“Fallacies and falsehoods there were from time immemorial”: Justice, Angel One, When The Bough Breaks

Traditions are only worth holding onto if they make sense.

Today marks a turning point for Vaka Rangi, at least in terms of its structure. With Star Trek: The Next Generation, we've entered the longest and most monolithic stretch of the entire Star Trek franchise. There is no point between 1987 and 2005 where Star Trek is not airing new episodes in some form or another, and this makes analysing and historicizing it the way I've been approaching it up 'till now unfeasibly difficult in any reasonable amount of time. Especially considering the fact that, to be brutally honest, not every episode of Star Trek from here on out is a historical milestone, and not every one really needs to be treated as such. Actually, I don't even consider that to be true of the Original Series, but you could at least craft a somewhat compelling argument that this might have been true in this instance. For these shows, however, three of which were comprised of seven seasons of thirty episodes each and one of which was comprised of four, it's really not plausible for me to tackle them episode by episode and expect to be done with all of this before Vaka Rangi itself becomes a historical relic.

So from now on, I'm going to start looking at whole sections of a season together in one essay instead of one at a time. I'll group the episodes together around a central theme that I think characterizes each of them and, instead of going into elabourate detail for all of them, I'll pull examples that support my thesis from each of them. Not every post will be like this; there are still a fair few episodes that I think warrant posts all to themselves, but this is going to become a regular feature from here on out. In particular, I simply can't conceive of any other way to sanely cover the byzantine complexity of the Dominion War's stubborn fixation on serialization *while also* writing about Star Trek Voyager at the same time. Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 is the first moment I think the time is right to approach the critique this way because there's a noticeable chunk of the year that's quite frankly completely superfluous, mediocre and eminently passable. And, er, I'm afraid it's this one. It wouldn't feel right for me to skip over these episodes entirely, but there's simply no way I can squeeze 1.5-2,000 words out of any of them, and I don't want to waste your time with an entire day's post that's just like 500 words or so.

It's not that any of these episodes are reprehensibly terrible; there's nothing in any of them quite as ghastly as “The Naked Now” or “Code of Honor” (although “Justice” and “Angel One” have moments that push it). What they all are, however, is rote and forgettable, and in a very particular way. I have a distinct suspicion that when people malign the first season, it's probably this crop of episodes they're thinking of, and I've personally skipped over these episodes so many times during my past revisits of this year I actually barley remember them. I know there's a lot of vitriol leveled at the earlier episodes too, and while I do grant they have their issues, I think the majority of the criticism of stories like “Where No One Has Gone Before”, “The Last Outpost” and “Lonely Among Us” is misplaced and unfounded and mostly stems from frustrated confusion that the show under Gene Roddenberry, Maurice Hurley and D.C. Fontana isn't what it's going to be under Michael Piller or Jeri Taylor. And yeah, “Hide and Q” and “Datalore” were both pretty excruciating, and don't get me going on “The Naked Now” and “Code of Honor” again. However, “Encounter at Farpoint”, “Haven”, “Too Short A Season” and “The Big Goodbye” were all magnificent and nobody can convince me otherwise.

These three episodes we're looking at today though...I pretty much concede every single criticism of them that's ever been made. They're all boring and work in very questionable ways, if at all, and more than anything else feel like the show is going through the motions. And disappointingly, “going through the motions” for the Star Trek: The Next Generation production team midway through its first season is apparently “halfheartedly reiterating the Original Series”. “Justice” is a bog standard Prime Directive story, which means it sucks by default without even getting into its worriesome situational politics, “Angel One” is another in a long line of ham-fisted TOS-style allegories that handles feminism with the same care and nuance Dave Gerrold gave homosexuality in “Blood and Fire” and “When The Bough Breaks” is basically a less-interesting “Wink of an Eye”. Every single one of these stories would have felt right at home on Captain Kirk's bridge, and not a single one needs the resources and potential of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It almost feels like the team honestly didn't care what they were making, dug up a bunch of old scripts and did a find-replace on all the names. You know, just like how they'll literally do that exact thing about eight months from now.

(I am, of course, well aware of the extenuating circumstances that led to exhuming “The Child”. This does not change the fact it was a somewhat ill-advised move, or assuage concerns that the production team thinks Star Trek Phase II and Star Trek: The Next Generation are interchangeable.)

I mean honestly, you'd think by now they would have figured things out: It's an oft-repeated and misleading myth, stemming from this show actually (we'll talk more about it once Michael Piller comes aboard) that any television series needs between one to three seasons to figure itself out before it settles into a groove. This is, bluntly put, both a presumptuous and false belief held only by people who have no experience with or understanding of TV that's not Star Trek. A television show is lucky if it lives long enough to get a second season, let alone three. The only reason Star Trek has historically had room to drag its feet is because it was made for syndication and doesn't have the same expectations hoisted onto it. There are plenty of shows that aren't Star Trek that storm right out of the gate confident in their own identity and proudly making their presence known (Dirty Pair, Miami Vice...) and even some that *are* Star Trek (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's first two seasons are quite honestly shamefully undervalued). Not everything has the luxury of a guaranteed episode count to slack off with.

One aspect of this that is true, however, is the fact that Star Trek *is* incredibly difficult to write for. It's unlike any other television show not because, as is often claimed, it's VFX-heavy science fiction, but because not only does it not play by the same rulebook as every other scripted drama on the air, it's not even playing the same game. Standard rules about plot, character development and conflict simply *do not apply* to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and that confounds people who aren't used to it. Not only that, but people who *are* versed in Star Trek have their own set of problems, namely they're so entrenched in their comfort zones and standard ways of approaching things (especially if they came up through or were fans of the Original Series, both of which is true of the current production team) they can't quite wrap their head around the fact it's not 1967 anymore. In the case of all of these parties, the default reaction to being confounded by Star Trek: The Next Generation is “do what the Original Series did”. And that gives you stories like these.

By virtue of inheriting the Original Series' narrative structure, these three episodes also inherit its ethical problems, because the Original Series wasn't always (read “was hardly ever”) the forward-thinking shows people like to think it was. And, like clockwork, each of these three episodes has at least one major cratering ethical failing: While not as stupefyingly abhorrent as “Are Unheard Memories Sweet?”, it's nearest Original Series/Phase II analog, “Angel One” attempts to Say Something Important about feminism by imagining a planet where men are held as slaves by a ruling class of dominatrices and asking its male viewers how they would like it if they had to live like that. While it's thankfully at least on the correct side of the issue this time, “Angel One” almost comically fails as social commentary because it doesn't realise its embarrassingly simple act of turnabout completely neglects to address the underlying social mores and power structures that dictate why women and women in particular, are treated as a hated underclass on contemporary Earth. Furthermore, it's sad how the show seems to think it needs to go to all this trouble when it already depicts a feminist and progressive world *by default*. The crew are obviously meant to be sympathetic, and they're trying mightily to prove to us they're ideals worth invoking. This just feels, redundant, unnecessary and as if the show is trying too hard.

