Chapter 12: Seventh Season - The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion: Revised Edition (2024)

SEVENTH SEASON

When it was announced that Season 7 would be TNG’s last, to make way for the long-requested feature film and the successor series Star Trek: Voyager, the idea that the beloved show was ending amid high ratings and critical acclaim still hit fans hard and left many in denial, often anger.

Signs of Star Trek’s success were certainly everywhere, capped by the post-season breakthrough of an Emmy nomination for best dramatic series alongside the likes of NYPD Blue, Picket Fences, and Northern Exposure. For his part, Berman was proud that the show had come out on top despite having “three strikes against it”: being science fiction, syndicated, and a sequel. “And we overcame all of those things,” he said, “and we’ve given rebirth to Star Trek, a show that was very important to people, and 176 episodes later it’s been embraced and welcomed by a lot more people and given them pleasure. That’s a good feeling.”

The depth of that popularity was evident all around. Sparked in part by the success of the New York Times Syndicate’s column by Ian Spelling, TV Guide began a science-fiction media column after offering a slew of high-selling Trek-related covers through the 1993-94 season. The eleventh-month Smithsonian Trek exhibit, described as the most popular in the history of the museum, had two thousand to three thousand visitors a day and racked up record-breaking sales in the gift shop before moving on to New York City’s Hayden Planetarium. A touring exhibit called “Federation Science” was also making headlines as it left its native Oregon and inspired thoughts of similar events, including attractions at Paramount-owned theme parks. Finally, there was the June 13 Wall Street Journal cover story detailing the philosophical split in the effort to translate the Bible into Klingonese that grew out of the prior summer’s Klingon language camp—though the TNG writing staff had long since moved away from using the “official” Marc Okrand linguistics created for the Trek feature films.

And what about ratings? Boosted by its own publicity campaign with local tie-ins and a gala studio preview for licensees, the finale “All Good Things …” drew a 15.4 rating and 26 share in the 36 metered Nielsen ratings markets to become the all-time first-run syndication and TNG leader, topping the pilot’s 17.7 rating from 1987 and coming in first in 21 of 31 markets. According to Paramount Research figures it even beat network prime-time offerings in 13 of the 19 markets where it ran from New York City and Los Angeles to Miami, Boston, St. Louis, Denver, Charlotte, and San Antonio. Meanwhile, the studio reported that TNG’s other “bottom line” showed sales of Trek-related merchandise topping $650 million overall as of spring 1994—including major lines of action figures and props from Playmates Toys and the ever-popular publishing line from Pocket Books, now closing in on 140 authorized titles and over $55 million in sales with some 70 on the best-seller lists.

But the question remained for fans, critics—and even cast members: How could such a popular entity leave the air at the height of its success? Some, like AP writer Scott Williams, wondered aloud that it all came back to the same old thing: money. “Paramount was looking at a ‘mature asset’ that could only get costlier,” he wrote a week before the finale aired. “At the same time, its revenues would remain relatively flat…. Folding the TNG tent lets Paramount close its books on one set of syndication deals and open them, more profitably, on another.”

Meanwhile back at the lot, the series-ending hoopla was but a distant din when the show’s writers realized that the season was getting off to a surprisingly slow start—in part thanks to the creature that came to be called Star Trek Generations. Not only did its Thanksgiving 1994 release date push up the series’ shooting schedule a month and cut short everyone’s vacation, but Ron Moore and Brannon Braga, winning promotions to producer and co-producer respectively, took the month of May 1993 to go write the feature’s first draft in Hawaii while the rest of the staff veterans got things running a week or two later: Jeri Taylor, now assuming more responsibility than ever as a full executive producer; René Echevarria, who added “executive” to his official story editor’s title; and Naren Shankar, who got an onscreen credit as story editor. Replacing Shankar as science adviser was André Bormanis, a longtime fan, computer manual author, and onetime astronomy doctoral candidate with ties to both NASA and the needs of Hollywood, thanks to a partnership with screenwriter Steve Geller and past story pitches to Star Trek.

“They definitely did their series jobs,” Echevarria said of Moore and Braga’s “distraction.” “But it was a priority for everybody to pull together and try to give them a little breathing room, if necessary, to get their job done.” Piller, still spending two-thirds of his time getting Deep Space Nine’s sophom*ore year rolling, felt TNG’s early season also suffered from a letdown of another kind. “The fact that it didn’t seem like there was a future took the wind out of our sails,” he said. “But I think the pride factor kicked in about a third of the way into the season and we started doing some really top-notch stuff.” At that point, he and Taylor discussed making the series’ wrap-up episodes special by tying up a few loose threads—the roots of the eventual Wesley Crusher and Ro Laren stories—while using TNG’s forum to introduce early backstory for Voyager, whose onrushing evolution was already well underway.

The series’ finality also played at least a subconscious part as the seventh season evolved into sort of a family reunion with more of the regular cast’s backgrounds finally being revealed through the dangling threads of real or imagined relatives: La Forge’s parents, Tori’s late father, Crusher’s grandmother, Worf’s once-mentioned foster brother, and even Picard’s “son” and Data’s “mother”! “You know, you could almost recite every day of Worf’s entire life, and Geordi was the guy we knew the least about, so it became natural for us to flesh that out,” Moore said.

“It was not our intent to answer every question and knit up every little mystery,” Taylor added, noting that details such as Jack Crusher’s demise would have to be left to future movies. “Still, I’m sure that underlying a lot of things was the awareness that it’s our last season, and that may have allowed us to take some chances and do some things that wouldn’t have been approved in earlier years.” As the architect behind beefing up the women with Troi and Crusher in command roles, she also noted how something finally came of the long-teased Pi-card-Crusher attraction as well as the controversial Worf-Troi-Riker triangle first hinted at during Season 5. “People always give us more credit than we deserve, as if we have a map for each season—it’s always so much more by the seat of our pants,” she added. “You know, the stories come along and we say ‘Aha! There’s the chance!’”

The workload led to kudos from the bosses, with Piller again citing Taylor’s “nurturing” of her staff. With the Moore-Braga duo busy working at year’s end with the finale and Piller and Berman scrutinizing the last few episodes, Taylor again leaned heavily on the others and turned to other freelancers to help fill the bill. For instance, former staffer Joe Menosky’s three scripts for TNG’s last year were all completed, along with “Rivals” for DS9, without a trip back across the Atlantic from Italy. “We learned that it’s possible to break a story here, fax it to Joe, have a phone conversation to flesh it out, and then two weeks later he sends us a script!” Taylor laughed.

The production side of the aisle had few shakeups as well—aside from brush fires and earthquakes—although visual effects producer Rob Legato’s departure from Deep Space Nine to join the new company Digital Domain allowed Trek cohort Dan Curry to assume oversight of both series, setting up greater continuity with two alternating visual FX teams. For TNG, veteran Ron B. Moore supervised with Michael “B.” Backauskas—an eighteen-year veteran who’d even worked on the first Trek feature in 1979 as well as the DS9 pilot—while supervisor David Stipes took on Joe Bauer as his coordinator. Both were joined by veterans Phil Barberio, moving over to become Curry’s “roving fielder” as series coordinator, and associate Eddie Williams.

The coming of Generations meant further opportunities, with Peter Lauritson getting involved and reverting to a consulting producer’s title on TNG as midseason on “Genesis” (266), leaving veteran Wendy Neuss to take on more overall post-production chores and move up “above the line” into the opening credits where residual fees are paid. Visual effects supervisor Moore also left to work on the feature at the same time, with his alternating slot split up among the rest of the staff late in the season. Also, with everyone doing triple duty costume designer Bob Blackman got help from Abram Waterhouse as co-costume designer. But by now, as TNG prepared to sail off into the rarefield subspace of the silver screen, the series’ caretakers no longer worried much about the impact of the day-to-day changes; indeed, since DS9’s launch—and especially during the protracted Viacom/QVC buyout war for Paramount in 1993—no one ever questioned the future of the Trek “franchise,” as some perhaps ruefully had come to call it. “I said facetiously once that Star Trek was bigger than Paramount,” Majel Barrett Roddenberry once said, “and since then I’ve started to think back on that, because it’s true: we’ve had three new groups (of owners/managers) come in, but they’ve changed and we’re still here—we’ve been the ones to keep a roof over everyone’s head!”

DESCENT, PART II

Production No,: 253 Aired: Week of September 20, 1993

Stardate: 47025.4 Code: d2

Directed by Alexander Singer

Written by René Echevarria

GUEST CAST

Hugh: Jonathan del Arco

Ensign Taitt: Alex Datcher

Lieutenant Barnaby: James Horan

Crosis: Brian Cousins

Transporter Technician Salazar: Benito Martinez

Goval: Michael Reilly Burke

With Dr. Crusher commanding the Enterprise, Picard and fellow captives Troi and La Forge hear Lore explain how their release of Hugh a year ago left a faction of the cyborg race in a vacuum of purpose that he and now the “emotional” Data can fill.

When Troi realizes that Data is showing only negative feelings, La Forge guesses that Lore must be using that part of Dr. Soong’s emotion chip (actually intended for Data) as his means of control. But before La Forge can build a device to block Lore’s control, he is led away by Data for more of Lore’s attempts to transform organic beings into full androids—then wins a reprieve when Data’s conscience kicks in.

In orbit, a Borg attack forces Crusher to leave behind some more of the crew, Riker and Worf are found by Hugh’s Borg-in-hiding, who ditched Lore when his crude tests left many born mutilated. Meanwhile, Beverly uses metaphasic shielding and a daring plan to destroy the Borg ship in a star’s corona.

Hugh, at first bitter about being left adrift by the Enterprise crew, helps the group infiltrate the Borg complex. He leads a revolt just as Lore orders Data to kill Picard. Once bested, Lore is finally deactivated by his brother, who later keeps the emotion chip intact only at La Forge’s insistence.

Despite producer Jeri Taylor’s best intentions, this last cliffhanger wrap-up was not ironed out until after hiatus, and she and Echevarria both regretted having “too much story” so that not all of the plot lines, especially Hugh’s (“I, Borg”/223), could be developed as much as desired, However, the shipboard plot with Beverly in command grew as it became more interesting.

“Part I left many balls in the air and I had to catch them,” Echevarria observed, “We had a better idea of what this Part II was going to be like, but nothing turned out quite as simple as it had seemed,” The first draft had Data shoot Lore in self-defense in an extended phaser battle, but Michael Piller wanted to avoid such an overt means and so the dismantling did the job instead, Taitt was Barclay in an early draft, but was dropped due to availability, expense, and the logic—as the writer pointed out—that “he’s quite senior and would have been down there—foolishly—with everybody else!”

Director Singer, only the third to helm both segments of a TNG two-parter, easily recalled the one-day location shoot back at the distinctive Brandeis-Bardin Institute in 100 degree Simi Valley, “Those Borg extras were dying,” recalled visual FX producer Dan Curry. “They had to wear black longjohns under those rubber suits.” The Borg Hall interiors—actually a narrow three-wall set multiplied optically, as were the extras—were left standing over hiatus on Stage 16, but the caverns were built anew.

Here we learn, as Picard must have when he was Locutus (“The Best of Both Worlds”/174-175), that a tube carrying a silver liquid can disable a Borg when pulled from their headgear. “Of course, you don’t want to imply that you can pull out any hose and they’re down like an old car,” Echeverria mused. Also, it is clarified that Hugh’s local unit of Borg are the only ones affected by the “individuality” concept, and, via an Okudagram, that they are thought to originate in the Delta Quadrant. Data would later discover the memories on the emotion chip (“Brothers”/177) that Lore spoke of (“Inheritance”/262), and it all would become a major point again (ST: Generations); Data’s “evil twin” uses his left index nail for a covert control switch, rather than his left thumbnail seen earlier (“Brothers”).

Crusher’s skills at bridge command would be explained later (“Thine Own Self”/268). Ironically, tactician Barnaby is played by James Horan, the same actor whose character almost killed her the last time the metaphasic shield came up (“Suspicions”/248); the solar-flare optical is the latest retouched reuse of an earlier element (“Redemption II”/201). Actor Burke later appeared on DS9 Cardassian pacifist Hogue in Season 2’s “Profit and Loss,” the unseen Lieutenant Powell speaking to Riker as a comm voice later becomes Ogawa’s fiancé (“Lower Decks”/267) and husband (“All Good Things…”/277-278).

Lore and one of his loyal Borg.

Once again, reflecting the confusion over O’Brien’s initial pips and what a “chief” is (“Real of Fear”/228, “Man of the People”/229, et al.), Crusher refers to Salazar as one though he’s clearly a pipless NCO. And the adhesion strip formerly seen used to attach Starfleet comm badges (“The Naked Now”/103, “The Survivors”/151, “The High Ground”/160) is absent here—a likely advance in quartermaster and/or studio techniques.

LIAISONS

Production No. 254 Aired: Week of September 27, 1993

Stardate: Unknown Code: ii

Directed by Cliff Bole

Teleplay by Jeanne Carrigan Fauci & Lisa Rich

Story by Roger Eschbacher & Jaq Greenspon

GUEST CAST

“Anna”: Barbara Williams

Ambassador Voval: Eric Pierpoint

Ambassador Loquel: Paul Eiding

Ambassador Byleth: Michael Harris

Young boy (Eric Burton): Ricky D’Shon Collins

As part of a cultural exchange, Picard greets two Iyaaran ambassadors aboard ship before departing in their shuttle to meet with their leader.

Worf, already uncomfortable in diplomatic settings, is upset to be chosen as a host by Byleth, a surly type who comes to blows with the Klingon over poker. In contrast, Troi finds herself escorting the gentle Loquel, who seems to be gorging himself on pure sensations of food and drink.

En route to Iyar, Picard’s shuttle crashes on a hostile world, and the Iyaaran pilot Voval is knocked out. After stumbling outside and collapsing outdoors, Picard awakes to find a human woman, Anna, caring for him inside a downed freighter. Apparently a crash survivor for seven years, a moody Anna ruins the shuttle’s com panel when sent to retrieve it and then confides she loves Picard.

