1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Half a Life”@2Next Generation episode #96
Production No.: 196
Aired: Week of May 6, 1991
Stardate 44805.3
Directed by Les Landau
Teleplay by Peter Allan Fields
Story by Ted Roberts and Peter Allan Fields
GUEST CAST
Lwaxana Troi: Majel Barrett
Dara: Michelle Forbes
B’Tardat: Terrence E. McNally
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Mr. Homn: Caryl Struyken
Dr. Timicin: David Ogden Stiers
Picard is nervous when Troi’s mother returns for a visit, but this time the ebullient Lwaxana has set her sights on Dr. Timicin, a quiet scientist who’s abroad to test stellar ignition theories that may enable him to save his world’s dying star.
Timicin, who invested his life’s work in the plan, is crushed when it eventually fails. Lwaxana can’t understand why he’s so despondent until he tells her he is nearly sixty, the age of the resolution: a ritual suicide to save children the burden of their parent’s aging.
Enraged, Lwaxana demands that Picard intervene. He can’t, of course, so she turns on Timicin herself: why doom his entire world by committing suicide when his research is so close to success? At first he resists, but eventually he agrees with her and seeks asylum.
His decision causes an uproar among his people, and armed ships are sent to retrieve him. Timicin stands firm, though, until his daughter beams up to plead with him to stand by the heritage he taught her. Touched, he agrees, and tells a tearful Lwaxana that the revolutionary will have to be someone else.
Later, Timicin is surprised when Lwaxana shows up as he prepares to beam down. If she is one of his loved ones, she tells him, she wants to be there with all the others when he says good-bye.
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Fans had looked forward to the guest appearance of M*A*S*H regular David Ogden Stiers in this outing, but it was Majel Barrett who surprised them by pulling off a well-done first look at the non-comic side of Lwaxana Troi; the segment features the two guest stars as perhaps no other TNG hour ever has. Its theme, the worth of older citizens and the problems of the aged, was handled in a thought-provoking way by Peter Allan Fields, who was hired as a staff writer the following season, and his partner Ted Roberts.
Though she had only one small scene, actress Michelle Forbes more than stepped out of the shadow of the two guest leads with her performance as Timicin’s loving yet embittered daughter, Dara ­ so much so that she would land a new recurring TNG role in the coming season. A student at the Performing Arts High School in Houston, she moved to New York at sixteen to audition for a movie and wound up staying. She worked on The Guiding Light for almost three years and moved on to TV guest roles.
At planet Haven, Picard and his crew meet up with Lwaxana Troi, Deanna’s mother, who blusters aboard when her late husband’s best friends, the Millers, insist on seeing the childhood genetic bonding vows consummated between Deanna and their son, Wyatt.
Deanna dutifully agrees and comes to find Wyatt a good companion, much to imzadi Riker’s confusion. Wyatt is puzzled because Deanna is not the blonde he has seen in visions since childhood.
The wedding plans go on despite the mothers-in-law’s comical feuding: First the pre-wedding dinner turns into a shambles; then the Millers want no part of the traditional nude Betazoid wedding.
Everyone’s plans go out the window, though, when a number of plague-ridden Tarellians, long thought dead, show up at Haven. Wyatt, a doctor, finds the blond girl of his visions is a Tarellian. She had pictured him for years as well without knowing why.
Wyatt apologizes to Deanna and shocks his parents by following his perceived destiny at last: joining the Tarellians to help them and his love find a cure.
Picard is glad to get his counselor back and to see Lwaxana’s flustering flirtations end.
Majel Barrett was hardly a newcomer to the Trek universe, having portrayed Nurse Christine Chapel in the 1960’s series and Dr. Chapel in the first and fourth movies ­ and having been Gene Roddenberry’s wife for nearly twenty years. Here she began what turned into a yearly visit as the “Auntie Mame of the Galaxy” and the bane of Picard’s existence as well as her daughter’s.
Troi here calls Riker “Bill” ­ the first and only time anyone does so in the series. This also marks the last time she would use the Betazoid word for “beloved,” imzadi, until the end of the second season (in “Shades of Gray”) ­ a barometer for the direction their relationship would take.
In one of the loveliest coincidences of Trek trivia, Richard Compton found himself directing this episode exactly twenty years to the day after appearing in a one-line walk-on role on the old show ­ as Lieutenant Washburn, a member of Scotty’s team trying to repair the dead Constellation in “The Doomsday Machine.”