“Justice” and “When The Bough Breaks”, meanwhile, both essentially drift around aimlessly and without a purpose, aside from the aforementioned Prime Directive hand-wringing, so all the same critiques I leveled against things like “The Return of the Archons” and “The Apple” still apply. I'm not going to reiterate my steadfast rejection of the Prime Directive every single time we get another episode about it: It simply doesn't work because there is no conception of reality where it would be possible to hold onto it from an anthropological perspective, and that's before getting at the rather loaded and reactionary subtexts that underwrite this kind of story. “Justice” at least has been read as a critique of unattainable, conventional “fit” standards of beauty and the oppression and stigma this forces onto those who don't conform, but I don't really buy that argument because A. the Enterprise crew are all supposed to be at the peak of physical health and fitness, B., Edo as depicted is pretty indistinguishable from any number of “close-minded” Original Series planetary societies that just follow rules and orders blindly and without question and C. I don't see anything wrong with advocating being as healthy and active as you can be within your means and as is appropriate to your specific body type. “Conventional standards of beauty” and “fitness” are not the same thing; in fact, the former tends to preclude the latter.

As is often the case with Star Trek: The Next Generation, at least at this point in time, the most noteworthy things on display here are visual aesthetics and hints at hidden stories that could have been told. In that regard, “Angel One” has a bizarre, half-baked C-plot about Romulan mobilization near the Neutral Zone that's supposed to set in motion a story arc, but it's entirely superfluous, it's dealt with far better in the episode “The Neutral Zone” and you miss absolutely nothing by waiting until then. I like how Geordi gets to command the Enterprise and Tasha gets to lead the away team, but that's all handled better in “The Arsenal of Freedom” and it really should have been Beverly in the captain's chair here instead. The matte painting and set from this episode, meanwhile, are definitely a step up for the show, and they both go on to be re-used with success in future episodes. Also, the central computer core from “When The Bough Breaks” is one of the most striking and memorable images from the first season, and the process of bringing the shot to life was covered in LeVar Burton's Star Trek: The Next Generation Reading Rainbow episode. As for “Justice”...well...

Look. As you've probably ascertained by now, I'm very forgiving of the visual style of this series. I *love* the Enterprise sets, the lighting, the Okudagrams, Andy Probert's elegant organic curves, everything. I love the uniforms, though I prefer the two-piece suit variants we start seeing in the third season, because just looking at those spandex jumpsuits makes my back hurt knowing what havoc they wreaked with the actors' spinal columns. I mentioned in the “Haven” essay how much I adore Ariana, her style, and how Danitza Kingsley could convey so much with just a look. Even her people's ship was fairly evocative. But “Justice” is where I finally draw the line. This episode, from beginning to end, is an aesthetic car fire. The Edosians look like William Ware Theiss didn't know what a 1980s was and tried to design something “hip” and “trendy” based on already dated Olivia Newton John music videos and half-overheard watercooler grumblings from his co-workers about “the kids these days”. The set doesn't help matters at all, and looks just as cringe-inducingly gauche as everything else about this episode does. The fact that it's actually a real place, the C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the San Fernando Valley, is just even more deeply unfortunate.

In the end, I can't decide what's worse: A bunch of out-of-touch TV veterans from the 1960s trying to be relevant and contemporary or simply not even bothering. “Angel One” and “When The Bough Breaks” feel like retrograde throwbacks, but “Justice” looks like your dad trying to breakdance in a suit and tie. It's not awkwardly dated because it's of the 1980s, that's just it: It's not of the 1980s. It's some old person's idea of what the 1980s were about. The real works of the period are the ones that transcend themselves to reach metafictional nirvana and can never look out of place because they were never trying to fit in to begin with. No matter which angle they were approached from, not a single one of “Justice”, “Angel One” or “When The Bough Breaks” should be here. They're all the work of burned out talent who have lost their game and who are unable to recapture their moment in the sun. They're a clear a sign as any that Star Trek: The Next Generation needs to clean house if it wants to have a legacy worth talking about.

“That's my evil twin who's doing that. We've got to stop him!”: Datalore

Almost as iconic to my memories of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the timespace it inhabits as Data is his brother Lore. I always found him to be one of the great antagonists of the show, even trumping the Borg. It's him who I think of along with the Klingons, Romulans and Ferengi as people the Enterprise would frequently and regularly come into contact with, and the two-part episode “Descent”, in particular the climactic scene where Data debates Lore in a darkened, bombed out corridor before shutting him down, is permanently burned onto my psyche as one of the show's most legendary and unforgettable moments.

As a result, this episode, Lore's first appearance, is always one I eagerly look forward to rewatching whenever I revisit Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season...And it's one I'm always profoundly let down by. Most recently, this happened when I was trying to introduce my sister to the show as I excitedly talked up how cool Lore was, how brilliant Brent Spiner was in the role and how important a role he played in my personal history with the series. After I put the Blu-ray on and we'd seen it, my sister and politely, yet firmly pointed out that, no offense, but “Datalore” was crap, the evil twin story was precisely the sort of artificial conflict we both hate in scripted drama and Wesley Crusher rendered the whole thing essentially unwatchable. She's right, of course: There are a few episodes of any show that really aren't very good, but you have to begrudgingly recommend to a new viewer because they lay the groundwork for later, far superior story arcs. Unfortunately, the very best I can say for “Datalore” is that it's in that category.

“Datalore” is actually Gene Roddenberry's final contribution to Star Trek as a writer and, well, it shows. This is absolutely the worst Wesley has been yet, and it's impossible *not* to lay that at Roddenberry's feet. He's obviously responsible. And, all the usual criticisms of Roddenberry's style of writing apply here too. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that Data's origin is established to be on an old Earth colony as the creation of an eccentric human inventor instead of “unknown aliens”, but that's definitely the case now. At the very least it gives Brent Spiner a lot more to do in the future, so that's good (though interestingly, Noonien Soong was originally supposed to be played by Mike Okuda. Seriously. That would have been cool in its own right). However, the one part of the script we can't blame on Roddenberry is its stock nature: The idea to make “Datalore” an evil twin story actually came from Brent Spiner. In the original script, Lore was apparently going to be Data's twin sister, a good android who was even going to join the crew to do mechanical work in environments humans couldn't go, like the exteriors of starships.