Initially sympathetic, Picard rails at the woman after he realizes he is not injured badly and that she seeks to keep him captive. She flees into the murky night just as Voval, very much alive, shows up at the freighter shelter and they set out after her.

Not until the “lovesick” Anna appears and threatens to jump off a cliff does Picard discover the truth: Voval took Anna’s form to learn about love, a concept alien to the Iyaarans—just as his shipboard cohorts wanted to study pleasure and antagonism.

Anna (Barbara Williams) saves Picard’s life, then won’t let him leave.

Sixth-season interns Fauci and Rich took this teleplay out of the season’s most arduous break session, building on Eschbacher and Greenspon’s straight homage to Stephen King’s Misery. “She” initially became a very balanced Starfleet officer, but Braga suggested hiking the character’s angst a few notches to create more tension.

Originally the script had Taylor’s B-story about Troi earning her commander’s pips, but when the two plots didn’t gel that line was ejected and saved for later (“Thine Own Self”/268), while Braga created the aliens’ “testing” events in an uncredited rewrite done in just eight days. Taylor was surprised Braga’s odd humor didn’t make the episode more popular, but for veteran director Bole the episode was “just flat not my favorite show,” citing the many rewrites as deadlines loomed.

Actor Pierpoint became the second regular from the onetime Fox SF series Alien Nation to guest on TNG (“In Theory”/199)—his craft being the redressed “alien shuttle” (see “Birthright, Part 1”/242 note)—while “Eric,” who appeared twice again (“Masks”/269, “Firstborn”/273), was named for Braga’s nephew. Propmaster Alan Sims recalled how, after he had bought chocolate-covered raisins for Loquel’s poker-game snack, actor Eiding confided he was allergic to chocolate and caused a wee-hours run to an open candy store for an alternative snack. “He said he broke out in red hives but offered to eat it anyway,” Sims said. “Now there’s an actor who’s grateful to be working!”

Braga also conjured up one of TNG’s infamously confusing “T”-aliens, the Terellians, with Picard’s comment that Anna could not be of that race “unless you’ve lost two of your arms”—indicating it’s possibly the species of bar pianist Amarie (“Unification II”/207), since a two-armed Tarellian was filmed but cut from the finale for time (“All Good Things …”/277-278). The plagued Tarellians (“Haven”/105) and warrior Talarians (“Heart of Glory”/120, “Suddenly Human”/176) are confusing enough, even without Dathon’s Tamarians (“Darmok”/202), but Braga would later concoct the Terellian “death syndrome” (“Genesis”/271) and “plague” (“All Good Things…”).

After seven years, Worf, Deanna, and Beverly are finally seen in their dress uniforms; Worf’s added Klingon sash scene evokes both Scotty’s dress kilts and McCoy’s dress-blues fussing (1967’s “Journey to Babel”). Continuity hounds will also notice references to the Ktarians (“The Game”/206, “Birthright, Part I”/242, “Time-scape”/251, “Phantasms”/258, Generations); Troi’s chocolate habit (see notes, “The Price”/156); papalla juice, red here instead of clear (“Imaginary Friend”/222); a Tarvokian powder cake, rather than “pound cake” (“The Game”); Worf’s battle “calisthenics” (“Where Silence has Lease”/128, “Emissary”/146, “New Ground”/210); Deck 12’s stellar cartography (“Lessons”/245, “Homeward”/265, Generations) and Deck 8’s unfinished nature, taken from the TNG Technical Manual. In a cut scene, Byleth had awakened Worf at 0500 for a tour of the arboretum, while later in a minor blooper he actually takes three poker chips during their game—not two as Worf claims.

Built by modelmaker Tony Doublin, new to TNG but a longtime associate of FX supervisor David Stipes, the freighter exterior scene was a six-by-sixteen tabletop model with crash-skid furrows and forced-perspective mountains only five feet away; Richard James’ live interior featured a slanted “crashed” floor. The cliffs were another Doublin model, combined at Digital Magic with a Dan Curry computer matte painting and the filmed actors, smoke, and stage—with Picard being a late addition to clarify the scene. Anna’s transformation to Voval came from an unused test element Curry had shot years before: the end result of a laser beam shot through melted plastic and bounced off white cardboard.

INTERFACE

Production No.: 255 Aired: Week of October 4, 1993

Stardate: 47215.5 Code: in

Directed by Robert Wiemer

Written by Joe Menosky

GUEST CAST

Captain Silva La Forge image: Madge Sinclair

Admiral Marcus Holt: Warren Munson

Commander Edward M. La Forge, Ph.D.: Ben Vereen

After successfully testing a new interface that transforms remote sensor data into hands-on “reality” via his own VISOR inputs, La Forge is ready to take on the retrieval of the lost U.S.S. Raman trapped low in the atmosphere of gas giant Marijne VII.

But the mission is threatened when Picard breaks the news that the Starship Hera has been lost with all its crew—including its captain, La Forge’s mother, Silva.

The engineer opts to press on with his Raman mission, noting that the device is designed to work with his unique anatomy. Just as he finds the crew of seven all dead, a fire flash leaves him with severe hand burns—even though the flash was merely relayed from the remote probe’s inputs.

After Dr. Crusher adjusts the interface to prevent a reoccurrence, La Forge tells his father via subspace that he refuses to believe his mother is dead. Even so, he’s startled to “find” her on the Raman during the probe’s next run. “She” asks him to take the ship lower in the atmosphere, where her vessel is supposedly trapped.

Despite suffering neural shock in the exchange, La Forge, with Data’s help, risks one more contact—countering Picard’s direct order and the beliefs of his friends, who feel he’s in hallucinatory grief. This time, he learns that his “mother” is really one of many fire-based lifeforms who were trapped on the ship and will die if not returned to their home lower in the atmosphere—and he does so. Initially angry, Picard later relents and shares his sympathy.

Though it became the first installment of what writer-producer Ron Moore dubbed TNG’s “Year of Lost Souls,” Geordi’s background finally comes to life in onetime staffer Joe Menosky’s fifth-season pitch, whose heavy special effects portray a sometimes confusing point of view. “Using Geordi in place of the camera/probe was a difficult convention to establish,” said director Wiemer, who noted it would have been “emotionally unrewarding” to show the reality of filming the remote probe with “Silva” while cutting back to Geordi in the lab for reactions.

The high-profile guest stars include Sinclair (the unnamed captain in ST IV) flying in from Jamaica and Vereen, whom Le Var Burton helped attract to the show, buying out a day of his Broadway show.

Originally Menosky had Riker in the virtual-reality suit, troubled by the deatti of his father and glimpsing scenes of their Alaska cabin, but Geordi was made the focal character because of Riker’s mind trip late last season (“Frame of Mind”/247) because of the logic of the VISOR implants. Rene Echevarria did a late polish, while Riker’s consolation of Geordi was a rare scene added for time and penned by Taylor, not filmed until three shows later. For his part, though, staff writer Naren Shankar wondered if the story’s concept wasn’t futuristic enough, and science adviser André Bormanis agreed: “There are prototypes of that kind of thing already, although tying it straight to the brain will take much longer.”

Menosky coined the names of Geordi’s sister Ariana and his mother Silva, although the name “Alvera K.” was on a bio screen briefly glimpsed in “Conundrum” (214); Taylor thought “Silva” was more “interesting” and didn’t consider the other visible enough to change it. His father, addressed as “doctor,” is not named here, though the earlier screen called him “Edward M.” and the script gives his rank as commander. Both parents had already been referred to as an exozoologist and a command officer (“Imaginary Friend”/222).

Ben Vereen appears as Geordi’s father.

The suit itself, designed by costumer Bob Blackman, carried “a prop man’s nightmare,” Alan Sims recalled: “blinky” sensors that each ran off its own watch battery and switch, requiring ten minutes in all to turn on or off between takes. “If I have any legacy it’s the teasing from the actors—‘Oh God, let’s save Alan’s batteries,’” he laughed. “But it’s not the cost of the batteries—it’s what happens when they run down and you have that delay to open ’em up and put in new ones.”

Background fans: The Raman, named for a Nobel Prize—winning Indian physicist, has a gaseous rather than forcefield fire-suppression system (“Up the Long Ladder”/144) and carries Star-fleet registry number NCC-29487 but has a crew dressed in “civvies”; Riker missed his mother and acted out when he started school; roller coasters are still known in the twenty-fourth century; Deep Space Three, in contrast to DS9, is headed by an admiral and is apparently near the Breen (“The Loss”/184, “Hero Worship”/ 211, Generations) and Ferengi; and the Hera had a mostly Vulcan crew, a century-old Starfleet practice (1967’s “The Immunity Syndrome”). Also seen again is the oft-used biolab lift (“The Offspring”/164, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2”/175, Generations) dubbed by set decorator Jim Mees as the “Rocky Horror elevator” after the cult classic.

Visually, Wiemer and FX supervisor Ron B. Moore were disappointed that the elaborate probe miniature by veteran modelmaker Brick Price was only seen once; producer Peter Lauritson regretted not getting to depict the trapped Raman. The hardest FX shot, Silva’s transformation to flame, used torso-shaped shells of flash paper that live FX man Dick Brownfield had formed and dried around a mannequin; two were butted together so the flames would go the same direction. Geordi’s walk-in wall of fire used the same effect as the Bersallis III firestorms (“Lessons”/245), although many of the flames were shot live—but not too close.

GAMBIT, PART I

Production No.: 256 Aired: Week of October 11, 1993

Stardate: 47135.2 Code: g1

Directed by Peter Luritson

Teleplay by Naren Shankar

Story by Christopher Hatton and Naren Shankar

GUEST CAST

Arctus Baran: Richard Lynch

Tallera: Robin Curtis

Vekor: Caitlin Brown

Narik: Cameron Thor

Yranac: Alan Altshuld

Admiral Chekote: Bruce Gray

Ensign Giusti: Sabrina LeBeauf

Bartender: Stephen Lee

Lieutenant Sanders: Derek Webster

When Picard disappears on an archaeological pleasure trip, the senior staff discover he was apparently vaporized weeks earlier by ruffians in a bar. Riker, who refuses to accept Picard’s death until justice is served, forces a Yridian source to reveal the attackers’ next likely stop, Barradas III.

There, La Forge finds the same kind of micro-crystalline damage found in the bar. Suddenly the group is ambushed by Picard’s “murderers,” who kidnap an injured Riker in a quick beam-up.

The “pirates” escape, but Data chooses to look for clues rather than pursue. Coming to, Riker discovers he is wearing a pain inducer, used for forced discipline by Baran, the leader of a mercenary band.

Riker is shocked to find Picard alive and posing as renegade archaeologist “Galen,” who’s at odds with Baran. Taking a cue from Picard, Riker assumes the air of a Starfleet “black sheep” and then repairs an engine problem that Picard had secretly caused so Riker could win the trust of Baran and the crew.

Data soon realizes the raiders have been hitting the ruins of a Romulan offshoot race and pursues them to Calder II, where he’s surprised to hear Riker order the shields lowered. He does so as Picard, who won a reprieve against attacking the Starfleet outpost there, is forced by Baran to open fire on his own ship….

Captain Picard is trapped aboard a pirate vessel.

This story, born from a sixth-season spec script from Iowa college student Chris Hatton, not only bore an all-star cast but truly went where no TNG story idea had gone before: breaking Gene Roddenberry’s thirty-year ban on so-called “space pirate” stories. First Michael Piller and then Jeri Taylor mulled over the impossible, attracted by the premise of Riker seeking vengeance for Picard’s death and the promise of an offbeat, less “talky,” romp. As they warmed to it and Piller suggested it could hold up as an expanded two-parter, and finally Rick Berman called Taylor in to talk.

“Rick has a little bust of Gene Roddenberry on his desk,” she recalled, “and he’d tied a little red bandanna around Gene’s eyes and said, ‘Gene always said he’d never do space pirates, and this is a space pirate story, and I don’t want Gene to see this, or hear it!’” “I just blindfolded it as a joke one day,” Berman added. “Whenever they come up with a story I don’t think Gene would like I blindfold him when we discuss the story…. I take it on and off, depending on who’s in here.”

“We say we’ll never do the ‘rodeo’ show and ‘A Fistful of Datas’ comes along,” agreed writer Shankar, who acknowledged the show’s popularity while still doubting it had had the “legs” to be expanded. “To me, it’s one of the classic television problems: If you start off the show by saying the captain’s dead, no one’s buying it … and you’re just marking time until the captain’s revealed”—in contrast to “The Best of Both Worlds,” which occurred over hiatus when there were “legitimate” doubts about Patrick Stewart’s return. Hatton, who beat the odds with a second story sale after this one (“Thine Own Self”/7268), moved to Hollywood for a time to pursue writing but then returned home to finish his degree first. His original spec script followed Picard’s point of view and didn’t involve Riker.

The guest cast boasted many familiar faces: a return to Trekdom for Robin “Saavik II” Curtis after her ST III and ST IV appearances; veteran Richard Lynch, who had previously worked with Stewart onstage; and Sabrina “Sondra” LeBeauf of the eighties Cosby Show, whose character Giusti was named for a friend of Shankar. “Sabrina was a fan, and though she’s a professional, I think sitting down at the controls of the Enterprise kinda unnerved her a little bit, but she picked it up and did fine,” recalled post-production producer Peter Lauritson, here directing his second TNG outing. Also, Altshuld was terrorist Pomet in “Starship Mine” (244), Brown had played Ty Kajada in DS9’s first-season “The Passenger,” Gray reprised Chekote from an earlier shot on DS9’s “The Circle,” and Lee had played Chorgan (“The Vengeance Factor”/157).

