TNG Season 1

Let’s address the obvious things first. Yes, “The Neutral Zone” rehashes key elements from both “Space Seed” and “Balance of Terror”. Yes, the Romulans as depicted in this episode bear no relation whatsoever to the way they were portrayed in the Original Series, in essence throwing all the interesting commentary and contrast they bring with them out an airlock. Yes, those bases were indeed meant to be destroyed as part of a story arc to introduce the Borg that gets promptly forgotten about as soon as this episode airs. And yes, the motivations of the main cast are seriously wonky and out of character such that characterization of people like Picard and Riker waffles back and forth bafflingly from scene to scene. This is all self-evident and indisputable. There, is, however, a pretty simple explanation for all of it that can’t just be laid at the creative team.

If you guessed it’s the Writer’s Guild strike, well, good for you! You’re getting good at this. I’m afraid you don’t win anything, though.

“The Neutral Zone” is basically a first draft spec script. The reason it is a first draft spec script is because it was the only thing the team had lying around to put into production to close out the year, and essentially nobody was allowed to actually revise it so it would, you know, make sense and be coherent. Every single fault the finished product has can straightforwardly be pinned on this, and to single out “The Neutral Zone” in particular for blame seems a bit unfair to me, not only given how sketchy things are going to get next year, but also due to the altogether reasonable defense that, through such gems as “The Naked Now”, “Code of Honor”, “Angel One” and “Skin of Evil”, this team has demonstrated itself to be perfectly capable of screwing up *without* an industry-wide Writer’s Guild strike to slow them down further. But also because, in spite of everything, “The Neutral Zone” really does work and contributes quite a lot to the unfolding text of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Romulans are, of course, a problem. After D.C. Fontana and others spent the better part (and I mean that quite emphatically in several senses) of the Original Series trying to make them a social parallel of the Federation, in some sense a people more cultured and sophisticated than us, “The Neutral Zone” basically undoes all of that in one fell swoop by making them an entire species of Dick Dastardlys. This does not, it should be noted, doom the Star Trek: The Next Generation Romulans for good: Future stories set in this continuity will make impressive strides with them and redeem this early tactical blunder by essentially depicting them as a fractured and splintered figurehead empire in decline…which actually *does* build off some themes from the Original Series, though they’re back to mustache-twirling by the Dominion War.…

Continue Reading

Rightly regarded as a high-water mark for the first season, “Conspiracy” is praised and fondly remembered by a certain kind of Star Trek fan for its unexpected gore-filled climax straight out of a splatterhouse horror flick or one of the Alien movies, and by less frightening Star Trek fans for its shocking perversion of the heretofore untouchable Starfleet Command. Of course it’s not really. It was, as is so often the case with this sort of thing, just aliens after all. And yet even so, “Conspiracy” does push the envelope noticeably for Star Trek: The Next Generation, even if its overall impact is arguably more muted than it perhaps could have been.

The idea of something rotten afoot in the hallowed halls of the supposedly incorruptible Starfleet Command should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this season with any degree of care or nuance. The seed was planted arguably as early as as “Too Short a Season”, where Admiral Mark Jameson’s flawless execution of Starfleet’s hero archetype plunged an entire planet into a four decade long world war. Then we had this episode’s direct antecedent, “Coming of Age”, where Admiral Quinn and Dexter Remmick interrogated the Enterprise crew under concerns something very big and very grave was about to happen that would “threaten the very core of Federation society”. Both of those episodes were, in one respect or another, about showing how the Enterprise was very likely the last bastion of progressive hope and idealism in an increasingly hostile and uncaring universe, and that’s not even touching on the direct diegetic and extradiegetic challenges to its ethics and values the show’s seen elsewhere from characters like Q, the Ferengi, the Tkon Empire, the Microbrain and even, debatably, Lwaxana Troi. If Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season has been about bringing Star Trek back for the Long 1980s, it’s also been about forcing it to prove it deserves to exist in the Long 1980s.