I'm not sure if Data's sister was always going to be named Lore, but, if she was, this does of course open up a raft of unpleasant gender essentialist concerns. “Lore” is in many ways the opposite of “Data”, the latter being measurable, quantifiable results of scientific inquiry while the former is accumulated tradition and folk wisdom, little of it being “rigid” or “scientific”, most of which tends to contradict itself. Put crudely, data tends to be the province of “hard” (horrible people would say “proper” science), while lore is the domain of the humanities and, well, oral history. Given the way the humanities are stereotyped as being feminine pursuits, It's not terribly difficult to see how someone of a more limited and provincial viewpoint might say data is masculine while lore is feminine, and this is absolutely something I could see Gene Roddenberry slipping up on. Even if he had the best of intentions, which I'm sure he did-He probably looked at the show and decided there needed to be more female characters to balance out all the men and thought someone like Lore would offer a perspective the Enterprise had thus far been lacking.

And she would have: I can think of lots of ways someone like the original Lore could have helped Star Trek: The Next Generation. The idea of a female android who has emotions, tells stories and does working-class jobs around the Enterprise is one that simply brims over with exciting potential to me. Just off the top of my head, I can see her providing a fascinating mid-point between Data, Geordi and Commander Riker and being someone who would have gotten along positively swimmingly with Doctor Crusher and Captain Picard in later years. She might even have been able to fill the role Tasha Yar failed to, and that's not even getting at how she could have served as a deconstruction of the traditional fembot of the sort the Original Series itself engaged in on more then one occasion. Most typically, fembots are patriarchal domination fantasies for misogynists looking for their ideal woman: A woman who is literally a commodified and servile possession. Lore would have been the opposite of that: A female android who is a daughter, sister, friend and colleague and treated as such.

(Speaking of commodification, a savvy writer could also use a character like this to comment on the sorts of things robots and artificial intelligence are created for in the real world. Again, many storytelling opportunities present themselves to me.)

But on the other hand, the inescapable gender essentialism of Lore's origin would have hung over her for the rest of her life, possibly threatening to overshadow everything she did. It would have been a clear-cut example of Star Trek's frustratingly signature two steps forward, one step back approach. Not that what we get is any better, mind you. Making Lore an evil twin of Data now implies that oral history isn't just inferior to quantitative information, it's actively dangerous to it. Obviously I'm drawn to the oral tradition and obviously this upsets me, but, despite what you may think, I don't hate science: I think there's a place in the universe for both things, and that really they're more similar then science wants to admit sometimes. At least when Lore was a girl, there was no indication Roddenberry meant there to be any value judgment to be made about this: It was simply that one sibling did one thing and the other did something else (although I've also heard Lore was going to be Data's love interest as well, in which case ew). With Lore a brother, and an evil one to boot, it's pretty hard not to take a value judgment from it.

The reason for the change is clearly because Brent Spiner felt like playing a psychopath that week, so he approached Gene Roddenberry for a rewrite. Not that I entirely blame him: With the utmost respect to the man, he's an absolute ham and I can imagine playing an emotionless android (although actually, whether or not Data is supposed to be emotionless at this point is an interesting subject for debate) would have started to feel pretty frustrating and limiting to someone who's that much of a performer after awhile. And, naturally, Spiner is electrifying in the part, making Lore instantly memorable from the very beginning. He's a classic “love to hate” sort of character, and the wonders Spiner pulls with the double act here more than explains why Lore gets brought back as a reoccurring villain. He's absolutely delicious. More importantly, it lays the groundwork for Spiner to break out of his usual role to do more clever and exciting things later on in the series.

Which is really as apt a metaphor for “Datalore” as I could hope for (see? Wordplay. It's not scary). The episode itself is garbage, with the notable exception of Brent Spiner's acting and, of course, the Crystalline Entity. But it sets a lot in motion that will pay off in huge dividends later on: If nothing else, “Silicon Avatar” and “Descent” are both brilliant. And, like so much about Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lore himself, or should I say herself, gets me thinking about many different possibilities and ideas. If the majority of them turn out to be things I'm projecting onto the show and extrapolating from my hazy 1980s memory, well, so be it. That's my lot in life, after all.

“Right out of a manga...!”: The Big Goodbye

“The Big Goodbye” is not the first Holodeck story, although it has that reputation among fans. We've seen the Holodeck used in a few episodes already for both training and recreation, but of course what fans mean when they say this is that “The Big Goodbye” is the first Holodeck malfunction story, which, shall we say, goes on to be something of a cliche in 1980s and 1990s Star Trek. Though even that's not technically accurate, considering “The Practical Joker” from the second season of Star Trek: The Animated Series was for all intents and purposes the debut of both the Holodeck and the Holodeck malfunction plot, even if it wasn't called that at the time.

Considering that, as a narrative device, the Holodeck offers basically limitless potential for intriguing and captivating storytelling and the overwhelming majority of Star Trek's writers default back to this one basic plot from a not-even-all-that-good episode from Star Trek: The Animated Series' decline period is concerning, but not the issue at hand today, because “The Big Goodbye” does work, and work very well. One obvious reason why is the actors, who are in top form: They're always in top form so it's quickly going to become irrelevant to keep mentioning that, but the specific way they're in top form this time around is because the structure the Holodeck offers allows Star Trek: The Next Generation to crash into period piece drama and genre pastiche. The common explanation given for this, echoed famously by Wil Wheaton in his own review of this episode, is that actors love this sort of thing anyway so naturally it's fun for them to throw themselves into a brief like this and just go nuts with it. And there certainly is some of that: I'm convinced the majority of the reason Data has a part here is so Brent Spiner can do his best hard-broiled gangster routine, which he's of course amazing at.

But Spiner is actually a really good example of how the actors go above and beyond, not just in this episode, but every day on set. Data's part isn't just an excuse for Spiner to do funny voices, he's a kind of Harpo Marx archetype who's constantly comically bewildered by his situation. Spiner's skill at impersonations actually gets written back into the character as Data's awkward efforts to blend in and get into his role. He's done this before, obviously, but this is the first time where the production starts to work with this and give him the room he needs. Gates McFadden does something very similar: A natural comedian, McFadden is clearly relishing the opportunity this episode gives her, and this is Bev's best outing yet. Gates doesn't play Crusher at all straight here, between her fumbling and tripping in the Holodeck to the exaggerated and pouty way she conveys the alleged “romantic tension” with Captain Picard, Gates turns Bev into basically a pantomime character here, it's wonderful and it's right up her alley. What “The Big Goodbye” is then is the first time on Star Trek: The Next Generation where the actors overtly get the chance to bring some of themselves into their characters, which is the defining moment that changes the crew of the Enterprise from one-note stock retreads into the beloved people they would become.

