Music Editor: *Gerry Sackman (EMMY CO-WINNER: sound editing, series: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” [163])
Supervising Sound Editor: (*) Bill Wistrom (EMMY CO-WINNER: sound editing, series: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” [163])
Sound Editors: (*) James Wolvington; (*) Mace Matiosian; *Wilson Dyer (EMMY CO-WINNER: sound editing, series: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” [163])
Post Production Sound: (*) Modern Sound
Production Associate: (*) Susan Sackett
Production Coordinator: (*) Diane Overdiek
Post Production Associate: Terry Martinez (151-174); Heidi Julian (×) (161-174); Wendy Rosenfeld (161-174)
Pre-Production Associate: () Eric Stillwell (×)
Casting Executive: (*) Helen Mossler
Assistant Scenic Artist: Cari Thomas
Stunt Coordinator: Dennis Madalone (all but 156, 158, 168, 172)
Research Consultant: Richard Arnold (uncredited first two seasons)
Computer Monitors: (**) Sony Corp. of America
Lenses and Panaflex Cameras: (**) Panavision
Special Visual Effects: (*) Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) a division of Lucasfilm Ltd.
Additional Motion Control Facilities: (*) Image “G”
Video Optical Effects: (*) The Post Group
Special Video Compositing: (*) Composite Image Systems
Editing Facilities: (*) Unitel Video
* * *
The number of * denotes the company or staffer’s prior initial season of screen credit in that position; () denotes an original credited or co-credited person in that position; a (×) following indicates prior TNG work in another position.
The fourth-season publicity shot, including recurring guest star Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan.
FOURTH SEASON
By the time of its much-heralded fourth-season opening, TNG had come so far from its splashy yet wobbly origins that even the original era’s movie series had a hard time keeping up. Where once the “new show,” fearful of suffering in comparison, avoided using original Trek’s established aliens, now Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, and Borg were being woven into a backdrop whose scope could only have been dreamed of by fans during the rerun and movie years of the seventies and early eighties.
After resolving “The Best of Both Worlds” cliffhanger, season four quickly became known as the sequel season: returning guests ranged from the Traveler, K’Ehleyr, and Duras to Leah Brahms, Lore, Vash, and Reg Barclay. Jack Crusher, Minuet, and Noonien Soong also resurfaced, as did Q and Lwaxana Troi, with Tasha Yar’s sister Ishara and mystery daughter Sela thrown in for good measure. In all, nine of the season’s first eleven shows concerned family.
TNG made history within the Trek mythos when its widely publicized eightieth episode, appropriately titled “Legacy,” was filmed, breaking the seventy-nine-show record of the original series. The season-ending cliffhanger, “Redemption,” would be TNG’s one hundredth completed hour.
Records of a more significant type were being broken as well. During the February 1991 sweeps month, “Devil’s Due” (187) drew the series’ highest-ever Nielsen rating of 14.4, breaking the record of 14.0 set in November 1987 during season one. And in January, members of Viewers for Quality Television quickly voted TNG the first non-network series to make the group’s list of fully endorsed television series—after VQT leaders had been persuaded by members to put the show on their ballot despite its syndicated distribution.
But there was still a long way to go before the industry’s old prejudices against science fiction in general and TNG in particular completely melted away. The series again won only two Emmys from among its many technical nominations and none on the so-called creative side despite such excellent actors as Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner.
“Because our show doesn’t air on one of the traditional networks, we continually face the frustration of being an anomaly,” Rick Berman said in accepting the VQT award. “We hope other organizations will follow … in acknowledging our show, which an increasing number of viewers have obviously been enjoying for four seasons regardless of where they watch it.”
Amid the grand epics and “comeback” shows, the 1701-D family found time to continue its own evolution: the fourth season showed us an Academy-bound Wesley, Data’s first romance, Picard reconciling with his brother, Troi losing her empathic powers, Riker confronting fatherhood, Beverly falling in love (at last!), Geordi’s VISOR turning against him, more shocks and sorrows for Worf and his loved ones, and O’Brien getting not only a name but a wife as well.
