When the energy whirlpool appears on schedule and the Enterprise cannot escape, Picard almost becomes bogged down with indecision and second-guessing.
Stewart poses with his photo double/future self.
Energy bolts attacking Picard lead Troi to suggest it is he the whirlpool wants, but when his double tries to leave the ship, Picard decides his departure “again” will only perpetuate the cycle. After stopping “himself” with a phaser stun, he orders a full-speed course directly into the vortex. After one more moment of self-doubt, the double Picard, his craft, and the whirlpool all vanish, leaving Enterprise alone and on course, just as before.
This story—originally titled “Time to the Second”—began as the first of what Maurice Hurley had planned as two consecutive but stand-alone episodes. “Time Squared” would segue into “Q Who” (142), in which the mischievous superalien is revealed as the cause of the vortex. That plan was scrapped at Gene Roddenberry’s insistence, Hurley has said, and so adds confusion to the ending. “Why would going into the vortex’s center save you?” Hurley asked. “It doesn’t make sense. But it does if Q is pulling the strings.” Still, the writer said his intent was to do a time-travel story involving just six hours, not “500 or a 1,000 years.”
A cheaper alternative to the full-size shuttlecraft, the low-budget shuttlepod, debuted here. The vessel is named for onetime NASA scientist Farouk El-Baz, who had earlier received a tip of the hat in “The Outrageous Okona” (130). According to Michael Okuda, the professor sounded very surprised the morning he called in from Boston University after he and his children had seen the show for the first time!
This segment also mentions the slingshot time-travel method used in the original Trek and in Star Trek IV, and introduces Riker’s fondness for cooking.
THE ICARUS FACTOR
* * *
Production No.: 140 Aired: Week of April 24, 1989
Stardate: 42686.4 Code: if
Directed by Robert Iscove
Teleplay by David Assael and Robert L. McCullough
Story by David Assael
GUEST CAST
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Kyle Riker: Mitchell Ryan
Ensign Herbert: Lance Spellerberg
* * *
When Riker is offered command of his own ship, the Enterprise heads for Starbase Montgomery to meet with the civilian strategist who will brief him on the assignment. That strategist turns out to be his father, Kyle, whom Riker hasn’t seen in fifteen years. Time has not softened the first officer’s hostility toward the older man, and he summarily rejects his father’s efforts at reconciliation.
As Dr. Pulaski—an old flame of Kyle’s—and Troi ponder why Number One is so bitter, Wesley, La Forge, and Data try to diagnose the reason for Worf’s increased tenseness.
Pain-dealing holodeck Klingons help Wort celebrate his Age of Ascension.
When they discover that Worf is out of sorts because he missed a ritual marking the decade since his Age of Ascension, they surprise him by setting up a reenactment of the Klingon spiritual rite on the holodeck.
As Troi and Pulaski compare notes on “their men,” Riker’s continued rebuffs lead Kyle to challenge his son to an anbo-jyutsu match—a martial art the younger man never beat him at.
The two finally resolve their feelings for each other, and Number One stuns the bridge crew by revealing his intention to turn down the offered command post and remain aboard Enterprise.
Here’s another case where a subplot—Worf’s Age of Ascension ceremony on the holodeck—almost overshadows the main story line, the return of Riker’s father. The segment is good in that it reveals Number One’s back story and brings Pulaski closer into the fold of characters, but it’s hard to compete with Klingon heritage for sheer interest.
Here Riker for the second time refuses a command post, this one on the Aries. We learn that his mother died when he was two and he left home at age fifteen. The almost forgotten Riker-Troi relationship gets a shot in the arm here as he confides to her his fears about advancement—and she and Pulaski compare notes about men.
The Tholians, a hot-planet race with a possible hive-mind culture who were introduced in an original-series episode called “The Tholian Web,” are mentioned here in connection with a conflict a dozen years earlier—an attack that almost killed Kyle Riker and introduced him to Pulaski. The Tholians would occasionally pop up in conversation later on, in “Peak Performance” (147) and “Reunion” (181).