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Heart of Glory”@2Next Generation episode #20
Production No.: 120
Aired: Week of March 21, 1988
Stardate: 41503.7
Directed by Rob Bowman
Teleplay by Maurice Hurley
Story by Herbert Wright and D. C. Fontana
GUEST CAST
Korris: Vaughn Armstrong
Konmel: Charles H. Hyman
Captain K’Nera: David Froman
Kunivas: Robert Bauer
Nurse: Brad Zerbst
Ramos: Dennis Madalone
Responding to signs of a battle in the Romulan Neutral Zone, the Enterprise finds only a battered Talarian freighter and ­ thanks to La Forge’s new VISOR’s visual feed ­ three Klingons, one near death. Their leader, Korris, explains that the ship was attacked by Ferengi and they were beamed away just before the ship exploded.
But after their comrade dies and Picard assigns Worf as a guide, the two survivors proclaim their hatred of the UFP-Klingon Alliance; they want to reclaim what they call the true Klingon warrior spirit. They appeal to Worf to listen to his heart and give up his life with the humans; the Starfleet Klingon is torn by their words.
Meanwhile, a Klingon Defense Force cruiser approaches and explains what really happened: the Klingons are rebels, who hijacked the Talarian freighter and destroyed a Klingon ship sent to pursue them. The two Klingons are detained, but they escape later with a homemade weapon; one is killed.
Korris, threatening to destroy the warp intermix chamber in Engineering, demands to be given the battle section and tries again to sway Worf, who tries to talk him out of sabotaging the ship. Korris lunges, Worf fires ­ and it is over.
The Klingon captain is impressed by Worf, but the lieutenant politely turns down his invitation to serve in the KDF fleet, electing to remain aboard the Enterprise.
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At last ­ a Klingon show! Hurley, who spent just two days creating a teleplay based on Fontana and Wright’s premise, was proud of this first-year episode, which finally shed some light on Worf’s background and on the current Klingon-Federation relationship. The seeds of the Klingon saga to come are planted here with the story of Khitomer and the Romulan betrayal, and Dorn truly gets a chance to shine. This tale of personal conflict does for Worf what “The Naked Time” did for Spock back in the early days of the first series.
What may be overlooked in the later introduction of Worf’s foster parents from Earth (“Family”) is the revelation here that he grew up with them on the farming colony of Gault and had a foster brother, still unseen, who joined him at Starfleet Academy but later left to return to the farm.
Bowman said he lost his late-season fatigue in the excitement over this script. Again he used the Steadicam aboard the disintegrating Batris. He designed an elaborate sequence of vertical shots for the final battle in the multi-decked main engineering section, and he toughened up the Klingon Konmel so that three phaser hits were needed to bring him down.
Footage of the old K’t’inga-class Klingon cruiser is lifted straight from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The Klingon phrases spoken here were written without any particular pattern by Hurley, but all later Klingonese would come from Mack Okrand, the linguist who developed the alien tongue for the Trek movies and wrote The Klingon Dictionary. The freighter Batris is referred to in the episode as a Talarian craft; the Talarian race would not be mentioned again until the fourth season (“Suddenly Human”).
Dennis Madalone here appeared in the second of many stunt roles as various crew members; he was first seen in “Where No One Has Gone Before”. Outside of Trek Robert Bauer, a drummer, was in a band (The Watch) with bass guitarist Michael Dorn for a time.
The Enterprise is sent to check on the missing USS Vico, a research ship sent to explore the interior of a Black Cluster ­ the remains of hundreds of protostars. The cluster generates gravitational tidal waves that are capable of buffeting a starship but pose no real danger.
Data finds a lone survivor among the wreckage of the Vico, a boy named Timothy, who tells his rescuer an alien vessel destroyed the ship. The evidence soon indicates otherwise, however, and Troi urges Data to foster his friendship with the boy to get the real story. Timothy, meanwhile, is so impressed by Data that he takes to mimicking the android.
Picard orders his ship into the Cluster to further investigate the Vico’s demise, whereupon the shock waves surprisingly grow more intense. The captain urges Timothy to recall what he can of his ship’s destruction, but the boy steadfastly refuses to change his story of alien invaders, until Data tells him androids do not lie. Timothy then breaks down and says he destroyed the Vico by accidentally touching a console.