Credit some of that to the calmest hiatus yet for the series, thanks to the return of most of the staff—led again by Michael Piller, now settling into his second year, and Rick Berman, whose name joined Gene Roddenberry’s in the closing credits as a fellow executive producer.
On his second directorial stint, Frakes shares a laugh with Dorn and Suzie Plakson (“Reunion”/181).
While many third-season staff writers left to work on other projects, Ronald D. Moore returned and added “executive” to his story editor title, sharing the position with newcomer Joe Menosky. They—along with supervising producer Jeri Taylor, who came on board after she helped rewrite “Suddenly Human” (176)—turned in their share of rewrites in tandem with writers who were new to the show. Among those new writers were David Bennett Carren and J. Larry Carroll, who wrote “Future Imperfect” (182) and joined the staff as story editors on the next episode, “Final Mission” (183). “Future Imperfect” marked the last show for producer Lee Sheldon, who wrote “Remember Me” (179); he was the latest in a long line to decide that writing for TNG was not for him.
“There are people who could be Emmy Award-winning writers on a lawyer show or a police drama,” Rick Berman once said, “who just can’t grasp what it is to write for a somewhat stylized twenty-fourth-century world where the conflict between characters is very, very subtle. There are a lot of writers who just don’t get it, or who have a lot of difficulty at it. It’s nothing to do with how smart they are, or how good they are, but how they fit into writing Star Trek.”
Piller described how a process called “breaking the story” is applied to a premise or outline once it goes to development. “I don’t like to get stuck in details,” he explained. “I encourage the writer, after the sale, to ‘hug’ the whole concept—get your ‘arms around it,’ get it into five or six double-spaced pages with a beginning, middle, and end, what you want to accomplish, and your major character arc (the path of an individual’s changes due to that story’s new experiences). If you can tell that and have a real solid foundation—then we start talking about details.”
From there, Piller said, the staff and any outsiders involved sit down and begin the show’s most collaborative process. Using a marker board, they go through each writer’s proposed story, seeing if it holds up to group scrutiny by diagramming and defining four to five “beats,” or major plot moments, in each act. From there the story is sent back to the assigned writer to be turned into a first-draft teleplay. Even for those scripts that survive this process, however, the route to final draft might take months or even years.
“I always tell the writers what they leave with from here is just a road map for the story,” Piller added. “I really believe first of all in listening to the characters—they may not want to follow that map. You may get to a point where they want to ‘turn left’ when you thought they were going to turn right!” While the writers were busy honing their act in the Hart Building, just across the studio street in the Cooper Building first-season veterans David Livingston and Wendy Neuss were being promoted: he by dropping the “line” from “line producer,” and she by joining the senior ranks in moving up from post-production supervisor to associate producer. They and the rest of the staff would work hard to keep production values as high as possible, especially given the spate of money-saving bottle shows that marked the second half of season four—the result of a studio effort to improve Paramount’s fina
nces in early 1991—while saving up the budget for the fourth-season cliffhanger, “Redemption” (200).
“Mom” and “son” embrace at Wil Wheaton’s goodbye party.
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS, PART 2
* * *
Production No.: 175 Aired: Week of September 24, 1990
Stardate: 44001.4 Code:b2
Directed by Cliff Bole
Written by Michael Piller
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Commander Shelby: Elizabeth Dennehy
Admiral Hanson: George Murdock
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Lieutenant Gleason: Todd Merrill
* * *
Hopes are dashed when the Enterprise’s jury-rigged deflector-dish weapon fails to stop the Borg, who go on to obliterate a Starfleet armada on its way to Earth.
At the same time, Borg have tapped into Picard’s knowledge of Starfleet defenses and human nature. A single tear is his only reaction to the DNA rewrites and bio-implants that have transformed his body.
