1.1 & 1.2 Encounter At Farpoint Still, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. We start, not surprisingly, with the very first episode of season one, and will hopefully do one or two a week from this point on. Encounter at Farpoint What intrigues most on a repeat viewing is the nascent depiction of the cast members we’ll come to know and love. A Captain Picard who is distant, brusque, even unlikeable – and about as far from Kirk as you could have wanted. Indeed, the Kirk role is clearly given to Riker, who’s a fresh-faced man of action with one strange characteristic: he’s desperate to please his captain (something that never really becomes a part of who he is). Data, unsurprisingly, gets a lot of time in the spotlight as the “Spock” figure of the show, although with an added dose of whimsy. TNG never quite developed a triptych to rival Kirk-Spock-McCoy, but where other cast members grow into their roles, Data is immediately a stand-out character. There’s a nice smattering of things that emphasise how the TNG universe has moved on from the earlier Trek continuity as well. Klingons in Starfleet (or one, at least). Androids in Starfleet (or one, at least). And the ubiquitous Holodeck, which gets described in such restrictive detail that this one episode can provides years of material for nitpickers everywhere (why don’t people ever walk into a holodeck wall, given that data can just chuck a rock at it in this episode? We will never know.) It’s impossible not to be charmed by the cameo appearance of Bones, now in his 130s, who passes the baton to the new crew in a scene clearly designed to cap off the show’s first “hour”. The appearance of perpetual antagonist Q is also fun, even if he’s far more vindictive and less mischievous than he’ll become. This episode’s main villain, as it turns out, is actually the hilariously-named Groppler Zorn, who has enslaved a space-jellyfish and forced it to pretend to be Farpoint space station (although, why Zorn has named it Farpoint is less clear. He lives right next door! It should be called “Next Door Station”.) Still, the episode ends with a pair of space jellyfish linking tentacles and flying off into the sunset, so at least we know there’s no danger of this Star Trek series being any less insane than the original one. They don’t make sci-fi like this anymore. TNG WTF: This episode marks the first time the Enterprise separates the saucer section, which was pretty much the 1980s version of finding out who was inside the hatch in Lost or that time Kendra turned up in Buffy. Apparently it was supposed to happen every time there was a dangerous situation, but they realised it slowed things down way too much. Which is good, because it means that any time it happens in the future, you know something really cool is going on. One other WTF moment in this episode is how they try to justify the women wearing uniformed minidresses by showing some male crew members also wearing them in the background. A nice nod to gender equality, but future episodes see them take the more sensible route of just giving everyone trousers. Mistakes: They left in the moment where the computer tells Riker to turn right and he turns left. They could have overdubbed it, but they didn’t. Presumably he intentionally ignores computer instructions to show how much of a maverick he is. Captain’s Log: This episode begins a grand tradition of the crew of the Enterprise dismantling someone’s society (however justly) and then leaving forever. Groppler Zorn never appeared again, presumably because the space-jellyfish bombed his colony back to the stone-age. Still, all things considered, it’s actually a pretty good episode. And this from what could arguably be called the worst season of Star Trek. Not a bad beginning at all. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here
