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It’s day 3 of the countdown till Star Trek Beyond and I’ve moved on to looking at the third Star
Trek show: The Next Generation. Launching in 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation revitalized the franchise and really
changed how nerd properties were perpetuated. Previously, every iteration of Trek had come with the same
characters; it was always Kirk, always Spock, always McCoy. Now, for the first time, there was a new
series with the Star Trek name but no returning heroes, a new crew with a new
status quo and new dangers.
This is the show that would launch Star Trek’s renaissance,
eventually leading to two spin-off shows and a full series of movies all its
own. The ‘90s was the decade of
Star Trek and this show is the reason why. As befits such a monumental series, I’m celebrating it here
with a top 12 list as, even though the show is really good, its quality is much
more limited to characters and short episodes than an overarching kind of
quality in the vein of Deep Space Nine or
Voyager.
12. REMEMBER ME
I think a lot of folks consider this a weaker episode but I
really like it, mainly because it’s one of the few episodes to focus on the
ship’s Doctor: Beverley Crusher.
Dr. Crusher was always a weak link on the show, lacking the definition
of a lot of her peers, but this episode actually afforded her a greater amount
of depth and identity, playing off her back-story in a neat and clever
way. What’s more, the core concept
at hand is damn creepy and I’ve always liked it when Star Trek went into horror
territory.
In the episode, an old friend comes to visit Dr. Crusher
but things go wrong when he disappears and no one remembers him ever being on
the ship. As the episode goes on,
more and more people start disappearing and Dr. Crusher is the only person to
realize they’re gone. What’s more,
the universe itself seems to be shrinking around her and time is quickly
running out.
That’s a great set-up
for a horror story, doing a nice job to negate the standard systems that would
keep Dr. Crusher safe. See, even
though the shrinking space is a problem the bigger and more chilling threat is
that the universe seems to be editing itself with each disappearance so there’s
no one to help her solve the problem.
It eventually turns out to be the fault of Wesley Crusher,
this being the third time he almost killed his mom, when he created an
experimental warp field that dropped Dr. Crusher into a pocket universe shaped
by her fears of losing people.
That’s a nifty concept and does a good job emphasizing Crusher’s
back-story as a single mom with a dead husband. The show rarely touched on Crusher’s dead spouse so whenever
they did it was a nice change of pace.
11. CHAIN OF
COMMAND
Here’s one I think a good amount of people are actually kind
of aware of, even if it’s not a full awareness. The episode is about Picard leading a black ops mission
against one of TNG’s B-list bad guy groups; the Cardassians. The Cardassians are a pretty unique
creation of Next Generation’s middle
years as they’re essentially a functional authoritarian state, a space
dictatorship that the Federation is forced to interact with. They don’t have the secretive sweep of
the Romulans or the warrior honor of the Klingons, they’re scheming, viscous
monsters famed for genocide and imperialism.
Though they were introduced earlier this is the episode
that really cements how creepy and oppressive their reign is. The main gimmick of the episode, and
the part that pretty much everyone remembers, is that Picard gets captured by
them and ends up tortured for several days on end by a Cardassian played by
David Warner in one of his best Trek roles.
These are the parts of the episode that really stick with
you, seeing Warner’s detachment as a torturer and the way he indoctrinates
others into a view of disassociation and inhumanity, even teaching his daughter
that Picard doesn’t actually feel pain or comprehend the world like a real
person would. It’s a chilling look
into an authoritarian regime that comes off all too realistic. There’s also a pretty interesting
B-plot about a new Captain taking over the Enterprise in Picard’s absence but
the prisoner stuff with Picard is what really sells this episode.
10. HOLLOW
PURSUITS
Here’s a pretty fun little episode that was refreshingly
focused on comedy. I’m honestly
surprised there aren’t more TNG episodes that take the comedic touch given how
much of the show basically functioned as a space sitcom. Anyway, this episode introduced one
Reginald Barclay, an intelligent Star Fleet officer who suffers from crippling
social anxiety. Given that there’s
a running joke about how the ship’s councilor was objectively terrible at her
job, Barclay has a lot of trouble overcoming his anxiety and ends up retreating
into the ship’s holodeck instead.