Incredulous, Picard, Troi, and Data convince him that cannot be, that his action was just a coincidence. Timothy has trouble believing them, however, especially when he hears more and more power being ordered to shields; he tells Data his ship did the same thing. As a huge wave approaches the Enterprise, Data finally realizes that all shields should actually be lowered: they’re magnifying the waves’ effect. Timothy decides to drop his android act, but he and Data vow to stay friends anyway.
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This big Data-little Data episode provided a charming turn not only for the android but for ship’s counselor Troi as well, expanding on the depiction of her duties. “Jeri Taylor and I say that since we’ve been here the counseling scenes have become much more numerous and realistic,” Michael Piller said. “But that expertise doesn’t come from practicing ­ it comes from being a patron!”
We also get a rare bit of Geordi background in this story, learning of a traumatic fire he suffered through at age five before receiving his first VISOR. The scenario was originally one of the memory scenes not used in “Violations”.
This time around, Harley Venton’s transporter officer who also appeared in “Ensign Ro”, is named Hutchinson in the script, although the name remains unspoken. The USS Vico is a wrecked re-dress of Star Trek III’s Grissom, already used during TNG as the Tsiolkovsky in “The Naked Now”, The Breen, one of the races suspected of having destroyed the Vico, were mentioned in “The Loss” as a race that could not be sensed telepathically.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“Hide and Q”@2Next Generation episode #11
Production No.: 111
Aired: Week of November 23, 1987
Stardate: 41590.5
Directed by Cliff Bole
Teleplay by C. J. Holland and
Gene Roddenberry
Story by C. J. Holland
GUEST CAST
Q: John de Lancie
Disaster survivor: Elaine Nalee
Wes at 25: William A. Wallace
The meddling, troublesome Q returns just as the Enterprise is racing to help a disaster-struck mining colony ­ but this time his target is Riker.
The alien creates a bizarre test for the first officer and his away team by sending fanged humanoids in Napoleonic costumes to attack them. Then he tempts Riker with the Q’s power and lets him use it to restore Worf and Wesley, who were killed in the “skirmish.”
Riker is worried about the power’s influence on him, and when the Enterprise reaches the survivors of the mining disaster he refuses to help revive a dead girl.
Guilt over that leads him to yield to the power, and when Q presses him to grant his friends’ wishes, Picard does not object: sight for La Forge, adulthood for Wesley, a Klingon mate for Worf, humanity for Data. But, as Picard has predicted, they all turn down the gifts because of their origin ­ Q.
Riker understands the lesson, and a humiliated Q gets “called home” by his continuum for losing the bet. Riker’s power and the crew’s wishes all disappear.
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Maurice Hurley used his pen name, of C. J. Holland, on this episode, a move he later called a “misunderstanding” over Gene Roddenberry’s extensive rewrites. That issue was soon resolved, and in fact proved to be a turning point in the way scripts would be handled. Hurley’s original story postulated that there were only three Qs but that a hundred thousand residents lived on their dying planet. Those residents needed assistance to escape their dying world.
Returning director Cliff Bole, who noted that the series was still trying to find its tone with this show, had prepared by reviewing Q’s previous appearance in “Farpoint.” However, once the episode began shooting, he found that de Lancie’s affinity for the character and the actor’s sheer talent made much of that work unnecessary.
It is during the head-to-head battle of wits between Picard and Q in the ready room that the title of the captain’s prized display book can be read: The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare. What isn’t so clearly visible is that the book, as usual, is opened to Act III, Scene 2, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with two illustrations showing.
Although Q refers to the Federation “defeating” the Klingons, later events, such as those in “Heart of Glory”, suggest he is being typically sarcastic. As hinted at in “Justice”, Klingon foreplay is seen here as rough, at Michael Dorn’s suggestion, with extra Faith Minton as the first Klingon “warrioress” depicted in TNG. In a later episode, “The Dauphin”, Worf would imply that it is the male who is submissive.
An admiral’s dress uniform is briefly seen here for the first time, before the duty uniform debuted in “Too Short a Season”. As worn by Q, it has wider gold braid for the tunic flap and collar.