And “Conspiracy” is the moment where this all comes to a head…or at least, it should have been. Because while it does build on these themes and neatly, satisfyingly wrap up the story arc introduced in “Coming of Age”, it doesn’t exactly do so in the way writer Tracy Tormé had hoped it would. The original plan was to reveal the Conspiracy to be just that: An actual conspiracy orchestrated by Starfleet Command’s higher-ups to instate martial law across known space and rule the Federation as a military junta. It would have been the deliciously perfect logical end result of Starfleet’s thinly veiled militarism: It doesn’t take much for someone surrounded by that kind of rhetoric and ideology to suddenly decide the world would be better off with them in charge. Couple that with the troublesome Philosopher King overtones Starfleet and the Federation have always had, and you get a recipe for a truly terrifying mixture of imperialism and grandiose self-entitlement.…

Continue Reading

Most people tend to remember “We’ll Always Have Paris” as the episode where Michelle Phillips guest starred in an odd bit of celebrity casting (this being the second documented connection to the Phillips family and The Mamas and the Papas in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season). I remember it as the first episode where Tasha Yar wasn’t on the Enterprise.

There is, of course, a bit more to it than either of those interpretations might lead you to believe. Not much, I’ll grant, but some. “We’ll Always Have Paris” is essentially Star Trek: The Next Generation doing Casablanca, with Captain Picard as Humphrey Bogart, Michelle Phillips as Ingrid Bergman and a great big fuck-off mad science experiment with time distortion in place of World War II and Nazis. This is all, of course, fairly standard operating procedure for the show at this point: The Manheim Effect, which causes one specific point in time to repeat itself, is rather transparently supposed to be a metaphor for Jenice meeting Captain Picard again and the latter’s subsequent re-examination of his past life choices. In this regard, it doesn’t bring much new to the table in terms of maturation themes then the likes of, say “The Battle”, “Too Short a Season”, “Coming of Age” or “Heart of Glory”. It does, however, handle romantic relationships a hell of a lot better than “The Naked Now” did.

What I love about this episode is how emotionally honest everyone is, especially Captain Picard. There was room here for the character to be played very gruff and uncomfortable, as if he’s unwilling to own his past mistakes (“Enough of this self-indulgence!” springs immediately to mind for me here), but Patrick Stewart, as usual, plays against this, and infuses his lines with a delicate balance of remorse, nostalgia, affection and acceptance. But due to the script’s stronger moments and the actors’ considerable skill (Michelle Phillips is, perhaps surprisingly, quite good as well), “We’ll Always Have Paris” comes across as a very emotionally mature story about two adults coming to terms with their past lives and past selves. In that sense, while it doesn’t particularly *add* anything to the themes Star Trek: The Next Generation has been working with over the course of the past year, it does very clearly build upon them. It’s a story the Original Series not only wouldn’t do, but was flatly incapable of doing, and its another sign that in spite of its occasional missteps, Star Trek: The Next Generation genuinely has transformed Star Trek into something newer, fresher and better in its inaugural season.

There’s a lot of subtler moments outside of Patrick Stewart’s and Michelle Phillips’ turns that make this clear as well. The fact that we *can* so casually and dismissively say the sci-fi plot and the human story are meant to be allegories for one another means we’ve reached the point where we can take that for granted, and that’s extremely telling.…

Continue Reading

“The Arsenal of Freedom” is without question near the top of my list of highlights for Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season and I’ll never understand why nobody seems to talk about it. This isn’t just good with qualifiers, which is how you can describe a decent segment of this year if you were inclined to be uncharitable, it’s genuinely *great*. It’s a flagrantly experimental story that’s one of the first clear departures from the Original Series template Star Trek: The Next Generation is saddled with and is, in retrospect, probably the definitive example of the kind of risks the series only took in its inaugural year. Everything about this episode is demonstrative of a show that’s creatively energized, bold, confident and self-assured.