This show’s hoopla included a visit by the Entertainment Tonight cameras, who were following ET host and unabashed Trek fan John Tesh through the two hours of makeup necessary to turn him into one of Worf’s Ascension Chamber tormentors. Tesh, all six feet six of him, is the Klingon closest to the viewer on the left. Thanks to the “Klingon shortage” caused by the simultaneous shooting of Star Trek V, wardrobe was running low and two of the Klingons got to wear old Planet of the Apes boots!
Longtime character actor Mitchell Ryan who plays Kyle Riker, may be best known as the villain in Lethal Weapon. Lance Spellerberg appeared as Chief Herbert once before (“We’ll Always Have Paris”/124). And, as with the Iconian artifact in “Contagion” (137), Sternbach filled the anbo-jyutsu mats and gymnasium set pieces with a myriad of animé references in Japanese.
PEN PALS
* * *
Production No.: 141 Aired: Week of May 1, 1989
Stardate: 42695.3 Code: pp
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Story by Hannah Louise Shearer
GUEST CAST
Davies: Nicholas Cascone
Sarjenka: Nikki Cox
Hildebrandt: Anne H. Gillespie
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Alans: Whitney Rydbeck
* * *
The Enterprise command staff decides it is time to give Wesley a real test of responsibility: oversight of a team checking into dangerous geological events in the Selcundi Drema system.
As the acting ensign seeks advice in picking and leading his team of older subordinates, a member balks at running a lengthy test Wesley feels is necessary. After soul-searching and a pep talk from Riker, Wesley gets the test run with no problem.
Meanwhile, Data interrupts Picard’s holodeck horseback ride to admit he has contacted a young girl on one of the unsafe worlds, Drema IV.
Although he wanted only to reassure the girl after picking up her lonely broadcasts for help when her world became unstable, Data now fears—and Picard agrees—that his contact may violate the Prime Directive.
After a lively staff debate on the issue, Picard agrees to let Data bring the young girl, Sarjenka, aboard as Wesley’s team tries to reverse the volcanic stresses that are about to wreck the planet.
Standing next to Data, Sarjenka watches from the bridge as the plan works and Wesley’s team celebrates. Picard then orders Pulaski to “wipe” Sarjenka’s short-term memory, and when Data takes her home she remembers nothing of her “pen pal” or of the ship that saved her.
Melinda Snodgrass, who adapted Hannah Louise Shearer’s original story treatment, has called this Data’s “age of innocence” story. The android had carried on a dialogue with Sarjenka for eight weeks without reporting it, much as he would later do while developing his protégé in “The Offspring” (164). In “Pen Pals,” however, the writers had to limit the two characters’ closeness, because Nikki Cox’s orange makeup became smudged so easily on contact.
Just as she had turned to her roots in the legal profession for “The Measure of a Man” (135), Snodgrass revealed her love of horses—and Patrick Stewart’s excellent horsemanship—in Picard’s equestrian holodeck visit. This scene was the only location shoot of the season, filmed at a ranch near the L.A. suburb of Thousand Oaks.
A frightened Sarjenka (Nikki Cox) won’t leave her friend Data’s side.
Sharp-eyed fans should spot one of the few TNG props not designed by Sternbach: the “spectral analyzer” used in t
he geology lab. This device was originally the “oscillation overthruster” sought by the evil red Lectroids in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension. Other homages to Buckaroo Banzai were planted throughout the series by the art staffers, most noticeably as passing references in graphics, as in “Up the Long Ladder” (144), for one.
Q WHO
* * *
Production No.: 142 Aired: Week of May 8, 1989
Stardate: 42761.3 Code: qw
Directed by Rob Bowman
Written by Maurice Hurley
GUEST CAST
Q: John de Lancie
Ensign Sonya Gomez: Lycia Naff
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
* * *
On the edge of UFP space, the Enterprise encounters its old nemesis, the superbeing Q, whose anger at being refused a crew post leads him to hurl the ship into unknown space. There, they encounter a new threat—the Borg.
