“We'll be grandmas by then...”: Coming of Age

Despite its reputation and admittedly rocky week-to-week quality, there's a remarkable thematic cohesion to Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season, perhaps even more so than in later years. Reoccurring motifs are emphasized and re-examined with dutiful regularity, episodes are clearly designed to build off of one another and there are quite a few attempts at introducing both long and short term story arcs. Granted they're not always successful, but the intent is there and should be acknowledged.

“Coming of Age” is a solid example of this, and also serves as a functional microcosm of the show as it exists at this point in time. Most notably, the story arc it tries to put into place actually sticks here, unlike in “Angel One” where it gets forgotten, reintroduced at the last second in the season finale, and then hastily abandoned again. Obviously, we know the big Conspiracy with Starfleet Command that has Admiral Quinn and Dexter Remmick all paranoid is going to pay off at the end of the year in an episode I'm currently forgetting the title of. That's worth dealing with then, though I will point out now that the story arc as envisioned and the story arc as realised were not exactly one and the same. But even as a standalone work, “Coming of Age” is quite structurally well-done, with two distinct subplots and a metaplot that all revolve around the theme of maturing and reaching new stages in one's life. The first one involves Wesley Crusher so we're going to avoid talking about it more than necessary (though I'll give a nod to the Benzite, another one of my favourite Star Trek: The Next Generation creature designs, even if the one I remember is Menden from “A Matter of Honor”, not Mordock here), but the one about Captain Picard contemplating accepting a promotion and leaving the Enterprise is really quite lovely.

In some ways, this is a rejection of Kirk being promoted to admiral in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But let’s stop and think about that for a minute: First of all, even in 1988 it took guts to stand up to Wrath of Khan, already firmly entrenched in fan consciousness as “The Bestest Most Perfect Star Trek Ever” (though younger audiences who weren't libertarian worshipers of Robert A. Heinlein might have posited Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home instead). Quinn even suggest Picard go teach new academy recruits, just like Kirk did. More to the point though, a fairly recent and common redemptive reading of Khan I've seen goes out of its way to talk up and romanticize the idea of Star Trek characters growing old and settling down, citing both Kirk's promotion and the fact not only Khan, but David and Carol Marcus coming back into his life as examples of how the narrative is in support of this.

Several things bother me about this reading, however: First of all, the only guiding thematic impetus behind Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was “kill off Star Trek as comprehensibly and permanently as possible”, and any incidental nuance just came from Nicholas Meyer wanting to tell a a solid aging story while he was at it. Secondly though, growing old and settling down are very un-Star Trek themes, and, as much as I do chew into Meyer, this is the point he's making and he's right to in this case. Star Trek is about *never stopping* learning and travelling. It's about making a commitment to always strive for self-improvement and growth throughout life. That's why we're on a ship that we'll soon learn doesn't even have a home port (actually, in the episode that concludes the story arc introduced here): The journey and the voyage must never come to an end, because it's through journeying and voyaging that we learn more about ourselves and others. Growing old and settling down are the antithesis of these very important truths: They're the symptoms of resignation and complacency, and if there's *anything* Star Trek has taught us, it's *never* to give up or become complacent.

But as I've said before, “growing up” and “growing old” are not synonyms. This is why this episode is called “Coming of Age”, and why teenage Wesley Crusher is the other side of the narrative coin. Captain Picard knows that to accept promotion would mean accepting stasis, and as an explorer at heart that's not something he can support (and isn't it interesting that Picard seems to equate Starfleet Command with toxic stasis?). But the word choice in both the script and Patrick Stewart's delivery is very careful and particular: There's a lot of talk about “where he belongs” and “what his path” is, and never about growing out of the Enterprise and leaving it behind. As part of his constant growth and maturation, Captain Picard has come to the conclusion that where he really belongs is the Enterprise: Here is where his true home is. This is also why the Enterprise has room for families, because it allows those people who want to start a family as part of their personal journey to do that while still travelling the stars. It's a new kind of bottom-up, egalitarian domesticity that is but one path available to people who live on the Enterprise: Voyaging helps us understand a sense of recursive cosmic community, connecting us with each other as well as with the universe as we travel the stars together.

