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Series Overview
Jean-Luc Picard - Patrick Stewart Will Riker - Jonathan Frakes Data - Brent Spiner Beverley Crusher - Gates McFadden Deanna Troi - Marina Sirtis Geordi LaForge - LeVar Burton Worf - Michael Dorn 
OTHER SEASONS Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 Season 6 OTHER STAR TREK SHOWS Star Trek Deep Space Nine Voyager Enterprise OTHER TREKS THROUGH SPACE Babylon 5 The new Battlestar Galactica 
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Series OverviewThe final season and it's clear that nobody knew it was going to be the last season or they might have tried harder to go out on a high. Fair enough, the final episode All Good Things... is a fabulous one that brings together the past and present of the show with hints of the future to delight the fans and make them furious that the show has ended all at the same time. Apart from that episode and the amusing Attached, there are very few episodes that rise above the average in this season. Identity seems to be the key to this season with the Borg searching for theirs and almost everyone pretending to be someone else at some other point. Worf gets to see himself in other circumstances in the good Parallels, the annoying Wesley Crusher finally finds his way in life in Journey's End and Data acquires a whole bunch of identities in the offbeat Masks. Still, there is only that final episode that will linger in the mind from this season with its mix of melancholy and dignity. It's the end and there might not be a dry eye in the house. TopDescent - Part 2It's all go in Star Fleet. Picard, Troi and Geordi are trapped in Lore's hideaway with the Borg and a Data who seems willing to torture his pal LaForge in exchange for new emotions. Dr Crusher is in command of the Enterprise and has her hands full with a fully-armed Borg ship and a makeshift crew. Worf and Commander Riker have contacted the Borg resistance led by Hugh, but can they make a difference before Geordi's mind is turned to mush? There's certainly a lot of plot to get through, so this episode whizzes along with barely the time to take a breath. The number of times that Data has been taken over by either Lore or his brother or some other transmission, you'd think by now the Federation might consider him a bit of a liability. His is the story with the character arc, but it's neither convincing nor exciting. His friends' attempts to bring him back to his senses is pretty standard stuff and Riker and Worf's involvement is merely to get some explanation from Hugh (see I,Borg) as to how Lore took over the Borg. Surprisingly, the best strand is that of Dr Crusher's first command of the Enterprise and she makes a damn fine job it too. TopLiaisonsAmbassadors from an alien culture come aboard the Enterprise for an exchange in culture. One, however, seems only interested in eating too many desserts and the other takes pleasure in nothing that Lt Worf can show him. Captain Picard, en route to the aliens' homeworld, however, finds himself stranded on an alien planet with a woman who hasn't seen anyone else in seven years and seems inordinately enamoured with him. To call this episode average would be to do average a disservice. Watching someone overeat isn't fun and neither is watching Worf get wound up by someone rude. Not exactly the stuff of great drama. Captain Picard's predicament is a bit more extreme, but is also about as convincing as a chocolate teapot, which undermines the explanation to the ambassadors' behaviour, which is inexplicable to the point of stupidity even before you examine it closely. TopInterfaceGeordi's visor is linked up to the remote control systems of a probe to provide an artificial reality environment with better control of the probe. The system gets an early test when a ship they are salvaging reveals a surprising secret. The Hera, the ship upon which Geordi's mother served and which has recently disappeared, is on the planet's surface and Geordi needs to take the salvage ship down into the depths to rescue the crew. Or is that all just wishful thinking. This is a completely unconvincing episode because nobody acts in a convincing manner. It is so obvious that Geordi's experience is not reality that it is never in doubt to anyone except Geordi, so we can only see him acting stupidly. Meanwhile, Captain Picard refuses to believe that Geordi has seen his mother. This is the same Captain who believed Guinan telling him that the whole universe had changed with even less proof than Geordi has in Yesterday's Enterprise. Rather double standards don't you think? TopGambit - Part 1Searching for the Captain who has disappeared, the crew learn that he was killed in bar brawl. The crew set about tracking down the mercenaries that killed him and get caught in a firefight, Commander Riker being kidnapped in the middle. On the mercernaries' ship, he discovers that Picard is alive and pretending to be a smuggler. The mercenaries are tracking down romulan artefacts worth a great deal and Riker's only chance of staying alive is organising a deadly attack on the Enterprise. There hasn't been a lot of pulp sci-fi in THE NEXT GENERATION, but that's exactly what this is. You keep expecting Buck Rogers to jump out of the shadows at any moment. As a result, this is unmemorable at best. TopGambit - Part 2Having manufactured their escape from the Enterprise, Riker makes friends with the captain by picking fights with Picard. The