The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition
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When his questioning proves fruitless, Krola stages his own death and makes Riker appear to be the executioner, hoping both to prevent the aliens from gaining a foothold on his world, and to quash Mirasta’s dreams of space exploration. Dr. Crusher beams in, however, bringing both Riker and Krola back up to sickbay, where she convinces Durken of what really happened.
Though the Chancellor is satisfied of the Federation’s good intentions, he realizes his people aren’t ready to accept the idea that they aren’t alone in the universe yet. Durken quietly puts his world’s nascent space program on hold—while granting Mirasta’s wish to leave with the starship.
Michael Piller had to persuade Rick Berman to let him bend the rules and tell this story—for the first time in Trek’s twenty-five years, the teaser of 1967’s “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” notwithstanding—from an alien culture’s point of view. The gamble worked to perfection in this homage to the classic 1951 science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, which gave us a look at what must be an ongoing process within the Federation. We also learn that a bungled first-contact mission was the reason behind decades of Klingon-Federation conflict.
The multiple teleplay credits include versions by “Tin Man” (168) scriptwriters Dennis Putnam Bailey and David Bischoff and another by Ronald D. Moore and Joe Menosky that tried to use the point of view of the Enterprise crew after Marc Scott Zicree—author of The Twilight Zone Companion—first pitched this basic story idea during season three.
Throughout its evolution, the idea took many twists and turns. It was considered for the season-end cliffhanger and, in a version called “Graduation,” as Wesley’s swan song in which he was to stay planetside permanently after a cultural-contact mission. One rejected concept, according to Zicree, had the new space travelers finding out about the Federation by taking in Picard & Co.’s crippled shuttlecraft. In another, the members of the contact team become celebrities.
The excellent cast includes George Coe, perhaps better known in genre circles for his old Max Headroom role as Network 23 president Ben DeVore; Carolyn Seymour, who played Romulan Sub-Commander Taris in “Contagion” (137); and Bebe Neuwirth, a longtime fan who plays Dr. Lilith Crane on Cheers. Here she’s a Malcorian nurse in a late-draft cameo, written with her in mind; she offers to help Riker escape if he’ll fulfill her greatest fantasy: to make love to an alien. Did Riker—or didn’t he? Well, he escapes somehow!
Clever use is made here of Malcorian medical and anatomical terms that sound almost authentic: “cardial organ” for heart, “costal struts” for ribs, “terminus” for foot, and “renal organ” for kidney.
GALAXY’S CHILD
* * *
Production No.: 190 Aired: Week of March 11, 1991
Stardate: 44614.6 Code: gc
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Teleplay by Maurice Hurley
Story by Thomas Kartozian
GUEST CAST
Dr. Leah Brahms: Susan Gibney
Ensign Rager: Lanei Chapman
Ensign Pavlik: Jana Marie Hupp
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Transporter Chief Hubbell: April Grace
* * *
La Forge’s joy at finally meeting Dr. Leah Brahms, the Galaxy-class engine designer whose holodeck image he once fell in love with, turns to ashes when she finally comes aboard the Enterprise. The real Dr. Brahms is cold and highly critical of the field changes Geordi has made in her original designs.
Meanwhile, the discovery of a new alien life-form ends in tragedy when the creature is accidentally killed. When the saddened crew members realize the entity was pregnant, Worf and Dr. Crusher free its baby with a phaser-fired “cesarean section.” The newborn attaches itself to the starship and drains energy from what it believes is its mother.
La Forge and Dr. Brahms set to work to “wean” the baby, Geordi having only recently discovered that his dream woman is in fact married. Their fresh start as friends is derailed, however, when she finds his old holodeck program and is infuriated to learn that he used her as a fantasy object.
La Forge and Dr. Brahms (Susan Gibney) find neither is what the other expected.
As other alien adults approach from their native asteroid field, the energy drain on the ship grows critical. Finally the two engineers rise above their friction to devise a sour harmonic frequency, which breaks the link between the Enterprise and the baby just in time. The crisis past, Geordi and Leah find they can laugh about their feelings now—as friends.