There's a somewhat famous quote by Arthur Ransome that's always inspired me and that I think is particularly appropriate here an within the context of Star Trek: The Next Generation in general:

“Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place.”

It goes without saying that this is a sentiment that resonates particularly near and dear to my heart. Aside from that though, it's one I think Captain Picard would probably agree with to some extent as well. Because this is what's so special about the Enterprise: It's both a house and a boat. It's a place you can call home that neither sacrifices a sense of familial community nor the restless urge to wander and grow. It's a house that travels with you, and that you travel with. In fact, note the only criticism Remmick can come up with of Picard's leadership is that his crew is “too familial” (and how telling it is that Starfleet Command would take issue with that). And, to head off the obvious objection, the universe of Star Trek: The Next Generation is not one that looks down upon people who do choose to stay in one place, as we'll eventually see with Benjamin Sisko the builder and healer, for whom travel and voyaging means slightly different things. But as much as Sisko's place my be Deep Space 9, Picard's really is without question the Enterprise, and I can find no fault with that.

But another reason I can't see “Coming of Age” as a commentary on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is because I still like to think of Star Trek: The Next Generation existing in its own universe and continuity separate from the Original Series, as Gene Roddenberry had originally intended it to be. I mean yes the show has pretty much shot that reading to pieces several times already, what with Klingons and Romulans playing major roles and all of “The Naked Now” (even this episode is not immune: One of Wesley's colleagues is obviously a Vulcan). But I like to avoid flamboyant fanwank in my own work as much as I do in the shows themselves, so what can we glean from “Coming of Age” about Star Trek: The Next Generation's own interiority? I think what this story is really about, by virtue of its recursive themes and motifs, is about the series starting to mature into its own person. Like we saw with Admiral Jameson in “Too Short a Season”, as much as Star Trek: The Next Generation is, well, the new generation, it's also unafraid to be marked by age, experience and wisdom. It's a show that embraces all these things and fuses them perfectly to the restless wanderlust of youth. And that, perhaps above all else, is where its utopia truly comes from.

Another one of my favourite quotes drives this home, this time from Gary D. Christenson of TV Guide not long after the conclusion of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season in July, 1988:

“Star Trek depicted us in reckless youth, with a Starship captain who tamed space as vigorously as we laid claim to the future...Star Trek: The Next Generation reveals the child grown-a little more polished, but also more complacent. And if there's a bit of gray and a wrinkle or two, so much the better.”

“When all its sands are diamond sparks”: Home Soil

It's interesting that “Home Soil” is such an overlooked episode, given the fact various Star Trek: The Next Generation creative teams essentially remake it at least three times over the course of the series' run. Its central theme, a debate over whether or not computer technology can develop sentience and self-awareness and should be considered life, leading eventually to a climax that Starfleet and the Federation in general walk away from with egg on their faces, reoccurs as the guiding thesis behind “The Measure of a Man” and “Evolution” and as the B-plot to “The Quality of Life”. Each of these episodes is much better received and remembered than “Home Soil” but, with the exception of “The Measure of a Man” (which has the added benefit of being a high-stakes drama about Data), they're all basically reiterations of it.

I've never had a problem with “Home Soil” personally and, of the four episodes, it's actually the one I'm likely to turn on most frequently. While good, “The Measure of a Man” has too much pathos for my particular casual viewing tastes, “Evolution” is a stumbling, rushed, mediocre debut for Michael Piller that doesn't really showcase all of his talents in the best light and is about Wesley Crusher, and while I do quite like “The Quality of Life”, the tech mystery plot about Data and the Exocomps is manifestly not my main attraction to it. This though is a jaunty space adventure with a decent central mystery, some lovely set design and matte work, some fun banter and rapport from the regular cast and another opportunity for the Enterprise to set itself apart from the rest of Starfleet. It's also the natural episode to follow “11001001”, as Star Trek: The Next Generation's interest in technoscientific transhumanism and machine singularities seems to still be lingering: After all, our mysterious alien is *literally* a collective computer consciousness. More importantly, there remains the faintest trace of our Lovely Angels' divine light, as “Home Soil”, just like its predecessor, maintains an ethereal and ephemeral link to Dirty Pair. Namely, to The Dirty Pair Strike Again.