In contrast to his Hugo-winning directing opus (“Inner Light”/ 225), Lauritson noted the outdoor/action scope and visual FX team planning required in this segment. “I was really whipped after this one!” he laughed. “Directing is a tough job, and I really respect the guys who do a lot of it.” Set decorator Jim Mees remembers the shoot too: his crew had to lug real rocks up from the studio in the heat and “build” the ruins.

Lauritson and Taylor praised Stewart’s portrayal of Picard while she joked that Lauritson must have “saved up all the favors ever owed him” to afford the show’s most extended phaser fight ever with over seventy phaser shots. All the explosions were done in post-production due to the fire-season ban on live explosive “squibs” at the location site at Griffith Park’s Cedar Grove. In fact, his boss David Stipes noted that the fire ban meant all damage “stains” had to be painted on digitally, as did a fake rock blown up in front of Geordi’s face—actually, on a blue screen set by live FX man Dick Brownfield and matted in. For orbital shots, the “Miradorn raider” from DS9’s “Vortex” was seen over what began as four-by-five NASA Earth slides, used to provide more detail for closer shots.

Trivia fans will note: the first TNG use of DS9’s gold-pressed latinum; Riker’s serial number, only the second given for the regulars in the series, is SC 231-427, and his time on the Hood (“Encounter at Farpoint”/101-102, “Tin Man”/168, “The Pegasus”/ 264) and the Minos Korva crisis (“Chain of Command”/236-237) are recalled; Picard’s alias “Galen” was his mentor archaeologist (“The Chase”/246); the Yridians (“Birthright, Part 1”/242, “Suspicions” 248, and DS9) are readable by empaths, unlike Ferengi and others (“Ménage à Troi”/172); there’s a UFP “Science Council” (repeated in “Force of Nature”/261) as well as an “Archaeological Survey”; and the Argus sector (“Nth Degree”/193, “Parallels”/263).

GAMBIT, PART II

Production No.: 257 Aired: Week of October 18, 1993

Stardate: 47160.1 Code: g2

Directed by Alexander Singer

Teleplay by Ronald D. Moore

Story by Naren Shankar

GUEST CAST

Arctus Baran: Richard Lynch

Tallera: Robin Curtis

Vekor: Caitlin Brown

Narik: Cameron Thor

Koral: James Worthy

Ensign Giusti: Sabrina LeBeauf

Commander Setok: Martin Goslins

Facing the defenseless Enterprise while posing as part of a mercenary crew, Picard and Riker play their parts by firing a low-level phaser burst that leaves the Enterprise unharmed but impresses the mercenary leader, Baran.

Data plays a hunch and lets the pirate ship escape but finds a coded message from Riker that details their next heading. Meanwhile, the Romulan Tallera forces Picard to reveal his true identity while explaining that she is actually a Vulcan agent sent to grab the crew’s target: an ancient psionic superweapon wanted by Vulcan isolationists who wish to rid their world of its leaders and off-worlders.

At the rendezvous site, Baran sends a raiding party aboard the Enterprise to retrieve the last psionic resonator piece from a Klingon contact who’d been detained there. Riker, whose act has fooled Baran, is ordered to kill “Galen” but instead is “shot” on stun by Picard.

Learning that Tallera is actually among those who want the weapon, she and Picard expose each other to the crew. He is taken hostage while others go with both of them down to Vulcan for their money, where Tallera kills them with the resonator just as Picard realizes its power source is negative thought. He then alerts his would-be Enterprise rescuers. Left useless, the weapon is destroyed by the Vulcan government and Tallera is detained.

To flesh out Hatton’s original hour-long story, Part II expanded upon the reason for the mercenaries’ looting, the Vulcan subplot, and the appearance of Koral, the galaxy’s tallest Klingon. Director Singer, who had done his continuity homework by visiting Lauritson’s set during Part I, took his turn at enjoying the show’s tone: a thankful change of pace that “took the onus off of being deadly earnest, deadly serious, and deadly complicated.”

Star Trek fan and NBA star James Worthy’s unforgettable appearance began with a chance meeting with the top Klingon of them all, Robert “Gowron” O’Reilly (“Reunion”/181, “Redemption” I and 11/200-201, “Rightful Heir”/249). He confided he’d always wanted to be on the show while they jokingly signed each other’s trading cards during an airline flight. At O’Reilly’s urging, Worthy met with Berman and Piller, who in turn asked Taylor about any suitable cameo parts—and the stoic, intimidating Koral was a perfect fit. “They asked if James Worthy could be written in and I said, ‘Who?’—‘cause I’m not a big sports fan,” Moore laughed. “And then—‘Oh! He’s a Laker!’ … We were looking for little filler plot elements to do anyway.” Worthy’s showing was a lighthearted lift for everyone, Singer said, and he noted that athletes are usually comfortable before the camera: “They’re in show business, they don’t freeze, and they take direction well.” Still, prop man Alan Sims recalled that he seemed to be humorously intimidated by it all: “To him, the pressure of basketball was nothing compared to what it’s like here.”

Despite his mixed feelings about the show, Shankar enjoyed fleshing out the Vulcan subplot—in part based on Spock’s admission in 1967’s “Journey to Babel” that a Vulcan was quite capable of killing for a logical reason. “We went for people who very logically felt that Vulcan’s ‘problems’ were linked to contamination by illogical people,” the writer observed, “so in a logical sense you say ‘Get rid of them.’ … I just thought it was a very logical way to arrive at racism being the answer to your problems. It was a different but very believable tone for the Vulcans.”

Captain Picard works with Tallera (Robin Curtis), a Vulcan agent.

Reusing place names to increase believability, Shankar reprised Draken IV from his own script (“Face of the Enemy”/249) and intended to name Yadalla Prime “Yonada Prime” as the destination of the people in 1969’s “For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky” but it was changed due to the presumed Romulan origins required. Likewise, Barradas III was an homage to “Beratis,” one of many names for the Jack the Ripper entity from 1967’s “Wolf in the Fold.” Moore named the Stone of Gol after the plateau of the Vulcan Masters where Spock studied in the first feature—leading Shankar to quip that the weapon might colloquially be referred to as the “Gol stone.”

With Vulcan so little mentioned in much of TNG, Moore had a chance to tie up a few loose ends regarding the planet, such as its “founding” UFP status, the governing “Vulcan council” (a cut line) titled ministers, and the myths of Vulcan gods. Surak’s Vulcan reformation of logic (from 1969’s “Savage Curtain”), referred to here as the Time of Awakening, is definitely dated for the first time with a two-thousand-year-old time frame, but with the Debrune of Part I described as “a Romulan offshoot” and their Barradas III outpost dated to the same era, the Vulcan-Romulan schism would appear to predate Surak by several generations, at least. In any case, it confirms that all three races had starflight well before Earth did—curious, given that Romulans had no warp drive in their first televised appearance (1966’s “Balance of Terror”) and are said to have lost their twenty-second-century war to Earth because of it.

The psionic resonator was another late-developed detail but was scaled back from early plans to make it a killer of millions at one stroke. Prop man Alan Sims recalled that the Vulcan god of death (to the right on the back) was bald-headed until Rick Berman ordered that hair be etched on to avoid any resemblance to Patrick Stewart in the insert close-up! Its effect shot was completely computer generated, reported FX supervisor Ron B. Moore, whose initial was switched to “D.”—as with the writer-producer—in a rare end-credits typo. The budget-minded cavern set won more praise from the director: “There’s more invention in that show per dollar and per hour of labor than almost anything else I’ve ever seen,” Singer said. “It is so extraordinary that the industry at large doesn’t know that or appreciate that: Richard James is in a class with anyone in the world.”

Trivia watchers will note Koral’s “Toron-class” vessel is the alien shuttle re-dressed again (“Liaisons”/254), seen alongside the Justman (“Suspicions”/248); the “Judge Advocate General” harks back (“The Measure of a Man”/135), while the Federation-Klingon treaty is quoted for the first time. Finally, the brief TNG clip with Frakes and Spiner that was used for the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards was shot during a break in this episode.

PHANTASMS

Production No.: 258 Aired: Week of October 25, 1993

Stardate: 47225.7 Code: ph

Directed by Patrick Stewart

Written by Brannon Braga

GUEST CAST

Ensign Tyler: Gina Ravarra

Sigmund Freud: Bernard Kates

Admiral Nakamura: Clyde Kusatsu

Workman No. 1: David L. Crowley

La Forge is embarrassed by the ongoing failure of a newly installed warp core just as Data becomes troubled by disturbing nightmare images from his dreaming program.

From memories of eating a living cake in the shape of Deanna Troi to workmen apparently disrupting a plasma conduit, Data seeks out a Sigmund Freud holodeck program and even Troi herself for answers. Though wondering if he’s developing human neuroses, Troi, like La Forge, dismisses Data’s dreams as just a new level of humanity—until he drifts off during a work session, begins seeing eating and mouth images on crewmen and finally stabs Troi in the shoulder when he sees a mouth image there—even with his dream program turned off.

With Data confined to quarters and the new warp core still a problem, in sickbay Dr. Crusher finds an interphasic, leechlike creature on Troi at the point of her stab wound. She learns the creatures, largely invisible, are all over the crew and are fatally extracting cellular peptides.

Sensing that Data’s dreams are a clue to their removal, Picard and La Forge enter a holodeck sequence connected to his dream program and encounter the images Data has been seeing. Upon awakening, the android successfully uses a high-frequency interphasic pulse to drive out the creatures, whose effects—including the warp-core failure—had been depicted in his dreams.

In his weirdly offbeat trademark style, staff writer Braga delved successfully into the nightmarish side of Data’s dreams—a goal ever since he introduced the idea of dreams earlier (“Birthright, Part 1”/242)—but around the set the episode went down in Trek lore as simply “the cake show.” Perhaps the most infamous production headache since the first season’s Armus creature (“Skin of Evil”/122), “the cake” reveals that even TNG’s well-oiled production machine has its breakdowns.

“The episode was fun and easy and it turned out great,” recalled the writer, who enjoyed taking jabs at Freud’s theories, “but the cake was the big thing: the production team, for some reason, God bless ’em, it threw ’em for a loop.” Never mind the old “saw a lady in half” magician’s trick table, or the same gag used in one of his own low-budget student films or the Tom Petty Wonderland-themed rock video; from the first production meeting Braga had wanted a full-length, anatomically correct cake with more gore, but that was pulled back by Berman and simplified to what staff members thought they’d finally agreed on: a torso sheet cake on a cutaway table.

Prop man Alan Sims, who at first suggested building the cake right over Sirtis’ body to employ her own limbs, told of a morning rush-hour call to his Santa Clarita baker after director Stewart, helming his fourth TNG outing, realized two hours before shooting that a “life-sized torso” wasn’t that large after all; store-bought sponge cakes added on and color-matched frostings were the jury-rigged answer. “The producer’s there now, the production manager’s there now, everyone’s upset, Patrick’s upset,” he recalled. “You can’t see it before [shooting day], so that’s why I ask these questions in the production meetings—‘You want arms or you want it like a Venetian statue?’” “Dreams are not practical … because no matter what you do someone’s gonna say ‘Oh, that’s not what I thought it was going to look like,’” agreed designer Richard James. “You virtually have to throw the head back because otherwise the head’s going to be looking right into the cake … but they didn’t want her ‘thrown back.’”

“I think there was a little bit of panic that day” was producer Peter Lauritson’s understatement, while set decorator Jim Mees was more blunt: “I thought everyone was going to kill each other! It was one of those things that if you could have you’d have pretended you were dying in a hospital rather than come to work!” And Dan Curry, who tried the “box” out himself, recalled that “if you put a prisoner of war in there you’d be put on trial for war crimes…. Marina (Sirtis) was a trooper about it.”

In Data’s dream, Deanna appears as a cake.

Despite it all, Braga said he was more “stunned” that Data’s stabbing scene of Troi was left in. “It’s really a very shocking moment, very disturbing—I fully expected children in the audience to scream about Data hiding in the closet to their parents!” Lines cut for time featured Data’s study of 138 dream theories, including Dr. Syrus of Tilona IV (“Frame of Mind”/247) and a banquet featuring Ktarian spice cake (see “The Game”/206) and a keynote speech on Bajoran aqueduct management (as in “Birthright, Part I”/242). Braga’d named Ensign Tyler after his girlfriend’s niece, and pointed out that Data did not yet know he had a “mother” (“Inheritance”/262).

Kutsatsu reprises Nakamura, one of Starfleet’s fifty-plus admirals, all the way from Season 2 (“The Measure of a Man”/135), while longtime con extra Joyce Robinson gets dubbed “Ensign Gates” here, an homage to actress McFadden. Also for the trivia buffs, Alexander is finally mentioned this season and said to like Riker’s jazz (“11001001”/116, “Second Chances”/250), and the “new” hatch cover was meant to be an all-new reactor core, cut for budget; the metaphasic scanner prop (“The Next Phase”/224) is an anyonic scanner here.

Finally, in Data’s room we see another casually stored phaser (“Aquiel”/239), Jenna’s gift (“In Theory”/199), and his getups for Dixon Hill (see “11001001”/116) and Sherlock Holmes (“Elementary, Dear Data”/129, “Ship in a Bottle”/238); despite his bedtime ritual we know he needs no rest (“The Best of Both Worlds”/174) although he has tried it (“Tin Man”/168). Ongoing here are the jokes about Spot’s pet-sitters (“Timescape”/251, “Genesis”/271), and his picky appetite, now up to feline supplement 125 from 74 (“Data’s Day”/ 185, “Force of Nature”/251). And in the season’s biggest blooper, the cat’s clear status as a male here would soon change (“Force of Nature”/261, “Genesis”/258).

The surreal imagery translated into a full plate for the post-production teams, the most complex being the quick holodeck dissolve from Ten-Forward to Freud’s office while Picard is talking on Data’s “chest phone.” Aside from director of photography Jonathan West and second-unit DP Tom DeNove matching lighting on the various sets to blue-screen shootings and to the half-second transformational cross-fade, the scene already required that prop man Alan Sims’ telephone within a cast Data “chest” be matted in on the imaged Data, who himself would dissolve with the backgrounds and the phone receiver that Picard holds.

