partial interdimensional existence. On top of that, Picard’s unresolved feelings for Jenice ­ he stood her up in Paris to ship out with Starfleet twenty-two years ago ­ are left hanging by a therapeutic session on the holodeck. Even Dr. Crusher finds herself jealous of Jenice.
Finally, using Manheim’s directions, Data beams into the Vandor lab to reseal the center of the dimensional breach with a hunk of antimatter; although he finds himself in three time continuums at once, he sorts it all out and succeeds.
Manheim is instantly cured, and he and Jenice prepare to begin his work again. And this time, thanks to the Parisian holodeck program, Picard gives Jenice a proper good-bye.
____________________
If this story doesn’t quite come off as another Casablanca (the source for the episode’s title), it’s not surprising. Shearer and her friend Deborah Dean Davis, who originally pitched the idea, wrote the script on five days’ notice, aiming for an “utterly romantic” story, but she says the teleplay was “toned down 75 percent.”
As late as the final draft, dated February 22, Jenice’s name was Laura, Riker was Picard’s fencing partner, Paul Manheim was much more of a loose cannon, Picard and Jenice actually spent a night together, and Troi confronted Beverly about her feelings for the captain, which she had not yet sorted out. The crew reversed the Manheim effect by first bypassing a multilevel laser-guided security system; Worf then held open a door to cool an overheated silolike power room while Riker scaled the tower to switch out a chip and Data input commands to the system below.
Completed just a week before filming began, the revised script suffered again when the Writers Guild strike of 1988 shut down production on the climactic scene ­ Data’s repair of the ripped time stream in Manheim’s lab ­ because the dialogue and special effects had not yet been tied down!
“We just ran out of script,” Legato recalled. “It was one of those ‘We’ll fix it when we get there’ things, and suddenly we were there, and the writer was out on the picket lines. The director had never worked with effects before; I had to do it. I ran over to Rick Berman’s trailer and said, ‘We’re out of script!’ We spent forty minutes. We got the writer on the phone and Rick would say, “Well, you weren’t on strike, the character might say this,’ and she’d say yes or no. I had to make up [the direction] on the spot. I came out with handwritten notes, I figured out how to shoot the three Datas in different time-streams with a whip-pan instead of an effects shot.”
Shearer and others complained that a lack of chemistry between Jenice and Jean-Luc diluted the story’s romantic feel, but Michelle Phillips, who played Jenice, felt the problem lay in the story’s conception; while her character wanted to see Picard again, and was quite willing to tease him, she was also fully committed to her husband and had been for a long time.
Phillips, an original-Trek fan who was one of the Mamas and the Papas, a 1960’s group, began her acting career in 1970. Her roles include the miniseries Aspen, the film Bloodlines, and one season on Knots Landing. Rod Loomis, who acted in his first play while in the army, is best known for playing a confused Dr. Sigmund Freud in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Lance Spellerberg appeared a year later as the same transporter chief, Ensign Herbert, in “The Icarus Factor”.
The matte painting of twenty-fourth-century Paris seen in the holodeck nicely combines the old Eiffel Tower with the new antigrav craft flying by. Eduoard’s Okudagraph menu included joke items such as Croissants D’ilithium, Targ Klingon a la Mode, and Tribbles dans les Blankettes.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“When the Bough Breaks”@2Next Generation episode #18
Production No.: 118
Aired: Week of February 15, 1988
Stardate: 41509.1
Directed by Kim Manners
Written by Hannah Louise Shearer
GUEST CAST
Radue: Jerry Hardin
Rashella: Brenda Strong
Katie: Jandi Swanson
Melian: Paul Lambert
Duana: Ivy Bethune
Dr. Bernard: Dierk Torsek
Leda: Michele Marsh
Accolan: Dan Mason
Harry Bernard: Philip N. Waller
Toya: Connie Danese
Alexandra: Jessica and Vanessa Bova
The Enterprise stumbles across the planet Aldea, a world completely cloaked from outsiders by a powerful force-shield. But the find is no accident: the seemingly friendly Aldeans kidnap seven youngsters, including Wesley, from the ship to perpetuate their race.