I really doubt any of the production staffers this week had read the book (I mean Mike Okuda might have, but not necessarily, as there are plenty of fans of the Sunrise animes who have never read Haruka Takachiho's novels), but it's interesting to compare and contrast the plots of both stories: There's considerably more overlap than you might assume at first glance. Both “Home Soil” and The Dirty Pair Strike Again concern erratic goings-on at a mining colony and a suspicious number of deaths that increasingly seem to be less than accidental. Kei and Yuri/the Enterprise crew get called in to investigate, things get personal once they themselves start to be targeted by the unseen assailants, and our heroes stumble upon a vast conspiracy that has engulfed the entire planet. It's soon revealed that the miners discovered something beneath the planet's surface (in both cases, an entirely unknown, nonhuman collective consciousness) and immediately set about covering it up for selfish reasons: In Star Trek: The Next Generation, as part of an attempt to cut corners and meet quota in a pseudocapitalist system of production, and in Dirty Pair as an underhanded power-grab by an incestuous corporate-state ruling class in an attempt to centralize authority at the expense of the people's spiritual growth.

“Home Soil” isn't a note-for-note recitation of The Dirty Pair Strike Again, obviously. For one thing, it's an incredibly reductive and simplified version of the story, with absolutely none of Dirty Pair's trademark ruminations syncretic spirituality. Where Kei and Yuri got to sublimate their existence through futuristic space tantra, the Enterprise crew gets to call out Starfleet for betraying its ideals and committing genocide against the “New Life” it claims to be looking to make peaceful contact with. This isn't any less worthwhile or meaningful a goal, of course (if anything, it's the sort of thing Starfleet and the Federation need to hear more often), but it is a far more gritty and sociological of one. And while this isn't a step back for the show, it does see it in something of a holding pattern for the moment: Episodes like “Haven”, “Where No One Has Gone Before” and “The Big Goodbye” clearly demonstrate it's capable of going the distance in this regard, though perhaps it's not quite comfortable going to the next level yet.

Still, it's a far better position to be in then it was just a few weeks ago with “Angel One” (momentarily ignoring the fact it slips back on itself briefly coming up with “When The Bough Breaks”), and the fact Dirty Pair still seems to hang over the proceedings even here is going to prove somewhat prophetic given “Home Soil” is redone so many times. But that's for later-What's important to take note of now is that even though Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't straightforwardly aping the Lovely Angels with this outing, the fact is the comparisons can still be made. And that's evidence of two things: One, the invocation of “The Big Goodbye” is permanent and we *really can't* ignore Kei and Yuri whilst talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation anymore, but also that the show is starting to appear reminiscent of things other than the Original Series. This is sort of a crucial step forward: There are a number of episodes making up the back half of this season that, while maybe not necessarily immediately recognisable as what we might think of as Star Trek: The Next Generation, are also not immediately recognisable as Star Trek, and that's kind of important to take note of.

Jonathan Frakes has often said that, in spite of its missteps, the first season was the most experimental and adventurous season the show ever did. And I think I see what he means: Increasingly free of the spectre of Kirk, Spock and McCoy (helped, I'm sure, by accruing surprisingly stellar ratings), Star Trek: The Next Generation starts playing around with the boundaries of its format to see what it can and can't do. Not every experiment has been or is going to be a success, that's the nature of experimentation, after all, but that the show is bold enough here to give some of these things a try really is commendable. There's a sense of avante garde playfulness to some of these episodes that it would have been nice to see a little bit more frequently in the character-driven Michael Piller era and psychologically mind-bending Jeri Taylor era. I'd hesitate to say Star Trek: The Next Generation was ever safe, but it's certainly more safe and less radical than it could have been. The ship has sailed on that: Too many disastrous decisions were made in pre-production for the show as it exists to truly live up to its full potential. But equally, the show knows it doesn't have to be as rote as it maybe has been in the past, and “Home Soil” is the first inkling of this changing status quo.