artefacts are part of a great vulcan psionic weapon when put together and one of the crew is a vulcan secret service agent. The last piece is on the Enterprise, so Riker is given the job of raiding the ship and killing Picard in the process. The second part of this story is no more convincing than was the first. Picard proves to be completely outmanoeuvred by his wily vulcan counterpart and the final resolution, with peace rendering the weapon useless, proves to be beyond any sense of suspension of disbelief. TopPhantasmsData's having strange dreams that drive him to stab Councillor Troi. The ship, meanwhile is suffering a total failure of propulsion from its new warp core. The dream programme that Data discovered back in Birthright-Part 1 may not be as much a boon as he thought it was if this episode is anything to go by. The imagery in it is quite frankly bizarre, but that provides the only real interest as the rest of the plot is pedestrian and the resolution trite. TopDark PageLwaxana Troi is back on the Enterprise, introducing a race that has only ever communicated by telepathy to the wonders of verbal communication. She is, however, tired and subdued and when she collapses under the strain, it seems that she has suffered some psychic trauma that has caused her formidable personality to collapse. Deanna is forced to go into her mother's dormant mind to find out what secret she carries that could do this to her. More dreams. For the second time in two weeks, we're wandering around the subconscious of a character. Once again, this proves to have some interesting imagery, but not a lot of excitement going on. Majel Barrett's Lwaxana Troi has been a constant source of delight, but here she is as dull as the rest of the show. TopAttachedWhilst beaming down to a planet split by two aggressive factions, Captain Picard and Dr Crusher are kidnapped and fitted with devices that will render their minds readable. They escape, but find that the implants now mean that they are able to hear each other's thoughts. What starts off as an interesting aside to the their predicament soon takes them into dangerous emotional waters as feelings they have long kept hidden are laid bare. One of the strengths of THE NEXT GENERATION has been its willingness to concentrate on the inner lives of its characters, on their hopes, fears, wishes and desires. The whole plot is built to bring the characters of Picard and Crusher together to confront their feelings. It's a sign of just how strong this show can be that it can do this and get away with it. TopForce of NatureThe Enterprise is searching for a missing ship in an area where warp drive is limited to a small area when it encounters two scientists who claim that warp travel is ripping apart the universe. When Picard recommends more research, one of them overloads her warp drive and creates a fissure in the very fabric of the universe, just as she predicted. We should all look after the environment and stop using our cars and petrol as much as much as possible. That's the pretty obvious message of this episode (albeit tarted up with subspace fissures etc) and this is one of those occasions where the message overwhelms the story and the series gets all preachy. Still, there are worse things to preach about. TopInheritanceWhilst trying to reliquify a planet's core no less, Data works with a scientist who tells him that she is his mother, the wife of Dr Noonian Soong his creator and was there at his 'birth'. Data finds it hard to come to terms with this and then starts to suspect that the scientist is not all that she says she is, or is perhaps a lot more. Well, we've had Data's brother, daughter and father before, so it's probably no surprise that his mother should show up somewhere along the line. Trouble is, that the whole episode is based around how Data deals with this information and a twist that most people will see coming a mile off. As a result, it's all a bit dull. TopParallelsWorf returns to the ship to find that small details in his life are changing. It ranges from the location of a painting on the wall to the fact that Deanna Troi is his wife. Nobody else has any idea what he is talking about. Either his grip on reality is slipping or there is something fundamentally wrong with the universe. An intriguing premise starts well and keeps its mystery almost to the end, but then rushes through a resolution that fails to make the most of the idea. Right up to the point where the sky starts to fill with Enterprises from other universes this is top notch THE NEXT GENERATION, but we're left with only seconds to absorb Commander Riker's destroying a borg-damaged counterpart of his ship and himself. Shame. TopThe PegasusCommander Riker's first captain comes aboard the Enterprise to take the ship on a search for The Pegasus, the first ship on which Riker served. That ship contains forbidden technology thought lost, now in danger of being discovered by the Romulans. Riker is torn between direct orders to keep the truth secret and the needs of the ship and his current captain to know the truth. At last, a really good episode in this seventh season. All about the nature of honour and loyalty, this gives Riker a problem that is not easily solved, a problem of morality, and takes away all of his confidantes who might have helped him to solve it. We all make mistakes and those mistakes help to make us, but it is in not repeating them that our future development lies. Hardly mind-blowing