The yellow-on-black grid of the empty holodeck wall made its debut here, but a phonelike programming unit used by Tasha—a seeming redundancy with vocal commands—was never seen again. Tried here and once more—in “The Last Outpost” (107)—before being scrapped was the building of Picard’s extreme pride in his Gallic heritage to the point of humorous defensiveness in his banter with Data—an echo of the original series’ recurring “Russian joke” with young Chekov, who believed his motherland was the home of all discoveries and inventions.
Fred Steiner made a onetime musical contribution to TNG with this episode, the only composer from the original series to do so.
HAVEN
* * *
Production No.: 105 Aired: Week of November 30, 1987
Stardate: 41294.5 Code: hv
Directed by Richard Compton
Teleplay by Tracy Tormé
Story by Tracy Tormé and Lan O’Kun
GUEST CAST
Lwaxana Troi: Majel Barrett
Wyatt Miller: Rob Knepper
Victoria Miller: Nan Martin
Steven Miller: Robert Ellenstein
Mr. Homn: Carel Struycken
Valeda Innis: Anna Katarina
Wrenn: Raye Birk
Ariana: Danitza Kingsley
Transporter Chief: Michael Rider
* * *
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—until a number of plague-ridden Tarellians, long thought dead, show up at Haven. Wyatt, a doctor, finds the blonde girl of his visions is a Tarellian; she had pictured him in her dreams 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.
Troi ponders the marriage her mother (Majel Barrett) helped arrange.
This episode, which barely resembles Lan O’Kun’s original story called “Love Beyond Time and Space,” became the ticket that won Tracy Tormé a place on the writing team. After impressing the staff without making a story sale, the son of singer Mel Tormé was contacted in a last-ditch try to save O’Kun’s concept. Tormé played up the in-fighting between the families to a caustically comic intensity that was later softened and edited out, to his regret.
Majel Barrett was hardly a newcomer to the Trek universe, having portrayed Nurse Christine Chapel in the 1960s 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 second (after “The Naked Now”) and last time any of the regulars 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”/148)—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.”
WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE
* * *
Production No.: 106 Aired: Week of October 26, 1987
Stardate: 41263.1 Code: wn
Directed by Rob Bowman
Written by Diane Duane and Michael Reaves
GUEST CAST
Kosinski: Stanley Kamel
Traveler: Eric Menyuk
Maman Picard: Herta Ware
Lieutenant Commander Argyle: Biff Yeager
Crew member: Charles Dayton
Ballerina: Victoria Dillard
* * *
The brave new warp theories of a supposedly brilliant Starfleet consultant go awry when the “expert” plunges the ship first into a neighboring galaxy and then into a dimension where the physical and mental worlds converge.
The trouble turns out not to be with expert Kosinski’s theories but with his mysteriously meek “assistant,” whose race can travel among dimensions and times.
The strain of propelling the entire ship, though, has put the so-called Traveler gravely near death—threatening to strand the Enterprise forever. And in this nether-space, crew members begin seeing alternate realities that threaten their sanity as well.
Finally it is discovered that Wesley’s friendship has a curative effect on the Traveler; he strengthens the alien just enough to get the ship home.
Before he does so, though, the Traveler advises Picard secretly of Wesley’s prodigious abilities and urges him to not let them go undeveloped. With a proud mother standing by, Wesley is promoted to acting ensign by Picard, and his Academy training begins.
Even though producer Maurice Hurley did numerous uncredited rewrites on their script, Duane and Reaves’s initial story survives as adapted from her Kirk-era novel, The Wounded Sky, in which an unusual alien resembling a glass spider performs warp experiments that mix physics with metaphysics and strand the original Enterprise far from home.
In the original teleplay, Kosinski was responsible for both the warp effects and the accident; he also had a son who felt he spent more time on his career than with him. The crew was in awe of Kosinski in the original script, and the hallucinations were even more bizarre, including the image of Jack Crusher appearing to both Picard and Beverly. The starship reappeared within a mono-block, or cosmological egg, and in exploding it to escape, the starship in effect caused the birth of a new universe. Significantly, the Enterprise has been missing for six days and the captain orders that the next day be observed as a day of rest!
The Traveler role was a consolation prize of sorts for Eric Menyuk, who only weeks before had come close to winning the part of Data. An original Trek fan at age six, he picked up drama in college and went from Boston-area theater to TV guest work in Hill Street Blues, Matlock, L.A. Law, and Cheers, among others.
Justman has said that hiring twenty-eight-year-old Rob Bowman to direct this segment was one of his proudest achievements on the show; Bowman was called in to replace Daniel Petrie, who dropped out to film the movie Mystic Pizza. It was a terrifying time for young Bowman, who wanted to make a good impression on his first assignment and overcome any doubts about his youth. Once he got his script, he worked for twenty days before filming began. He walked around the sets in off-hours, using storyboards and blocking out scenes to prepare his action lines and camera angles. Bowman went on to become one of the infant series’ most prolific directors.