The use of computer animation produced a very believable alien baby and adults in this story, written from Thomas Kartozian’s outline by former producer Maurice Hurley, with uncredited assist from Jeri Taylor on the Geordi-Leah Brahms reunion and Ron Moore on the tale of “Junior.” The chemistry between LeVar Burton and Susan Gibney was strong enough to lead many fans to hope for a return by the engineer if she ever becomes unattached.
Jana Marie Hupp, seen here as Ensign Pavlik, would fare much worse in a fifth-season episode, “Disaster” (205). The Jefferies tubes, named for original-series art director Matt Jefferies, are finally seen here, after having been mentioned during the third season in “The Hunted” (159).
In a rare blooper, “Junior” is seen attached over the starboard shuttle bay, which is spoken of as Shuttle Bay 2 even though it has always been identified in drawings as Shuttle Bay 3.
NIGHT TERRORS
* * *
Production No.: 191 Aired: Week of March 18, 1991
Stardate: 44631.2 Code: nt
Directed by Les Landau
Teleplay by Pamela DouglasJeri Taylor
Story by Shari Goodhartz
GUEST CAST
Keiko O’Brien: Rosalind Chao
Andrus Hagan: John Vickery
Ensign Gillespie: Duke Moosekian
Ensign Peeples: Craig Hurley
Ensign Peter Lin: Brian Tochi
Ensign Roger: Lanei Chapman
Lieutenant O’Brien: Colm Meaney
Guinan: Whoopi Goldberg
Captain Chantal R. Zaheva: Deborah Taylor
* * *
The Enterprise finds the starship Brattain, missing for several weeks, adrift in space. The entire crew save the ship’s Betazoid counselor, is dead.
While the crew is investigating the incident, odd events begin to occur. Troi is tormented by nightmares, and La Forge can’t restart the Brattain’s engines. Dr. Crusher suggests that the irritability among the crew might indicate a repetition of whatever happened to the now-dead science vessel. Picard decides to leave the area only to discover the Enterprise’s engines don’t work either.
Data, unaffected, theorizes the ships are caught in a Tyken’s Rift, a spatial rupture that is draining their energy. La Forge fails in an attempt to dislodge them. Dr. Crusher finds that the crew’s depression and shakiness stem from dream deprivation, and Troi realizes that her colleague’s nightmares mirror her own; she wonders if they could be an attempt at communication.
While brainstorming with Data, Troi guesses that her nightmare images come from a ship trapped on the other side of the rift. The other ship is asking for their aid in freeing both vessels with a release of hydrogen; the Brattain crew died before they could figure it out.
Troi tries to reach the other ship in a dream while Data vents all the ship’s stored hydrogen. Just as their attempts seem to have failed, there is a giant explosion and the ship is thrown free.
Troi ponders the Tyken’s Rift trap with a tormented Betazoid (John Vickery).
Though it’s regarded as the clinker of the fourth season by many fans and by those involved, this script—from a story by Shari Goodhartz, who penned “The Most Toys” (170) during season three—does let Troi save the ship for once. The story suffered from time problems, among other things. Michael Piller recalled that the energy and pace were so slow that the episode ran nine minutes over and had to be severely cut.
After “flying” in a suspended harness during the filming of this episode, Mari
na Sirtis joked that her plea for more action scenes for Troi had backfired—she is deathly afraid of heights. The scenes, shot throughout an entire day of second-unit production, “seemed like a great idea in the meetings,” but were a “terrible” production mistake, Jeri Taylor said. Rob Legato was more blunt: “Horrible!”
Longtime Trek fans should recall Brian Tochi as young Ray Tsingtao in the original-series episode “And the Children Shall Lead.” More recently he was the voice of Leonardo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and has appeared in everything from Santa Barbara to the last two Police Academy movies.
Michael Okuda’s plaque for the Brattain—inexplicably labeled “Brittain” on the re-dressed Reliant miniature from Star Trek II—identifies the ship as NCC-21166 of the Miranda class, built at the Yoyodyne Division (another Buckaroo Banzai reference) over 40 Eridani-A (Vulcan’s sun, according to Franz Joseph’s 1974 Starfleet Technical Manual).
