Star Trek: The Next Generation S1E1 "Encounter at Farpoint" Review
I have started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I've got to say, I feel I was unfairly harsh in my assessment of Voyager - this show makes Voyager look like Deep Space 9 by comparison. You all haven't seen my rant about Voyager yet, as I haven't written it down - but rest assured, it's on its way. Now I'll know better than to post it without a caveat noting that although it has its glaring issues, that's apparently par for the course. The good news, though, is that I have heard that The Next Generation gets better! We've just got to get through the first couple of seasons to get there.
Since I've already seen DS9 and part of Voyager and will be making comparisons, watch out!
Alright, with that out of the way, this episode was absolutely baffling to me. After watching this, I felt honest-to-god guilty about making fun of Voyager's first episode for being weird and incoherent. Voyager, I'm so sorry, at least you clearly established the series' plot hook! Even several episodes in, I'm not sure what the overall plot hook of TNG is aside from that they're going about on a spaceship doing odd jobs for the Federation (cool, but what are the stakes here?). On top of that, I watched this episode with prior knowledge of the central character to the whole mess, and let me tell you, I think it would have made exponentially less sense without that.
The character in question, of course, is Q. An alien being who I was already familiar with from the episode he appears in during DS9 as well as the wonderful memory-alpha wiki, introducing Q in the very first episode of your new series - and not only that, but the first episode of this period's run of Star Trek - is a COMICALLY bizarre choice.
Let me set the scene here, describing my own experience with this - you turn on the first episode of critically acclaimed, famous Star Trek: The Next Generation after having recently watched Star Trek: Deep Space 9, a series whose first episode generally established all the important characters and initial plot hooks in about as cohesive a way as was possible given the sheer amount of exposition that needed to be laid out, and part of Star Trek: Voyager, a series whose opening was significantly weaker but still neatly established all that exposition stuff, albeit in a really weird way. Now, watching TNG, you're expecting to see something similar. Presumably, Picard and the crew will receive their assignment to work on the Enterprise, they'll all be introduced, and we'll learn some important information about the ship's mission and the state of the galaxy. Instead, everyone goes onto the starship with very little exposition, mostly wearing ill-fitting uniforms (iconic character Data's nipples are clearly visible through his in some scenes), and almost immediately, before we really have a handle on who anybody is, they encounter a strange forcefield and Q of all people teleports onto the ship, wearing a silly little 16th century outfit. Now, I knew who Q was, so I knew right away the implications of this: this episode was going to be fucking batshit. But let's take a moment to imagine what all of this would look like to a viewer who DID NOT KNOW WHO Q WAS. I don't usually care about spoilers and in fact tend to seek them out since knowing the basics of what happens ahead of time helps me process what's going on in shows, but I wish so desperately that I had been able to see this episode the way someone who doesn't know ahead of time who Q is must experience it, but like, with the level of fondness I already have for Star Trek because without that I would have probably turned it right off.
Anyway, Q shows up in his silly little outfit and immediately starts throwing out freeze rays and giving dismal speeches about human nature. Being familiar enough with the series to sort of understand what's going on, this is delightful to watch, because it is such an absurdly hilarious thing to put in the first episode of your show. He teleports several crew members - including a couple who are not even human - into a courtroom to face a trial for all of humanity's crimes, a scene which culminates in Picard suggesting that the crew be tested to see if humanity truly is as bad as Q says, instead of making the judgment entirely in the courtroom. Q agrees to this, and suddenly, we have an entirely different episode of Star Trek.
We are now at Farpoint Station, a station run by Groppler Zorn of Deneb IV. The station is a place where exactly what you want always seems to appear - sometimes in ways that seem impossible - and Zorn seems suspicious. We are introduced to several more crew members who will be part of the main cast. From here, the episode proceeds in a much more normal way for a Star Trek episode - the crew tries to establish diplomatic relations while also investigating weird phenomena on the station, such as the aforementioned things appearing out of thin air and a feeling of great pain noticed by empath Deanna Troi. We get a lot more character moments in this part of the episode, which is great because it was hard to really get a read on anyone during the Q segment. Data especially shines here. Q returns to taunt the crew, and fairly soon after that, a new ship appears and begins firing on the planet, causing immense destruction. Despite mockery and antagonism from Q, the crew is able to determine that the ship is actually a creature capable of transforming energy into matter that has come to rescue its mate from being exploited by being forced to create Farpoint. Enterprise rescues the Farpoint creature by providing it with the energy it needs to escape, and both creatures float off into the stars, providing a beautiful image and a very satisfying end to the mystery. This also satisfies Q, who declares that his test has been passed and then leaves.
I honestly feel that this would've been a stronger opening episode if Q was removed and the other plot of the episode - Farpoint Station and its exploitation of the jellyfish creature - was given the full runtime and further developed. That was already a strong plot that allowed the ethics and mission of Starfleet to be established clearly for the audience, and leaving out Q would have allowed more time for exposition and development of the plot and characters. I DO like Q as an occasional plot device in the series - but I feel like they should've waited and introduced him later, when we knew the main cast well enough that his trial and test would have provided an opportunity for us to see characters who we cared about face an insurmountable threat and prove their value instead of... an unabashedly weird series of events that lacked emotional weight because we didn't really know who these people were yet. Compared to the first episode of DS9, which sets up emotional and political stakes right away by exploring Sisko's personal history and relationships with his family, as well as the situation with the end of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor and the orbs while also introducing all the most important characters in memorable ways, or even to the first episode of Voyager, which despite its weirdness did also fit the ship into a wider universe, establish lovable characters quickly instead of waiting for halfway through the episode, and introduce the general plot of the series, it just doesn't hold up.
As it stands, this is a decent enough opening and lots of fun to watch if you're familiar with the basics of Star Trek already (vitally including who Q is - so not just TOS) and have some attachment to it, but I really don't think that I would've continued the series if this had been my first introduction to it - I feel like it would have made very little sense to me what was going on.