The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition

by Larry Nemecek

  Sagan, a longtime fan inspired to writing by role-play games and Patrick McGoohan’s visionary The Prisoner series, welcomed the chance to finish Crusher’s oft-interrupted tease “Jean-Luc, there’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you” in times of peril (see “Remember Me”/179) and other close calls (“The Naked Now”/103, “Allegiance”/166, “Qpid”/194). Mauric’s B-story aboard ship was originally more “an oblique cross between Get Smart and James Bond” in tone, Sagan recalled, but it was deemed too “over the top” and in Ron Moore’s polish draft the gags were dropped—such as Riker being put on hold for twenty-fourth-century “elevator music” and an irritated Worf smashing a “sound-altering device” that makes such a racket that no one can hear himself think. Also cut was the fact that the link was drawing Jean-Luc and Beverly into an addiction to each other’s brain waves and eventually a hive mind. Earlier, Sagan added, a shared kiss and a hint of possibly more by the duo around their campfire didn’t survive the story break stage: Berman and Piller didn’t want such a drastic change with the movies on the horizon.

  Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher share a romantic moment.

  Taylor recalled the fan buzz about the episode and spoke to the mail that poured in when the two leads didn’t draw closer at the show’s end. “Where do you go from there? It starts to become a soap opera, and Picard would be sealed off from other stories,” she explained, praising the Stewart-McFadden chemistry. “Also it seems perfectly legitimate to me, emotionally, that two people who have gone that long without ever coming together—there must be a reason for that.” Of course, fan demand for a Beverly/ Jean-Luc tryst would soon get tweaked and then some in the show’s final (“All Good Things…”/227-278).

  Sagan’s place names came from an original entry of a signboard of more famous mythical places, such as Oz and Narnia, from his Ender’s Game screenplay. A two-day return to the Bronson Caves area of Griffin Park near the Hollywood sign (“Darmok”/ 202, “Ensign Ro”/203, “Homeward”/265) provided the landscape; in fact, a gag photo was snapped with Stewart and McFadden in the foreground of the Tinseltown landmark. Science adviser Bormanis noted the Prytt mind-control devices should have been attached on the side of the head near the higher-reasoning center of the temporal lobe, but plot demanded that they be hidden on the back of the neck. We also learn that “associative membership” in the Federation is available, and that Ogawa had a late association with another crewman before being engaged to Andrew Powell (“Lower Decks”/267).

  Trivially, Crusher’s fear of heights was revealed once before (“Chain of Command, Part 1”/236), as was her grandmother’s story (“The Arsenal of Freedom”/121), with more to come (“Sub Rosa”/ 266); her pet phrase “Penny for your thoughts” is not new (“The Perfect Mate”/221). But this story raises a mystery: since Picard didn’t know Beverly until after Walker Keel had introduced her (“Conspiracy”/125) to Jack, her remark that the trio spent more and more time together implies she was with Jack on the Stargazer, at least initially—unless it returned to base often, but that seems unlikely.

  Though visual FX were not a big part of the story, they took a lot of time—including six hours of expensive blue-screen shooting for the fireball cave, which injected motion into the otherwise static lockdown of split-screen work with the “pan-and-scan” technique used when adapting a movie’s anamorphic frame to the squarer television image. After director of photography Jonathan West was filmed walking through the cave with a bright photobulb for reference, the actors were shot running their action as live FX men Dick Brownfield and Will Thorns blew their hair with fans to match the fireball’s close pass; the crew men were then erased from the shot. The fireball elements, rented from unused stock shot FX modeler Tony Doublin, were then composited with the live elements, with other details—shifting light intensity and the images getting sharper when closer to camera—added digitally after that. Rare (for TNG) was the visible forcefield at the Kes border, complete with a costly and time-consuming nonstatic pan, after Stipes’ coordinator Joe Bauer noted that the fugitives had no reason to recognize an unfamiliar planet’s invisible forcefields. An unused DS9 element shot by Gary Hutzel provided the forcefield “hole.”