Parents begin to panic as all attempts at negotiations fail. The Aldeans, convinced they are permanently sterile, stubbornly offer only to trade for the children. As a show of force, their defense system knocks the Enterprise three days’ distance with one bolt.
But there Wesley finds holes in the Aldeans’ technology: their age-old Custodian supercomputer shows wear and tear, and no one now knows how to maintain it. A secret scan by his mother shows the race is dying from radiation poisoning due to an ozone leak caused by their shield.
When Wesley organizes a hunger strike, Picard and Dr. Crusher are asked down to the planet for help. Riker and Data use the opportunity to secretly beam into a computer center, and, backed with control of the cloaking shield, the Enterprise crew is finally able to convince the Aldeans of the nature of their true problem. Picard pledges UFP aid to help them regain their ecology and their health.
____________________
This was an opportunity to utilize those often ignored shipboard families that Shearer initially pitched to Fontana, and it was this story that helped win her a spot on the writing staff. A subplot involving ship separation and the saucer being held hostage was phased out to focus on the main story.
The nonspeaking young hostages included Wil Wheaton’s younger siblings, Jeremy and Amy as Mason and Tara. Makeup designer Westmore’s daughter McKenzie played Rose. All three youngsters’ appearances were uncredited.
This was another script in which Legato would provide an impressive yet inexpensive FX solution to a story need: the Aldean computer’s power room. “The script called for a ‘little black box’ power station, but that wasn’t enough,” he said. “It needed to be something that left you awestruck ­ but how, on a low budget?”
First Legato had a two-foot-tall model of a reactor and a cavern-shaft built with a ledge. Then he shot actors against a simple black background with a single hard white light rising on them, as if from a door opening from floor to ceiling. Next he burned their image into the black side of the model to establish the scale for a few seconds before camera picked up the live-action shooting on the set. “At three thousand dollars it was much cheaper than compositing the scene with mattes,” he added.
~1:[6,#b],7:[2,#i]@1“Where No One Has Gone Before”@2Next Generation episode #6
Production No.: 106
Aired: Week of October 26, 1987
Stardate: 41263.1
Directed by Rob Bowman
Written by Diane Duane and Michael Reaves
GUEST CAST
Kosinski: Stanley Kamel
Traveler: Eric Menyuk
Maman Picard: Herta Ware
Lieutenant Commander Argyle: Biff Yeager
Crew member: Charles Dayton
Ballerina: Victoria Dillard
The brave new warp theories of a supposedly brilliant Starfleet consultant go awry when the “expert” plunges the ship first into a neighboring galaxy and then into a dimension where the physical and mental worlds converge.
The trouble turns out not to be with expert Kosinski’s theories but with his mysteriously meek “assistant,” whose race can travel among dimensions and times.
The strain of propelling the entire ship, though, has put the so-called Traveler gravely near death ­ threatening to strand the Enterprise forever. And in this nether-space, crew members begin seeing alternate realities that threaten their sanity as well.
Finally it is discovered that Wesley’s friendship has a curative effect on the Traveler; he strengthens the alien just enough to get the ship home.
Before he does so, though, the Traveler advises Picard secretly of Wesley’s prodigious abilities and urges him to not let them go undeveloped. With a proud mother standing by, Wesley is promoted to acting ensign by Picard, and his Academy training begins.
____________________
Even though producer Maurice Hurley did numerous uncredited rewrites on their script, Duane and Reaves’s initial story survives as adapted from her Kirk-era novel, The Wounded Sky, in which an unusual alien resembling a glass spider performs warp experiments that mix physics with metaphysics and strand the original Enterprise far from home.