As the ship discovers planet after planet ravaged like those in the Neutral Zone whose destruction was first blamed on the Romulans, Guinan—an old foe of Q as well—tells Picard of the Borg’s deadly attacks on her people.
Suddenly two Borg beam over from their cubelike ship to drain information from the starship’s computers, ignoring the crew and quickly learning to blunt phaser attacks.
Their vessel then locks on Picard’s ship and slices out a core of the saucer, killing eighteen. A brief skirmish leaves the Borg ship damaged, and Riker takes advantage of the lull to lead an away team over.
What they find is a half-humanoid, half-robotic race living as a group mind intent only on destruction and gaining technology. They also find that the Borg ship is regenerating itself.
Sure enough, the fight resumes and the Enterprise is soon on the brink of defeat, its shields and warp drive gone. Picard admits to a gloating Q that humans can’t yet handle all that the cosmos might yield—that he needs Q’s help. Satisfied, the superbeing returns the Enterprise to its own corner of the galaxy—and vanishes.
Data, Riker, and Worf get their first look at the Borg.
Later a reflective Picard tells Guinan that the near-fatal Borg encounter may have been just the jolt a complacent Federation needed.
Recurring character Q takes a back seat here to Maurice Hurley’s long-delayed new Federation opponents, the Borg, who were originally envisioned as a season-opening threat (see “The Neutral Zone,”/126). The new cybernetic race was meant to provide the hard-core danger the Ferengi couldn’t deliver. “If somebody’s interested in gold, they’re not much of an adversary,” Hurley said of the greedy little race. “We can make gold in our replicator.”
Although the Borg began as a race of insects, a concept dropped for budget reasons, their relentless mentality survived. Guinan was not present at the time, but we learn it was the Borg who scattered and virtually killed off her people a century earlier—an event that drives the plot of the first TNG movie, Generations—and leaves perhaps her only prejudice (“I, Borg”/223). In this episode Guinan also engages in a defiant, barb-trading standoff with Q that will come back to haunt him later in “Deja Q” (161). Also, Guinan’s office is seen for the first and only time in TNG history.
Pulling the props, wardrobe, and optical effects together for the Borg’s physical look was a herculean task and a learning experience, to put it mildly. The Borg armature forearm, for example, weighed about forty pounds. Some of their outfits came from the makers of the “still suits” for Dune and Batman. Because the show went over budget by about $50,000, a planned eighth day of live shooting was dropped, and for a time, according to Rob Bowman, “we didn’t know day to day if we were making a stinker or a winner.”
Meanwhile, it was effects expert Dan Curry’s time to shine, along with associate Ron Moore. They won an Emmy nomination for bringing the Borg ship to life. The models for the ship were built by Starlight Effects from the simple embellishments that Rick Sternbach and Richard James had created based on the description of the cubical ship given in the script.
Making his debut as a stuntman extra as the “baby Borg” was Sam Klatman, the son of Carol Eisner, David Livingston’s secretary. Lycia Naff, who played a three-breasted mutant woman in Total Recall, showed enough comic potential in this show to be written in again in the next episode, but her character was dropped after that appearance.
SAMARITAN SNARE
* * *
Production No.: 143 Aired: Week of May 15, 1989
Stardate: 42779.1 Code: ss
Directed by Les Landau
Written by Robert L. McCullough
GUEST CAST
Grebnedlog: Christopher Collins
Reginod: Leslie Morris
Surgeon: Daniel Benzali
Ensign Sonya Gomez: Lycia Naff
Biomolecular Specialist: Tzi Ma
* * *
As Wesley prepares to take more Academy tests at Starbase 515, Picard suddenly elects to join him for the long shuttle ride after a heated argument with Pulaski.
Aboard Enterprise, Riker underestimates the slow-witted Pakleds, who kidnap La Forge after Number One allows Geordi to beam over to give the obese scavengers a hand with their ship.