Modelmaker Tony Doublin created two different creature puppets for the episode, including cable-actuated foam models for the “mouths” initially five times larger than the finished shot and then scaled down, with the background blended digitally so even Geordi’s skin muscles appeared to move. His interphasic creatures were originally much more complex, sporting visible tentacles and shot on two plates for a transparent “jellyfish” effect with internal organs visible on the fourteen-inch model. After the shots had all been filmed and composited, FX supervisor David Stipes recalled with a groan, the word came down to make them more mollusk-like with embedded tentacles and not so much movement apparent in “this” dimension—so the extras were all painstakingly “painted” out. “You can still see their guts moving but it’s about a tenth of what we did,” Stipes said.

Finally, the dream aura allows a reality warp on the sets: As Picard and La Forge round a corner to enter Ten-Forward, the wall of “fake” cabin doors can be seen backing up to the wall behind the bar.

DARK PAGE

Production No.: 259 Aired-Week of November 1, 1993

Stardate: 47254.1 Code: dk

Directed by Les Landau

Written by Hilary J. Bader

GUEST CAST

Ambassador Lwaxana Troi: Majel Barrett

Maques: Norman Large

Hedril: Kristen Dunst

Lieutenant Ian Andrew Troi: Amick Byram

Kestra Troi: Andreana Weiner

While escorting and tutoring the Cairn, a telepathic species who until recently had no concept of spoken language, the normally boisterous Lwaxana Troi seems tired when the group visits the Enterprise. Despite Lwaxana’s playing matchmaker for her with Maques, a Cairn, Deanna is troubled by her mother’s unusual moodiness and prods her to get a checkup.

Lwaxana is seen to be low on psilosynine, a Betazed neurotransmitter used in telepathy, but defies Crusher’s order to avoid mental contact and collapses. Maques helps them learn that something has triggered a past event that Lwaxana had blocked into her metaconscious mind—the Betazoid protection from psychic trauma—and caused the comatose shutdown.

After assuring the crew that his presence is not the cause, Maques offers to act as a telepathic “bridge” so Troi can explore her mother’s mind and unblock the damage. There she encounters images trying to drive her away: Picard, a wolf, and even her late father—as well as Hedril, a Cairn girl.

Still baffled, Troi reads her mother’s diaries and finds seven years have been deleted by her mother. Using Maques as a telepathic bridge again, she uncovers her mother’s self-guilt over the drowning of a previously unknown older sister, Kestra. After helping her mother say goodbye to her daughter and the guilt, Troi gives her grateful mother an old photo of the whole family that Mr. Homn, their valet, had saved for just such an occasion.

Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett) with Deanna Troi as a baby.

The season’s next “family reunion” not only featured Lwaxana Troi in another less “Mame”-like turn but finally gave a glimpse of Deanna’s father, previously only hinted at (“Encounter at Fair-point”/101-102, “The Child”/127, “The Host”/197) but seen here to be a Starfleet lieutenant played by Byram Amick—who previously appeared as Paul Hickman, one of La Forge’s former crewmates (“Identity Crisis”/192).

Bader kept retrying her basic pitch of a telepathic mental/ emotional rescue through various guises-Crusher and another female doctor, then a Geordi story, then Crusher and Troi, then Troi and someone else, and then Lwaxana rescuing Deanna—before it took its present form. Taylor was glad to continue fleshing out the story behind the boisterous Lwaxana and to deliver the unique science-fiction “rescue”; the hard part for her and Bader, noted uncredited polish writer René Echevarria, was coming up with a dark enough secret that after seven years wouldn’t portray Lwaxana “unsympathetically.”

Echevarria’s regrets were being told to tone down Maques’ sometimes comical attempts at language into halting and simple pauses, and doing without location lakeside scenes in favor of the less-expensive arboretum set—which was larger than usual (“Data’s Day”/185, “Imaginary Friend”/222) with its own pond this time. Bader had included the part of valet Mr. Homn but had to make him an unseen long-distance contact when Carel Struyken was not available; the staff was unaware that Deanna originally did not recognize Homn in the first Lwaxana story (“Haven”/105).

After “Phantasms,” a move toward more fictional neural “tech” led to the uniquely Betazoid telepathic neurotransmitter psilosynine, the metaconscious, and the paracortex lobe of telepathy. Bader’s one homage that stood was originally the “Lake El’Nar eddy,” named for her late friend Eddie Elnar.

Actor Large had already played Romulan proconsul Neral (“Unification I-II”/208-7) and a Kobheerian captain on DS9’s first-season “Duet.” Young Kristen Dunst was also seen in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire, while Teddy and backup Buck of Working Wildlife, the rented wolves who chased her and Troi, had played Two Socks in Dances with Wolves and were later in The Jungle Book. As usual the past two seasons, all the animals were arranged by Rob Block’s Critters of the Cinema, who’d provided Data’s most recent Spot as well as Simon, the mixed Pomeranian appearing as Kestra’s dog.

Actually no chase was involved, since actors and most crew weren’t allowed close to the trained but still-wild animals—“Nobody wanted to be there with the wolf except Dan Curry,” Lauritson quipped. Instead, extensive split-screen shots against blue screen were used: for instance, Dunst actually petted not the wolf but the knuckle of a handy C-clamp stand, with the animal matted in later. To inject motion into othewise static lockdown shots, the camera panned with Troi running through a doorway, then locked down to film the wolf running through, apparently only a moment later.

Block revealed the wolf’s growl was achieved safely by the “give-and-go” method: first the leashed wolf gets a lick of a bolted-down meaty bone before it is covered, then the cameras are readied to catch the animal’s reaction when it is revealed again as a trainer moves as if to take it. Staring down the lens at that sight, “the second unit cameraman said he’d never been more scared in his life,” Sims recalled. As with all animal shots, an American Humane Association offical was on hand to help oversee the five pages and fifty-seven guidelines on animal handling in film work.

Without the wolf, Sirtis did complete her own stunt for the “jump into space”: leaping off a huge blue-screened platform onto air mattresses. The shot was matted in with the starfield, corridor walls, and computer-enhanced shadows and interactive light for both on and off the ship—a four-hour compositing job involving seven elements.

On the trivial side, we see Deanna’s office is on Deck 8 and hear again she’s “good with languages” (“11001001” 116); the Federation Council is mentioned, as is Data’s dream program (“Birthright, Part I”/242, “Phantasms”/258). For Troi fans, much backstory is finally revealed here: Though Lwaxana once said Deanna’s accent reminded her of him (“Haven”/105) he doesn’t show it here, where he’s seen to be a lieutenant in the gold-color duty division of the time—either engineering, helm, or weaponry. Taylor’s injection of “Down in the Valley” being Deanna’s favorite at bedtime fits with past facts that her father read Westerns to her (“A Fistful of Datas”/234) and sang to her (“The Host”/197). While her “Mr. Woof” for Worf is obvious (“Half a Life”/196, “Cost of Living”/220), Lwaxana’s nickname of “little one” for Deanna (“Manhunt”/145, “Ménage à Troi”/172, et al.) takes on new meaning; lan’s name was revealed earlier via his namesake, Deanna’s “son” (“The Child”/127). The Trois’ marriage on SD 30620 is an odd stardate compared to other timeframes dated, but the event works out to about 2328 reckoned with the clues given here. Deanna’s “genetic bonding” mating ot Wyatt Miller (“Haven”/105) likely occurred before lan’s death, when she was seven, circa 2343—and perhaps was what pushed Lwaxana to delete her seven years of log entries. In lines cut from the last scene, Lwaxana says Kestra was never jealous of her sister and she swore Ian never to mention her, while Deanna reveals she’d just received the photo from Homn after an update on her mother’s condition.

ATTACHED

Production No.: 260 Aired-Week of November 8, 1993

Stardate 47304.2 Code: at

Directed by Jonathan Frakes

Written by Nicholas Sagan

GUEST CAST

Ambassador Mauric: Robin Gammell

Security Minister Lorin: Lenore Kasdorf

Kes aide: J. C. Stevens

In beaming down to meet with the Kes, a society whose bid to join the Federation is the first by a nonunified world, Picard and Dr. Crusher are intercepted and taken hostage by the Prytt—the Kes’s isolated and xenophobic neighbors on Kes-prytt—to discourage their suspected Kes-UFP union against them.

As Riker and Worf discuss their options with Mauric, the Kes begin to show a few paranoid signs of their own. Picard and Crusher escape with the help of a Kes agent but find they have been rigged with devices that open up uncontrollable telepathy between the two.

During their escape and flight toward the Kes-Prytt border, Picard and Crusher discover they become sick if they try to separate and regain some privacy. That closeness leads them to find that not only are they strongly attracted to each other, but that Picard was once in love with her yet repressed it because of Jack and his death.

Prytt guards cause a detour that delays their beam-up, leading Mauric to turn the tables and accuse Riker of a UFP-Prytt conspiracy. Riker beams Loric up against her will for a face-off, but the unending roadblock leaves him telling the Kes that their membership bid will be denied and that Prytt will be invaded by Starfleet investigators unless the two are returned.

Back aboard finally, Picard asks Crusher about their newfound feelings but she prefers to just stay friends—at least for now.

The long-hinted-at spark between Picard and Dr. Crusher is finally explored in this story from twenty-three-year-old Nick Sagan, son of well-known physicist Carl Sagan and a summa cum laude graduate of UCLA’s film school. He won Gates McFadden’s praise for “turning her season around.” After an uneventful session with DS9’s staff, the newest of TNG’s favored freelancers recalled that his idea of Picard and Crusher kidnapped by a cult group and physically shackled together as in The 39 Steps was the last premise of twelve he’d pitched a year earlier; the telepathic link was added from an uncredited writer’s premise. “He was one of the most comfortable freelancers we’ve ever had,” Taylor said of Sagan, whose optioned screenplay for Orson Scott Card’s Hugo-and Nebula-winning Ender’s Game novel first impressed her.

Sagan, a longtime fan inspired to writing by role-play games and Patrick McGoohan’s visionary The Prisoner series, welcomed the chance to finish Crusher’s oft-interrupted tease “Jean-Luc, there’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you” in times of peril (see “Remember Me”/179) and other close calls (“The Naked Now”/103, “Allegiance”/166, “Qpid”/194). Mauric’s B-story aboard ship was originally more “an oblique cross between Get Smart and James Bond” in tone, Sagan recalled, but it was deemed too “over the top” and in Ron Moore’s polish draft the gags were dropped—such as Riker being put on hold for twenty-fourth-century “elevator music” and an irritated Worf smashing a “sound-altering device” that makes such a racket that no one can hear himself think. Also cut was the fact that the link was drawing Jean-Luc and Beverly into an addiction to each other’s brain waves and eventually a hive mind. Earlier, Sagan added, a shared kiss and a hint of possibly more by the duo around their campfire didn’t survive the story break stage: Berman and Piller didn’t want such a drastic change with the movies on the horizon.

Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher share a romantic moment.

Taylor recalled the fan buzz about the episode and spoke to the mail that poured in when the two leads didn’t draw closer at the show’s end. “Where do you go from there? It starts to become a soap opera, and Picard would be sealed off from other stories,” she explained, praising the Stewart-McFadden chemistry. “Also it seems perfectly legitimate to me, emotionally, that two people who have gone that long without ever coming together—there must be a reason for that.” Of course, fan demand for a Beverly/ Jean-Luc tryst would soon get tweaked and then some in the show’s final (“All Good Things…”/227-278).

Sagan’s place names came from an original entry of a signboard of more famous mythical places, such as Oz and Narnia, from his Ender’s Game screenplay. A two-day return to the Bronson Caves area of Griffin Park near the Hollywood sign (“Darmok”/ 202, “Ensign Ro”/203, “Homeward”/265) provided the landscape; in fact, a gag photo was snapped with Stewart and McFadden in the foreground of the Tinseltown landmark. Science adviser Bormanis noted the Prytt mind-control devices should have been attached on the side of the head near the higher-reasoning center of the temporal lobe, but plot demanded that they be hidden on the back of the neck. We also learn that “associative membership” in the Federation is available, and that Ogawa had a late association with another crewman before being engaged to Andrew Powell (“Lower Decks”/267).

Trivially, Crusher’s fear of heights was revealed once before (“Chain of Command, Part 1”/236), as was her grandmother’s story (“The Arsenal of Freedom”/121), with more to come (“Sub Rosa”/ 266); her pet phrase “Penny for your thoughts” is not new (“The Perfect Mate”/221). But this story raises a mystery: since Picard didn’t know Beverly until after Walker Keel had introduced her (“Conspiracy”/125) to Jack, her remark that the trio spent more and more time together implies she was with Jack on the Stargazer, at least initially—unless it returned to base often, but that seems unlikely.

Though visual FX were not a big part of the story, they took a lot of time—including six hours of expensive blue-screen shooting for the fireball cave, which injected motion into the otherwise static lockdown of split-screen work with the “pan-and-scan” technique used when adapting a movie’s anamorphic frame to the squarer television image. After director of photography Jonathan West was filmed walking through the cave with a bright photobulb for reference, the actors were shot running their action as live FX men Dick Brownfield and Will Thorns blew their hair with fans to match the fireball’s close pass; the crew men were then erased from the shot. The fireball elements, rented from unused stock shot FX modeler Tony Doublin, were then composited with the live elements, with other details—shifting light intensity and the images getting sharper when closer to camera—added digitally after that. Rare (for TNG) was the visible forcefield at the Kes border, complete with a costly and time-consuming nonstatic pan, after Stipes’ coordinator Joe Bauer noted that the fugitives had no reason to recognize an unfamiliar planet’s invisible forcefields. An unused DS9 element shot by Gary Hutzel provided the forcefield “hole.”