Now captain of the Enterprise, Riker at first can’t shake off the feeling of doom pervading the ship. But, inspired by Guinan’s advice to turn the tables on the Borg by using their own hostage, he and Shelby, now serving as his first officer, design a daring plan. They kidnap Picard so that Data can try to tap into the Borg collective consciousness.
The going is slow, but just as Riker is prepared to give up hope and ram the Borg ship directly, Picard fights through to give Data one simple Borg network command: “Sleep.”
Now dormant, the Borg experience a power feedback that destroys their ship. A shaky Picard begins his rehabilitation, thankful for his escape but deeply troubled by his experiences.
Though the logic of the Borg’s demise in Data’s lab is irrefutable, writer Michael Piller and director Cliff Bole both felt that this sequel did not live up to its setup. Piller has said he waited until he returned to the lot in late July to sit down to wrap up the story—and the idea of using the Borg’s interdependency as a weakness hit him just two days before filming was to start.
Crusher and Troi look for signs of Picard in Locutus.
Despite the rumors over the summer, the talk about making the strong-willed Shelby a regular in the wake of Wesley’s upcoming exit eventually evaporated. A succession of female conn officers would follow until the semi-regular Ensign Ro came aboard in the fifth season in an episode named for her (203). Meanwhile, amid all the swashbuckling, hand it to the women of this crew for saving humanity: it is Beverly who discovers the Borg’s fatal flaw, and it’s Troi who realizes that Picard is fighting through his programming.
Though her background remains murky, Guinan delivers an intriguing line when she tells Riker that her relationship with Picard goes “beyond friendship and beyond family.” And Todd Merrill would be back to play Gleason later in “Future Imperfect” (182), though with a change in rank and duty assignment.
In another bow to series continuity, Piller’s teleplay proposes using nanites as a weapon against the Borg (“Evolution”/150) and in throwaway references, mentions Barclay’s name (“Hollow Pursuits”/169, and “Nth Degree”/193). After its breakthrough use here, the main deflector dish would be utilized again in other episodes, albeit with more mixed results (“The Loss”/184, “Night Terrors”/191, “Nth Degree”/193, “A Matter of Time”/209). Data’s cybernetics lab where Picard is brought, yet another re-dress of the old movie bridge, was the site where Lal was born and died (“The Offspring”/ 164). And we learn that a shuttle can carry its own small transporter system.
Though less favored by Rob Legato and Dan Curry and largely unused since the appearance of its four-foot cousin in season three, the original six-foot Enterprise model had to be hauled out of storage for the ship-separation sequence in the Borg battle, since it was the only version built in two sections. The various battle effects and Borg visuals are motion-picture quality, but again TNG struck out with the Emmys for special effects. Part 2 was nominated, but it won no awards in that category. The episode did snag Emmys for sound editing and for sound mixing, as well as a nomination for art direction.
Almost lost amid the saga and special effects in Part 2 are the slew of new starship designs—admittedly not seen here in good shape—that were crew-designed and built by “kit-bashing”—combining parts from available kits to assemble an all-new model. Among the new ships were the Cheyenne-class Ahwahnne, the Challenger-class Buran, the Springfield-class Chekhov, the Freedom-class Firebrand, the Niagara-class Princeton, and, as mentioned by Shelby, the New Orleans-class Kyushu, the Nebula-class Melbourne (later seen in “Future Imperfect”/182 and “The Wounded”/186), and the Rigel-calss Tolstoy, for the author of War and Peace but renamed the Chekhov in the final draft. Some of the dead hulks can even be seen with their hulls’ lifeboat hatches open—a Greg Jein touch. Rick Sternback also revealed that the Mars Defense Perimeter ships—basically unmanned bombs—were based on the submarine model used in The Hunt for Red October, and quickly dubbed the “Blue-gray October.”
