TNG Flashback: Encounter at Farpoint

Back in July, I wrote about the release of the newly remastered Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-ray (and the special one-night theater event to celebrate the release). This year is the 25th anniversary of the series, and this new release has rekindled my love of the show that essentially set my career path in game design by leading me to Decipher, makers of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game.

In fact, that 25th anniversary is this very week. And on this occasion, with my rekindled love, I've begun watching the episodes again from the beginning. And I plan to talk a little bit about each episode here on the blog (assuming I can find time for it between all the other in-progress, incomplete article series I have rolling here). Given the recently announced December release date for remastered Season 2, I'll have around five months between each release anyway, so my rather leisurely pace should work out just fine.

The series began with the two-hour episode "Encounter at Farpoint." The newly launched Enterprise is sent to pick up members of its crew at Farpoint Station, a mysterious base constructed by an alien species and almost miraculously suited to Starfleet's needs. On the way, the powerful being Q intercepts the ship and charges the crew with proving they are no longer the "dangerously savage" human race of centuries past, by unraveling the mystery of how the station was built.

The episode is a peculiar blend of competing elements. It simultaneously wanted to demonstrate how the new series would follow in the mold of the original, but clearly wanted to "one-up" the original and be more impressive and modern. It clearly wanted to include many personal moments to establish all the characters, and yet in many cases those characters weren't much like what they'd become.

Even the story is a bit schizophrenic; I've read that the episode was originally planned for one hour, but a last minute request was made to expand it to two hours. This led to the addition of the Q character and subplot -- ironically the far more effective and memorable element of the episode.

That said, there's more than Q padding this episode out to its full run time. The pace of the pilot is very unpolished, with lots of scenes that include oddly lingering camera shots and loosely timed dialogue. There are long, panning shots that show off sets and models. Several scenes are completely unnecessary to the plot, serving only to demonstrate how the new show is "bigger and better" -- Look, the ship separates in half! How cool is this holodeck thing?!

Some of this awkwardness comes from the director. There are several noticeably odd placements of the camera, and oftentimes the editing choices within a scene don't depict a natural emotional arc for a character (a character will be at one emotional level in a first camera angle, but a different intensity in the next). But a lot of the strangeness is baked into the script -- particularly in the scene in Q's courtroom, which includes an uncharacteristic joke from Data and an odd outburst/monologue from Tasha. Many "act outs" arrive with no dramatic tension whatsoever, presenting a commercial break even in the middle of a scene.

But of course, the grand rebirth of Star Trek couldn't have begun here if it was really all that bad. There's plenty here to like. Patrick Stewart gives a wonderful performance of many layers -- hard edges toward Riker and Q, softer moments with Beverly and Wesley. The "handoff" scene with DeForest Kelley as McCoy is a perfect representation of the old doctor, and has extra poignancy in knowing that he was actually the first actor of the original cast to pass away.

Composer Dennis McCarthy does what's probably his best score work on the entire series. Producer Rick Berman ultimately pushed for a quiet "musical wallpaper" approach to the show, and McCarthy would ultimately comply. But here at the beginning, his score is bombastic and entertaining, the only odd moment being when the entire theme song (by Jerry Goldsmith) is tracked in straight from the main title to score the saucer separation sequence.

As I noted when I watched those two episodes at the movie theater, the acting pool of the 1980s wasn't very talented. There are a number of painfully bad line readings from a variety of no-name characters. But there is a hilarious moment from a random female crew member who totally checks out Riker's ass, plus the first appearance of Colm Meaney (in a red uniform!) as the then-unnamed O'Brien. (No wonder they kept using him; everybody else was terrible.) Guest star Michael Bell as Zorn gives a performance that is simultaneously over the top and completely forgettable.

But John de Lancie as Q is excellent. Not only does he establish a character that would be brought back almost every season (and in two other Star Trek series), but he's more nuanced here than some of the main actors still trying to find their roles. Particularly impressive is the opening sequence on the bridge, in which Q switches into different costumes from different periods of Earth history; with each costume change, he adopts a noticeably different persona.

Some other random observations that I found worthy of note:

• Poor Marina Sirtis had it tough in this episode. The script wrote Troi as practically bipolar in her expression of the emotions she sense empathically. Sirtis gave it her best, acting many scenes with real tears brimming in her eyes. But it read so strangely in the finished product that I think it actually crippled the writing of her character for several years of the series. No one wanted to see that kind of thing again -- not the writers, not the fans, and probably not even the actress herself.


• The Ferengi are mentioned in this episode, as a worthy menace with cannibalistic tendencies. Needless to say, they went in a different direction.


• Worf actually comes off less aggressive than Tasha in this episode.


• Jean-Luc Picard apparently did not get to pick his own first officer, nor did he even seem to have sought the Enterprise for his command. (He says at one point that Starfleet "has given me a ship with children aboard," implying he was just following orders by taking the flagship assignment.)


• The episode ends with a button so typical of the ending of a classic Star Trek episode, you half expect Alexander Courage's original theme to start playing over the end credits.

I also have to say again that these remastered episodes are truly spectacular. The newly engineered 7.1 audio track is wonderful, and the visuals are truly stunning. For example, I never realized before that the two creatures at the end of the episode were of slightly different colors (implying a male and female, I think). And some of the model shots of Farpoint Station and the Bandi city are really almost too clear in their restoration; you can tell that they're models and can perceive their miniature size on screen.

Encounter at Farpoint was a bit of a rocky start for the series in many ways, but with enough hints of greatness in it to get the ball rolling. Certainly it pulled me and many other fans in back in 1987. I'd grade it a B-. By the standards of the rather weak first season, that's actually a pretty good mark.