The holodeck is one of the major advancements featured in
TNG, a massive expanse of space that could ship into any location imaginable
that the crew were theoretically meant to use for recreation. I say ‘theoretically’ because more
often than not the holodeck ended up getting used for questionable reasons or
came to life and tried to kill everybody.
This episode is a former as we see Barclay use the deck to create
simulated versions of the crew to be his friends or even have sex with him, or
occasionally he just beats them up to vent his frustrations.
It’s a screwy idea but one that definitely makes the
concept of the holodeck a lot more worthwhile than just using it to stage
meandering film noir episodes. It
actually feels like it’s taking the human experience forward, asking questions
about what’s legitimately acceptable in a virtual space and how people might
use VR to escape from reality.
Given the growing prevalence of social media, VR, and now AR the entire
situation is a lot more relevant now than it was in the 1990s.
9. A FISTFUL OF
DATAS
Speaking of the holodeck, here’s another fun episode that
made great use of that little plot device without ever feeling long-winded or
contrived about it. The set-up is
that during a slow day on the Enterprise Worf and his son Alexander head down
to the holodeck to play through an Old West program and are later joined by
Councilor Troi, who Worf was involved in a flirtatious relationship with at the
time.
However, in the midst of
their fun Geordi and Data mess something up while trying to run the ship’s
systems through Data’s brain, causing the holodeck to develop a malevolent
sentience visualized by casting every one of its Old West characters as
Data. From there, Troi, Worf, and
Alexander must work together to complete the story and escape the holodeck
before they end up six feet under.
One of the nice things about this episode is how aware it
is that the premise is incredibly goofy.
There’s no real attempt to make the villains imposing or threatening,
just letting them stand as boilerplate cowboy baddies because that’s exactly
the kind of villain the holodeck would produce.
What’s more, the episode places a welcome emphasis on Worf’s
relationship with his son Alexander, which was rarely explored in great detail
but always proved engaging when it popped up. Finally, this is the best Councilor Troi episode there is as
she spends the whole thing doing a hilarious Clint Eastwood type impression and
the laconic nonchalance suits her exceptionally. All around it’s just a very fun episode with great adventure
and some major laughs.
8. BROTHERS
Fun fact about Star
Trek: The Next Generation, series regular Brent Spiner ended up the show’s
favorite tool for multi-part episodes.
Seriously, Spiner is a good actor in his own right but the number of
times the show calls upon him to play a ton of characters at once is just
staggering and honestly only works a few times and this episode is the best
example of it.
Spiner’s main
character was Data, an android that Star Fleet discovered on some random planet
and Picard appointed to his crew as a fun way to tempt fate. Seriously, it’s actually a major plot
point that nobody knows how Data’s programming works so Picard decided to give
him access to the ship’s control seems like a huge risk.
Living up that risk, in this episode Data receives a
mystery signal and goes rogue, hijacking the ship just when a young child is in
desperate need of some anti-venom they don’t have on board. Data taking over the ship is one of his
best scenes, it’s a chilling vision of how mechanically efficient and truly
deadly he is when he’s truly unleashed.
The back half of the episode features Data heading down to a planet
where he meets his evil twin Lore and his creator Dr. Sungh. This is where Spiner shows his acting
skill as he plays all three characters in what’s essentially a one-man
show. All around, this is a pretty
great one.
7. YESTERDAY’S
ENTERPRISE
Another two-parter, this episode is one of the few really
good time travel stories to come out of Star Trek. The story gets into some very weird mechanics of time travel
and destiny and whether or not an event was always going to happen or was
driven by choice but really none of that matters. What matters is that it’s a very well told and emotional
story enabled through the central gimmick of a temporal jump.
The set-up is that while traveling
through space, the Enterprise encounters a mysterious energy vortex. Just as the ship is getting ready to
investigate, a ship emerges from the vortex and all of reality shifts around
them. The ship that emerges from
the vortex is the Enterprise-C, a ship that, in the main time line, was lost
defending a Klingon colony from Romulans.