~1:[3,#b],4:[2,#i]@1“The High Ground”@2Next Generation episode #60
Production No.: 160
Aired: Week of January 29, 1990
Stardate: 43510.7
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
GUEST CAST
Alexana Devos: Kerrie Keane
Kyril Finn: Richard Cox
Waiter (Katik Shaw): Marc Buckland
Policeman: Fred G. Smith
Boy (Ansata): Christopher Pettiet
While helping victims of a terrorist bomb blast on nonaligned Rutia IV, Dr. Crusher is taken hostage by one of the terrorists, Kyril Finn. Finn is fighting for the independence of his people, the Ansata.
Aiding the abduction and all their other terrorist acts is dimensional-shift beaming, a mostly untraceable technology whose use came with a high cost: it breaks down body chemistry and is fatal if used too often.
Finn plans to keep Crusher for her medical skills and as a bargaining chip to increase Federation pressure on the Rutians to settle the conflict with his people.
Local police chief Alexana Devos, saddened but steeled to her job, is infuriated when Riker wants to bargain for Crusher. Angered by the medical aid brought to the Rutians by the Enterprise, Finn leads a raid to bomb its warp chamber. His plans are foiled by a cool-headed La Forge, but the Ansatan leader manages to get away with Picard as a second hostage.
After Wes develops a scan for the dimensional beaming and locates the Ansata underground base, the hostages are freed ­ but not until Devos kills Finn just as he’s about to shoot the captain.
Devos is coldly defensive: it’s better for Finn to die than to live as a prisoner. The crew leaves, thankful for their liberated officers but sobered by the unlikely prospects for peace anytime soon on the troubled planet.
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Written in response to the producers’ request for another action-adventure script, Snodgrass had to come up with the concept of dimensional shifting to meet Gene Roddenberry’s concern that the terrorists have a logical way to defeat the Enterprise’s vast array of technology.
Originally conceived of as a parallel to the American Revolution, the Ansata rebels’ cause was changed to resemble that of Northern Ireland, according to Snodgrass, although Finn’s reference to himself as a latter-day Washington stayed in. (During the episode, Data reveals that the reunification of Ireland on Earth occurs in 2025.)
Stewart’s campaign to give Picard’s character more action and romance may have begun to bear fruit by this time. The normally stoic captain belts a terrorist on the bridge of the Enterprise, foreshadowing his encounter with the Borg later on. The story also provides this season’s version of the ongoing tease of Beverly’s interrupted confiding to Picard, begun in “Arsenal of Freedom”. We also learn that she hails from North America.
Geordi experiences problems with one of his engineers, Reg Barclay, (nicknamed “Broccoli” by the crew), a nervous, shy officer who retreats to the holodeck when he can’t handle real life.
After Barclay botches an antigrav repair diagnosis, Picard urges Geordi to find the man’s strengths and bring him out. What the chief engineer finds is a host of holodeck fantasy programs ranging from the seduction of Deanna Troi to the casting of La Forge, Data, and Picard as Three Musketeers who are no match for Barclay’s swordplay.
Meanwhile, during a routine transport of medical samples to help stop a plague, systems such as the replicator, transporter, and warp drive begin to show flaws. Suddenly the matter-antimatter injectors freeze open, catapulting the ship forward with a sudden burst of warp speed. Enterprise then continues to accelerate; if Geordi can’t find a way to slow it down, the starship will self-destruct in minutes.
It is meek Barclay who realizes the problem stems from a little-used substance leaked from the medical-sample containers and then spread by crew members to the affected systems. That known, La Forge is able to unstick the injectors and get the ship back under control just in time.
Infused with confidence from his performance, Barclay decides to bid his holodeck fantasies good-bye once and for all, except ­ he smiles to himself ­ for program 9.
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A critic-pleasing tour de force for actor Dwight Schultz ­ remembered by many as “Mad Dog” Murdoch, the manic pilot from The A Team ­ this story answered the questions of viewers who’d wondered if even twenty-fourth-century Starfleet officers were beyond the temptations of overdosing on holodeck fantasy, or “holodiction.” Schultz had been a longtime Trek fan and, like Whoopi Goldberg, had asked to do the show if the right part came along.
While this episode provided the regular actors with some real change-of-pace scenes ­ including Wesley as a pie-eating Gainesborough “Blueboy” and Troi as the sheer-robed “goddess of empathy” ­ those involved in this show deny they intended to make a comment aimed at that faction among Trek’s most obsessive fans. Once again we see that apparently there is no privacy on the holodeck, since outsiders are free to enter someone else’s program at will as also seen in “Manhunt”, “The Emissary”, and “Cost of Living”.