More in-jokes: TNG staffers’ names can be seen in the explosives manifest that Data and Troi examine. Entries include Mooride Polyronite 4 (Ron Moore, visual-effects coordinator), Takemurium Lite (David Takemura, visual-effects associate), Neussite 283 (Wendy Neuss, associate producer), Bio-Genovesium (Cosmo Genovese, script supervisor), and Hutzelite (Gary Hutzel, visual-effects coordinator).
IDENTITY CRISIS
* * *
Production No.: 192 Aired: Week of March 25, 1991
Stardate: 44664.5 Code: ic
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Teleplay by Brannon Braga
Story by Timothy de Haas
GUEST CAST
Lieutenant Commander Susanna Leitjen: Maryann Plunkett
Nurse Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake
Lieutenant Hickman: Amick Byram
Transporter Technician Hedrick: Dennis Madalone
Ensign Graham: Mona Grudt
* * *
La Forge is disturbed to hear from former shipmate Susanna Leitjen that they are the only two members remaining from an away team sent to Tarchannen III five years ago.
The others are disappearing and apparently headed for the planet, initially investigated after a small colony disappeared there without a trace. On the surface, three shuttles but no life signs are found.
Leitjen tells La Forge she senses the others nonetheless. She then becomes unstable and has to be beamed to sickbay. Finding that Leitjen’s blood chemistry has been altered, Dr. Crusher guesses the others have undergone the same process and have somehow been transformed into another species. Leitjen worries that the same thing will happen to her and La Forge. After she makes a dash to get off the ship, Geordi finds her skin broken out in blotches and her middle fingers fused together.
La Forge, almost entirely transformed into one of the ultraviolet light-beings of Tarchannen III.
La Forge, working harder than ever, finds a shadow not noticed before on the team’s original log tapes, indicating another entity nearby. Then he too falls ill and leaves the ship, evolving faster than any of the others.
Meantime, Dr. Crusher finds and removes a parasite from Leitjen that had been rewriting her DNA. They beam down to the planet’s surface, where La Forge has been almost completely transformed; he is invisible except by ultraviolet light. Only his old friend’s coaxing brings him back in time to remove the parasite.
Rescued from the slush pile of spec scripts, this story by fan writer Timothy de Haas originally concerned two non-regular crew members. The glowing transformed aliens gave Westmore, Blackman, and a company called Wildfire a chance to pioneer a remarkable optical effect using ultraviolet light. “MTV is using that a lot now,” David Livingston said of the ultraviolet effect. “We didn’t do it just to be glitzy—we did it because it tied in dramatically with the story.”
Originally, Brannon Braga recalled, the script linked Geordi and Susanna romantically, but the word came down to give the engineer a break with his “failed love” record, which began in “Booby Trap” (154) and continued in “Galaxy’s Child” (190). Braga said his first draft was more “horrific” with many more aliens on the surface, but Geordi wasn’t transformed; keying the mood more to terror, of a type he described as “restrained and psychoanalytical,” and involving Geordi in the emotional trauma of the change made the show click.
A nice continuity touch here is the use of the older-style uniforms, phasers, and tricorders for the visual log from the Victory’s away team five years earlier—note the opening stardate, 40164.7—with Geordi as a command-division lieutenant (j.g.) when he came from the Victory (“Elementary, Dear Data”/129). The shuttlepod Cousteau from the Aries carries its ship’s number, NCC-45167; it was the second ship command offered to Riker, in “The Icarus Factor” (140).
After debuting in the sciences division (“Where No One Has Gone Before”/106) and dying in the guise of security noncom Ramos (“Heart of Glory”/120), stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone here became Transporter Chief Hedrick; he’s listed as a transporter technician, but he wears an ensign’s pip. Likewise, Yasutake’s recurring character finally gained a last name, Ogawa, here after Beverly had already called her by her first name, Alyssa in “Clues” (188).