FORCE OF NATURE

Production No.: 261 Aired: Week of November 15, 1993

Stardate: 47310.2 Code: fn

Directed by Robert Lederman

Written by Naren Shankar

GUEST CAST

Dr. Rabal: Michael Corbett

Dr. Serova: Margaret Reed

DaiMon Prak: Lee Arenberg

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

While tracing the missing medical ship Fleming through the Hekaras Corridor—the only safe route through an area filled with tetryon particles, a hazard to warp-driven ships—the Enterprise is fired upon by a Ferengi ship that had seemed to be dead.

After DaiMon Prak asserts that an object presumed to be a Federation buoy emitted a disabing verteron pulse, the Enterprise helps the ship on its way—only to be attacked in the same way hours later.

A Hekaran brother and sister, Rabal and Serova, board the ship forcibly to explain their goal: to demand that the use of warp drive be halted before it destroys the fabric of space near their world—even if that means isolating it from the UFP.

An angry Picard softens after Data finds their theory merits study, but the impatient Serova sacrifices herself and her own ship to create a rift that sucks in the Fleming and threatens the Enterprise. A shaken La Forge, upset at the newfound dangers of warp drive, helps find a way to “coast” into the rift on a brief warp pulse and recovers enough to “ride” another wave out when the Fleming tries to restart its warp drive, damaging both ships.

DaiMon Prak (Lee Arenberg) refuses to help the Enterprise find a missing ship.

With the UFP declaring a new warp five speed limit, La Forge consoles Rabal over his sister’s sacrifice and joins Picard in mulling their careers’ use of warp drive, resolving to put their new awareness to good use.

This disappointing though worthwhile “message” show finally beat the staff’s so-called Limits Curse of Season 6, when Joe Menosky’s environmental theme of warp-drive damage was tried but dropped from several stories (“Suspicions”/248). Or did it? Shankar, admitting “it wasn’t one of my finer moments,” was disappointed to lose his original version and its emotional underpinnings: a visit by Geordi’s sister Ariana (only mentioned in “Interface”/255) to confront his emotional denial regarding their mother’s death.

“I’ve been on enough series and tried to do environmental issues to realize that they are so hard to dramatize,” Taylor said, “because you’re talking about the ‘ozone hole,’ and … it’s so, so hard to make it emotional and personal and give impact on that kind of level.” Shankar agreed: “You oversimplify the issue, you oversimplify the solutions, and you end up with boilerplate and platitudes and nobody’s happy.”

Shankar, having championed the rebirth of the eco-premise to Jeri Taylor after returning “galvanized” from an environmental film group breakfast, first wrote of Geordi as a “control freak” who was throwing himself into his work rather than mourn Silva’s loss; the warp-drive revelations shook up the one thing he had been able to control—his engines—and led to much soul-searching. Taylor agreed with Piller that the Ariana plot was too forced and trite, though Shankar wished it had been worked out rather than dropped altogether; a conflict for Geordi with another crewmate didn’t pan out, shooting deadlines approached, and the stripped-down script shows the padding of hastily written scenes concerning a rival engineer and Spot, of all things—in part thanks to the fast pace of editor-turned-director Lederman. “Somewhere about Act III the story finally starts, and by that time I don’t think anybody even cared,” added Taylor, who praised Shankar’s attempts to deal in vain with a “doomed premise.”

INHERITANCE

Production No.: 262 Aired: Week of November 22, 1993

Stardate: 47410.2 Code: ih

Directed by Robert Scheerer

Teleplay by Dan Koepel and René Echévarria

Story by Dan Koeppel

GUEST CAST

Dr. Juliana O’Donnell Soong Tainer: Fionnula Flanagan

Dr. Pran Tainer: William Lithgow

With the Enterprise on hand to help reheat the cooling core magma of Atrea IV, one of the married scientist team coordinating the project tells Data she was once married to Dr. Soong, his creator—and thinks of herself as his mother.

With no memory of her or a mention of her by Soong, Data takes a while to warm to Juliana Tainer, who had left the inventor after he became too immersed in his work. Data’s memories of her and other early life events were erased when Soong and Tainer fled the Crystalline Entity on Omicron Theta, his creation place, and the colonists’ logs were substituted. When pressed, she tearfully admits that she was against Data’s creation and wanted him dismantled when they left, all because of fears he’d be like evil Lore.

Data finally accepts her as his mother but begins to sense other odd things about her. When her husband is injured in a plasma cave and Data joins her there, the instability forces them to jump from a cliff and her arm is severed, confirming his guess that she is an android.

Juliana Tainer (Fionnula Flanagan)—Data’s “mother.”

Playing data from a chip found in her brain, Data sees Soong explain what happened: His wife really died after Omicron Theta, but he built his best-ever android to house her mind without her ever knowing the difference. Abiding by his wishes, Data opts to tell Juliana not of her true nature but of Soong’s regrettedly unspoken love for her.

This simple yet beautifully mounted tale of yet another crewmember’s “family” began as one more held-over pitch that got a second look during Season 7. As one of writer Echevarria’s favorites, he acknowledged it was a real “insider’s show” but was pleased with both its emotional tone and the chance to smooth out some rough spots from Data’s backstory as it had evolved (“Datalore”/114, “Brothers”/177, “Silicon Avatar”/204, “Descent, Part II”/253). Also noteworthy is the much-praised performance by Flanagan, who’d already appeared on DS9’s first-season “Dax.”

Professional writer Dan Koepel’s premise came in early enough that Echevarria was able to plan the idea of Soong’s emotion chip having further memories—those wiped from his “childhood.” The writer’s first teleplay draft, differed in that Soong created the Juliana android so human-seeming merely out of his own drive, not due to his love for her, and it wasn’t as clear on her “Sophie’s Choice” guilt over dismantling Data rather than face another Lore.

Cut here was a scene in which Troi counseled Data to talk to his mother a reference to a hiccuping program that Soong could never make work. Only the bare-bones remains of another story line survived the cut too: Juliana’s husband Pran is distrustful of androids like Data—a concept designed to raise the tension involved in his final decision. The cooling core “tech” was worked out by science adviser André Bormanis, who came up with the ship-based “chain reaction” method of reheating the plasma after the staff opted for the more visual symptom of earthquake shocks over rising radiation.

New background abounds here: Soong’s jungle planet, unnamed in “Brothers,” is here dubbed Terlina III; three failed androids preceded Lore; he apparently wore the same lab jacket all his adult life; Data had a childhood memory that was “wiped” and replaced with the colonists’ logs, perhaps the reason for his “late” development; an isolinear chip can hold a smaller chip as an interface; and, in an Okudagram “Commercial Transport Database Achive” also filled with in-house joke entries, the Soongs stayed at Mavala IV four days when wed in 2328; one witness was a Corvallen (seen in “Face of the Enemy”/240). Other revisted references include the pattern enhancers (“Power Play”/215, “Time’s Arrow”/226, “Ship in a Bottle”/238, “Frame of Mind”/247); magnesite ore (1967’s “Friday’s Child”); and phaser-bore drilling (“Pen Pals”/141, “A Matter of Time”/209).

Light on special visual FX, the show featured a Dan Curry matte painting for the phaser bore hole that Data looked up through. The pan-and-scan “cheat” was used again (“Attached”/ 260) to animate the split screen by following Brent Spiner as Soong back and forth around a stationary stand-in, with the crew directing the actor from a monitor, until Spiner/Data could be shot separately and matted in. As with the other violin scenes, the bowstrings are muted with wax so no sound covers the dialogue before music is looped later.

The hard luck extended to other areas as well, in small ways: “DaiMon” Prak has no Ferengi forehead military tattoo, while Mike Okuda said the Hekarras Corridor wall graphic title was misspelled and all but the last two incorrect letters were wiped out, leaving only “RS Corridor.” Visually, though, the “space rift” was a success as FX supervisor Ron B. Moore augmented the standard liquid nitrogen/black velvet anomaly with added cans of dry ice dropped into boiling water. The distortion wave was the firestorm element again (“Lessons”/245), “stretched” and re-colored.

The warp five cruising limit debuts here, designed with an “emergency clause” so it doesn’t cramp future storytelling. The Fleming honors Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, while “biomimetic gel” (again in “Bloodlines”/274) was an item science adviser André Bormanis “created” from real news: a man-made material developed by scientists at Cambridge that creates small tubules than can mimic certain cellular-level biological activities and structures. We learn that warp drive is now three hundred years old, matching the dating of 1967’s “Metamorphosis” despite the fact that the modern warp coil wasn’t involved, since it wasn’t developed until a century later (“A Matter of Time”/209). Also, the Ferengi Marauder, last seen in Season 2 (“Peak Performance”/ 147), is of the Dekora class with a crew of 450 and is seen to fire missiles from its rear arc but it is not clear how the Grand Nagus (DS9’s “The Nagus” and “Rules of Aquisition”) fits in with the “Ferengi Council.” A cut line refers to Riker once surfing on Risa’s Kattala Beach.

Other Trek bits return: verterons (“The Pegasus”/264); the ship’s log recorder and delta rays, going back to original Trek’s second pilot and “The Menagerie”; weather-modification systems (“True Q”/232, “Sub Rosa”/266, “Journey’s End”/272); a glimpse of pinkish-white dilithium; the Intrepid, Sergey Rozhenko’s ship (“Family”/ 178), which rescued Worf from Khitomer (“Sins of the Father”/165). Finally, though Spot’s gender has changed (“Phantasms”/258), Geordi is the latest to discover that her disposition hasn’t (“Timescape”/251, “Phantasms”/258, “Genesis”/258)—but her feline supplement (see “Phantasms”), now up to version 221, seems to have clicked.

PARALLELS

Production No. 263 Aired: Week of November 29, 1993

Stardate: 47391.2 Code: pa

Directed by Robert Wiemer

Written by Brannon Braga

GUEST CAST

“Lieutenant” Wesley R. Crusher: Wil Wheaton

“Dr.” Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake

Gul Nador: Mark Bramhall

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

Worf is nearly driven insane when, after returning victorious from a bat’telh competition, he realizes he is sliding from one alternate universe to another.

First the details of his unwanted surprise birthday party keep changing. Then the details of the sabotaged Argus Array—as well as his tactical console—are different too, resulting in La Forge’s death during a Cardassian attack. At that point, Worf finds himself on an Enterprise where Ogawa is chief medical officer and he is married to Troi!

After Data points out that La Forge was nearby each time Worf sensed a change, his VISOR is activated and immediately makes the Klingon dizzy—and this time he wakes up on a Riker-led Enterprise as first officer, with Wes Crusher at tactical. Data has found that Worf’s RNA shows quantum-level flux that is out of sync with the universe, and discovers with Wes a quantum fissure where many universes intersect—a fissure that trapped the original Worf and is aggravated by the VISOR’s subspace pulse.

During the search for Worf’s true universe, the warlike Bajorans of this one open fire, destabilizing the fissure so much that Enterprises from the various universes begin popping in together—including a ragtag fugitive in a Borg-controlled galaxy that opens fire as Worf returns to his correct universe. That ship is neutralized, the quantum states are repaired, and once home Worf can’t help but see his relationship with Troi differently.

From the briefest of premises, Braga developed the latest of his complex, high-concept stories that turned out to be one of Season 7’s most popular—largely due to its unforgettable effects and the debut of what became known as the “Worf-Troi thing.” “It’s been kinda fun, but it infuriates some people,” Taylor said of the dreamstate romance. “Some people are so upset that we didn’t put Riker and Troi together and just get it over with, and how dare we introduce this!”

Story needs and the nonpermanent formats of alternate universes were what tempted the staff to finally pursue the Worf-Troi romance they’d first toyed with in Season 5 (“Ethics”/216, et al.), after a plot based on Picard didn’t pan out. “I think most people didn’t pick up on the relationship we were trying to evolve, which was good—we wanted that surprise when we find out they’re married,” Braga said, noting its future incarnations (“Eye of the Beholder”/270, “Genesis”/271, “All Good Things …”/277-278). “This is a couple that only has relationships in alternate realities and timelines… even as creatures. They make normal couples look boring by comparison!”

The story, which Taylor said “broke like butter” despite Piller’s skepticism over its brief roots, is filled with other gems, as well: a Cardassian on the bridge in one universe, his people conquered by warlike Bajorans; another where Ogawa is a doctor and ship’s medical officer; and still others where Picard is killed by the Borg and—most haunting—a fugitive Enterprise on the run from the all-victorious cyborgs. The last line “Champagne,” originally unscripted, was written by Taylor at director Wiemer’s request for a more definitive ending—after a huddle over just how direct Worf should be. Wiemer noted that even Worf’s initial shuttle scene is not set in his “real” universe, but admitted the thought didn’t occur to him until after he was done with the show! For the record, seven alternates are seen in all.

In an alternate universe, Worf meets Lieutenant Wesley Crusher.

Braga also revealed that the throwaway Wes Crusher role was first written for Tasha but felt to be redundant (“Yesterday’s he would soon return in “reality” anyway (“Journey’s End”/272). Worf’s party song was to have been the traditional “Happy Birthday” in Klingonese—until producers learned the broadcast fee quoted by the copyrighted song’s royalty holders. He made his nephew a namesake again (“Liaisons”/254, et al.) for Worf and Troi’s “son,” and he returned to the Argus Array (“Nth Degree”/193), a favorite design, just to have it break down again. The shuttle Curie was originally dubbed the Borges, after the one of Braga’s favorite authors whose parallel-worlds story “The Garden of Forking Paths” greatly predated quantum mechanics as a science; the craft design is also finally given a name, Type 6. Bormanis said the “subspace pulse” of Geordi’s VISOR is not a warp-like field but merely a computational speed accelerator, much like a transistor.