Wesley and the Traveler (Eric Menyuk).
The episode’s dazzling optical effects were quite literally homemade, Legato recalled. “We got the usual kind of vague explanation for the end-of-the-universe visuals in the script,” he said. “But I did it simply, at home in my basement, with water. I had always noticed water reflections on the wall, so I shot multiple layers of that through dissolved Mylar bits. It was peculiar and bizarre. And I used little suspended moving Christmas tree lights for the little blinkies.”
Worf’s pet targ is actually a Russian wild boar named Emmy Lou, wearing a Theiss-designed original. “That pig smelled horrid,” laughed Justman. “A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!”
Biff Yeager debuts here as the longest-runn
ing chief engineer of the first season, although Riker introduces him as “one of our chief engineers”; Dennis “Danger” Madalone, seen here as the sciences division ensign terrorized by his own self-conjured fire, is a Stuntman who began getting screen credit as stunt coordinator in Season 3 and portrayed various unlucky crew members, Picard’s mother picked up a first name in “Chain of Command, Part II” (237); Herta Ware played Jack Gilford’s dying wife in Cocoon. Menyuk, who was featured in 1994’s The Air Up There, returned as the Traveler twice later (“Remember Me”/179, “Journey’s End”/272), while Kosinski’s unexplained square rank pip was never seen again.
THE LAST OUTPOST
* * *
Production No.: 107 Aired: Week of October 19, 1987
Stardate: 41386.4 Code: lo
Directed by Richard Colla
Teleplay by Herbert Wright
Story by Richard Krzemien
GUEST CAST
Letek: Armin Shimerman
Mordoc: Jake Dengel
Kayron: Tracey Walter
Portal: Darryl Henriques
DaiMon Tarr: Mike Gomez
* * *
History is overshadowed by danger as the Enterprise readies for the first Federation contact with the Ferengi, the supercapitalists of the galaxy, while chasing one of the vessels to retrieve an outpost’s stolen T-9 energy converter.
The chase ends abruptly when both ships find themselves immobilized over an unknown planet, which turns out to be an outpost of the long-dead Tkon Empire. A joint mission to investigate is arranged, but the Ferengi double-cross Riker’s team and stun them.
The first meeting with Ferengi: Armin Shimerman (rear), Jake Dengel (left), and Tracey Walter.
An automated Tkon “portal” guard emerges from his centuries-old sleep and challenges the two sides. The childish Ferengi tire him, but Portal is finally impressed by Riker’s wisdom and Federation ethics, and he frees both ships.
This ambitious yet uneven introduction of the Ferengi unfortunately failed to live up to all the advance buildup about the “new alien threat.” As developed by Herb Wright and Gene Roddenberry, the Ferengi debuted in fur wraparound outerwear and used blue energy-bolt whips that were never seen again after the unsatisfying steel spring became an eleventh-hour fix when the original design was not delivered on time to use. According to Zimmerman, the Ferengi’s poor eyesight accounts for their beady eyes and brightly lit ship interiors; to compensate, their huge ears help provide better hearing5—and an erogenous zone (Ménage à Troi”/172, “Chain of Command, Part I”/236).
Their ship, inspired by a horseshoe crab on Wright’s desk, was designed by Andy Probert (who added the forward “earwig” pincers) and built by Greg Jein.
Richard Krzemien’s initial story concerned a planetary caretaker named Dilo, precursor to Portal, as a latter-day Rip Van Winkle who slept while his empire fell. Riker’s concluding request to beam over several replicated Chinese finger puzzles to the pesky Ferengi echoes Scotty’s solution at the end of “The Trouble with Tribbles”: sending the prolific fur balls detested by Klingons to their ship. The Tkon Empire seal that appears in the revolving holographic display is also seen as the blade design on Portal’s staff.
By 1993, greater things in Trek awaited most of the Ferengi-playing actors here: Walter and Gomez resurfaced in “Rascals” (233), while Shimerman—after a run as Paskall on Beauty and the Beast and an uncredited TNG debut (“Haven”/104)—would go on to become the first actor to play a second Ferengi (“Peak Performance”/147) and the first regular Ferengi anywhere as Quark on eventual spinoff Deep Space Nine. Also, Henriques would play Romulan ambassador Nanclus in ST VI.
Mike Okuda’s Ferengi insignia stems from a design literally meaning “dog eat dog,” colored green for greed, envy, and the color of money. Also debuting here, Michael Westmore added, is the system by which the insignia tattooed on a military Ferengi’s right lobe roughly denotes rank; from no “rocker” hashmarks up to three.
LONELY AMONG US
* * *
Production No.: 108 Aired: Week of November 2, 1987
Stardate: 41249.3 Code: Ia
Directed by Cliff Bole
Teleplay by D. C. Fontana
Story by Michael Halperin
GUEST CAST
Ssestar: John Durbin
First Security Guard: Colm Meaney
Assistant Chief Engineer Singh: Kavi Raz
* * *
The spat between two neighboring planets would be almost comical if it weren’t for the Enterprise’s serious task of transporting their ambassadors to Parliament, a UFP diplomatic outpost.
