Encounter at Farpoint, Parts I and II (TNG)

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Five Year Mission. Today I will be discussing the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, entitled “Encounter at Farpoint.” This first aired a few months before I was born. But I grew up with this ship, and these characters, so the challenge for me for this show is going to be revisiting everything with a fresh pair of eyes. I’ll be trying to imagine what it was like to come at it for the first time, but also drawing on my knowledge of how it all ends up.

The familiar scene, short a few players.

So after the opening teaser, we get a nice long, pan over the exterior and interior of the shiny new Enterprise. She’s sleeker than her predecessor, larger and more powerful, and with families and children aboard she’s like a moving city. We meet Jean-Luc Picard first, in his captain’s log during the long establishing shot, and then we immediately are introduced to Data with a classic Data interaction, where he doesn’t understand an idiom, in this case, to “snoop”.

Deanna Troi, Tasha Yar, and Worf are on the bridge too, but we don’t learn much about them yet. Troi gets her first “I’m sensing” as Q shows up on the bridge.

So yeah, we meet Q before we meet half the regulars. He’s a little more sinister in his early appearances, but John De Lancie is as much of a ham as ever, so even while he’s being menacing he’s still basically a comic character. He threatens Picard, tells him humans should turn around and go home, and traps the enterprise in a net, all the while emphasizing his points by playing dress-up. Then he disappears, but leaves the net behind.

Picard decides to run, very fast. The net catches up. Picard evacuates the women and children to the saucer, leaving Worf to get them to safety, and takes the drive section into battle with Q. Worf is not happy about this, because he’s a Klingon and hates running from combat, but he does as he’s told and it’s a nice little Worf moment, which is cool, because Worf isn’t a regular yet and he barely appears in this episode.

Say what you will about the guy, he's got a killer fashion sense.

It turns out Worf had nothing to worry about anyway, because there is no fight. Picard surrenders, and he, Tasha, Data, and Troi find themselves in a post-World-War-Three courtroom where Q is judge, jury, and executioner. They are accused of being savage and barbaric. Tasha immediately confesses in a melodramatic attempt at character development and Q turns her into a popsicle as a display of his power. She gets better.

Picard convinces Q to let him and his crew prove that humans are more than mere savages, and Q says the Farpoint Mission (remember that thing Picard was talking about in his Captain’s Log? You know, before this random half hour of Q happened? No? Ok, well, there’s a space station and a mystery and we’ll get to it soon.) Anyway, Q disappears for the time being and the crew returns to the ship as if they had never left. The net is gone.

So we’re about a third of the way through the episode at this point and it kind of feels like the actual plot is just now starting. But first we have to meet four more regulars. Will Riker, the Enterprise’s first officer, is clearly intended as estrogen bait. As the series goes on Riker will be come one of my favorite characters, but his performance in this episode is kind of especially awful. It feels like a lot of focus is being put on him, but they do a poor job of establishing who exactly he is. Plus his scene with Doctor Crusher and the scene where he meets Troi and it’s revealed that they used to be lovers are both extremely stilted and awkward. Fortunately, they’re also short.

We meet Dr. Crusher and her son Wesley, who is only really annoying in one scene in this episode, in my opinion. We also meet Geordi LaForge. He’s not the chief Engineer of the Enterprise yet, and honestly I don’t think the writers know what he is. His character development in this episode consists of one scene where he tells Doctor Crusher that his visor causes him constant pain, something that’s never picked up on again. But I digress. It’s only a two-hour pilot, someone has to get forgotten about and its just kind of par for the course that it would be Geordi. They do a remarkably good job of introducing most of the ensemble without bogging the episode down too much, even if some of the backstory does feel like an infodump.

Ok, where was I? So there’s a mystery of Farpoint Station, which basically boils down to how it always seems to be able give people exactly what they need, there’s a creepy guy with the frankly awesome name of Groppler Zorn, and Picard decides to test his new first officer by having him manually reconnect with saucer section, in a scene which tries very hard to have dramatic tension, but fails because there are literally no stakes. Seriously, are we supposed to think the series is going to end 40 minutes into episode one when Riker crashes the ship into itself? It’s kind of dumb.