stuff, but a little more subtle and deeper than this season has been so far. TopHomeward BoundWorf's foster brother is caught in a natural disaster whilst observing a pre-industrial society. The prime directive states that the indigenous population must be allowed to die, but the man beams some of them into the holodeck and convinces the Captain that they can save the survivors without them ever knowing that they left their home planet. Then one of them escapes into the Enterprise. The prime directive is one of STAR TREK's dodgiest ideas, being set aside whenever a plot requires it and morally suspect in the first place anyway. The debate upon the rights and wrongs of letting a whole race die out is barely more interesting than the tension between the foster brothers. TopSub RosaOn a planet designed in the image of the Scottish highlands, Beverly buries her grandmother and then encounters the old woman's lover, a man who is elusive and may be a whole lot more than he appears. What the heck is this all about. Not since the very early days of the show have we had a plot so utterly ridiculous as this one. A creature capable of being the lover of a whole family's line of women without anyone figuring it out for 800 years? How did these women have baby daughters with ordinary men if they're so besotted with this one? Whose idea were those bloody awful scottish accents? At least Gates McFadden tries her best, giving a not bad performance as a drug addict (albeit the drug being anaphasic love). Shame about absolutely everything else though. TopLower DecksA look at the life of junior officers aboard the Enterprise takes the spotlight away from the regular characters and gives us a look at some of the background staff. A group of young officers are facing their evaluations and for some it will mean promotion whilst for others it will take them to places they never expected. The change of focus here really makes for a refreshing and original episode. Contrasting new and young ensigns with the tried and trusted officers works really well. The strand that takes Ensign Sito (whom we first met in The First Duty) is particularly powerful and the downbeat ending actually really works for the story. Episodes that come together as well as this are few and far between and should be cherished. This goes straight into the top drawer. TopThine Own SelfData is damaged whilst retrieving radioactive components from a crashed probe on a pre-industrial world. He wanders into a village with no memory and brings with him a strange plague. As the villagers start to panic, he investigates and finds a cure, but will the villagers let him administer it? Meanwhile, back on the ship, Counsellor Troi attempts to take the bridge commander tests. This is a fairly standard THE NEXT GENERATION plot. It passes the time well enough, but has little to raise it above the usual. There is more interest in Counsellor Troi's travails with the engineering test than with Data's story. TopMasksA rogue comet holds an ancient archive within it, an archive that starts to reconfigure the Enterprise into a copy of the original planet. The crew try to translate the heiroglyphs floating around the computer core in order to understand what's going on. In the meantime, Data has been infected and overtaken by a number of personalities, one of which could be the end of them all. This examination of symbology and its place in our lives makes for an interesting and original episode. It's a bit static and it's very talky, but still manages to be fascinating. This is helped by the performance(s) by Brent Spiner, playing a number of strangers all inhabiting the one body. The solution to the problem is also a fascinatingly simple one. TopEye of the BeholderA young man kills himself in an area of the Enterprise's engineering section. Investigating the scene, Counsellor Troi has an empathic vision, an echo of an event that took place when the Enterprise was being built. There was a love triangle and a murder and the killer might now be aboard the ship again. Well now here's a funny episode. It's interesting enough whilst it's unrolling before your eyes, but the moment that it's over you're left wondering what the point was. Thinking about it hard, you'll realise that there wasn't one. TopGenesisReg Barclay is not feeling well, so Dr Crusher gives him an artificial T cell to create an immunity. Unfortunately, the cell mutates and all the of the crew start to de-evolve into earlier states of being. Captain Picard and Data return to the ship to find Riker is now a caveman, Deanna Troi is amphibious and Worf is a heavily armoured killing machine. This is a terrific episode, starting off simply enough, building up through various changes in behaviour to the point where Riker can no longer captain the ship. Then things get really dark as Picard and Data wander the ship, facing the prehistoric crew equivalents. Deanna's amphibious state is a shock and Barclay's arachnid forebear gives both Picard and the audience a shock. The resolution is too easy, but at least there is some scientific theory behind it. TopJourney's EndWesley Crusher returns to the Enterprise, but proves to be out of sorts, argumentative and generally aggressive. He falls under the wing of a descendant of the north american indians, one of a settlement that is threatened by a new border agreement with the Cardassians. All is not as it seems, however. An entire episode of THE NEXT GENERATION dedicated to the teenage strops