When we're talking about material progress on a social scale, normal measurements of time don't apply. Wherever Kei and Yuri are invoked, things don't immediately get better for everyone. In fact, in the immediate aftermath, things seem to get a lot worse. But this is merely the observer effect trick of the singularity in place once again: A spark has been lit somewhere, and the universe has righted itself. Things will get better, in time.

11100011 10000010 10110001 11100011 10000010 10100100 00100000 11100011 10000011 10100110 11100011 10000011 10101010: 11001001

A common theme in much science fiction, we've dealt with the subject of both transhumanism and posthumanism rather extensively already. In Star Trek, this has traditionally manifested in the multitude of non-corporial entities, godlike beings and androids that tend to show up. The Original Series was notoriously ambivalent on the subject, for as much as 1960s Gene Roddenberry hated the idea of machines replacing people, he also seemed somewhat fascinated by the notion that humans might become hyper evolved beings of pure thought, in essence, ideal rational actors. 1980s Gene Roddenberry, along with his contemporaries, have a very different viewpoint: First of all, there's Data, who, while he doesn't yet carry all of the symbolism he's eventually going to, is already an indication Star Trek: The Next Generation might be toying with a novel conception of humanity.

But also 'round about the 1980s, transhumanism came to be associated in the pop discourse first and foremost with a very specific set of beliefs, typically involving augmenting or replacing bits of materialistic human life with mechanical, robotic and digital components. The rise of the personal computer allowed for a general ossification of the definition of cyborg, and the belief humanity's future lay in becoming more and more intertwined with computer technology. The Borg are commonly read as a critique of this notion, a very simplistic and reductive pop Frankensteinianism that wrings its hands over unchecked material technoscience. But, as we will eventually discuss, this is not what the Borg actually are and, for various reasons, Star Trek: The Next Generation has a far more complex and nuanced relationship with the transhuman than this interpretation would lead you to believe.

This is, however, what “11001001” looks at with the characters of the Bynars, an entire species that has evolved in such close proximity to computers that their thoughts have become indistinguishable to binary code. Well, partially, because the episode is obviously not a critique of them: The crew is incredibly sympathetic to the Bynars all throughout, and Jonathan Frakes was so enamoured of them he wishes they'd stayed on as regular characters. And the way they're realised is rather charming, with each half of a “base pair” acting as a kind of gate and decisions being made through relaying thought-bits between them. Even the joke explanation they give for why they stole the Enterprise at the end of the episode, “you might have said no”, ties into this: As entities of pure logic on a life-or-death mission, they could not accept any potential failure state, so they engineered a situation where that would be impossible. It's a perfectly delightful conception of digital transhumanist philosophy as it popularly exists as of the Long 1980s.

This specific kind of transhumanism is, predictably, very grounded in technofetishim and materialism. The most recognisable manifestation of this in the contemporary political climate is likely the Church of the Singularity, a Silicon Valley-based faith that professes the rapid increased in digital computer technology over the past thirty or forty years is evidence of a looming “machine singularity”, where either our computers will become self-aware or will end up absorbing humanity somehow (a common version is the belief that humans will soon be able to upload our consciousnesses onto the Internet). It's the logical end result of the existentialist, positivist, materialist, technoscience-dominated flavour of Westernism that's come into vogue over the past few decades: When humans are reduced down to machines and , shortsightedness dictates that we can improve on the inherent randomness of nature with our Will through our evolved, superior deft mechanical touch.