In the original teleplay, Kosinski was responsible for both the warp effects and the accident; he also had a son who felt he spent more time on his career than with him. The crew was in awe of Kosinski in the original script, and the hallucinations were even more bizarre, including the image of Jack Crusher appearing to both Picard and Beverly. The starship reappeared within a monoblock, or cosmological egg, and in exploding it to escape, the starship in effect caused the birth of a new universe. Significantly, the Enterprise has been missing for six days and the captain orders that the next day be observed as a day of rest!
The Traveler role was a consolation prize of sorts for Eric Menyuk, who only weeks before had come close to winning the part of Data. An original Trek fan at age six, he picked up drama in college and went from Boston-area theater to TV guest work in Hill Street Blues, Matlock, L.A. Law, and Cheers, among others.
Justman has said that hiring twenty-eight-year-old Rob Bowman to direct this segment was one of his proudest achievements on the show; Bowman was called in to replace Daniel Petrie, who dropped out to film the movie Mystic Pizza. It was a terrifying time for young Bowman, who wanted to make a good impression on his first assignment and overcome any doubts about his youth. Once he got his script, he worked for twenty days before filming began. He walked around the sets in off-hours, using storyboards and blocking out scenes to prepare his action lines and camera angles. Bowman went on to become one of the infant series’ most prolific directors.
The episode’s dazzling optical effects were quite literally homemade, Legato recalled. “We got the usual kind of vague explanation for the end-of-the-universe visuals in the script,” he said. “But I did it simply, at home in my basement, with water. I had always noticed water reflections on the wall, so I shot multiple layers of that through dissolved Mylar bits. It was peculiar and bizarre. And I used little suspended moving Christmas tree lights for the little blinkies.”
Worf’s pet targ is actually a Russian wild bear named Emmy Lou, wearng a Theiss-designed original. “That pig smelled horrid,” laughed Justman. “A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!”
Biff Yeager debuts here as the longest-running chief engineer of the first season, although Riker introduces him as “one of our chief engineers”; Worf’s pet targ is actually a Russian wild boar named Emmy Lou, wearing a Theiss-designed original; and Dennis Madalone, seen here as the sciences division ensign who is terrified by his self-conjured fire, is a stuntman who would receive screen credit beginning with the third season as stunt coordinator and would continuing to appear as various crew members.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Where Silence Has Lease”@2Next Generation episode #28
Production No.: 128
Aired: Week of November 28, 1988
Stardate: 42193.6
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Written by Jack B. Sowards
GUEST CAST
Nagilum: Earl Boen
Ensign Haskell: Charles Douglass
Transporter Chief: Colm Meaney
En route to the Morgana Quadrant, the Enterprise suddenly finds itself inside a black void without form or dimension ­ a void that is unending and inescapable, no matter which direction the ship turns.
A sister ship, the USS Yamato, appears in the void, and Riker and Worf investigate. But the ship is part of the trap, and the men find themselves in a maze of repetition that nearly drives Worf mad with its illogic.
Finally the presence behind the void appears: Nagilum, an entity who wants to study humans’ reaction to death.
The superalien, who appears on screen only as vaguely humanoid facial sections separated by darkness, announces he will use from one-third to one-half of the crew for his experiments. After much soul-searching, Picard regretfully begins the autodestruct sequence with Riker, and later outwits images of Troi and Data sent by the alien to argue against the move.
With just two seconds to spare before autodestruct, the soft-voiced entity suddenly frees the ship, saying he has learned enough about human nature by watching the crew’s preparation for death. In one final debate, a relieved Picard tells Nagilum that they do have one trait in common: curiosity.
____________________
TNG newcomer Winrich Kolbe, whose distinctive accent earned him a nickname, “the Baron,” on the set, put his years of directorial experience to good use in fighting the claustrophobia of this budget-minded “bottle show.” Penned by Star Trek II coauthor Jack Sowards, the only scenes that take place off the Enterprise are aboard a sister ship!
According to Hurley, this superalien’s name is the reverse spelling (minus one l) of Mulligan. The name was chosen because actor Richard Mulligan, the star of Soap and Empty Nest, was originally sought to play the role.