(Special praise is also due to LeVar Burton, who gets a lot of time with Wil Wheaton here and immediately shows that Geordi is probably the only character who can work with Wesley Crusher and make the scene less than insufferable. LeVar of course by this point had four years of experience as a children's educator here, and it shows in the way he has Geordi interact with Wesley and, actually, Data as well. It's frankly exactly the sort of thing Geordi should have been doing from the beginning. I also can't very well not give a nod to legendary, and legendarily cantankerous, actor Lawrence Tierney and his show-stealing portrayal of Cyrus Redblock.)

But it's ultimately the Holodeck that facilitates all of this, not just on a production level but on a metatextual one as well. Because the Holodeck is not an excuse to do a genre romp, though lesser creative teams will use it for that end, and nor is it even to do a straightforward Doctor Who-style narrative intruder story, although Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden and to a lesser extent Patrick Stewart do emphasize that angle to some degree here. But the true purpose of the Holodeck is the means by which Star Trek: The Next Generation can explore the power of symbols and fiction. “The Big Goodbye” is not one of the famous “Holodeck programmes gain sentience” stories Star Trek will toss out with wild abandon in later years, though it could be argued the groundwork is laid here: What it is instead is a story where different kinds of fictional characters are forced to interact, and where the new Enterprise crew gets to join the ranks of oral heritage. The reason the Holodeck can be the vessel by which the crew and the show gets this opportunity is down to its fundamental element. According to The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach, a document that outlines all the blueprints, systems and operational details of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, the Holodeck runs on an unstable radioactive transuranic (meaning ahead of uranium on the periodic table) element...called keiyurium.

This then is at long last the moment where the Lovely Angels finally crash-land into Star Trek: The Next Generation, reshaping and intertwining the fate of the two series forever. And it makes perfect sense that this should happen in “The Big Goodbye”, a story about recursive performativity (not only are the characters playing roles in their Holodeck simulation, but the aforementioned bleedthrough over the boundary between the actors and their parts is the first time a critical and defining aspect of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins to crystallize), and through the Holodeck, which uses light, colour and sound to create a fantasy world of performative artifice. Captain Picard assumes the mantle of a fictional hero of his, in essence bringing Dixon Hill into himself and giving him a transformative rebirth and reconceptualization. And it's also very telling that Dixon Hill himself is a private eye and his world is one of Raymond Chandler-esque hard-broiled detective fiction, the very same genre that a nascent Dirty Pair once called a parent.

But no congress between devotee and divine can happen without situated mythopoeic transformation and sublimation, and both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Dixon Hill leave “The Big Goodbye” profoundly altered. Having awakened into its transcendent fictional power, Star Trek may now conjure dreams, but, as Whalen's injury demonstrates, it's no longer allowed to place itself above other people and concepts. It's been disabused of its presumptuous God Trick illusion: Becoming a fictional ideal means you're one thing to strive for among many, not the only one. And Dixon Hill is rendered essentially outmoded, with Star Trek's newfound divinity rendering it for all intents and purposes vestigial. We weep for Picard's good friend Lieutenant McNary who, his part having been played, must stand alone in Dix's office as the stage lights go out. Star Trek has transcended to a higher plane of understanding, but in doing so it's transcended Dixon Hill, hard-broiled detective fiction, and indeed its own pulp roots.

Which does bring us all the way back back to Kei and Yuri, for the Enterprise crew's invocation of Dixon Hill is really simply an allegory in microcosm for Star Trek: The Next Generation's invocation of Dirty Pair. The Angels have been summoned, and nothing is ever going to be the same again. Enlightenment is not always reached without a manner of trauma, as the cleansing light of Angels can also scorch. Perhaps this is why keiyurium is an unstable radioactive isotope. We've caught our fist glimpse of the sublime and eternal here tonight, but the ego death this necessitates involves casting aside everything we thought we knew about what science fiction is. Affair of Nolandia and Dirty Pair: The Motion Picture pointed the way forward, and Star Trek: The Next Generation has already demonstrated its strongest in the realm of images and memory. This is no longer recognisable as classical science fiction. This is something far stranger, grander and more wonderful unto itself.

“...the issue at stake is patriotism”: Too Short a Season

“Too Short a Season” is one of the most criminally underrated episodes in Star Trek: The Next Generation's first year, if not the whole series. It's the first unabashedly, hands-down brilliant episode since “Haven”, which makes sense as it's the show's second contribution from D.C. Fontana. Well, second *official*, at any rate: She did the teleplay for “Lonely Among Us”, which I also loved, and she did clean-up work on “The Naked Now”, but understandably took her name off it and used a pseudonym there. Though “Too Short a Season” is still an adaptation of somebody else's work, it's still very much a story that's very recognisably hers: It's got every ounce of that trademark Fontana bite and cynicism and, as we'd expect, it's a story where the real villains are the Federation. In fact, it's the first story like that in the entire franchise.

I seem to recall once either reading or hearing a rumour that the role of Admiral Mark Jameson was written with Captain Kirk in mind. Now, I can't substantiate this anywhere and have no idea where I might have initially picked that up, so I could very well be imagining things, but after having just rewatched “Too Short a Season” in lieu of the critique I gave the Original Series it seems truly uncanny to think about. Because one level on which to read this episode is as a very firm reaction against the sort of ethics that permeated *huge swaths* of the Original Series, especially under Gene Roddenberry. Jameson is not an obsequious pencil-pusher, like previous obstructive Starfleet admirals have been. He's not some incompetent desk jockey removed from the “real” action on the front lines, he's every bit the unorthodox renegade and rogue Kirk is. In fact, “Too Short a Season” almost seems like a flat rejection of “A Private Little War”, for what Jameson does here is almost the exact same thing Kirk did in that episode, only while the narrative lionized Kirk, it condemns Jameson.