Also: Worf’s birthday apparently fell on SD 47391.2, after a brief bio screen gave it as December 9 (“Conundrum”/214); his party featured a seventeen-candle cake, with twentieth-century balloons tied to chairs and poppers optically enhanced; Alexander is said to be visiting the Rozhenkos on Earth; the Cardassian warship is mispronounced from its original “gayler” (“The Wounded”/186). Troi’s chocolate fetish has a long history (see “The Game”/206, “Liaisons”/254) as does Worf’s bat’telh, as well as a muddled spelling (back to “bat’tehl” of “Reunion”/181).

The alternate realities have a host of trivia, too: Troi’s wardrobe from the entire series (except for the buttoned-down Season 1, of course) is emptied here; set pieces from the alternate bridge would turn up in the finale (“All Good Things …”/277-278), while Barash’s future comm badges with included rank bars (“Future Imperfect”/182) are worn here with pips. The fourth deep space station ever mentioned, DS5, is seen to be a Regula One design from the second Trek feature; the others besides DS9 are DS3 (“Inheritance”/262) and DS4 (“Suspicions”/248). “Starbase 47” is the redressed cryocapsule/relay station (“The Neutral Zone”/126, “Aquiel”/239), while we finally get a glimpse of Utopia Planetia’s land-based facility, complete with surrounding red Martian terrain.

Recalling the earlier “cake crisis” (“Phantasms”/263), Braga early on contacted FX supervisor Ron B. Moore about a feasible way to create a “hundred Enterprises” to fill the screen after the fissure’s collapse. Rather than using the “abomination” of stock shots with dozens of light-source angles, he and his coordinator Michael “B.” Backauskas developed a motion control plan to film the model while rotating and lit in the same direction but from above and below and varying distances. The “multiple Worf” shuttle scene, conceived of as a clip sequence, was accomplished with split-screen shots, two with a stand-in in the back to allow more easy-to-matte crossing movement. Tossed in with a “less ominous” all-new anomaly and an old explosion effect (“Timescape”/251) for the Borg Enterprise, Moore was able to boast that his formidable segment’s FX came out under budget and on time: “I don’t know how many Enterprises are on the screen, but it’s a good deal more than a hundred!”

THE PEGASUS

Production No.: 264 Aired: Week of January 10, 1994

Stardate: 47457.1 Code: pe

Directed by LeVar Burton

Written by Ronald D. Moore

GUEST CAST

Admiral Margaret Blackwell: Nancy Vawter

Admiral Erik Pressman: Terry O’Quinn

Commander Sirol: Michael Mack

Painful memories and choices are stirred up for Riker when his first captain, Erik Pressman, joins the Enterprise to lead a mission to retrieve their old ship, the Pegasus, before the Romulans can salvage the secrets it was testing.

Pressman, now an admiral, upsets Riker when he reveals his plan to salvage the ship and continue with the original test: a phased cloaking device that not only allows ships to pass through solid material but violates the original Treaty of Algeron with the Romulans.

Riker, ordered not to share the secret with Picard, is haunted when the frustrated former captain reveals that a cover-up muffled the news that Pressman’s crew mutinied just before the ship was lost.

After a standoff with a Warbird looking for the Pegasus, Pressman orders Picard to take the Enterprise inside a fissure of the huge asteroid, where the Pegasus is eventually located. Aboard the ship, now phased partly into solid rock, Riker puts the loyalty he gave Pressman as an ensign behind him and defies the enraged admiral. But the two are suddenly beamed back with the salvaged phasing cloak as the Romulans seal the Enterprise inside the fissure. Riker reveals Pressman’s secret as an escape option. Picard takes it—revealing the technology to the Romulans and arresting Pressman for the treaty violations, with the promise of an inquiry to expose his Starfleet allies.

Winning praise as LeVar Burton’s second directorial stint and one of Ron Moore’s finest efforts, the writer said this story began as a bare-bones “Raise the Titanic” idea and struck paydirt when the conflict-torn Riker story was coined. Though it grew from the secret project, Riker’s silence on the subject, and his “straight arrow” character as a young officer, Moore acknowledged a certain resemblance to the themes of honor and duty of his own “The First Duty” (219), where Wes Crusher didn’t have the benefit of fifteen years’ good record to minimize his early-career mistake. In contrast to Pressman, Picard is also portrayed as the type who’d pick his first officer sight unseen from resumes—a fact not explored since the pilot.

As a sidelight, Moore also jumped at the chance here to nail down the eternal question: Why not a Federation cloaking device? “I thought, let’s sew this up,” Moore explained, “not because it’s the last season but because I’m sick of that question at the conventions! It’s such a screamingly obvious thing to the fans, and I was just tired of it and wanted to put it to rest.” After some thought, the treaty ban seemed to be the “cleanest” explanation, he added—and much better than the “bizarre theories” he’d heard in the past: “‘The cloaking device hurts humans but not Vulcans and Romulans,’ or ‘It wouldn’t work on Federation starships because of their design’ … or that the Federation wasn’t smart enough to figure it out! Somebody also said, ‘We don’t sneak around’—and I thought that was kind of ridiculous too.”

Ironically, the “phasing cloak” is the same concept that the “devious” Klingons and Romulans were known to be testing at one time or another (“The Next Phase”/224). Moore also wanted a lighthearted teaser to contrast with the coming heavy drama, but revealed that instead of “Captain Picard Day”—written to utilize Jonathan Frakes’ never-aired Stewart impersonation—his first idea was a rehearsal of Shaw’s “Pygmalion” performance shipboard directed by Crusher with Troi, Riker, and Data as Eliza, her father, and Professor Higgins. “After the [story] break, Michael kinda frowned and said, ‘OK, give it a shot,’ but it was just insane—it didn’t fit at all,” he said, hoping in vain that the scene could have been one of many saved and used later on.

The show debuts the first black Romulan, making it the latest Trek species to be depicted as multiracial, although not everyone got the message at first: actor Michael Mack—due back as the human Starfleet Ensign Hayes at tactical in the first feature—recalled that he was made up as a traditional Romulan with “lightened” skin for his first shooting! A second take with correct makeup had to be reshot a third time when the producers wanted his intensely menacing portrayal softened.

There’s history of another kind in Act III, when longtime bridge extra Joyce Robinson—having finally gained a character name (“Phantasms”/258)—got to utter an uncredited reply to Picard. The line was written for Data but actor Brent Spiner—joined by the rest of the cast, when too late to change the setup—pointed out that the helm and not the ops officer should carry out the “course plotted” order.

Also for trivia hounds: Moore marks the difference here between Starfleet Security (internal) and Intelligence (external), noting that “There was a time when you couldn’t even mention Starfleet Intelligence on the show—and I kept sneaking it into scripts—and finally people sort of stopped caring.” His dating of the Treaty of Algeron puts in at the time of the never-detailed “Tomed Incident,” the last Romulan-UFP encounter before TNG’s first season (“The Neutral Zone”/125). Contest winner Paul Menengay was named for a friend of Brannon Braga’s, although the entries actually came from two area elementary schools and prop man Alan Sims’ own children. Science adviser Andre Bormanis was proud to contribute his first original “technobabble”; a “duonetic field,” coined from Daystrom’s original duotronics (“The Ensigns of Command”/149) as the field equivalent of the fictitious verterons (“Force of Nature”/261 and DS9’s “In the Hands of the Prophets,” “Playing God,” et al.) and tetryons, when factual forms became too awkward to say repeatedly.

Admiral Pressman, former commander of the Pegasus.

Other past references include Admiral Shanti (“Redemption II”/201), the Excelsior-class U.S.S. Crazy Horse (“Descent”/252), the JAG office (“Gambit, Part II”/257), extending shields to protect another object (“The Next Phase”/224, “Final Mission”/183, “The Defector”/158, “Deja Q”/161), and the first emergency exception for exceeding warp five (“Force of Nature”/261). We learn that Riker trains for the bat’tleh with sticks and, curiously, says his beard is four years old; perhaps he shaved it after the second season!

Thanks to a convincing early test shot, the for the first time was seen illuminated within the darkened asteroid with only its own sources and spotlights—actually, inexpensive focal spots attached to Image G’s motion-control camera—to avoid what was facetiously dubbed “magic cave lighting.” “To me, that’s what really sold the show,” FX supervisor David Stipes said. “I really wanted to get that creepy quality, dangerous and claustrophobic: Picard doesn’t want to be there!” The five-foot carved-foam asteroid model and the many cave wall pieces were again Tony Doublin models, with the molten wall made of backlit paraffin and dissolvable styrene, plexiglass, and aluminum foil. Though Rick Sternbach readied sketches of a new ship based on designs (“Yesterday’s budget forced the reuse of the Grissom model of ST III (“The Naked Now”/ 103, “The Drumhead”/195, “Realm of Fear”/228) in unaltered form with the “rock” simply pressed in around it; Richard James’ interior set was tilted at a fifteen-degree angle.

HOMEWARD

Production No.: 265 Aired: Week of January 17, 1994

Stardate: 47423.9 Code: hm

Directed by Alexander Singer

Teleplay by Naren Shankar

TV story: Spike Steingasser

Based upon material by: William N. Stape

GUEST CAST

Dobara: Penny Johnson

Vorin: Brian Markinson

Kateras: Edward Penn

Dr. Nikolai Rozhenko: Paul Sorvino

Tarrana: Susan Christy

Worf and his shipmates are disturbed to find that his foster brother Nikolai, a cultural observer on primitive Boraal II, has sheltered the natives in caves to protect them from the planet’s suddenly dissipating atmosphere—an obvious Prime Directive violation.

Like Nikolai, Worf assumes Boraalan guise to blend in and assess the social damage. Picard insists on true noninterference under the Prime Directive, which would mean the Boraalans would perish along with their world.

But Nikolai won’t back down, and he secretly creates a duplicate of the Boraalan caves in the holodeck. He transports them, planning to keep them safe until a new home planet can be found and the natives transported there, thinking only that the “storms” of their world have at last dissipated.

Picard and Worf are furious but feel forced to go along now, especially since Nikolai reveals he has fathered a Boraalan child and plans to stay with the people. In addition, one Boraalan, Vorin, is overwhelmed when he accidentally wanders out into the Enterprise; when he can’t choose between staying or returning once he knows the truth, he kills himself.

Boraal’s plasmonic storms harm the holodeck system so much it almost collapses, but before it does a new planet is chosen and reached, and the Boraalans transplanted. The brothers, despite their differences, finally come to value their cooperation and part on warmer terms. But for Picard and the others, the experience has left the pros and cons of the Prime Directive just as unresolved as ever.

Yet another celebrity fan, actor Paul Sorvino, appears in this story, which not only continued the season’s “family” theme but re-aired the old Prime Directive debate (“Pen Pals”/141, “Who Watches the Watchers?”/152, et al.). Director Singer, working his sixth and last TNG outing, was concerned going in about working with well-known Sorvino and ensuring the Boraalan society was believable, but while those fears proved groundless he soon found his chief worry would be Mother Nature: surrounded by wildfires on location November 2 in the familiar Bronson Caves area of Griffith Park.

“We were simply told ‘Finish, get out. No time to talk, get out’” he recalled. “The fire people said ‘We can’t protect you—there’s only one way in and one way out and you’re a sitting duck and the fires are out of control.’” He and line producer Merri D. Howard praised the crew for getting shut down and out in about forty minutes—and was thankful the area didn’t burn after all, saving the extra expense of scouting a matching area. “It was exceptional—within two hours we were filming back here,” Howard added. The schedule was reshuffled, only a half-day was lost, and the second time out proved more efficient with familiarity.

It was tough matching the outdoor camp on location, with the “fake” holodeck scene on stage, and then in the “real” nighttime scene shot onstage—a nightmare made even worse with the rescheduling due to the fire. “We had to go back in there, undress what we’d spent the whole day on before, put it up on the stage, and then undress it and bring it back to the park,” set decorator Jim Mees recalled. “And it’s a hundred degrees, and people are digging holes and building a stairway with seventy steps; my boys have not had a fun year!” Good thing the “Village” included only fifteen actors and extras.

As for the story, Taylor had nixed as “strained credibility” Steingasser’s premise about fooling primitives with a holodeck home mockup—until Echevarria had successfully married it to Stape’s idea about finally seeing Worf’s once-mentioned foster brother (“Heart of Glory”/120). “I do that with Michael,” Taylor said of a writer’s persistence. “He’ll say no and I’ll say, well, I’m gonna wait and maybe I can try this again—and I’m glad the boys do the same thing, because I am not the be-all and the end-all of knowing what will work.” Still, the unanswered questions about the Prime Directive’s application don’t reflect well on the crew and Starfleet, Shankar noted; Echevarria wondered if the premise could even serve as a model for future such cases but recalled that Piller wanted to keep the status quo and the hard choices it forced: whether better to watch a planet die or incur the later suicide of those who could not handle the “change.”

Though recalling that he was a bit more “temperamental” than TV actors, Taylor noted the nice serendipity of Sorvino asking to be on the series just as the teddy-bear-sized role of Nikolai came up—making him a believable echo of his “father,” played by Theodore Bikel (“Family”/178). Nikolai’s comment that Worf had “changed a lot in four years” implies they must have met at that time, possibly at Earth during the starship’s post-Borg refit (“Family”); in any case, actor Dorn got to go without his Klingon makeup for the first time, donning only a Boraalan nose.

Worf infiltrates a doomed village.

On the trivia side, the Enterprise observes the warp five limit (“Force of Nature”/261); stellar cartography is seen again (“Lessons”/245, “Liaisons”/254, Generations); Dr. Crusher still hasn’t got the hang of Pulaski’s “memory wipe” (“Pen Pals”/141, “Who Watches the Watchers?”/152); and mention of “Holodeck 5” on Deck 10 implies that more than the first four on Deck 11 are now available, as with Holodeck 7 (“The Perfect Mate”/221). On location, a last-minute request for food on a spit for the Boraalans’ camp was solved thanks to the day’s catered set meal; prop man Alan Sims took the leftover chicken fillets, wrapped them on a stick, and charred the whole thing to look like rabbit!