Funny thing then that “The Arsenal of Freedom” was also the subject of one of the biggest, ugliest creative disputes of its early years. The debate in question apparently stemmed from the scene where Captain Picard and Doctor Crusher fall into the underground control room. In the original script, Picard was to have been injured and Beverly would have to tend to him, confessing her feelings for him in the process. Writer Robert Lewin wanted it to be an extension of the romantic subplot that supposedly underwrites their characters, but Gene Roddenberry wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea so the roles were switched and the dramatic moments were toned down by Maurice Hurley, who handled the final script. As a general rule, Hurley was always fiercely loyal to Roddenberry as a producer and always kept in lock-step with whatever he thought he wanted. This spat resulted in Lewin leaving the show, and is sometimes cited as evidence of Roddenberry’s (and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s) frustrating lack of interest in conflict and character development.

And it’s a bullshit argument.

While it’s true Roddenberry was not terribly interested in character drama (he was far more intrigued by ideas and concepts as both a writer and producer, sometimes to his benefit, other times to his disadvantage), there are several reasons why Roddenberry might not have approved of Lewin’s first draft. First of all, Beverly’s action would have been flagrantly a Hippocratic Oath violation, which is my first issue with it, but also the scene as originally written was simply put cornball and not Star Trek: The Next Generation. People always mistake this show’s pioneering work in utopian conflict resolution for a *lack* of conflict because they lack the media literacy necessary to understand there’s a difference (not even getting into the fact you can perfectly well have plot without any sort of conflict at all), this is what makes Star Trek: The Next Generation so incredibly difficult to write for and I think that’s what happened here.

 Because the subplot as Hurley rewrote it is lovely: There isn’t a passionate, bombastic, angst-ridden declaration of love between Captain Picard and Doctor Crusher, no, but instead we get several wonderful scenes of two characters forced together through an emergency who keep themselves going by talking and getting to know each other a little better.…

Continue Reading

Like most of the first season, “Heart of Glory” is a moment notably effaced in the standard historical record. It is, quite obviously, designed to be the first big Worf and Klingons episode. According to fans, the first big Worf and Klingons episode is “A Matter of Honor” from next year, which is curious, considering that episode is far more about Commander Riker. It’s especially frustrating for me in this regard, because not only is “Heart of Glory” itself very good, it’s also the episode I always saw as ushering in the part of the first season that (with one notable exception) starts to get really consistently confident and adventurous.

This is not a story about Klingons, at least not entirely and not to the extent any of the Ron Moore penned stuff will be. Nor is it some angst-ridden character story about Worf where he’s forced to decide where his loyalties lie. There is never any doubt Worf will remain loyal to the Enterprise: In fact, the entire episode hinges on setting up a double feint where Captain Picard, Commander Riker and Tasha Yar (and, metatextually, us) all begin to doubt and mistrust Worf’s intentions with Klingon reactionaries aboard only to feel really ashamed at the end when Worf delivers a stirring speech about how true honour and glory lies with doing battle with your inner demons and trying to become a better person. It’s a bang-on perfect Star Trek: The Next Generation brief, which is all the more astonishing considering it was bounced around between four different writers like a hot potato. “Heart of Glory” is in truth a deeply touching commentary on empathy, personal journeys and where you make your home, and as good as some of the future Worf episodes are going to be, there’s an undeniable and irreducible idealistic maturity to this episode that gets lost under every single successive creative team to handle him and his people.

In some respects then “Heart of Glory” is another Original Series/Phase II revist, in this case John Meredyth Lucas’ “Kitumba”. That episode concerned a top-secret mission to the Klingon home world where the Enterprise crew had to stop a civil war that would have put all of local space at risk, all the while learning that while Klingon culture is very different to ours, it’s still manifestly a culture of its own that we must respect. D.C. Fontana worked on this script briefly, and she at least was surely aware of “Kitumba”, having been on Phase II‘s staff as well. When viewed this way, “Heart of Glory” does seem to be a bit after its time, considering the Klingons are manifestly supposed to be our allies now and thus “Kitumba”’s central punch no longer quite seeming to deliver or by necessary. However, “Heart of Glory” does hedge against this by going out of its way to paint Korris and his crew as reactionary fundamentalists obsessed with returning to an imagined past Golden Age of glory and honour.…

Continue Reading

Despite its reputation and admittedly rocky week-to-week quality, there’s a remarkable thematic cohesion to Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first season, perhaps even more so than in later years. Reoccurring motifs are emphasized and re-examined with dutiful regularity, episodes are clearly designed to build off of one another and there are quite a few attempts at introducing both long and short term story arcs. Granted they’re not always successful, but the intent is there and should be acknowledged.