(That Jameson is destined to fall from grace is made obvious fairly early on: Not just in the way the teaser emphasizes his impulsive commandeering of the mission, but thanks to Marina Sirtis. “Too Short a Season” is an excellent showcase for her theatre-honed expressiveness: When Jameson is first speaking to Karnas on the bridge, the camera keeps cutting to Deanna Troi, and Marina goes out of her way to telegraph his ulterior motives to us purely through her facial expressions: Marina plays Troi as if she can sense Jameson's deceit and ambition right from the outset. Granted, I suppose this raises the question of why she wouldn't have expressed her concerns to Captain Picard, but it's Marina Sirtis' considerable acting prowess that's primarily responsible for getting us to think her character might be under-served in the first place.)

The entire reason there's a hostage crisis in the first place stems directly from Jameson's actions negotiating for the resolution of a similar situation forty years prior. Karnas demanded Starfleet weapons so he could crush his enemies and Jameson “interpreted” the Prime Directive by giving them to all sides of the conflict, plunging the planet into a brutal, decades-long world war that took the lives of thousands. Karnas wants Jameson to return and see the aftereffects of the devastation he wrought, which was inconceivable. It really is difficult to avoid the parallels to “A Private Little War” here, where Kirk responded to the Klingons feeding weapons technology to one warring faction by giving Federation weapons technology to the other. The childishly po-faced overtures to the Garden of Eden and jaw-dropping racism in that episode aside (they were both intolerable signatures of the Original Series on the whole anyway), Gene Roddenberry genuinely seemed to think Kirk did the noble thing here at the time, resulting one one of the original Star Trek's most unquestionably morally bankrupt hours. That “Too Short a Season” paints a similar scenario as Admiral Jameson's downfall is crucial to take note of, because it marks a genuine turning point for Star Trek as a franchise.

Not only is Star Trek: The Next Generation out-and-out rejecting the very same ham-fisted cowboy film ethics its predecessor reveled in, it's evidence that just as Star Trek itself has learned from its mistakes, so has Gene Roddenberry. Because even though he's beginning to delegate more and more responsibility to producers Maurice Hurley and Rick Berman, Roddenberry is still very much the showrunner for the moment, and he would have had the final say on whether or not a story made it to screen or not. And that he allowed something so openly hostile towards viewpoints he previously held is telling, and laudable, as it's another sign both he and his franchise are still striving to improve. Perhaps that's why the rest of this story concerns Jameson's reckless and irresponsible pursuit of an anti-aging drug, and why Captain Picard and Commander Riker muse at the end about the nature of age and wisdom. Star Trek: The Next Generation is saying it's grown up now, and impulsive, foolhardy mistakes like the ones that characterized Admiral Jameson's career are the mark of the young.

Not youthful, per se, but young: After all, the Enterprise bridge crew is comprised of a fair number of people 30 and under, and Star Trek: The Next Generation must know its future will be decided by the youth culture of the Long 1980s. But there's a significant difference between being chronologically young and young minded, and indeed one can be young in different ways. What I think “Too Short a Season” is critiquing is the brash, self-assured hotheadedness of youth, vices that I think could also be argued to characterize a lot of hegemony. Even before he started taking the drug, Jameson was a “young soul”: Naive and thoughtless. He remained that way to his dying day, and it hurt people. It hurt Karnas, it hurt his people, it hurt his colleagues and it hurt his wife. People that self-absorbed and masculine don't comprehend the damage their actions cause to others. They're simply incapable of understanding because they blind themselves to the rest of the universe. Though the Enterprise has the spirit of youth in that it is unceasingly restless, it's also marked by wisdom and experience, which means it's struck just about the perfect balance any person can strive for in life.

(Indeed, one person who could also be called both young and wise is D.C. Fontana. She's always been this way, it's just that this is the first time the rest of Star Trek is beginning to catch up with where she's always been. Fontana has never been a fan of Federation authority and power structures, and its incredibly validating to finally see her ideas start to be realised and vindicated. That Roddenberry is starting to finally listen to her is evidence of his own growing wisdom.)

But “Too Short a Season” is not just about Star Trek's interiority. As much as it calls to mind “A Private Little War”, it's also tellingly reminiscent of the Iran-Contra Scandal (indeed, it's explicitly based on it), which means it's perfectly of its time as well. My more perceptive readers might recall that throwing the Iran-Contra Scandal at the Enterprise was Q's opening argument in his prosecution of the crew in “Encounter at Farpoint”, so having it show up again here is rather significant. This has two major repercussions: Firstly, it refutes Picard's early argument that the 24th Century is more enlightened and advanced, because clearly the Federation is not above engaging in the same destructive, selfish corruption that 20th Century empires did (which is in hindsight rather obvious, as, being a federation it's by default a hegemonic and imperialist power structure itself).

But secondly, and more importantly, it shifts the series' utopian rhetoric away from the Federation to the Enterprise *itself*, which is quite possibly the single most important move in the history of the franchise. The Federation may now be diegetically tainted, but the Enterprise crew gets to show how they have a more idealistic, constructive and...adult approach to problem solving. Captain Picard no longer speaks for all of humanity or the Federation, he now just speaks for himself and his crew. By recreating Q's challenge in microcosm and detourning its rehtoric, Picard and the Enterprise manage to salvage their utopianism while shedding the more distasteful top-down and teleological aspects of it. This one story sets the groundwork for the entire future of the Star Trek franchise and lays a blueprint for how it can stay true to its ideals, thus proving it's worthy to become symbolic avatars of them for us to look up to. Pretty much all future Star Trek will be judged on how well (or not) it handles this brief, and “Too Short a Season” really ought to be seen as the moment where all that is put into place.

“1, 2, 3, I see...”: Hide and Q

"Yep. Looks like a soundstage to me, Commander."

A lot of times on television shows, particularly very expensive and VFX heavy science fiction shows such as this one, certain concessions must be made to financing. Sometimes you're forced to shoot an entire episode on pre-existing sets or re-use old special effects shots in order to make the cut that week on time and on budget. Star Trek of the Long 1980s tends to be pretty good at this: Just recently, Star Trek: The Next Generation used a bottle show brief as an opportunity to turn “Lonely Among Us” into a minor classic, and six years later Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, facing a similar mandate, will take “Duet” and turn it into an unmitigated classic.

And then there's “Hide and Q”.