  FORCE OF NATURE

  * * *

  Production No.: 261 Aired: Week of November 15, 1993

  Stardate: 47310.2 Code: fn

  Directed by Robert Lederman

  Written by Naren Shankar

  GUEST CAST

  Dr. Rabal: Michael Corbett

  Dr. Serova: Margaret Reed

  DaiMon Prak: Lee Arenberg

  Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

  * * *

  While tracing the missing medical ship Fleming through the Hekaras Corridor—the only safe route through an area filled with tetryon particles, a hazard to warp-driven ships—the Enterprise is fired upon by a Ferengi ship that had seemed to be dead.

  After DaiMon Prak asserts that an object presumed to be a Federation buoy emitted a disabing verteron pulse, the Enterprise helps the ship on its way—only to be attacked in the same way hours later.

  A Hekaran brother and sister, Rabal and Serova, board the ship forcibly to explain their goal: to demand that the use of warp drive be halted before it destroys the fabric of space near their world—even if that means isolating it from the UFP.

  An angry Picard softens after Data finds their theory merits study, but the impatient Serova sacrifices herself and her own ship to create a rift that sucks in the Fleming and threatens the Enterprise. A shaken La Forge, upset at the newfound dangers of warp drive, helps find a way to “coast” into the rift on a brief warp pulse and recovers enough to “ride” another wave out when the Fleming tries to restart its warp drive, damaging both ships.

  DaiMon Prak (Lee Arenberg) refuses to help the Enterprise find a missing ship.

  With the UFP declaring a new warp five speed limit, La Forge consoles Rabal over his sister’s sacrifice and joins Picard in mulling their careers’ use of warp drive, resolving to put their new awareness to good use.

  This disappointing though worthwhile “message” show finally beat the staff’s so-called Limits Curse of Season 6, when Joe Menosky’s environmental theme of warp-drive damage was tried but dropped from several stories (“Suspicions”/248). Or did it? Shankar, admitting “it wasn’t one of my finer moments,” was disappointed to lose his original version and its emotional underpinnings: a visit by Geordi’s sister Ariana (only mentioned in “Interface”/255) to confront his emotional denial regarding their mother’s death.

  “I’ve been on enough series and tried to do environmental issues to realize that they are so hard to dramatize,” Taylor said, “because you’re talking about the ‘ozone hole,’ and … it’s so, so hard to make it emotional and personal and give impact on that kind of level.” Shankar agreed: “You oversimplify the issue, you oversimplify the solutions, and you end up with boilerplate and platitudes and nobody’s happy.”

  Shankar, having championed the rebirth of the eco-premise to Jeri Taylor after returning “galvanized” from an environmental film group breakfast, first wrote of Geordi as a “control freak” who was throwing himself into his work rather than mourn Silva’s loss; the warp-drive revelations shook up the one thing he had been able to control—his engines—and led to much soul-searching. Taylor agreed with Piller that the Ariana plot was too forced and trite, though Shankar wished it had been worked out rather than dropped altogether; a conflict for Geordi with another crewmate didn’t pan out, shooting deadlines approached, and the stripped-down script shows the padding of hastily written scenes concerning a rival engineer and Spot, of all things—in part thanks to the fast pace of editor-turned-director Lederman. “Somewhere about Act III the story finally starts, and by that time I don’t think anybody even cared,” added Taylor, who praised Shankar’s attempts to deal in vain with a “doomed premise.”

  INHERITANCE

  * * *

  Production No.: 262 Aired: Week of November 22
, 1993

  Stardate: 47410.2 Code: ih

  Directed by Robert Scheerer

  Teleplay by Dan Koepel and René Echévarria

  Story by Dan Koeppel

  GUEST CAST

  Dr. Juliana O’Donnell Soong Tainer: Fionnula Flanagan

  Dr. Pran Tainer: William Lithgow

  * * *

  With the Enterprise on hand to help reheat the cooling core magma of Atrea IV, one of the married scientist team coordinating the project tells Data she was once married to Dr. Soong, his creator—and thinks of herself as his mother.

  With no memory of her or a mention of her by Soong, Data takes a while to warm to Juliana Tainer, who had left the inventor after he became too immersed in his work. Data’s memories of her and other early life events were erased when Soong and Tainer fled the Crystalline Entity on Omicron Theta, his creation place, and the colonists’ logs were substituted. When pressed, she tearfully admits that she was against Data’s creation and wanted him dismantled when they left, all because of fears he’d be like evil Lore.