of a stroppy teenager? Well you just know that this isn't exactly going to blow your socks off and so it proves. At least we can safely assume that this is the last we will see of Wesley Crusher as he swans off onto higher planes of existence with the Traveller (from Where No-one Has Gone Before and Remember Me). This is proving to be a patchy season at best. TopFirstbornWorf's son doesn't want to take the Rites of Ascension that will lead to him becoming a warrior. Worf takes him to a Klingon festival to see his heritage, but an assassination attempt on Worf's life puts him in pursuit of the Duras sisters who have plagued his life. He is aided in this by a familiar klingon warrior who tries to assist in Alexander's training, but who turns out to have a surprising secret. The decisions that we make today shape the person we are in the future and the events that we allow to happen to us. Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but one that is raised and played out in an interesting story that has a little to say about parent pressure, future determinism and Ferengi negotiation techniques. TopBloodlinesDaimon Bok, whose son Picard killed in battle, returns to announce that he is going to kill Picard's hidden son. Seeking out the boy, Picard has to try to come to terms with being a father to a son that doesn't really want to know him and then sets off in pursuit of Bok in order to rectify the situation. Following on from the series one episode The Battle, where Bok tries to take his revenge on Picard directly, this plot is a lot more subtle and the issues of parenting are more acceptable because they involve Picard, a man with a fear/dislike of children who is suddenly thrust into the role of parent. The biggest insight that the episode can bring into the art of parenting is that it takes patience. Not exactly earth-shattering. TopEmergenceWhilst discussing Shakespeare's The Tempest on the holodeck, Picard and Data are nearly run over by the Orient Express. Other systems are proving unreliable and the discovery of alien nodes connecting disparate systems and taking over the ship puts the crew at odds with its own vessel. The key appears to be the holodeck where strange characters from different programs are playing out some wierd storyline. Straightforward plotting and an entertaining enough premise makes this a solid enough, though thoroughly average, episode. The idea of the ship taking on its own life makes it a bit different, but everything else is by the dot-to-dot book of STAR TREK plotting. TopPreemptive StrikeThe Maquis is a group of resistance fighters operating in the demilitarized zone between Federation and Cardassian space. The treaty between the Federation and Cardassia requires that the Maquis be disarmed. Picard is given the job of managing this with the help of Ensign Ro, but she is conflicted by the nature of the mission because it was the Cardassians that tortured and killed her father in front of her and held her in a POW camp throughout her childhood. Michelle Forbes returns as Ensign Ro Laren in an interesting tale of the conflicted loyalties that can arise for someone operating under deep cover. Whilst her friendship with a mentor who reminds her of her father is pure cliche, the level of her acting and the rest of her story lifts this episode up above the ordinary. It's also one of the few times that we see the Federation acting in a way that is morally questionable and Picard in a position of being betrayed. More thought-provoking than most episodes. TopAll Good Things...Picard is randomly shifting through time. One moment he's where he ought to be, the next he's tying up vines in his dotage back on Earth and then he's taking over command of the Enterprise for the very first time. Q is at the heart of this, but claims not to be responsible. He also states that Picard will destroy the whole of humanity. When one of the Picards locates an anomaly in the Neutral Zone, he brings the Enterprise in all three time lines together to try and save the day, but will he actually wipe out the human race for all time? It's the very last tv episode of STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION and they certainly go out in style with story that takes us cycling back to the start (allowing Tasha Yar back in) whilst hinting at possibilities for the future that we will never see. Worf and Riker at odds over the dead Deanna? Geordi without a visor? Data as a lecturer at Cambridge? It might all come true, though the biggest (most pleasant) shock is the ex-marriage between Picard and crusher. These hints allow us our illusions that the story will go on, though in our imaginations rather than on our tv screens. It's also one of the most ambitious stories. Apart from completely ripping the original concept of being unstuck in time from Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, exactly what is going on is not explained for a good long time, even after Q's appearance. The sense of threat is also very real this time as Q isn't his usual playful self, but has returned to his more sinister early incarnation. The crew of the future are all aged believably and the acting stakes are raised one last time to give us something to remember them by. All good things must come to an end, of course, but at least we can revisit these through the marvels of DVD and reruns. Come to an end it has, a good thing it certainly was. Top |
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