Shankar was disappointed that budget limits prevented more FX shots from heightening the crisis of the failing holodeck, but FX supervisor Ron B. Moore did save time and money by using retouched old grid elements (shot at numerous angles for “Schisms”/231) for all the “signs of La Forge” save one—the grid in the water, which was done with a “live” grid under the small pond.

SUB ROSA

Production No.: 266 Aired-Week of January 31, 1994

Stardate: c. 47500 Code: sr

Directed by Jonathan Frakes

Teleplay by Brannon Braga

TV story: Jeri Taylor

Based upoin material by: Jeanna F. Gallo

GUEST CAST

Governor Maturin: Michael Keenan

Ned Quint: Shay Duffin

Ronin: Duncan Regehr

Felisa Howard: Ellen Albertini Dow

Following her grandmother Felisa Howard’s funeral on Caldos IV, Dr. Crusher finds diaries revealing that the centenarian had a young lover named Ronin—and then fights off a friend, Ned Quint, who wants the doctor to throw away a candle he says has brought the Howard women bad luck for over eight hundred years.

Soon Ronin appears to her as an apparent “ghost” who has romanced her family’s women for centuries. At the same time, malfunctions beset Caldos IV’s weather-control net and it gets a power transfer from the Enterprise.

Ned warns Beverly about the candle and Ronin, but after some resistance—and odd nighttime sensations of pleasure—she is lulled by the loving “ghost” into resigning from Starfleet and taking Felisa’s place there as a healer, joining him as his latest lover.

Ned, found trying to sabotage the weather net’s power beam, shouts “He’ll kill us all!” just before a green plasma bolt leaps out to kill him. The same kind of energy is traced to Felisa’s grave, leading Picard to follow Beverly, confront Ronin about his mysterious origin, and order Felisa’s body exhumed.

Ronin goes on a rampage, blasting Picard, Data, and Geordi in turn before reanimating Felisa’s body and shocking Beverly with the truth: he is really an anaphasic plasma being who has used her family to stay alive and corporeal, via the candle and even the weather net. She has no choice but to destroy the candle—and then his form as well.

As one of the most atypical TNG episodes ever, this lushly mounted “romance novel in space” was named the favorite of the year by the slightly biased story writer Jeri Taylor, a self-professed “addict of a number of trashy genres” such as gothic romances and historical novels. Actress McFadden, who called it a highlight of her own season, won kudos for her all-out performance: “The lovemaking without a partner—this is not easy stuff to do,” Taylor said, “and she committed herself to it completely.”

Still, Braga noted that the show was not a favorite of what he called “hard-core fans” but defended it as simply stretching the Trek envelope; “I’ve come to notice that whenever you infuse a show with sexual themes, some of these fans seem to short-circuit. I mean, the weather array malfunction causing thunderstorms—it was fun!” Countering some reports, though, Taylor said the story and its roots in fan Jeanna Gallo’s year-old spec script was a nod to The Innocents, the film version of Henry James’ Turn of the all-time favorite—and not the Scottish succubus Lasher of Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour: the title is Latin for “under cover” or “not out in light.” Gallo’s Scot-based world focused on Beverly and her living grandmother, with aliens who had possessed humans for centuries as an explanation of paranormal activity. Attracted to and yet dissatisfied with the premise, Taylor recalled creating the unassigned story in a stream-of-consciousness session and then praised Berman and Piller for allowing the off-format show to go ahead.

The designers’ showpiece featured a Wuthering score by Jay Chattaway and an all-indoor set by Richard James, deceptively lit by director of photography Jonathan West and showcased by Frakes in his much-praised eighth turn as director. It came complete with a “raised” cemetery lawn to accommodate the buried casket and an organic tree assembled by greensmen working a solid weekend on Stage 16, using a real trunk anchored to the set and cutoff branches refastened and tied off from above; interiors were built within the cargo bay/ shuttlebay set area. Look close and notice the art department’s gag tombstones for the dead such as “Vader,” “McFly,” and others culled from the science fiction genre.

Set decorator Jim Mees recalled having to come up with a room full of camellias a month out of their season. The original order of three hundred silk camellias—clipped from their unconvincing wire stems and attached to real yet barren ones—was deemed not nearly enough on the Friday night before Monday’s shooting, so the floral vaults of Paramount were opened up to fill the room with all manner of flowers, topped by the camellias for show. Propmaster Alan Sims had another surprise when “Felisa” turned out to be actress Dow, a college drama teacher he hadn’t seen since 1972.

The Howard name, an homage to line producer Merri Howard, had actually first been glimpsed on Beverly’s bio file (“Conundrum”/214); of course, given Terran paternal lineal naming, each “Howard woman” would have carried her husband’s name unless Beverly was the first in a long line of feminists who chose not to! We’ve already learned back in Season 1 that she survived a disaster with her grandmother/healer (“The Arsenal of while Braga revealed that he’d named Felisa after his own grandmother who’d died shortly before the story was written. In a scene cut for time, Beverly opens the show with the same eulogy Braga’s own mother used for his grandmother: a recipe, recalling her love of cooking, for gingerbread baked in the “arms of a welcoming pan” in a “happily” heated oven. Another cut line tells us Beverly did not leave Caldos II for good until she wed Jack. Also, Braga took “Jessel” and “Ned Quint” from Turn of the Screw and was surprised to learn later that his made-up name “Ronin” was actually Japanese in origin.

Beverly is troubled by a ghostly presence.

The guest cast includes Regehr, a soap opera staple, and Keenan, best known as Picket Fences’ first-season mayor who spontaneously combusted. We learn here that terraforming was new a century earlier when Caldos Colony was built, while weather control (“True Q”/232, “Force of Nature”/261, “Journey’s End”/272) was at least that old. Also recalled here are the still-unseen Dr. Selar (“The Schizoid Man”/131, “Remember Me”/179, “Tapestry”/241, “Genesis/271, “All Good Things …”/277-78), Worf’s mok-bara class (“Clues”/188, “Man of the People”/229, “Birthright, Part II”/243, “Second Chances”/250, “Lower Decks”/267, “Genesis”/271), and the drama masks in Beverly’s room (“Suspicions”/248).

TNG’s first use of the Amiga-based Video Toaster, provided by contractors Joe Conti and Tim McHugh, was an effort to get more creative control in contrast to what visual FX supervisor David Stipes called the “act of God” luck of liquid nitrogen “smoke” filmed against black velvet, “The challenge really was to get the ghost,” he said. “I thought everyone was really courageous in tackling this story. But if we didn’t make that work, the whole story wouldn’t sell: how to do purposeful, borderline-erotic ephemerals to look like it’s caressing and hugging Beverly—without looking ridiculous or lewd?”

LOWER DECKS

Production No.: 267 Aired-Week of February 7, 1994

Stardate: 47566.7 Code: Id

Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

Teleplay by René Echevarria

Story by Ronald Wilkerson & Jean Louise Mattias

GUEST CAST

Lieutenant (j.g.) Sam Lavelle: Dan Gauthier

Ensign Sito Jaxa: Shannon Fill

Lieutenant (j.g.) Taurik: Alexander Enberg

Ben: Bruce Beatty

Lieutenant [j.g.] Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake

Joret Dal: Don Reilly

Four young Enterprise ensigns find their friendship strained during personnel evaluations, as Sam Lavelle and Sito Jaxa learn they are both up for the same job as ops relief. Joined by their civilian waiter pal Ben, they learn that promotions seem assured for Nurse Ogawa and engineer Taurik—though the young Vulcan has his people’s historic problem in reading his human friends and superiors.

Riker, blind to how similar he and Lavelle are, is not high on the young officer, while Worf has much faith in Sito—even though she receives a surprise tongue-lashing from Picard, who recalls her role in the cover-up by Wesley Crusher’s Academy flight team.

The tension of promotions is abruptly broken by a baffling secret mission that all but Lavelle have a hand in: Ogawa must keep mum about a recovered Cardassian, and Taurik intentionally distresses a shuttle with phaser fire. Then Sito, after a lesson from Worf, stands up to Picard, giving him what he needed to see: the guts to volunteer to pose as a Bajoran captive taken by the Cardassians.

Sadly, Sito is lost on the mission, leaving behind only scattered escape-pod debris. Lavelle’s promotion and new job leave him empty after her presumed death, but his spirits—and those of her mentor Worf—are bolstered by their friends’ support.

Once again, Jeri Taylor regretted not being able to give veteran TNG freelancers Wilkerson and Matthias a shot at the teleplay of their “great, great concept” of the self-styled “little people”—which was so popular it fueled erroneous rumors that the junior officers were being primed for Voyager. The writing team presented this pitch—partly inspired by Wilkerson’s love of the BBC classic Upstairs, the unorthodox manner of fleshed-out character notes.

“Again, like our lessons’ [245], what was important was not the mission but the relationships of the people,” Wilkerson said: “What it is like to work for Riker, to work for Worf, to wonder what goes on in secret briefings in the observation lounge”—and to put faces to the always-nameless crew. The lineup saw the writers return to the known character of Sito (“The First Duty”/219), develop TNG’s first fully realized Vulcan (Matthias’s favorite Star Trek race), create a “young Riker,” and lean on an already established regular like Ogawa—Barclay having been considered but dropped as too well-known; a fifth, “nerdy” character was scrapped, Echevarria added the civilian waiter Ben, perhaps the first ever in Ten-Forward besides Guinan allowed to speak, just to have a character “who hitched aboard the ship for fun, who’s unconcerned about rank, and who passes along stupid rumors!”

For his part, Echevarria enjoyed getting more humor into less “buttoned-down” Starfleet characters with this story, which like his “Second Chances” (250) went practically unchanged from first to final draft. All the cast won praise, with Enberg’s Taurik mentioned as a recurring guest had the series gone on; he had already played the reporter dogging Mark Twain (“Times Arrow, Part II”/227). Though the original name Sorik was changed to echo the new “T” Vulcan male name, as with Tuvok of the uncoming spinoff Voyager, all three writers’ concept for Taurik matched: an odds-figuring “young Spock” barely concealing his pithy sarcasm as a junior officer.

Sito gained a first name unheard in her first appearance (“The First Duty”), while visual FX producer and martial-arts adviser Dan Curry marveled at actress Shannon Fill, a trainied dancer and acrobat but new to martial arts: “I’ve never seen anybody learn it that quickly and so convincing.” After seeing the idea first nixed and then approved for development by Michael Piller based on Fill’s performance, Taylor hinted that Sito may yet turn up on Deep Space Nine as a former Cardassian hostage. “I’ve gotten more mail on that—how could Picard send Sito to her death?” she said. “A lot of people were very upset by that and felt that was very inappropriate for him, and didn’t behave as even the military now would behave.”

Ogawa, who was almost cut from the story to make more room for the other characters, gets her personal life in order in a hurry: a new fiancé, only seven episodes after her last boyfriend (“Attached”/260), who conceives a baby only four episodes later (Genesis”/271), Taurik’s research guru was named for Cuban nuclear engineer Nils Diaz, Echevarria’s true-life godfather and a propulsion-system researcher. And for true trivia fans, Sam Lavelle’s name can claim two sources: a close friend of Echevarria’s and, initially, Wilkerson’s Canadian labrador Samwell.

Worf trains Ensign Sito (Shannon Fill) to trust her instincts.

Though the segment is light on visual effects, supervisor Ron B. Moore singled out computer “Harry” artist Adam Howard’s nice touch of dimming Taurik’s phaser-rifle beam behind the smoked glass of the shuttle window in only the weapon’s third appearance (“The Mind’s Eye”/198, “Descent”/252). The tough Curie was Worf’s quantum-crashing craft (“Parallels”/263), where it was seen to be Shuttlecraft 3—the same as the onetime Justman (“Suspicions”/248). Other notes: Echevarria originally had Sito not only track a lost puppy at ops but deal with a “turbolift traffic jam” Worf adds a red lapel to his mok’bara gi here (“Clues”/188, “Man of the People”/229); Riker learned poker on the Potemkin, a stay of only six weeks (“Second Chances”); Cardassian dissidents would next be seen on DS9’s “Second Skin”; and though the Klingonese gik’tal is not a mok’bara manuever, it does relate to death (“Firstborn”/273). This outing provides the first TNG mention of DS9’s Bajoran religious vedeks, implies that Canada was still a Terran entity two generations earlier, recalls Riker’s Alaska roots (“The Icarus Factor”/140), and reveals that a probe sent into Cardassian space is a treaty violation, Bridge duty shifts are apparently not long-lived: we see “alpha shift” with Worf and Data, while “beta shift” has Ensign Gates (“Phantasms”/258. “The Pegasus”/264) and extra Tracee Cocco’s character—usually all seen working together. Also on ship, we learn that ensigns must share a cabin while junior lieutenants do not.

THINE OWN SELF

Production No.: 268 Aired: Week of February 14, 1994

Stardate: 47611.2 Code: th

Directed by Winrich Kolbe

Teleplay by Ronald D. Moore

Story by Christopher Mutton

GUEST CAST

Talur: Ronnie Claire Edwards

Garvin: Michael Rothhaar

Gia: Kimberly Cullum

Skoran: Michael G. Hagerty

Apprentice: Andy Kossin

Ensign Rainer: Richard Ortega-Miro

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

Sent to retrieve radioactive debris from a downed probe on preindustrial Barkon IV, Data loses his memory and unwittingly spreads the fragments throughout a village, where radiation sickness begins to sicken the inhabitants.

Limited by the culture’s unenlightened primitive science, the town’s healer has no clue to the sickness, but all signs point to the odd-skinned man as the reason behind the outbreak. As it soon engulfs his befriended “family,” a man named Garvin and his young daughter Gia, an angry mob confronts Data and reveals his inner circuitry, scaring them but intriguing the android, who was already far along in discovering a cause and cure.

The mob finally “kills” the “monster” and buries him, but with the starship’s return Riker and Crusher arrive to locate and beam up the overdue android. Upon reactivation Data cures the villagers and finds he is now outranked by Commander Troi after she opted to take the bridge officer’s test.