However, now that the Enterprise-C has warped into the
present, it was never lost fighting the Romulans and the Klingon/Federation
peace treaty never manifested. As
such, we’re confronted with a dark alternate present where the Federation has
been at war with the Klingons for nearly 10 years and has become highly militarized
as a result.
The crew all wear
side arms and turtlenecks, the ship’s lighting is low to conserve power, and
military rank is valued above all else.
It’s a dark vision of the present and eventually the crew realizes that
the only way to avoid this future is to send the Enterprise-C back through the
vortex of time so that the Romulans can destroy it. It’s a tense and dramatic story of how all of reality can
turn on the life or death of one ship and one crew.
6. THE WOUNDED
Another Cardassian episode, in fact, this is the episode
that actually debuted them as a new enemy for the Federation to contend
with. It wasn’t till the spin-off
show Deep Space Nine that the
Cardassians were a genuinely major threat to the Federation but they remained a
serious thorn in Star Fleet’s side during the TNG days and a blotch on their
record, as this episode shows.
See, the episode revolves around a diplomatic agreement that was reached
to end years of hostility between the Cardassians and the Federation and while
there’s some wiggle room in the document it’s basically a confirmation of
victory for the Cardassians.
The agreement, coupled with some mysterious recent
Cardassian movement, ends up prompting a major Star Fleet general to take
action against the Cardassians, launching an assault on several of the
territories that were given to them by the Federation.
It’s a powerful story that plays on
national pride, PTSD, neglected veterans, and the power of hatred as Picard
works desperately with the Cardassian authorities to coral the general and
avoid another war. This episode
features some of Picard’s best speeches and best moments along with a knock out
ending twist.
5. THE MEASURE OF
A MAN
Another Data episode, this one functioning as pretty much
the only good thing to come out of TNG’s early seasons. It’s about a scientist named Dr. Maddox
who initially wanted to experiment on Data to figure out what made him
tick. Maddox’ first proposals were
declined but now he’s back with a transfer order and Star Fleet backing to
dismantle Data for weird experiments and such. The situation prompts Data to resign which opens the
question of whether or not he can resign and launches a legal proceeding over
whether or not Data has the actual right to make his own decisions and whether
or not he’s the property of Star Fleet.
When people say TNG was steeped in philosophy and
high-minded discussions of ethics and the like this episode is what they’re
thinking of. It’s an elaborate
courtroom drama where Picard is called upon to defend the rights of man and
human dignity through debate and philosophy, though ultimately his argument
boils down nicely to “we don’t know.”
This is really the episode where Patrick Stewart most came to embody
this role and moved on from a British curiosity to a real talent and a name in
his own right.
The debate and argument at hand are also pretty well
realized and they find a way to really make you, the audience, think about what
actually does define sentience and the things we extend humanity to. Given our current long, slow march
towards artificial intelligence I can’t help but think this episode will only
prove more and more vital in the years to come.
4. RELICS
Even though The Next
Generation was very much its own show it also featured a number of episodes
with cameos from the original cast, the best of which was easily Relics. The plot is that the Enterprise comes
upon a mysterious giant metal object floating in space. Eventually, the crew realizes the
object is a Dsyon Sphere, a hollow metal shell built around a star to harness
the star’s power and warmth.
While
exploring the sphere, the crew comes upon a ship locked in orbit with a pattern
trapped inside its transporters.
Activating the system, it reveals Scotty, the engineer of the original
Enterprise. Scotty’s ship was dead
in space and so, to avoid dying of starvation, he’d rigged up a way to keep his
pattern preserved inside the transporter and had been stuck there in suspended
animation for decades.
The real star of this episode is James Doohan, the actor
who played Scotty. Doohan was
always one of the best parts of the original series for his humor and while
he’s funny here, its his dramatic chops that truly elevate this episode. Doohan’s role as a man out of time,
trapped in a future that’s so thoroughly surpassed his understanding of
technology, is a brilliantly tragic take on his original role as the best
engineer in Star Fleet. It
emphasizes nostalgia and the passage of time in a great manner and even
features Scotty and Picard getting drunk on the bridge of the original
Enterprise.