En route there, the ship passes through a strange energy cloud, and puzzling malfunctions start to occur. Worf and Dr. Crusher then show bizarre personality shifts while attending to them.
After an assistant engineer is murdered while inspecting the malfunctions, Data adopts the methods of Sherlock Holmes. But Troi’s hypnosis of Crusher and Worf reveals that they have accidentally taken aboard a long-lonely life-force. The creature is now looking for a host body to return it to the energy cloud.
The crew is shocked when the being chooses Picard as its host. After apologizing for the damage it caused, the alien has Picard resign his command and divert the ship back to the cloud—where it beams out as pure energy.
Just as Riker is about to take over the stunned ship, Troi senses that the union did not work. Sure enough, Picard uses the transporter circuits to rematerialize in his human form.
Once back, the tired captain gives Riker the job of keeping the cannibalistic races’ diplomats from eating each other.
Michael Halperin’s original stay contained the final basic plot, but a dilithium breakdown on the starship was the subplot. The diplomatic conference was added by Fontana, as in her 1967 original-series script, “Journey to Babel.” Halperin’s story ended with Picard, his ship basically powerless, bringing the energy creature home by using the slingshot time-traveling effect seen in various Trek episodes and Star Trek IV.
This show was the first of many TNG treks for director Cliff Bole, a veteran of The Six Million Dollar Man, V, the new Mission: Impossible, Paradise, and every other Vega$ shot. Bole recalled that the show got mail criticizing its depiction of what amounted to cannibalism on the part of the carnivorous doglike Anticans.
Seen as a still-unnamed security ensign was actor Colm Meaney of “Farpoint,” where he’d been a command-division ensign; at least here he’d been given the mustard-colored uniform he began to sport in Season 2 as O’Brien, the transporter chief; the flap over his rank was yet to come (“Family”/178, “Schisms”/231). Uncredited as the lead Antican (unnamed but called “Badar N’D’D” in the script), Marc Alaimo played the first of many Trek aliens leading up to eventual spinoff DS9’s Gul Dukat (“The Neutral Zone”/126, “The Wounded”/186, “Time’s Arrow”/226).
The debut of TNG’s dress uniform, from “Lonely Among Us.”
Rivan (Brenda Bakke) gives Riker a feel for life among the Edo.
Finally, the archenemy Antican and Selay are seen in close proximity with no problem in the background of “Tapestry” (241), supposedly some thirty-five years before this time. Both Anticans (“Captain’s Holiday”/167, “Unification I”/208, and spinoff DS9) and Selay (“Ménage à Troi”/172) later turn up solo as background extras.
TNG’s dress uniform, designed to evoke memories of the deck waistcoats of the eighteenth-century British navy, made its debut here. The look would be slightly altered the following season: the gold edging would be reduced in width, and the front flap would follow the collarbone panel line instead of spiraling down from the collar. Two nice visual effects are seen in this episode: the stars warping by outside the ready room window, and their reflection on the desktop.
A few odd notes: one of the scenes in which Kavi Raz could be seen as Singh in the background had to be reshot when the actor wasn’t available, so a wig on a chair was used as a standin! Okuda and Stembach winced at the
use of the transporter in this early story as a life-pattern restorer, so they came up with the official explanation that the system had come under the unique electromagnetic influences of the cloud-entity. A clunker of a prop that would not be reused after this episode is Beverly Crusher’s surgical cap with its bizarre eyepiece.
JUSTICE
* * *
Production No.: 109 Aired: Week of November 9, 1987
Stardate: 41255.6 Code: ju
Directed by James L. Conway
Teleplay by Worley Thorne
Story by Ralph Wills and Worley Thorne
GUEST CAST
Rivan: Brenda Bakke
Liator: Jay Louden
Conn: Josh Clark
Mediators: David Q. Combs, Richard Lavin
Edo girl: Judith Jones
Nurse: Brad Zerbst
Edo boys: Eric Matthew, David Michael Graves
* * *
The pastoral planet of Rubicun III beckons after the Enterprise delivers a party of colonists to the nearby Strnad system. Rubicun’s healthy people—the Edo—and their ways of love and open sensual pleasure make this planet seem like the perfect R-and-R stop.
But trouble looms in paradise after Wesley inadvertently chases a ball into one of the Edo’s always shifting forbidden zones, drawing the planet’s simple punishment for every crime—death. Dr. Crusher is furious, but Picard feels helpless under the Prime Directive.
As the captain pleads for Wesley’s life, a machinelike being begins to orbit the planet and sends a probe to scan Data’s brain. Proclaiming itself the Edo’s god, the being demands that the Enterprise people leave its “children” alone—and take the Strnad colonists back, too.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 7