“Coming of Age” is a solid example of this, and also serves as a functional microcosm of the show as it exists at this point in time. Most notably, the story arc it tries to put into place actually sticks here, unlike in “Angel One” where it gets forgotten, reintroduced at the last second in the season finale, and then hastily abandoned again. Obviously, we know the big Conspiracy with Starfleet Command that has Admiral Quinn and Dexter Remmick all paranoid is going to pay off at the end of the year in an episode I’m currently forgetting the title of. That’s worth dealing with then, though I will point out now that the story arc as envisioned and the story arc as realised were not exactly one and the same. But even as a standalone work, “Coming of Age” is quite structurally well-done, with two distinct subplots and a metaplot that all revolve around the theme of maturing and reaching new stages in one’s life. The first one involves Wesley Crusher so we’re going to avoid talking about it more than necessary (though I’ll give a nod to the Benzite, another one of my favourite Star Trek: The Next Generation creature designs, even if the one I remember is Menden from “A Matter of Honor”, not Mordock here), but the one about Captain Picard contemplating accepting a promotion and leaving the Enterprise is really quite lovely.

In some ways, this is a rejection of Kirk being promoted to admiral in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But let’s stop and think about that for a minute: First of all, even in 1988 it took guts to stand up to Wrath of Khan, already firmly entrenched in fan consciousness as “The Bestest Most Perfect Star Trek Ever” (though younger audiences who weren’t libertarian worshipers of Robert A. Heinlein might have posited Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home instead). Quinn even suggest Picard go teach new academy recruits, just like Kirk did. More to the point though, a fairly recent and common redemptive reading of Khan I’ve seen goes out of its way to talk up and romanticize the idea of Star Trek characters growing old and settling down, citing both Kirk’s promotion and the fact not only Khan, but David and Carol Marcus coming back into his life as examples of how the narrative is in support of this.…

Continue Reading

It’s interesting that “Home Soil” is such an overlooked episode, given the fact various Star Trek: The Next Generation creative teams essentially remake it at least three times over the course of the series’ run. Its central theme, a debate over whether or not computer technology can develop sentience and self-awareness and should be considered life, leading eventually to a climax that Starfleet and the Federation in general walk away from with egg on their faces, reoccurs as the guiding thesis behind “The Measure of a Man” and “Evolution” and as the B-plot to “The Quality of Life”. Each of these episodes is much better received and remembered than “Home Soil” but, with the exception of “The Measure of a Man” (which has the added benefit of being a high-stakes drama about Data), they’re all basically reiterations of it.

I’ve never had a problem with “Home Soil” personally and, of the four episodes, it’s actually the one I’m likely to turn on most frequently. While good, “The Measure of a Man” has too much pathos for my particular casual viewing tastes, “Evolution” is a stumbling, rushed, mediocre debut for Michael Piller that doesn’t really showcase all of his talents in the best light and is about Wesley Crusher, and while I do quite like “The Quality of Life”, the tech mystery plot about Data and the Exocomps is manifestly not my main attraction to it. This though is a jaunty space adventure with a decent central mystery, some lovely set design and matte work, some fun banter and rapport from the regular cast and another opportunity for the Enterprise to set itself apart from the rest of Starfleet. It’s also the natural episode to follow “11001001”, as Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s interest in technoscientific transhumanism and machine singularities seems to still be lingering: After all, our mysterious alien is *literally* a collective computer consciousness. More importantly, there remains the faintest trace of our Lovely Angels’ divine light, as “Home Soil”, just like its predecessor, maintains an ethereal and ephemeral link to Dirty Pair. Namely, to The Dirty Pair Strike Again.