I won't say “Hide and Q” only exists to re-use the effect for Q's force field from “Encounter at Farpoint”, but I will say it's odd how a character who carries such weight and gravity suddenly reappears only ten episodes after his debut in a story that seems to be little more than a pointless (and far inferior) retread of his previous appearance. Because it's really difficult to make the case that this isn't what “Hide and Q” is: Q shows up, captures the Enterprise and puts the crew through a series of tests in order to determine whether or not humans are worthy of being a spacefaring civilization. The reason given for why Q is back is apparently because his people, while no longer worried humanity is a threat to itself and others, might now progress to such a level that their power might come to rival that of their own, and would like to test to see if humans are responsible enough to wield such abilities. But this amounts to little more than a diegetic explanation of the symbolic power Q already had: Q was already a manner of god and the issue at stake was *always* whether Star Trek: The Next Generation was deserving of that title and honour. That's what it means to be a utopian ideal: You become a role model and idol others try to take into themselves.

Furthermore, this not only adds nothing to Q's symbolic power, it actually does measurable harm to his efficacy as a character. Although Q was always going to be a reoccurring foil for the crew, from this point onwards, there are going to be two kinds of stories that feature him: The first kind are stories like “Encounter at Farpoint” that actually recognise the potential metatextual challenge Q can offer the series that force Star Trek to prove it's capable of living up to the ideals it claims to embody, and furthermore, that those ideals are ones worth holding on to. The second, and regrettably far more common, type of story is the one where Q becomes, in the words of John de Lancie himself, Captain Picard's (or Sisko's, or Janeway's, but that's another couple of books) “wacky sitcom uncle” who happens to be omnipotent. And while “Hide and Q” isn't quite in that camp just yet (we'll have to wait until the third season for the transition to officially take place), it does cheapen Q as a character and opens the door for that to happen down the road.

The damning scene is at the end, where Q is forcibly called back by his people for his petulant interference in humanity's affairs. It leaves just an awful taste in the mouth: If there was ever any hope Q would become something other than a second-rate pallet swap of Trelane from “The Squire of Gothos”, it's gone now. The best redemptive reading I could come up with is that this is the moment where Star Trek: The Next Generation proves its own worthiness as a utopian ideal by mantling its own god in the manner we would do to it, as mirrored in Riker's brief obtaining of Q powers. The idea perhaps being that if Star Trek: The Next Generation is to be a god, it will be an egalitarian god of the people that will have no such need for displays of authoritarian power structures or the fetishization of the Western test drive.

There is, at least, one truly good scene in the ready room that could support this where Q chides Picard for “not knowing [his] own library”, asking if he truly believes Hamlet's speech describes the kind of beings humans are, to which Picard says he hopes humans might someday become that way. And while that one scene does reaffirm the show's commitment to self-improvement, the problem at hand remains that Star Trek: The Next Generation still doesn't have the right to that kind of power or presumptuousness yet. There have been good episodes so far, yes, but most of them have had their share of rocky and questionable aspects and the residual stench of “The Naked Now”, “Code of Honor” and “Justice” still lingers. It's going to take a lot more to make us forget about all of that. This trial is far, far from over: Star Trek: The Next Generation hasn't been given a not guilty verdict, it's been placed on probation.

Pretty much everything else that goes wrong with “Hide and Q” can be chalked up to production tribulations, namely the fact Marina Sirtis wasn't available this week. In fact, possibly the only good thing “Hide and Q” provides is definitive proof of how crucial Sirtis really was to this show: As much fuss as has been made about Deanna Troi's supposed vestigial role in the first season, the moment she's not there things go completely to hell. There's a handwavy explanation for why Troi's not around painfully obviously tacked onto the teaser, her absence drives a noticeable wrench into the proceedings and just throws everyone's dynamic totally out of whack. Troi initially had a lot of lines in the original script, and Marina's unavailability necessitated they either get cut or shifted onto other characters, so we get a few people once again acting blatantly out of character. The person this affects the most severely is, naturally, Tasha Yar, who gets the brunt of Troi's scenes and lines.

I'm not sure how much of Tasha's part here was supposed to be hers and how much was Deanna's, but I'm going to speculate the more-than-a-little uncomfortable scene where she emotionally lashes out at Q, gets sent to the penalty box and then bursts into tears to get comforted by Captain Picard was probably intended for Troi. This was 'round about the time the writers decided Tasha was too hard to write for and it was better to have her do nothing at all than risk derailing the show by trying to cater to her, so I'd be reasonably willing to bet the first draft had her down on the planet playing kick-the-can with Worf and the pig dudes. And anyway, the scene just makes more sense with Troi: I mean it doesn't work a whole lot better, but you could at least see how someone could think a person who spends all her time dealing with other people's emotions might have problems working through her own.

The fact that the writer seemed to think Deanna and Tasha were interchangeable touches on a few other truths, however. Firstly, and most obviously, it's a sign that Star Trek: The Next Generation's staff writers really don't know what the hell they're doing and ten weeks in have no better handle on their characters than they did in pre-production, a supposition that is duly backed up by the fact the entire production team walks out by the end of the season. But secondly, it's another indication of where Denise Crosby's talents really lay. Because she and Patrick Stewart really do make that scene work-I mean, Crosby's absolutely no longer playing the part she was given, she hasn't been since “The Naked Now”, but that kind of tender, flustered emotion is right up her alley. And Stewart plays off of her quite well, making the scene as sweet to see acted out as it is cringe-inducing on paper.

Tasha also gets one other decent scene, once again with Geordi. LeVar Burton is one of the few people this week who gets to play someone we recognise, and it's hard not to smile when Q!Riker gives him his sight back long enough to see the bridge and his friends and to tell Tasha “you're even more beautiful than I had imagined”. That scene was written for Tasha, and I shall carry on believing that no matter what any of you tell me. It's a *lovely* extension of the romance that's been blossoming between their characters over the past nine weeks, a line that it actually makes sense for Geordi to say and is entirely in keeping with the character established in “Encounter at Farpoint”. Maddeningly, Denise once again throws the scene, completely failing to react to LeVar or even visibly emote: Given everyone else in this cast is so intensely and delightfully visual, it's so frustrating to see her continually drop the ball like this.

And that's about as much as I have to say about “Hide and Q”. Like the scene with Geordi and Tasha, it's aggravating to see Star Trek: The Next Generation stumble forward, consistently handicapping itself as much as it is actually coming into its own.

“...vibrations that have been left behind in space and time.”: The Battle

It's beyond a cliche to say that history repeats itself. In fact, I'm not sure it's ever been the case where that hasn't been beyond a cliche. The phrase is usually invoked when someone wants to make a sweeping generalization about human shortsightedness or failing to learn from the past.