3. THE PEGASUS
Now, for a change of pace, we have an episode zeroed in on
the Enterprise’s first officer William Riker. Riker was originally intended to be the young, hands-on,
hotshot officer who would go on away missions rather than risking the
Captain. It’s an idea that goes
all the way back to the failed 1970s Star
Trek Phase 2 TV pitch.
Obviously, none of that manifested as Riker being the away guy would’ve
left Picard empty and flaccid, so instead Riker became more of the roguish
lady’s man of the group, filling the role of “guy who has a lot of sex” that
every Trek after the first one has felt the need to produce.
This episode takes him seriously out of his comfort zone
when his old commanding officer comes in to direct the Enterprise on a top
secret mission to salvage Riker’s old ship the Pegasus. From the outset it’s clear there’s more
going on than we know and the episode gets a lot of drama out of Riker
struggling between his loyalty to Picard and his oath of secrecy to his former
Captain.
It also helps that the
incredible Terry O’Quinn, who just devours the part as a kind of authoritarian
Picard, plays Riker’s old captain.
Much like ‘The Measure of a Man,’ this is an episode defined by ideology
and philosophy about the struggle of ideals between loyalty, safety, and
justice and it’s a great watch.
2. BEST OF BOTH
WORLDS
Another Riker-centric episode, though it’s not quite as
character driven as one might think.
This is easily Next Generation’s
most famous episode as it features the blockbuster storyline of the Enterprise
engaging the Borg on their own terms, Captain Picard getting captured and
assimilated, the infamous route of the Federation at the battle of wolf 359,
and the Borg’s attack on Earth.
It’s a dynamite premise that took two episodes across two seasons to
complete and pretty much put Next
Generation on the map as the Star Trek show of the era.
The plot is that Riker is considering leaving the Enterprise
for a Captain’s chair of his own when the ship is called in to investigate
mysterious attacks on Federation colonies. While investigating they come upon a Borg cube and during
the encounter Picard is captured and assimilated, becoming Locutis of Borg. From there it’s a desperate, ever
worsening drive to defeat the Borg and rescue the Captain as Riker is forced to
take command of the Enterprise.
It’s a great episode with a lot of action and dark, dramatic moments
that felt legitimately new and different for a TV genre show. What’s more, the visual of assimilated
Picard became iconic of the whole franchise and immediately transmitted the
Borg into the collective conscious of an entire generation of nerds as the new
sci-fi boogiemen of the age.
1. Q-WHO
Here’s a choice that’s probably not going to win me any new
fans. Conventionally, ‘Best of
Both Worlds’ is cited as the best TNG episode and while I certainly see the
appeal this is my list and from where I’m sitting Q-Who is just the stronger
story all around. ‘Best of Both
Worlds’ has a lot of great elements and stand out scenes but the actual story
tends to fade from most folks memory, overpowered by the handful of great
moments with weaker filler scenes between them.
‘Q-Who’ is a chilling and compact story from start to
finish, the premiere of the Borg and the best Q episode by far. For the uninitiated Q was a reoccurring
villain on TNG played by John de Lancie.
He was more of a mischievous imp than a true threat as he had the power
to do anything but generally just used it to annoy everybody: not this time
however.
This episode, Q launches the Enterprise across the galaxy
into the delta quadrant where they’re confronted by a mysterious and deadly
cube spaceship filled with freaky Cyborg beings. Within, they come upon a cold and eerie world of silent
automatons, alien aesthetics, and a nursery where babies have their limbs
amputated and replaced with Cyborg parts.
When the cube inevitably turns its attentions to the Enterprise it seems
as though no force in the universe can stop them, in the end forcing Picard to
appeal to a higher power to escape.
Like I said, I like Star Trek when it has a horror edge to
it and this episode is scary, especially Q’s monologue about the nature of the
Borg. It’s the only time we see
him ever frightened, which says a lot about what a threat the Borg. What’s more, the fact that Q seems
unable to actually destroy the Borg (simply teleporting the Enterprise away)
comes with its own chilling implications.
‘Best of Both Worlds’ may have showed us what the Borg could do but this
episode left a lot more to a much more terrifying author than the show’s
writers: our own imagination.
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