TNG Flashback: The Neutral Zone

The first season finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation was a lackluster affair cobbled together at the last minute. Adapted in part from a short story submitted by outside writers, the shooting script was reportedly written in a day and a half. And it comes off like it. Rather than a grand season finale to whet the appetite for more, "The Neutral Zone" comes off like the result of a timer going off, and the writers simply stopping with whatever they had.

The Enterprise discovers a derelict spaceship from the late 20th century, aboard which they find three humans, cryogenically frozen in the hopes of a future cure for their fatal ailments. As the three deal with adjusting to a life 370 years later, the Enterprise is ordered to the Neutral Zone. After 50 years without contact by the Romulans, a number of Federation outposts in the area have been destroyed. It's up to Picard and his crew to determine what happened, and confront the Romulans if necessary.

I mentioned that part of this story came from outside writers, and that was the 20th-century humans aspect of the episode. I don't know if they were writing personal wish fulfillment, or if they thought they'd craft a winner by stealing the "thawed 20th century human" plot from the classic original series episode "Space Seed." Either way, it's a disaster. There's no Khan here. There's no threat at all here, and that's the problem. These three people from the past are at absolute worst a nuisance to our heroes. One is a drunken mess who just wants to pick up partying again. Another is a "1 percenter" fixated on money. The most sympathetic is a woman pining for her lost family, but what becomes of her matters nothing at all to anyone on the ship. (With the possible exception of Counselor Troi. But even she only takes an interest when Picard orders her to.)

The lack of tension in this plot line isn't the worst thing about it, though. Worse is the endless opportunities it provides for more of that 24th-century moralizing about how stupid 20th-century humans are. The first season was full of it, and it has worn painfully thin by this finale. Sure, if I myself could have a conversation with someone from the 1640s, I probably wouldn't think much of his morality, knowledge, or capabilities. But I feel like there comes a point where hearing Picard and Riker talk about we the audience in this way isn't inspiring us to be better (as I'm sure Gene Roddenberry would have professed), it's browbeating us. It's preachy. It's not entertainment.

But the second plot line really isn't any better. There's lots of dramatic talk about how Federation outposts have been destroyed. But it's really all just talk. The storyline culminates in a viewscreen showdown where Picard talks with two Romulan commanders for a few minutes, and then both ships part ways. Again, no real threat, no tension.

The entire premise of "no Romulan contact for 50 years" is undermined in numerous ways. We never find out why they were dormant. Nor does it seem they actually were. Worf's recently revealed back story tells us the Romulans attacked Khitomer when he was a boy. (Does contact with Klingons not count?) And not long before that, we heard about an off-screen conflict with the Romulans in "Angel One." Eventually the writers would throw this whole dormant Romulan thing out the window when a Romulan attack was also revealed to be crucial to the fate of the Enterprise-C.

Slightly intriguing in this subplot is the fact that the Romulans were not in fact behind the destruction of the outposts -- and that outposts of theirs were destroyed as well. All were "scooped off the face of the planet" by an unknown force. That unknown force would later be revealed as the Borg. Apparently, the writers envisioned a trilogy of episodes to introduce their new badass replacement for the failed Ferengi, and planned to begin season two with a two-part episode following directly on this story, with Romulans cooperating in a first encounter against the Borg. All that was scrapped thanks to the Writers' Guild strike, with the season premiere replaced by an unconnected story, and the Borg's introduction delayed until later in the season. Definitely a missed opportunity, and it definitely left this episode to feel like what it is -- a beginning lacking an ending.

Composer Ron Jones does great work even for this terrible episode, though. His theme for the Romulans has both suspense and action gears, and marks the first time any composer established a leitmotif for the race in Star Trek. Jones also has some silly fun with the 20th-century characters, underscoring them with music more comedic in tone.

Other observations:

• It's curious that we see two Romulan commanders here where one clearly would have meant one less actor to cast and pay. I wonder if the writers had some sort of twin Romulus/Remus notion in mind here to explain what appear to be two equal commanders on the Romulan ship?

• Speaking of that Romulan ship, it's fantastic. The model builders delivered a truly different and eye-catching design.

• One of the Romulan commanders is played by Marc Alaimo, who would later play the role of Gul Dukat on Deep Space Nine.

• It's puzzling why the writers choose to make the frozen humans originate from the 20th century. With only 12 years left in said century at the time the episode aired, surely they didn't think we'd be freezing people and launching them into space on the timetable they were putting forth. Why set themselves up to be wrong?

• This episode starts with Picard off the ship and Riker in command. Accordingly, Riker observes the standard Next Generation protocol for away teams, remaining aboard the Enterprise as Data leads the mission to the derelict.

• Ship security is shown to be preposterously lax in this episode. One of the 20th-century characters just takes a turbolift to the bridge. (You'd think on a ship full of civilians and children, some security measure would be in place to prevent that.) No one notices he's there until he says something. And then, although Picard immediately orders security to escort him from the bridge, the two no-name officers stop to gawk at the Romulan warbird instead, observing the entire sensitive exchange before finally carrying out their orders after being told a second time.

• When I think that this was Gates McFadden's last appearance on the show for a year (since Crusher was replaced in season two by Dr. Pulaski), it makes me extra sad. She's used only for comic relief here, and poorly, treated with sexism by the 20th-century folk.

Season one ended on this truly dull note, an episode I'd grade a D-. Easily one to skip.

So, a few final words about the first season as a whole. It was both better and worse than I remembered. I graded 11 of the 25 episodes at least a B-, which is probably higher than I might have guessed before watching them. But that means more than half the episodes were subpar (and 9 of them some form of truly bad D grade or worse). Most notably, not a single episode was worthy of an A or A-.

In short, the series really didn't find itself in this first season. Frankly, were it starting out today, I can't imagine it ever would have lived beyond the one season. Fortunately for us, the then-new direct-to-syndication model of the series gave it the wiggle room to work through its growing pains and ultimately reach a consistent level of quality.

My top five for the season: "Skin of Evil" (I know, I'm shocked too), "The Battle," "Where No One Has Gone Before," "The Naked Now," and "The Big Goodbye."