In Star Trek, the past tends to be spoken of as something we must move beyond. Indeed, that's the central thesis of “The Battle”, and the episode gives us two contrasting perspectives for how this manifests in people. In one corner we have DaiMon Bok, who has spent the last nine years obsessed with his son's accidental death and with coming up with a way to punish Captain Picard for it because he can't move on and needs someone to blame for his grief. In the other we have Captain Picard himself who, while touched to be able to return to the USS Stargazer, also frequently makes it clear that this is something from his past that must remain there. The torture he undergoes at the hands of Bok's thought-maker is simply a metaphor for how dangerous it is to “live in the past”, how it can consume a person and keep them from moving forward. And here again is that theme of progressing, of going forth: What I have always taken from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and how I choose to read this theme as it appears here and elsewhere in the Star Trek franchise, is one of continually growing *as a person*. Of constantly striving to be learn a little bit every day, and always striving to improve oneself as a human being. Of never settling or becoming complacent.

But there is another reading of this, a reading that is, from my perspective, altogether less savoury, yet one that's not quite reducible out of the larger conceptual framework of Star Trek this series does inherit. And that's the notion of progress, and history itself, as teleology. The idea that one must go forward for this is the right and natural way to go, or indeed the *only* way to go, and that this will ultimately get us to the best possible ending point. “Boldly going forward because we can't find reverse”, as it were. What this does is impose a hierarchical, modernist master narrative over the theme, and this is more than a little disturbing considering the technofetishism that does surround Star Trek, and that's only going to increase as Star Trek: The Next Generation goes on. The franchise has had gravely concerning run-ins with Modernization Theory and managerial progressive thought at times, and those are not so easily forgotten, especially at the comparatively young state of our new show at this time. It's the self-absorbed, manifest destiny style of futurism that has dogged the entire genre of Western science fiction since its earliest days, and Star Trek: The Next Generation will have to grapple with it one way or another. It doesn't have a choice, as, merely by being Star Trek it becomes saddled with the franchise's undeniable (albeit tenuous) connection to Golden Age Hard SF.

I hasten to add I don't think this is something any of Star Trek's creative figures actually subscribe to, at least not any of its current (1987) creative figures. When Star Trek's writers, designers, artists and producers talk about the franchise's utopian dream, I really do think they're sincere and actually mean what they say. With the possible exception of certain Nerd Culture, engineering and technoscience subgroups within its fandom, people who are genuinely invested in Star Trek as a shared cultural myth understand that its role is not to predict the future, but provide a fantasy world that imagines a better life for us in the present. They know that the series has a frankly unique opportunity to look at people's emotions and concerns and provide ways for us to explore them in a healthy, positive and constructive way. Even Gene Roddenberry himself was by this point well aware of what Star Trek really was, what it stood for and what it meant to people, and a big part of the reason he was as controlling as he was here was only because he was keenly aware of the responsibility Star Trek: The Next Generation had. That he wasn't amazing at managing all of that and had (many, many) personal vices of his own is a separate issue: The important thing is that he understood and he cared.

This is why one of the factions of Trekker culture I absolutely cannot stand and have no time for are those who accuse Star Trek: The Next Generation of being a boring, whitewashed conflict-free gated community and maintain what the show ought to have been doing is pointing out how corrupt and decadent the world of Star Trek really is and deconstructing its “so-called utopia”. There are a great many moral, ethical and conceptual issues with the Federation and Starfleet (I of all people am certainly not averse to pointing that out), and while first of all the show does not get nearly enough credit for acknowledging and problematizing this to the extent it does (in fact we're coming up on a big episode that does just that), more relevantly, that's not Star Trek: The Next Generation's *job*, or at least not the extent of it. Rather, what this show does is, through a series of role models and ideals, give us the language of symbols we need to work through issues in our own day-to-day lives. No, the world of Star Trek is never something that's going to actually come to be, but that's not the point: The point is it's a place we can visit and take lessons and ideas back home from. Star Trek: The Next Generation doesn't “ignore” conflict, it's trying to help us deal with conflict in a more positive and healthful way.

But a compulsion to move beyond the past, or at least learn from it lest we be doomed to repeat it, requires one to subscribe to a very specific set of axioms and beliefs. I've spoken at times of temporal perception around the world, and it's perhaps worth returning to that here. The idea of a discrete past, present and future is not a universal one, rather, it's (generally speaking, but not uniquely) a Western innovation with its own quirks and eccentricities that shape how those claiming such a heritage tend to perceive things. There is a case to be made it's a more harmful way of looking at things too, as recent studies contrasting “unitense” languages (like English) with “monotense” languages (like German, Mandarin and Japanese), show the latter to be overwhelmingly happier and both physically and mentally healthier. The idea being, one supposes, that people who more consciously deliberate over a future are also more likely to see it as something faraway they need not worry about. By contrast, people who don't preoccupy themselves with such things, or, as many indigenous people do, see time as a cyclical and ever-evolving present, are more likely to take action to improve their lives and the world around them in the moment.

And even if you do hold onto the idea of a past, as either something to be avoided or looked back upon with nostalgic sadness, you must ask yourself the question: In either case, is the past something to be moved beyond and forgotten? I submit a convincing case could be made that it's not. We all vividly remember our childhoods or other such formative and meaningful moments in our lives, rose-tinted and distorted as those memories may oftentimes be, and those times all had a hand in shaping the people we became. Indeed, in the last Ferengi episode, Commander Riker told Portal how he doesn't begrudge the Ferengi their beliefs because to do so would be to deny their past, and Riker can hardly “hate the people” that humans “used to be”. This is why it upsets me when I hear wistful thought experiments like “if you could go back and change anything about your past knowing what you know know, what would you change?”: Because I couldn't change anything, for fear of dramatically altering the person I am now, and the person I am now is someone I'm proud of, because they're confident and assured in their identity and always strives to learn and grow.

But in a more esoteric sense, I find that memories of that past can oftentimes prove invaluable in the present, to use a starkly Western linguistic form for the moment. Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Long 1980s are long in my past, and yet they are both still things that I treasure and are absolutely fundamental to the positionalities I now hold, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. There are many things from this period I miss and that I think the world could stand to re-learn, and many events from it I constantly look back on and re-evaluate in my mind. The very act of doing what I'm doing with this project, revisiting an old television show from long ago and far away that used to mean one thing to me and now means something else, is in a very material sense proving that the past lives on in some sense. I think as we grow older, we cannot but help to reflect on things in an attempt to understand ourselves a little better, and you can define yourself anywhere along those axes that you like, either in opposition or in solidarity. But we mustn't ever abandon the past or our memory not because history will repeat itself if we do (it will anyway, that's how time works), but because we can't cut loose such an important part of what makes us who we are.