This episode also introduces Worf’s soon-to-be-famous holodeck combat-calisthenics program, which will be seen later in “The Emissary” and “New Ground”. The autodestruct sequence seen in “11001001” is repeated here, but with a flexible countdown time; the device has not been used since. Whether included as yet another homage to the original Star Blazer’s flagship or even its namesake, the World War II Japanese battleship, the starship Yamato’s NCC number given here was 1305-E. In a rare continuity error, the number was changed nine shows later, in “Contagion” to 71807.
~1:[4,#b],5:[2,#i]@1“Who Watches the Watchers?”@2Next Generation episode #52
Production No.: 152
Aired: Week of October 16, 1989
Stardate: 43173.5
Directed by Robert Wiemer
Written by Richard Manning and Hans Beimler
GUEST CAST
Nuria: Kathryn Leigh Scott
Liko: Ray Wise
Dr. Barron: James Greene
Oji: Pamela Segall
Fento: John McLiam
Hali: James McIntire
Mary Warren: Lois Hall
A failing reactor at a hidden cultural observers’ post on Mintaka III draws the Enterprise to that world to render assistance. Before the starship arrives, however, the reactor explodes, injuring three scientists and causing their “duck blind” screen to fail.
An away team is sent to the planet. They successfully rescue two of the scientists but cannot find the third, a man named Palmer. But one of the natives, Liko, witnesses the landing party’s beam-up, and as a result falls, critically injuring himself. Dr. Crusher beams him aboard to save his life, a Prime Directive violation that angers Picard. A memory wipe doesn’t take after Liko is returned home, and he begins telling his brethren that the old god-legends they gave up ages ago were true after all ­ and their “Overseer” is “the Picard.”
Riker and Troi beam down in native disguises to find Palmer, but when the Mintakans find the missing scientist first, even their leader, Nuria, begins to believe Liko’s tales.
Riker escapes with Palmer, but Troi is trapped and kept behind as a possible sacrifice. Liko now desperately wants “the Picard” to bring his dead wife back to life.
Picard risk further contamination by bringing Nuria aboard to prove he is mortal, a tactic that almost fails until she sees he cannot save one of the scientists from dying.
Meanwhile, lightning storms prompt a hysterical Liko into almost sacrificing Troi before Picard arrives. The native, disbelieving his “god’s” claims of mortality, shoots Picard with an arrow, drawing blood.
Although the Mintakans are aware of the outworlders now, Picard leaves them with the knowledge that the rational path is the one they should follow ­ and the “duck blind” is dismantled.
____________________
If the rocky crags of Mintaka III look familiar to longtime Trek fans, it’s no wonder: they’re the Vasquez Rocks, a county park that was the site of location shooting for several original-series episodes: “Arena,” “Friday’s Child,” “Shore Leave,” and “Alternative Factor.” This time, shooting in 100-degree heat for two days, the hardworking cast and crew were joined by the local snakes, scorpions, and bees ­ meaning no attractants like deodorant or perfume could be used.
Viewing the story as a morality tale, first-time TNG director Wiemer shot his Mintakan scenes as tableaux, reminiscent of medieval morality plays. Among the guest cast, Twin Peaks fans remember Ray Wise as Leland, Laura Palmer’s possessed father. Wise also appeared in Henry VIII with Frakes in New York. Kathryn Leigh Scott later portrayed Maggie Evans, the love of vampire Barnabas Collins in the short-lived Dark Shadows remake, while James Greene played the more than friendly elevator operator on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.
Rick Sternbach has said he based the design of the protruding scope used in the “duck blind” on the video cameras used by the TMA-1 team in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Using Trek’s own background well, Picard and Beverly refer to the memory-wipe technique that Dr. Pulaski used in “Pen Pals”). The disguised Troi and Riker also use subcutaneous transponders, just as Kirk and Spock did in 1968’s “Patterns of Force.”