During the shuttle ride Picard finally opens up enough to explain his reason for making the trip—surgery to replace a defective cardiac unit—and leaves Wesley spellbound with the tale of the shore leave brawl as a young officer that nearly got him killed.
Meanwhile, the Pakleds demand that Enterprise release all of its computer information to them. As the crew considers a show of force to rescue Geordi, Riker learns Picard is near death after surgery.
Anxious to reach their captain, the crew members trick the Pakleds with the “crimson force field”—a ruse—and rescue Geordi.
Picard awakens in post-op to learn of his close call—and to find that an amused Pulaski is the specialist who pulled him through.
Created by TNG’s late-season producer McCullough, the Pakleds, with their sniffly, slow-minded ways—an allusion to fans, or to materialistic Americans?—have to be among the most humorously bizarre aliens ever created for Trek. Geordi gets a chance in the spotlight in this episode, and the “crimson force field” harks back to the corbomite trick twice used by Kirk in the 1960s.
Christopher Collins had turned up in the TNG universe once before, as the Klingon captain from “A Matter of Honor” (134), and played aliens on spinoff DS9’s “The Passenger” and “Blood Oath.” Lycia Naff had been in “Q Who” (142).
La Forge finds the Pakleds (Leslie Morris and Christopher Collins) harmless at first.
Listen carefully to the tale Picard tells Wesley about his early exploits and you’ll hear the alien ruffians called Nasicaans—a rare verbal animé reference. Also heard are references to the Jarada from “The Big Goodbye” (113), to a recreation facility named for twentieth-century astronomy artist Chesley Bonestell, and to Epsilon 9 as the site of a new pulsar cluster, though no direct connection is made to the same-named communications relay station in the first Trek movie. Picard also mentions that the Klingon-UFP alliance is only twenty or so years old.
For this episode the art staff almost got a chance to bring to life the designed but as yet unbuilt captain’s yacht, but budget constraints led to the use instead of an executive shuttle for Picard and Wesley’s trip.2 A rare slipup: Wes tells the control booth that he is departing Shuttle Bay 2 in Shuttle Number 2 when he’s actually in the Sakharov (Shuttle Number 1) in Shuttle Bay 3, as indicated on the bay floor.
Picard’s artificial heart and a replay of his Nausicaans incident became the basis of an entire Q episode in Season 6 (“Tapestry”/241), while the Pakleds were never again a major focus—except to rescue Lore offscreen in “Brothers” (177)—but did turn up in the background of Deep Space Nine.
UP THE LONG LADDER
* * *
Production No.: 144 Aired: Week of May 22, 1989
Stardate: 42823.2 Code: ul
Dir
ected by Winrich Kolbe
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
GUEST CAST
Danilo O’Dell: Barrie Ingham
Granger: Jon de Vries
Brenna: Rosalyn Landor
O’Brien: Colm Meaney
* * *
Stellar flares are about to destroy the Bringloidi homeworld when the Enterprise rescues the colony, populated by a simple but lively people long ago forgotten except for fragmentary post-holocaust records.
The Bringloidi bring along their livestock and set up camp on a cargo bay. Riker is soon keeping company with the bumbling leader’s lovely but feisty daughter.
Riker and Brenna (Rosalyn Landor) take a shine to each other.
Then Picard and Data learn that the colonists’ were one of two groups to settle in this solar system. The Enterprise heads off to warn the other of the danger.
Soon they find the Mariposans, an entire society composed of clones from the five crew members who survived the original colony ship’s crash landing.
Now fearful of degeneration due to replicative fading, the Mariposans beg for fresh DNA from the Enterprise crew. But the idea is repugnant to the Starfleet people—just as the idea of sex is to the Mariposans—and they decline.
Desperate, the colony leaders kidnap Riker and Pulaski and collect DNA cells. But the two return to destroy the maturing bodies of the clones and bring a compromise suggestion from Picard: rejoin the Bringloidi, their original fellow colonists, and breed on a resettlement world.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 15