Extra Randy Pflug models the humanoid shape that Geordi creates from the cast shadow, while among those wearing the ultraviolet suits were Mark and Brian, two L.A. disc jockeys who had become NBC variety show hosts.
NTH DEGREE
* * *
Production No.: 193 Aired: Week of April 1, 1991
Stardate: 44704.2 Code: nd
Directed by Robert Legato
Written by Joe Menosky
GUEST CAST
“Einstein”: Jim Norton
Cytherian: Kay E. Kuter
Lieutenant Linda Larson: Saxon Trainor
Ensign April Anaya: Page Leong
Leiutenant (j.g.) Reginald Barclay: Dwight Schultz
Ensign Brower: David Coburn
* * *
Sent to repair the malfunctioning Argus Array telescope, the Enterprise discovers an alien probe near the installation. An energy surge from the probe knocks out La Forge and Lieutenant Barclay, who have been sent to study it from a shuttle.
When they come to, both officers seem to be fine, but Barclay soon begins making leaps of insight and showing abilities he never had before. He describes how to destroy the probe when it grows dangerous and then how to fix the telescope in a fraction of the time he would normally need.
A scan of the lieutenant’s brain tissue reveals an underlying physiological reason for his new abilities: he is rapidly evolving into the most advanced human ever seen. The crew is edgy about his new powers, but Barclay seems innocent enough.
Then the telescope’s reactors begin to fail rapidly, and even Barclay is stymied. Just as the installation is about to explode, the computer blinks out and then comes back on line—speaking with Barclay’s voice.
The transformed crewman saves the installation and then propels the ship to a point thirty thousand light-years away. Picard now fears Barclay’s intentions but is reluctant to sever the lieutenant’s link to the computer, fearing it might kill him.
Suddenly the image of a smiling alien appears. His race, the Cytherians, studies other civilizations by transforming them using the probe, and then bringing them to their home system. Barclay is restored to normal as Picard agrees to be scanned in exchange for information about the Cytherians.
Supermind or superthreat? Barclay (Dwight Schultz) interfaces with the computer.
Looking for a vehicle to bring back popular guest star Dwight Schultz and his milquetoast character, the staff decided on Joe Menosky’s idea of an episode focusing on superintelligence. Rob Legato made good use of his effects background here in his second outing as a director, using live lasers to “connect” Barclay to the ship’s computer on the bare holodeck.
Legato recalled how the pages for the final scene arrived the day of shooting on this ever-changing script, making the alien a floating head whose purpose was much more benevolent
than in earlier drafts—an attempt to get away from the standard hostage plot. He was proud of a camera shot on the bridge in which he rejected a series of close-ups in favor of a long continuous roll from one speaker to another.
This segment demonstrates how Gates McFadden’s pleas to round out Beverly’s character with “comedy and hobbies” were finally being met. We see her interest in the theater here on top of past glimpses of dance, in “Data’s Day” (185), and biology in “Clues” (188). Michael Piller credited Rick Berman with suggesting the Cyrano de Bergerac scene between Barclay and his teacher, the “drama doctor.”
Geordi and Barclay’s shuttlecraft here is the Feynman, named for 1965 Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman. The “ODN bypass” mentioned concerns the optical data network, the starship’s multiplex data transmission system. And the graviton concept, used by the Cytherians to bring their subjects home for study, was first used by the two-dimensional creatures in “The Loss” (184).
QPID
* * *
Production No.: 194 Aired: Week of April 22, 1991
Stardate: 44741.9 Code: qp
Directed by Cliff Bole
Teleplay by Ira Steven Behr
Story by Randee Russell and Ira Steven Behr
GUEST CAST
Vash: Jennifer Hetrick
Sir Guy: Clive Revill
Q: John de Lancie
Servant: Joi Staton
* * *
Picard is nervous enough while preparing his keynote speech for the Federation Archaeology Council. Then in quick order he’s visited by Vash, a mischievous female archaeologist he met on vacation on Risa and then by the pesky superbeing Q.