  Data finally accepts her as his mother but begins to sense other odd things about her. When her husband is injured in a plasma cave and Data joins her there, the instability forces them to jump from a cliff and her arm is severed, confirming his guess that she is an android.

  Juliana Tainer (Fionnula Flanagan)—Data’s “mother.”

  Playing data from a chip found in her brain, Data sees Soong explain what happened: His wife really died after Omicron Theta, but he built his best-ever android to house her mind without her ever knowing the difference. Abiding by his wishes, Data opts to tell Juliana not of her true nature but of Soong’s regrettedly unspoken love for her.

  This simple yet beautifully mounted tale of yet another crewmember’s “family” began as one more held-over pitch that got a second look during Season 7. As one of writer Echevarria’s favorites, he acknowledged it was a real “insider’s show” but was pleased with both its emotional tone and the chance to smooth out some rough spots from Data’s backstory as it had evolved (“Datalore”/114, “Brothers”/177, “Silicon Avatar”/204, “Descent, Part II”/253). Also noteworthy is the much-praised performance by Flanagan, who’d already appeared on DS9’s first-season “Dax.”

  Professional writer Dan Koepel’s premise came in early enough that Echevarria was able to plan the idea of Soong’s emotion chip having further memories—those wiped from his “childhood.” The writer’s first teleplay draft, differed in that Soong created the Juliana android so human-seeming merely out of his own drive, not due to his love for her, and it wasn’t as clear on her “Sophie’s Choice” guilt over dismantling Data rather than face another Lore.

  Cut here was a scene in which Troi counseled Data to talk to his mother a reference to a hiccuping program that Soong could never make work. Only the bare-bones remains of another story line survived the cut too: Juliana’s husband Pran is distrustful of androids like Data—a concept designed to raise the tension involved in his final decision. The cooling core “tech” was worked out by science adviser André Bormanis, who came up with the ship-based “chain reaction” method of reheating the plasma after the staff opted for the more visual symptom of earthquake shocks over rising radiation.

  New background abounds here: Soong’s jungle planet, unnamed in “Brothers,” is here dubbed Terlina III; three failed androids preceded Lore; he apparently wore the same lab jacket all his adult life; Data had a childhood memory that was “wiped” and replaced with the colonists’ logs, perhaps the reason for his “late” development; an isolinear chip can hold a smaller chip as an interface; and, in an Okudagram “Commercial Transport Database Achive” also filled with in-house joke entries, the Soongs stayed at Mavala IV four days when wed in 2328; one witness was a Corvallen (seen in “Face of the Enemy”/240). Other revisted references include the pattern enhancers (“Power Play”/215, “Time’s Arrow”/226, “Ship in a Bottle”/238, “Frame of Mind”/247); magnesite ore (1967’s “Friday’s Child”); and phaser-bore drilling (“Pen Pals”/141, “A Matter of Time”/209).

  Light on special visual FX, the show featured a Dan Curry matte painting for the phaser bore hole that Data looked up through. The pan-and-scan “cheat” was used again (“Attached”/ 260) to animate the split screen by following Brent Spiner as Soong back and forth around a stationary standin, with the crew directing the actor from a monitor, until Spiner/Data could be shot separately and matted in. As with the other violin scenes, the bowstrings are muted with wax so no sound covers the dialogue before music is looped later.

  The hard luck extended to other areas as well, in small ways: “DaiMon” Prak has no Ferengi forehead military tattoo, while Mike Okuda said the Hekarras Corridor wall graphic title was misspelled and all but the last two incorrect letters were wiped out, leaving only “RS Corridor.” Visually, though, the “space rift” was a success as FX supervisor Ron B. Moore augmented the standard liquid nitrogen/black velvet anomaly with added cans of dry ice dropped into boiling water. The distortion wave was the firestorm element again (“Lessons”/245), “stretched” and re-colored.