What about you? What are some of the memories that help you understand the truth about yourself?

“For in her dark she brings the mystic star”: Lonely Among Us

The Star Trek: The Next Generation toy line I was most familiar with was done by Playmates in the early 1990s. But they weren't the first to get the license to make tie-ins to the show: The first company to get the job was Galoob who, early in the first season, put out a line of 3-inch toys (savvily designed to compliment the popular Kenner and Star Wars toys of the time) along with accessories based on Star Trek: The Next Generation. We're still a little ways off from looking at the line in detail, but for our immediate purposes it's worth mentioning the first figures Galoob released based on characters not among the main crew were of the Anticans and the Selay from “Lonely Among Us”.

Part of the reason why the Anticans and the Selay got action figures that early is surely because they were likely the only new extraterrestrial characters created for Star Trek: The Next Generation apart from Q Galoob would have had access to when they were prepping designs. But I personally think it may have been at least partly because the Anticans and the Selay are genuinely well-done and memorable creatures. Makeup artist Michael Westmore credits them as his favourites among the characters he designed for the first season, in spite of a few of the Selay masks being a bit too rigid to be able to properly emote. And it really is entirely due to Westmore's work: Culturally speaking, neither group is “something to write home about”, as Data would say-They basically exist to hate each other and serve as suspects when the cloud starts wrecking shit in the ship's internal systems. The show's not quite gotten to the point where it can portray an entirely alien culture with conviction and nuance. What is interesting about the diplomacy part of the story is how it's used as another showcase for the show's progressive post-scarcity utopianism. In this case, the crew's unfamiliarity with disputes over territory, resources and religion (and memorably “economic policy”, as Captain Picard points out) are contrasted with the latent mutual hostility between the Anticans and the Selay. We also learn from Riker that humans no longer need to domesticate animals for food (the word he uses is “enslave”, which is wonderfully loaded).

But even though the script paints them as entirely forgettable and one-note, the Anticans and the Selay still stick in my mind. They're among the most iconic images and signifiers of this part of the show for me: Later on in the year, the show will throw out some truly questionable material on the aesthetics front, but this time the imagery and mood is more than enough to carry the story. Aside from the delegates themselves, there's also the cloud tank trick that were used to create the Beta Renner being and the straight-out-of-Star Wars lightning bolt effects (clearly, ILM were showing off). Whenever I think of season one, I immediately think of the Anticans and the Selay, and indeed this episode on the whole.

“Lonely Among Us” is not terribly captivating from a narrative standpoint. It's a bottle show of the sort the show is going to find much better and much more effective ways of handling later on, and the plot is standard-issue science fiction fluff. There's some delegates, a murder mystery, and a weird alien thing that takes over people's brains. But all that said it's worth commenting on how well-executed and professionally the show handles the brief here: Nobody can be argued to be phoning it in here, it's a very capable ensemble story for the time with every major character getting something important to contribute, nobody gets talked over, shouted down or ignored, which was frustrating to watch in some earlier scripts, and there are some very memorable performances on display. Brent Spiner is so obvious it's not even really worth mentioning: It's his first opportunity to do his Sherlock Holmes routine that will go on to be so important to Data's character in the future, and he predictably leaps into the role with flamboyant gusto. But I mean, seven episodes in and it's already clear we can expect no less from Spiner. LeVar Burton gets some nice cracks, Colm Meaney is back, Michael Dorn gets something to do and Marina Sirtis, Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden all get a chance to show sides of their range they weren't able to before.

But for me the highlights of the week are Denise Crosby and Jonathan Frakes, who between them basically have to run the ship when their crewmembers star acting erratic and the delegates start eating each other. Denise Crosby play Tasha visibly harried and exasperated by the goings-on and her inability to keep them in order. Her understated performance works in her favour this time, and her subtle irritation at life in general actually allows her to steal the comic relief role from Spiner's mugging: She's a delight to watch here. This is also the beginning of Crosby's genial rapport with Jonathan Frakes, as their characters spend a lot of time troubleshooting together. As for Frakes, gets to play Riker commanding and competent for really the first time, and the scene where he conspires in secret with Geordi, Doctor Crusher and Data to relieve Captain Picard of duty is a frankly stunning example of how well this cast understands and gels with one another even at this comparatively early stage: The actors play off of each other wonderfully and you can sense the genuine, heartfelt concern and trepidation in their voices and body language.

The cast had long since become fast friends, of course: Everyone has their own story of how they met each other the first day filming “Encounter at Farpoint” and immediately felt a deep and powerful connection with each other and how they quickly became best friends and remain so to this day. Doug Drexler tells Paula Block and Terry J. Erdmann In Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 how the bridge set was like a “futuristic night club”, with bowling, slam poetry sessions, impersonations, wrestling matches, singing and dancing and copious amounts of general screwing around. It's extremely rare not just in Star Trek, not just in television, but in any kind of production or life in general, to get that level of camaraderie and friendship. It sounds like an absolutely magical time, and reminds me of the few times I would travel to camps or workshop seminars and meet people who shared my interests and positionalities and with whom I too felt an immediate and intense kinship. The only difference is that I eventually fell out of communication with all of my friends, but these actors all remain soulmates. Star Trek: The Next Generation and its cast were both truly blessed.

But the one production-level factoid about “Lonely Among Us” that really seals it as an iconic story for me is the cinematography. It's uniquely dark, which I simply love. There are entire sections of the set blacked out at a time, and the scenes with Riker, Tasha and the delegates all feature a lot of moody light and shadowplay. To me, this is the definitive look of Star Trek: The Next Generation's inaugural year, and why this episode is always at the forefront of my mind when I think about it. While later seasons are maligned (unfairly, I might add, go watch the restorations), for being too brightly lit and looking washed out, it is true that the ambient light gets turned up a bit when Marvin Rush takes over from Edward R. Brown as director of photography in the third season. This means that the show's earliest years, in particular this one, have an unmistakeably distinctive moody and filmic (but not cinematic) look about them, and this episode is a masterclass example of that. Which is, bluntly all it needs. Between the Anticans, the Selay and the cinematography, “Lonely Among Us” has far more to offer that's worth remembering apart from its rather passable plot. If it's mediocre, it's mediocre in a very Long 1980s way, and that's not a bad thing, because images and emotions are more powerful than words anyway. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is still intractably evocative and still looks like absolutely nothing else, and that's all that matters.