There are a considerable number of concerns regarding the Church of the Singularity. Most obviously, by being an outgrowth of Nerd Culture it by default comes out of an inherent and extremely patriarchal superiority complex, and then there's the matter of so much of it being driven by corporatist technocrats with an already heated interest in selling you the latest digital status symbols. Most actual scientists will be quick to tell you that nothing the Church of the Singularity espouses is remotely scientifically feasible, and most of it rests on fooling you into thinking computers are much more sophisticated and intelligent than they actually are. But more to the point, it's completely repugnant to the worldview I'm increasingly interested in: This kind of rote materialism is not only anathema to any kind of animist or spiritual understanding, by reducing human existence down to the level of what amount to tools, it also denies humanity itself. Thankfully, this is not the only kind of transhumanism, and this is not the only kind of singularity.

Throughout genre fiction there is, and has always been, a strong predilection to what can be and has been described as a “singularity archetype”: A kind of poorly-translated vision of what humanity's future might look like. Star Trek itself has already given us a few, such as the aforementioned hyper-evolved beings of pure thought, comparatively crude as they might be by the standards we're now holding ourselves to. But the best one the franchise has given us by far has been The Traveller: A person who instinctively understands the connection between space, time and thought. There is a further link between us and these things that the spirits understand, even if they only exist sometimes in the realm of pataphor and allegory. There is a desire to return to this understanding; to reclaim our identification with our spiritual selves, and it's a desire I frequently map onto the relationship we as readers and writers have with idealism and utopianism. Now is not the time or place for this discussion, but this drive is but one manifestation of our yearning to reclaim what we call a Glorified Body. And there *is* a place for technology here, as it can help us construct a rough approximation of what that reclamation and rejoining feels like. Remember, Star Trek: The Next Generation manifestly does not say the Bynars are evil-They help the Enterprise and have their own role to play in its journey of self-discovery and self-actualization.

The hands-down best example of singularity fiction I can think of unquestionably has to be Dirty Pair, with Kei and Yuri perhaps even acting as a kind of Glorified Body themselves. It's they who demonstrate most clearly a functional median between these two forms of transhumanism: Kei and Yuri are “The Lovely Angels”, because they are divine avatars who represent both valuable and beloved ideals as well as serve as the vessel by which the universe brings about necessary progressive change on a cosmic scale. It is said the singularity is marked by oftentimes catastrophic and traumatic immediate change, and looks like the apocalypse to the unenlightened. But Kei and Yuri are also Angels because they play the role of Angels, diegetic metaphors. But the girls are also supposed to posses material bodies genetically engineered to be perfect; recursive metaphor, if not outright pataphor, for the Glorified Body. And, being a story, Dirty Pair is already a performative allegory for the spiritual and social growth humanity has before it.

And, fittingly, the Holodeck returns in this episode to play a crucial part in the Bynars' plan. We have Minuet, a sentient, hyper-aware programmed being who exists in multiple worlds at once, and the interlink between the Holodeck and the rest of the Enterprise facilitates the Bynars being able to backup their history. In fact, “11001001” was originally meant to air before “The Big Goodbye”, with the malfunction in the latter story going to be attributed to the Bynars' enhancements here. Perhaps a consequence of this blurring of the boundaries between realms can also account for the memorable turns from the regulars: Data and Geordi both take critical further steps to the characterization they'll become famous for, Worf is starting to become more pronounced and developed and even Tasha Yar gets to do some things we might expect to see a character with her backstory and personality do.

Reading “11001001” in this context gives me a newfound appreciation for the shot of the Enterprise approaching Starbase 47. Perhaps counterintuitively, it's one of my favourite images from Star Trek: The Next Generation, despite obviously being a reuse of a shot from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. But I've always felt it looked so much better here: Crisper, more organic, and more darkly evocative. Perhaps this then is a metaphor in itself, for Star Trek: The Next Generation is finally starting to show signs it might just transcend the Original Series, because it understands a set of spiritual truths its predecessor never could.

“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.