Story by Stuart Charno, Sara Charno, and Cy Chermak
GUEST CAST
Captain Benjamin Maxwell: Bob Gunton
Keiko Ishikawa O’Brien: Rosalind Chao
Gul Macet: Marc Alaimo
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Glinn Telle: Marco Rodriguez
Glinn Daro: Time Winters
Admiral Haden: John Hancock
Picard is shocked to learn a renegade Federation starship under the command of Captain Benjamin Maxwell is destroying Cardassian ships, threatening the fragile peace that the Federation and the Cardassian Empire have achieved after years of skirmishes.
He invites the Cardassian, Gul Macet, aboard to witness the pursuit of the ship, the USS Phoenix. Both watch in horror on long-range scan as two more Cardassian ships are destroyed.
O’Brien, Maxwell’s former tactical officer, says he finds the decorated captain’s acts hard to believe. Maxwell, he says, must have a reason for the attacks. Intercepted at last, Maxwell gladly comes aboard to tell Picard that he has proof the Cardassians are rearming for war.
But Picard has seen enough and relays his orders to bring the captain back for an inquiry. Maxwell agrees, but once aboard his ship he breaks off to pursue a Cardassian freighter, daring Picard to board it to prove his case.
Picard refuses and orders Maxwell to surrender, but the Phoenix powers up its weapons. To break the standoff, O’Brien beams over and quietly persuades his old captain to give up. A broken Maxwell agrees.
Macet expresses his thanks, but Picard sternly warns him that even though Maxwell’s actions were wrong, the facts show that his information was right. He says the Enterprise will be back to lead the fight against the Cardassians if necessary.
____________________
A wonderful show that not only offered a strong and tragic figure in Bob Gunton’s Captain Maxwell but also added some long-overdue depth to O’Brien’s character. Even the scientific deux ex machina ­ transporting through one-fiftieth of a second break in recycling shields ­ was well done. Other nice touches included references to the depleted post-Borg fleet and the shield-dropping prefix code, a concept dating back to Star Trek II.
While the philosophical conflict was between the two captains, it was O’Brien who butted heads with his counterpart Cardassian and sang an Irish song with his former commander ­ a gem of a scene suggested by Michael Piller (which Rick Berman picked) ­ helping to diffuse a tense situation and returning Maxwell to a sane but broken state. (The song, “The Minstrel Boy” by Thomas Moore, figured prominently in the movie The Man Who Would Be King.) We also learned that young Miles Edward O’Brien was a peaceful, nature-loving boy who never killed until a Cardassian patrol forced him to. Mentioning his stint as tactics officer on the Rutledge provided a nice setup for future bridge duty (“Redemption II”, “Disaster”).
Only Mark “Sarek” Lenard had played three different aliens in the Trek universe until Marc Alaimo did it here as one of the Cardassians after appearing as a Selay and a Romulan (“The Last Outpost”, “The Neutral Zone”); in his next go-round he would play a human (“Time’s Arrow”). Also back was John Hancock as the admiral who seems to get only Picard’s touchiest security problems (“The Defector”). And Bob Gunton, seen on Broadway in Sweeney Todd, did perhaps the best job of any actor since William “Decker” Windom, in 1967’s “The Doomsday Machine,” of conveying a once-strong Starfleet commander gone awry.
Greg Jein was the model maker responsible for bringing Ed Miarecki’s Nebula-class starship to life as the NCC-65420, USS Phoenix, already seen briefly in an earlier show, (“Future Imperfect”); its dedication plaque hangs in Maxwell’s ready room instead of on the bridge. The Cardassian warship Trager was designed by Rick Sternbach and built by Miarecki and Tom Hudson. As a “major” race’s vessel it began as a simple ship with pods, evolved into a scorpionlike design, then lost its appendages and took its final form, which Sternbach based on an Egyptian ankh.
Like that of the Talarians (“Suddenly Human”), Cardassian space is on the “west” side of the Federation, opposite the Klingon and Romulan territories, judging from their sector numbers and the art staff’s galactic plane-view “map.” Continuing the tradition of giving each alien culture a signature color for its energy devices, Cardassian phasers are pink.