We learn more about Guinan’s background here: her nonconformist slant and her mother’s misfit brother, Terkim. Trivia note: the test objects made of “duranium,” also mentioned in “A Matter of Perspective”, that O’Brien uses on the malfunctioning transporter are actually U.S. Navy sonar buoy transport cases.
The Enterprise is asked to check up on a remote terraforming station on Velara III that is working to transform the supposedly lifeless planet into a fertile, habitable Class M world.
But during the visit, an engineer is mysteriously killed when the laser drill in the hydraulics room goes berserk. Minutes later, Data narrowly avoids the same fate. As he and La Forge check it out, they discover what comes to be called a microbrain.
This unusual inorganic entity is a real life-form native to the planet. As Dr. Crusher and Data investigate the aliens, the tiny being declares war on the humans. By pumping and desalinating the Velarans’ narrow subsurface water ecosphere, the terraformers were killing its race.
The power it draws is strong enough to deflect the ships’ transporter beam. Finally it is deduced that the microbrain is photoelectric, and a shutdown of power weakens it enough so that it can be sent home.
In doing so, Picard’s crew promises to abide by the Velarans’ request for no UFP contact for three hundred years. The planet is quarantined.
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This story’s theme of unintended destruction echoes that of original Trek’s “Devil in the Dark,” in which a silicon-based mother creature attacks the miners who are unknowingly taking her eggs. This TNG, however, was a lackluster show, which Hurley recalls as the one where just about everything that could have gone wrong did ­ including pages having to be rewritten the day before shooting. About the best thing this episode has going for it is an explanation of terraforming and the Velarans’ name for humans: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water. Walter Gotell, who plays Mandl, will be remembered as General Gogol in the James Bond films. An unused matte painting of the Velara III station, complete with parked shuttlecraft, was prepared by Andrew Probert.
Dr. Crusher falls in love with Odan, a Trillian mediator en route to settle a bitter dispute between Peliar’s Alpha and Beta moons.
But while shuttling down to the surface he is mortally wounded by a marauding ship; in surgery his “Dr. Beverly” is shocked to find a parasite living inside him. Her surprise is compounded when she learns that Odan himself is the parasite occupying the host body in a joint symbiotic arrangement the Trill have used for generations.
As the dispute grows more intense, Riker volunteers to be Odan’s host while a replacement is sent. Although Riker’s human body adjusts to its new “co-tenant” Dr. Crusher cannot accept the first officer as her lover. Odan agrees to stay away.
The moons’ delegates are just as uneasy about the situation, but Odan convinces them he can be trusted. Finally Dr. Crusher decides she can accept Odan, even in Riker’s body, and they spend one more night together. Odan then settles the political dispute in a marathon session that greatly weakens Riker’s body.
Dr. Crusher removes Odan to save Riker’s body; both recover well. Then the expected Trill host body replacement arrives only to turn out to be female.
Crestfallen, Beverly admits she can’t take Odan’s constant changes. The two do, however, exchange vows of love before he leaves.
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Another tale that could only be told in science fiction, Horvat’s script gives Gates McFadden a rare chance to show Beverly as a woman of passion, and even dallies with homosexuality (more precisely, asexuality) until the doctor admits she is unable to accept Odan in a female form.
Marvin Rush, director of photography since season three, became the first of three in-house staffers in a row to get a turn in the director’s chair. Rush started out on the original WKRP in Cincinnati as a camera operator before moving on to low-budget films and sitcoms such as Dear John and Frank’s Place, where he caught the eye of the TNG staff. He recalls that much of his effort went into helping Franc Luz and Jonathan Frakes establish a continuity for Odan ­ and into disguising McFadden’s seven-month pregnancy. James Cleveland McFadden-Talbot, her first son, would be born over the hiatus on June 10 in Los Angeles ­ a well-timed delivery.
In a nice echo of the workout scene from “The Price”, we now see Beverly talk to Deanna about her new lover. The scene is played out in the ship’s barbershop, where we meet another Bolian barber, as in “Data’s Day” and “Ensign Ro”. An uncredited Robert Harper played the speaking role of Lathal Bine, representative from Peliar Zel’s Beta moon.
The large shuttle seen here ­ named the Hawking for American physicist Stephen F. Hawking ­ is not new; it is the original full-scale set, little seen due to its piecemeal construction history (“Coming of Age”).