In a later episode, “The Drumhead” (195), Admiral Satie would put Starfleet’s loss at 39 ships and nearly 11,000 lives; Shelby says it should take less than a year to “get the fleet back up,” though the loss definitely leaves Starfleet shorthanded, as we see in “The Wounded” (186).
Although wrecked starships won’t be found there, the site of the armada’s massacre is an actual star: Wolf 359 is the third-closest system to Sol, after Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Starjust 7.6 light-years from our solar system or, in Trek terms, a journey of about thirty-six hours at warp nine.
SUDDENLY HUMAN
* * *
Production No.: 176 Aired: Week of October 15, 1990
Stardate: 44143.7 Code:sh
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
Teleplay by John Whelpley and Jeri Taylor
Story by Ralph Phillips
GUEST CAST
Captain Endar: Sherman Howard
Jono: Chad Allen
Admiral Connaught Rossa: Barbara Townsend
* * *
The Enterprise discovers a failed Talarian craft adrift with five unconscious teenage boys, one of them human.
Raised a Talarian and known as Jono, the human checks out as Jeremiah Rossa, kidnapped a decade earlier when his parents were killed and his colony attacked by Talarians.
But Jono is the adopted son of Talarian Captain Endar, who by custom raised him after his own son was killed. He threatens war when the boy’s human grandmother, a Starfleet admiral, asks that he be brought back home.
The boy also shows signs of having been abused, but Endar says the scars are only reminders of a rough-and-tumble Talarian boyhood. With Jono at the age of decision, Endar and Picard finally agree to let him decide his own fate. Photos help him recall his parents and the attack. But Jono is so agonized by the choice before him that he tries to avoid it by killing Picard so that he will be put to death.
Seeing that, Picard realizes Jono should remain with his adopted people and returns him to a grateful Endar.
Picard tries to help Jono (Chad Allen) choose between his native and adopted cultures.
A budget-saving bottle show sandwiched in among this season’s ambitious early stories, “Suddenly Human” stirred rumors throughout Trek fandom that it would address the issue of child abuse. Instead, it deals with the emotions and decisions faced by broken families and by cultures in collision.
Viewers may remember young Chad Allen as the autistic son of the doctor played by Ed Flanders on St. Elsewhere. He shares some fine moments with Picard who once again must confront his discomfort with children (“Farpoint”/101, “Disaster”/205). Under Troi’s gentle probing, the captain wonders if the feeling stems from his lack of friends as a duty-driven child who early on wanted to be in Starfleet. His brother later speaks of Jean-Luc’s childhood in “Family” (178).
“To us, it was the issue of the foster parent, havin
g raised and nurtured the child, having as much right to custody as the natural parent,” said writer Jeri Taylor. Taylor, who had been recommended by short-time producer Lee Sheldon before his exit, won an ever-expanding staff job as a result of this script. She came from a line producer’s background on series such as Quincy, Magnum P.I., In the Heat of the Night, and Jake and the Fat Man, but knew nothing about Trek until she took a crash course by watching all prior TNG and original-series episodes as well as the motion pictures.
Originally, Taylor named these aliens Phrygians, but after Okuda suggested that a once-mentioned race be used instead, the staff chose the otherwise undescribed builders of the Batris (“Heart of Glory”/120). The look of Endar’s warship, Q’Maire, is based on the big galactic patrol vessels of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series, Sternbach revealed. The training ship, with its two great power panel “sails,” harks back to the early wind-powered Coast Guard trainers. Although neither was based on the often-re-dressed Probert-designed freighter, their armament—like that of the Batris—includes “merculite rockets.”
Judging by the art department’s galactic “map,” Talarian space lies adjacent to that of the Federation, opposite Klingon and Romulan territory. A historical note: the evidence given here indicates that Starfleet’s uniform style changed sometime between Wesley’s birth (“Family”/178) and the tape of Jono’s parents, thirteen to eighteen years prior to this episode.
BROTHERS
* * *
Production No.: 177 Aired: Week of October 8, 1990
The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition Page 23