I really doubt any of the production staffers this week had read the book (I mean Mike Okuda might have, but not necessarily, as there are plenty of fans of the Sunrise animes who have never read Haruka Takachiho’s novels), but it’s interesting to compare and contrast the plots of both stories: There’s considerably more overlap than you might assume at first glance. Both “Home Soil” and The Dirty Pair Strike Again concern erratic goings-on at a mining colony and a suspicious number of deaths that increasingly seem to be less than accidental. Kei and Yuri/the Enterprise crew get called in to investigate, things get personal once they themselves start to be targeted by the unseen assailants, and our heroes stumble upon a vast conspiracy that has engulfed the entire planet. It’s soon revealed that the miners discovered something beneath the planet’s surface (in both cases, an entirely unknown, nonhuman collective consciousness) and immediately set about covering it up for selfish reasons: In Star Trek: The Next Generation, as part of an attempt to cut corners and meet quota in a pseudocapitalist system of production, and in Dirty Pair as an underhanded power-grab by an incestuous corporate-state ruling class in an attempt to centralize authority at the expense of the people’s spiritual growth.…

Continue Reading

A common theme in much science fiction, we’ve dealt with the subject of both transhumanism and posthumanism rather extensively already. In Star Trek, this has traditionally manifested in the multitude of non-corporial entities, godlike beings and androids that tend to show up. The Original Series was notoriously ambivalent on the subject, for as much as 1960s Gene Roddenberry hated the idea of machines replacing people, he also seemed somewhat fascinated by the notion that humans might become hyper evolved beings of pure thought, in essence, ideal rational actors. 1980s Gene Roddenberry, along with his contemporaries, have a very different viewpoint: First of all, there’s Data, who, while he doesn’t yet carry all of the symbolism he’s eventually going to, is already an indication Star Trek: The Next Generation might be toying with a novel conception of humanity.

But also ’round about the 1980s, transhumanism came to be associated in the pop discourse first and foremost with a very specific set of beliefs, typically involving augmenting or replacing bits of materialistic human life with mechanical, robotic and digital components. The rise of the personal computer allowed for a general ossification of the definition of cyborg, and the belief humanity’s future lay in becoming more and more intertwined with computer technology. The Borg are commonly read as a critique of this notion, a very simplistic and reductive pop Frankensteinianism that wrings its hands over unchecked material technoscience. But, as we will eventually discuss, this is not what the Borg actually are and, for various reasons, Star Trek: The Next Generation has a far more complex and nuanced relationship with the transhuman than this interpretation would lead you to believe.

This is, however, what “11001001” looks at with the characters of the Bynars, an entire species that has evolved in such close proximity to computers that their thoughts have become indistinguishable to binary code. Well, partially, because the episode is obviously not a critique of them: The crew is incredibly sympathetic to the Bynars all throughout, and Jonathan Frakes was so enamoured of them he wishes they’d stayed on as regular characters. And the way they’re realised is rather charming, with each half of a “base pair” acting as a kind of gate and decisions being made through relaying thought-bits between them. Even the joke explanation they give for why they stole the Enterprise at the end of the episode, “you might have said no”, ties into this: As entities of pure logic on a life-or-death mission, they could not accept any potential failure state, so they engineered a situation where that would be impossible. It’s a perfectly delightful conception of digital transhumanist philosophy as it popularly exists as of the Long 1980s.

This specific kind of transhumanism is, predictably, very grounded in technofetishim and materialism. The most recognisable manifestation of this in the contemporary political climate is likely the Church of the Singularity, a Silicon Valley-based faith that professes the rapid increased in digital computer technology over the past thirty or forty years is evidence of a looming “machine singularity”, where either our computers will become self-aware or will end up absorbing humanity somehow (a common version is the belief that humans will soon be able to upload our consciousnesses onto the Internet).…

Continue Reading