In my day, only the bad guys had androids.

And speaking of sort of pointless scenes, DeForest Kelly has a cameo as Admiral McCoy. It feels extremely forced. But I can forgive it because it started the tradition of every series having a regular from the previous series show up to pass the torch, which feels really sweet in its own way. And you get the impression that Bones kinda misses the old days, and especially Spock, and that’s sweet in its own way too. But it still sticks out as having no connection to the plot of the episode.

Then the aforementioned Riker/Troi scene happens. Ugh its so cheesy and eighties and awful and I don’t want to talk about it. Least favorite couple. Anyway, Troi, Picard and Riker meet with GROPPLER ZORN, Troi is overwhelmed with loneliness and despair, and I start getting bored because the actual plot of the episode is not super engaging and not much happens.

Riker meets Data and Wesley on the Holodeck. I don’t think the writers knew yet exactly the can of worms they were opening when they invented the holodeck. It seems innocent enough in its first appearance – just landscapes, no characters, which is much more plausible and less morally dubious. There is an implication that it's extremely state-of-the-art and Riker has never seen one, which will be contradicted later.

There’s a scene on the planet where nothing happens, but it’s cool to see Riker leading an away team because there’s a real attempt to engage the whole main cast in a way TOS never did. But it's still kind of a dumb, pointless scene. Geordi discovers something about the tunnels under the city and Troi experiences feelings again.

FEELINGS.

Back on the ship, Picard gives Wesley a tour of the bridge. Wesley already knows everything about the bridge and can’t resist showing off, Picard gets predictably annoyed and kicks him off the bridge, and we setup a conflict that will persist for at least, like, a season. Then an alien ship shows up and starts shooting at the Bandi cities.

Q comes back to taunt Picard, but he’s also kind of trying to drop big hints and get him to figure out the mystery, almost as if he wants them to pass the test. Ultimately, they do – Picard, Troi, and Data figure out that the alien ship is a lifeform that can convert energy into matter and Farpoint Station is its mate, enslaved by the Bandi. They free the station and both of them transform into space jellyfish, which fly away holding hands.

Shiny happy space jellyfish laughing...

The episode ends with the ship departing for parts unknown, with a “Let’s See What’s Out There” from Picard, which is his catchphrase for season one. It’s corny, but I think it’s this kind of optimism that enabled this show to make it to a second season. There’s definitely a sense of fun, of adventure for its own sake. I don’t think any other series totally made that work as a motivation.

Ultimatley, that’s why the weird plot-within-a-plot of Q using the Farpoint mission to test Picard works for me. It sets up what the show is about – the need to explore- by threatening that need directly. And we don’t ever go back to the courtroom – because the jury is still out. Q is still watching this crew, to see how they’ll handle all the challenges that await them. And the show doesn’t really forget that.

I’m looking forward to continuing this adventure myself, especially the part that involves getting out of the sometimes gag-inducing first season and into the good stuff. But first we’re going to jump ahead seven years and see how Kathryn Janeway’s first mission out compares to Jean-Luc’s. It will be cool to see how the two shows handle their growing pains by looking at them side by side. Anyway, thanks for joining me, and until next time, may your encounters with Omnipotent beings always be judicious.

Random Observations/ Continuity Errors:

Data says he graduated from the academy in ’78, which doesn’t fit into the timeline of the show at all. I noticed this on my own without looking at the timelines on Memory Alpha, in case there was any doubt about how much of a dork I am.

The Ferengi get name-dropped here, though we won’t see them until “The Last Outpost.” Apparently they were supposed to be the show’s major villain. That didn’t happen.

The computer is way more polite than usual! It says “please” and “thank you” all the time. They dropped that very early on.

Recurring character watch: Even in his very small role (he’s credited as Battle Bridge Conn officer), Miles O’Brien makes an impact with really memorable facial expressions in several reaction shots. 

Troi: “I’m only half Betazoid, my father was a Starfleet officer.” Implies that Betazed isn’t a Federation planet, which is later contradicted.

Troi and Tasha both wear mini-skirts at some point. These mercifully disappear early into season one.

Q’s Elizabethan grammar is terrible.