Star Trek: The Next Generation S01E01, "Encounter at Farpoint" (1987) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So when I planned out this series, going over all of the pilot episodes from the classic Star Trek shows (1966-1969, 1973-1974, and 1987-2005) as well as revisiting the first episode of Strange New Worlds, I completely forgot that the anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation was coming up this week. It was on Thursday, and this week just happens to be the week that I'd be reviewing that premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". So here we are, talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation and its pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". Let's get into it!

 After the success Paramount had had with the Star Trek feature films in the '80s, they decided that it was a good time to bring the franchise back to television. But with William Shatner and the cast of TOS now being too expensive for a weekly TV series, and deciding not to recast the iconic characters for the new series, Paramount went with a series set about 100 years after the events of TOS. With original series creator, Gene Roddenberry, back at the helm, the new concept became Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Unlike with TOS, where the main characters were very clearly Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, TNG has a more ensemble cast, with each character getting episodes focused on them. Except for Tasha Yar in season 1, though she would get a few episodes dedicated to the effects her death had on other characters in later seasons. Mostly Data and Worf being that they were the characters most affected by Tasha's death. But that has nothing to do with this episode. I've talked about "Encounter at Farpoint" alot on this blog, and on various blogs that I've run over the past almost nine years, none of which exist anymore. So, I won't say much more about it. However there are a few things that I'd like to point out about it that I noticed upon my billionth rewatch last night. 

The first is that Riker spends nearly half the episode looking for Data. Why? I mean, even in TOS they had commpanels to contact crew members on from anywhere on the ship. So why did Riker spend so much time looking for Data? From a real world perspective, it was something that either Roddenberry or D.C. Fontana put into the script to pad it out a bit so they could get to that 2 hour limit, but from an in universe perspective, it doesn't make any sense unless Data wasn't answering his communicator, but if that were the case, if I were Riker, I'd be sending Yar and a security team to look for Data, not doing it myself. But, I'm not Riker. From a real world perspective, it's an interesting way for Riker to meet both Worf and Data considering how close he's going to be to both characters in the future.

Also, I find it interesting that after the Enterprise has reconnected its saucer section to the stardrive section, Picard, Data, Yar, and Troi don't return to the Bridge. Picard just leaves Worf in command until Riker arrives on the Bridge, which he apparently doesn't do right away because he's off looking for Data after talking to Picard in the Observation Lounge. Worf is just in command for a good chunk of the episode. 

"Encounter at Farpoint" is my most watched Star Trek pilot episode. Mainly because it's the episode I've owned multiple times over the years. I've had it on two VHS releases, the Collector's Edition and the retail release, the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Q DVD box set, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 DVD box set. I've also had it digitally. And of course back in the day of VHS, where most shows only had a few episodes on home video, and it was expensive to get all of TNG on VHS, I watched the episodes I had available to me. Which was most of the first season, a few episodes from the second season, two episodes from the third season, and one episode each from seasons 4 and 5. Plus whatever we had recorded off the TV. So the episodes I had were the ones I watched the most of well into the 2000s since I wouldn't get the DVD sets until the early 2010s and it would be another decade before I would get Voyager on DVD. But we'll get to that in two weeks.

As I mentioned in my review of the Collector's Edition VHS release I appreciate the slower pace of "Encounter at Farpoint" because it gives us time to get to know these characters a little bit, and gives us time to get used to these characters. Especially back in 1987 when fans were so used to Kirk and his crew, having watched their adventures for 21 years at that point. And while we knew alot about Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, and a little bit about Sulu and Chekov, that happened over the span of 25 years between the TV show and the first six movies, and it wouldn't be until Strange New Worlds that we'd find out anything about Uhura and Nurse Chapel. Whereas with "Encounter at Farpoint", we learned a bit about Picard, a bit about Riker, a bit about Data, a bit about La Forge, a bit about Crusher, a bit about Yar, and a bit about Troi. Worf got nothing in this episode. But he was a last minute addition so they couldn't write much into the script for him without a complete rewrite.

Overall this was a decent beginning to TNG, which would only get better and the seasons went on and spawned an entire era of Star Trek on television, which ended in 2005, and then restarted in 2017 with Discovery, leading to the current era of Star Trek on television. And of all of the Star Trek shows that came out between 1987 and 2005, TNG had the most merchandise, which I will talk more about when I get around to doing either series or season reviews for Star Trek.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for this week, but I will be back next week with more reviews and other blog posts. So until then have a great rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.