  The warp five cruising limit debuts here, designed with an “emergency clause” so it doesn’t cramp future storytelling. The Fleming honors Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, while “biomimetic gel” (again in “Bloodlines”/274) was an item science adviser André Bormanis “created” from real news: a man-made material developed by scientists at Cambridge that creates small tubules than can mimic certain cellular-level biological activities and structures. We learn that warp drive is now three hundred years old, matching the dating of 1967’s “Metamorphosis” despite the fact that the modern warp coil wasn’t involved, since it wasn’t developed until a century later (“A Matter of Time”/209). Also, the Ferengi Marauder, last seen in Season 2 (“Peak Performance”/ 147), is of the Dekora class with a crew of 450 and is seen to fire missiles from its rear arc but it is not clear how the Grand Nagus (DS9’s “The Nagus” and “Rules of Aquisition”) fits in with the “Ferengi Council.” A cut line refers to Riker once surfing on Risa’s Kattala Beach.

  Other Trek bits return: verterons (“The Pegasus”/264); the ship’s log recorder and delta rays, going back to original Trek’s second pilot and “The Menagerie”; weather-modification systems (“True Q”/232, “Sub Rosa”/266, “Journey’s End”/272); a glimpse of pinkish-white dilithium; the Intrepid, Sergey Rozhenko’s ship (“Family”/ 178), which rescued Worf from Khitomer (“Sins of the Father”/165). Finally, though Spot’s gender has changed (“Phantasms”/258), Geordi is the latest to discover that her disposition hasn’t (“Timescape”/251, “Phantasms”/258, “Genesis”/258)—but her feline supplement (see “Phantasms”), now up to version 221, seems to have clicked.

  PARALLELS

  * * *

  Production No. 263 Aired: Week of November 29, 1993

  Stardate: 47391.2 Code: pa

  Directed by Robert Wiemer

  Written by Brannon Braga

  GUEST CAST

  “Lieutenant” Wesley R. Crusher: Wil Wheaton

  “Dr.” Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake

  Gul Nador: Mark Bramhall

  Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

  * * *

  Worf is nearly driven insane when, after returning victorious from a bat’telh competition, he realizes he is sliding from one alternate universe to another.

  First the details of his unwanted surprise birthday party keep changing. Then the details of the sabotaged Argus Array—as well as his tactical console—are different too, resulting in La Forge’s death during a Cardassian attack. At that point, Worf finds himself on an Enterprise where Ogawa is chief medical officer and he is married to Troi!

  After Data points out that La Forge was nearby each time Worf sensed a change, his VISOR is activated and immediately makes the Klingon dizzy—and this time he wakes up on a Riker-led Enterprise as first officer, with Wes Crusher at tactical. Data has found that Worf’
s RNA shows quantum-level flux that is out of sync with the universe, and discovers with Wes a quantum fissure where many universes intersect—a fissure that trapped the original Worf and is aggravated by the VISOR’s subspace pulse.

  During the search for Worf’s true universe, the warlike Bajorans of this one open fire, destabilizing the fissure so much that Enterprises from the various universes begin popping in together—including a ragtag fugitive in a Borg-controlled galaxy that opens fire as Worf returns to his correct universe. That ship is neutralized, the quantum states are repaired, and once home Worf can’t help but see his relationship with Troi differently.

  From the briefest of premises, Braga developed the latest of his complex, high-concept stories that turned out to be one of Season 7’s most popular—largely due to its unforgettable effects and the debut of what became known as the “Worf-Troi thing.” “It’s been kinda fun, but it infuriates some people,” Taylor said of the dreamstate romance. “Some people are so upset that we didn’t put Riker and Troi together and just get it over with, and how dare we introduce this!”

  Story needs and the nonpermanent formats of alternate universes were what tempted the staff to finally pursue the Worf-Troi romance they’d first toyed with in Season 5 (“Ethics”/216, et al.), after a plot based on Picard didn’t pan out. “I think most people didn’t pick up on the relationship we were trying to evolve, which was good—we wanted that surprise when we find out they’re married,” Braga said, noting its future incarnations (“Eye of the Beholder”/270, “Genesis”/271, “All Good Things …”/277-278). “This is a couple that only has relationships in alternate realities and timelines… even as creatures. They make normal couples look boring by comparison!”