According to Cord Cutter News®, a daily email letter about TV to which I subscribe, 34 years ago this week, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired its 100th episode (on June 17, to be precise).
That episode, “Redemption, Part I,” featured a Klingon story arc allowing Worf to explore his identity and closed out the fourth season, which had begun explosively with the second part of the story about Captain Picard’s assimilation by the Borg (“The Best of Both Worlds”).
So, by the time of its 100th episode, The Next Generation (TNG) had established itself with strong stories exploring the kinds of topics for which Trek is now known – allegories for contemporary problems, explorations of morality and conscience, and optimism for humankind’s future.
It didn’t start that way. The first couple seasons were uneven, at best. Nevertheless, I watched every episode, hoping for it to get better, which by season three, it did.
I remember in the fall of 1987, when TNG premiered. I was, of course, eager for any new Trek I could get, as the original cast movies were beginning to wear thin as the cast aged out of their formerly adventuresome roles. No matter how much the now 94-year-old William Shatner (Captain Kirk) of the original series (TOS) might have always aspired to immortality, by the late ‘80s, even he had to have been experiencing a few creaky bones.
TNG wasn’t exactly what I expected. There were no Vulcans among the main cast. And the new captain wasn’t actually new. Patrick Stewart, as Jean-Luc Picard, approached 50 and was (gasp!) bald. I was in the cast of a play during the show’s premiere and several other cast member discussed our anticipation about the new series during backstage moments. After it premiered, we shared what we thought of it. Most were enthusiastic because, well, TNG ,from the start, was essentially the only game in town where Trek was concerned.
To this day, I’m embarrassed that I disparaged the Picard character, if only for his age and lack of hair. I wanted him written out of the show, with the younger, more hirsute Will Riker taking the captain’s chair. A wise woman in the cast, just old enough to be my mother, said, “What you don’t understand is that he [Stewart] is the sexiest man in that cast.”
I wasn’t convinced. But I was still in my “pre-gay” period and my vision about many things remained cloudy, including what made a man truly attractive.
But I learned, and soon Patrick Stewart’s trim physique and, more importantly, his sonorous voice and credibility as a leader won me over. Ultimately, Picard became my favorite of all the Star Trek captains so far, although Anson Mount as Captain Pike in Strange New Worlds is nipping at his heels.
TNG began a wave of shows aired in syndication, meaning local stations throughout the country signed on to air it, often in “graveyard” slots late at night. Fortunately for me, the local CBS affiliate bought into the syndicated package, airing the show, to the best of my memory, late on Saturday nights. But I’m not certain of that.
It didn’t matter since by the mid 1980s, I owned a VCR, and I set it to record all episodes on VHS tapes that I kept through several moves and more than as many years. After the advent of DVDs, which showed me without question the poor quality of those video tapes, I donated them to a church yard sale. I have no idea where they wound up.
A few years ago, CBS, which now owns the Star Trek franchise under its Paramount banner, upgraded the TNG masters to high definition and released the series, with loads of special features, on Blu-ray. I bought the set, of course, and marveled at the stunning imagery and colors its discs offered. Fans hoped the process would extend to TNG’s spinoffs, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but the TNG project lost money. Timing is everything and the TNG high-definition release coincided with the rise of streaming. Fewer and fewer people are buying optical discs, and the simple math is that not enough people, even among Trekkies, bought the TNG Blu-ray set.
TNG is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age of Trek.” I believe it’s easy to see why. By the time it went into production, state-of-the-art special effects had become rather ordinary, and each episode showed some of the best computer-generated imagery available for the time. I remember reading each episode cost about $1,000,000, and if that sounds like a lot of money now, consider what it meant in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Beyond that, Stewart, even though he allegedly initially didn’t really want to become involved in TV sci-fi, carried the show well, with gravitas and consistency, and episodes focusing on Picard’s journey were among the series’ best, especially those involving his recovery from Borg assimilation (“Family”), but also including such gems as “The Inner Light,” “Chain of Command, Parts I and II” and “The Drumhead.” Especially from the latter seasons, it becomes increasingly difficult to isolate only a few stronger episodes. By then the writers had found their groove, especially after Ronald D. Moore (later associated with the Peabody Award-winning Battlestar Galactica reboot) joined the staff, and the cast’s easy chemistry had gelled.
About halfway through the run of the series, I received a telephone call from Sandy Fries, who had been a staff writer and story editor for TNG during its first season. He is credited as the sole writer for “Coming of Age,” the episode during which Wesley Crusher applies for but fails to make it into Star Fleet Academy.
At the time, I edited a magazine for a national non-profit organization that connected the entertainment industry with colleges so students could bring artists and other presenters to campus. He approached me to write for my magazine. While that didn’t come to pass, he told me that TNG producers accepted speculative scripts from the public and he encouraged me to try.
So I did. During the next nine months, I crafted a convoluted episode that likely would have boosted a normal episode’s costs by a factor of 10 had it ever been produced. But, it wasn’t. A few months after submitting it, I received a rather formulaic rejection letter telling me to get an agent if I chose to submit another script in the future.
A season or two later, I noticed a scene in the episode “Dark Page” that seemed eerily like one from my own script. If you think I might have had recourse, I didn’t. The filmed scene did not include any of my dialogue, only a style of presentation, and such ideas aren’t subject to copyright. But I couldn’t help but feel someone on the staff had liked my idea.
Nevertheless, I maintain bragging rights, although increasingly miniscule as time passes. How many of you can say you ever submitted a script to TNG? Or to any TV show, for that matter?
As the years have passed, iterations of Star Trek continue to multiply and I’m always right there in front of the screen, ready for each new episode. Beyond that, through paid streaming services like Paramount+ and the free PlutoTV, I and virtually any other fan out there can watch something from the Trek catalogue 24/7.
Who would have thought? Certainly not I when I was a child and the original series aired on antenna TV and I, being the only sci-fi fan in my family, had to argue or barter to be able to see each episode.
The primary reason I’ve stayed with Trek throughout the decades is its promise of a better, prosperous future for humankind, where all are treated equally and are appreciated for their diversity. Recently, someone in a Trek discussion on Facebook raged about one of the newer series, Star Trek: Discovery, demanding to know, “When did Star Trek get so woke?”
“Dude,” I wanted to say, “Star Trek was the original woke.”
Indeed.
Especially now, appreciation for diversity and optimism for the future are needed more than ever.
Make it so.
AfterThoughts is a weekly column offering opinions and experiences from Farr’s seven decades of life. He is a retired writer/editor/photographer, occasional actor, vocalist, stage director and published novelist living in the greater Columbia, SC area.