If moments of this story feel like an old Universal movie, it’s no accident: Chris Hatton’s “Data as Frankenstein” pitch, his second sell of the season (“Gambit”/256-257), quickly caught the staff’s attention, “He wanders into the medieval village, is befriended by the little girl, and villagers come out and chase him with torches!” joked writer Ron Moore, who liked the show even though he never had a “close feeling” about it. Ironically, director Rick Kolbe felt it provided him a personal chance to improve on TNG’s other “little girl” show, which he’d also helmed, “Pen Pals” (141): “I felt we had more character in there and didn’t veer off into tech talk.’”

That welcome step was mostly due to Moore’s avoiding a predictable “We’ve lost Data and we got to find him!” plot back on ship by reviving the B-story of Troi’s test and promotion shelved earlier in the season (“Liaisons”/254). But Moore, who traced the idea of Troi’s need for a stretch back to not only the mentioned roots (“Disaster”/205) but also Jeri Tayior’s Pocket Books novelization of “Unification,” wanted to correct the vague impression that in Starfleet one need only pass a test to get a commander’s rank. “The action was an amalgam of both: if she became a bridge officer after the test, they’d also give her the promotion,” he explained. Likening Crusher and Troi to today’s naval medical officers of restricted line rank, he and the other writers posited that neither one initially attended Starfleet Academy despite Academy dates on their bio files (“Conundrum”/214)—a fact never addressed onscreen, aside from Troi attending “university on Betazed” (“Ménage à Troi”/172); a cut opening line had her returning from a class reunion of the unsited Carvin Institute for Psychological Studies. The backstory here explains Troi’s standing watch later (“Genesis”/271) as well as Beveriy’s skills in “Descent” (252-53) and her future captaincy (“All Good Things …”/7277-78)—and in hindsight backs Pulaski’s comment that she was not a bridge officer despite her commander’s rank (“Where Silence Has Lease”/128).

For what construction coordinator Al Smutko called a $104,000 investment, production designer Richard James’ Barkon IV village saw action many times throughout the spring, lasting through three major revampings for TNG (“Journey’s End”/272, “Firstborn”/273, “Preemptive Strike”/276) as well as a shot on DS9’s “Shadow-play.” Among the segment’s few visual effects, producer Dan Curry noted that computer “Harry” animator Adam Howard at Digital Magic designed the arcing around the pole spearing Data, while Harry animation and dry-ice elements provide the luminous cloth shimmers. Visual FX supervisor David Stipes joined Kolbe in seeking, for once, an instantaneous warp-core breach during Troi’s crisis simulation—done inexpensively with a white-out wipe begun with blinding flash bulbs from onstage FX man Dick Brownfield.

Worf and Troi are stunned by the strange transformations.

For trivia hounds: “imzadi” is used—for the first time in a year (“Second Chances”/250) and the last time on the series—at Frakes’ request, rewritten by permission from the original Act II line written as simply “ship’s counselor”; his trombone playing is nothing new (“11001001”/116, “Future Imperfect”/182, “The Next Phase”/224, “Second Chances”/250).

Cut speeches specified that Troi passed the bridge test on her fourth try and, in the village, explained the roots of the name “Jayden”—Hatton’s original premise title—as a handsome nobleman in a Barkon folktale, transformed to an ugly frog by a demon’s spell. Also, the U.S.S. Lexington harks back to a Kirk-era starship in 1968’s “The Ultimate Computer,” while Data’s once-secret on-off switch (“The Measure of a Man”/135, et al.) was already known to all those present in the last scene (“Datalore”/114, “Brothers”/177, “The Game”/206). That moment in sickbay features Patrick Stewart’s only line of the whole show, a briefest-ever appearance arranged so he could perform his Olivier-winning A Christmas Carol in London during the segment’s early December filming. Michael G. Hagerty earlier played a Klingon (“Redemption 11”/201).

M ASKS

Production No.: 269 Aired: Week of February 21, 1994

Stardate: 47615.2 Code: mk

Directed by Robert Wiemer

Written by Joe Menosky

GUEST CAST

Eric Burton: Rickey D’Shon Collins

A comet discovered by the Enterprise is found to be the “archive” of an ancient society. Unexpectedly, a sensor scan activates an odd replication program that begins converting areas of the starship to the Mayan-like culture of the archive’s makers.

The program targets Data and deposits various iconic characters from the culture into him: baffling voices speaking of pain, death, and sacrifice. When areas of the ship actually begin to be transformed into foliage and jungles and Picard regretfully orders the archive’s destruction, his command is cut short by the transformation of Main Engineering.

Eventually, Picard and the others deduce that Masaka, the most feared character, and “her” pursuer, Korgano, share a nip-and-tuck chase dynamic not unlike that of the Terran sun and moon. With time running out and direct override impossible, La Forge finally locates the archive’s transformational program just in time for Picard to assume the “mask” of Korgano and “chase” Masaka off her temple throne.

Once Masaka is subdued, both the ship and Data return to normal—without the whole society of characters that were once within him.

Former staff writer Joe Menosky’s second offbeat and long-distance script of the year, from an old premise off Michael Filler’s suggested take on the “Lost Library at Alexandria,” featured a large amount of well-done opticals but proved confusing to many—including several who worked on it! “I think a lot of people have been utterly mystified by it,” admitted Jeri Taylor. “I loved the mythic aspect … how important that has been to so many cultures, and how we in contemporary days have strayed away from that.”

Data is possessed by members of an alien civilization.

“Joe has a magnificent imagination, he thinks in a deep way,” agreed Naren Shankar, charged with clarifying some of the vagaries in his uncredited polish, “But in this case it was too much…. We had to make it more understandable, make the clues clearer. And the end result is … it’s still kinda confusing!” Director Bob Wiemer, heading up his eighth TNG effort, was more to the point: “I didn’t get it,” he said, noting the extensive rewrite. “I always look and find a meaningful subtext of some kind in most every show I’ve done; more often than not they’re little morality plays, and I was unable to find that in ‘Masks’ … it ended up kind of an exotic adventure story, but it didn’t have any heart.” Recalling a core element of the second Star Trek movie, science adviser André Bormanis said the script’s original explanation of the archive was an “advanced Genesis device” that was to scout out a planet to re-create members of an old society kept “on file” and but mistook the Enterprise for such a world by a triggering malfunction.

Menosky’s original use of purely archetypal forms were hard to conceptualize, Shankar recalled, and so they were changed to actual characters suggested by the archive’s image files. That didn’t help actor Brent Spiner, who made no bones about his concern in bringing off the various character extremes, “He said ‘Dustin Hoffman took a year to figure out how to play a woman in am I supposed to do it in two days?” recalled Taylor. “But I thought he did an extraordinary job…. He’s a fine actor and he needn’t be so worried.” Even so, Wiemer backed up Spiner’s request for revoicing and, when refused, to have subtle effects done in post-production with Wendy Neuss’s crews: raising the pitch of the child voice, lowering the man’s, and adding reverb to the lhat voice. The youngster Eric (“Liaisons”/254, “Firstborn”/273) returned as the lone guest actor.

Visually, the show was a clear triumph, with the props themselves featuring a hand-silversmithed mask for Picard and a sandstone-finished styrene version for Data, With Stage 16 taken up with the previous show’s village, “Masks” saw Richard James’ elaborate temple set built on DS9’s Stage 18. Drawing from many ancients’ design influences, it was later revamped on the sister show for the Albino’s fortress interior on Blood Oath. We learn that Crusher took her test “eight years ago,” before the Enterprise launched, and that perhaps antimatter pods can be ejected separately.

The visual effects crews had a field day, with supervisor Ron B. Moore praising the melting comet effect performed by Santa Barbara Studios, creators of the comet in DS9’s main title sequence, This opening shot was such a hit that he won a costlier longer slot for the effect in the show’s tightly budgeted running time—from six to nine seconds, The foot-high, primer red library model itself had been cobbled together from wood pieces by visual FX producer Dan Curry in the shop at Image G, where miniatures are filmed, and then digitized by Santa Barbara before the decision makers picked a texture to be applied.

Less splashy but more intricate were the onboard set transformations needed, a blue-screen dissolve overlaid with a visual ripple stemming from a water element much revamped from its initial use, the de-aging anomaly in “Rascals” (233), Both Curry and Stipes were amazed at another one of Patrick Stewards feats: complete body control that allowed a blue-screen shot of his mask’s final disappearance to be shot without a hokey “jump cut” when footage of it actually being removed is trimmed out. “You say ‘stand still’ and that guy’s a statue!” recalled Moore, who tugged loose the mask’s slip knot and let it fall while Stewart never budged nor blinked.

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Production No.: 270 Aired: Week of February 28, 1994

Stardate: 47622.1 Code: eb

Directed by Cliff Bole

Teleplay by Rene Echevaria

Story by Brannon Braga

GUEST CAST

Lieutenant (j.g.) Walter Pierce: Mark Rolston

Lieutenant (j.g.) Nara: Nancy Harewood

Lieutenant Daniel “Dan” Kwan: Tim Lounibos

Ensign Mottle Galloway: Johanna McCloy

Woman (Ensign Marla E. Finn): Nora Leonhardt

Man (Lieutenant William Hodges): Dugan Savoye

A suicide by promising young Lt. Kwan in the plasma stream of the isolated nacelle’s warp coils is baffling to all those who knew him, but the first clue comes when Troi gets an overwhelming sense of panic and fear while visiting the site.

Guessing somehow she’s detected an empathie echo, the counselor checks again with Worf as an escort. This time she suddenly sees the room in its unfinished state as it was back at Utopia Planetia eight years earlier, along with images of a terrified woman, her lover and a mysteriously menacing man—and Worf mysteriously disappeared.

Suspecting the empathie echo dates back to the construction phase, a records check finds that Kwan and the mystery man, Walter Pierce, both were still aboard after having worked at the shipyard. Meanwhile, Troi and Worf find themselves drawing closer and actually consumate their newfound love, but she just as suddenly succumbs to pangs of jealousy at the sight of Worf working with Kwan’s girlfriend, Lt. Calloway.

Pierce proves evasive but fans Troi’s jealously, tipping her off to catch Worf with Calloway in her cabin. Enraged, Troi shoots Worf and rushes to kill herself in the plasma stream—only to realize Worf, alive, is trying to stop her. The entire episode has been played out in her mind, a reaction to the echo left behind by the partly-empathic Pierce in his fatal love triangle at Utopia Planetia. But unlike Kwan, a partial empath, Troi had help in averting disaster.

Jeri Taylor recalled that this latest unreal chapter of the ongoing Worf-Troi “romance” was a brief year-old Brannon Braga “haunted room” idea, rushed directly from a memo to the story break as the late-season panic of dwindling premises set in again, Before he handed it off to Echevarria for the teleplay, Braga had already pegged the story to feature a rare suicide—albeit externally motivated—and a dramatic look inside the oft-discussed but never-seen nacelle tube, complete with warp coils and plasma stream.

Though happy with the mystery, the writers all worried the hallucination’s beginning point might be a bit vague—including the fact that Worf’s bumbling request to Riker for Deanna’s hand came in reality. “That was confusing, even for the actors,” Echevarria recalled. “They thought that was part of the hallucination; that’s why Jonathan played it so broadly…. They thought they would have to reshoot it.” The highboy door is already up for her second visit to the nacelle room; another clue, he said, is knowing that an external space shot such as the one following her first visit would be a Trek point-of-view violation never used during a dream or hallucination, Even so, he noted, a POV flaw occurs later when the camera cuts down to caller Beverly during Worf and Troi’s “morning after,”

The centerpiece is the nacelle set—a previously unconceived shipboard area that continuity tenders Rick Stembach and Mike Okuda had to locate on their plans before consulting with Richard James for his designs; for the record, the room is at the nacelles’ rear (in this case, the starboard) on Deck 25, accessible only via Jefferies Tube. Braga initially visualized a catwalk with plasma access the length of the nacelle, but Stembach felt it took away from the “hot” feel of the engine and pushed instead for the isolation door approach—though he noted the flaw in not only a “one-way” forcefield but one more powerful by definition than the plasma itself!

Designed to give the leapers somewhere to fall from, James’ cramped, two-level set created tension in more ways than one: director Bole, now on his 24th TNG outing, recalled the “endless” shooting day in the tiny room as the longest of his television career: The room cried out for a vista of the nacelle interior beyond, so with both time and budget in mind James huddled with the visual FX team to consider the varying angles of the view beyond, The two-step result: a distant Dan Curry background matte painting representing the inside rear of the forward Bussard ramscoop (“Samaritan Snare”/143, “Night Terrors”/191, “Cost of Living”/220, “Liaisons”/254), and a 30-inch-long model of seven warp coils optically doubled to 14, built by Anthony Frederickson of the DS9 art staff. With no money to spare, his “quick and dirty” model was built around vacuum-formed styrene coils from a wooden prototype and included foam coffee cups for dividers, blue-gelled plastic with black tape to set off the glowing nacelle “grills,” and optical touch-ups of added “runway lights” lengthwise and a ceiling piece.

Dr. Crusher examines Deanna, who is having strange visions.

The plasma stream itself was more Video Toaster animation (“Sub Rosa”/266) with some elements taken from a WaterPik stream, noted visual FX supervisor David Stipes. Stunt coordinator Dennis “Danger” Madalone himself provided Kwan’s suicide leap, but the shallow arc from his standing start was digitally stretched in post-production farther over into the bottom injector, which was reinserted after taking out the floor landing pads. The skeleton glimpsed behind the wall panel was none other than a “Visible Man” model FX coordinator Joe Bauer glued to a piece of glass, while the skeletal fragments in Sickbay are human remains obtained from India, complete with a hard skull that prop master Alan Sims had to bash when Bole wanted smaller pieces.

For true trivia buffs, a flurry of faces and names on briefly glimpsed bio file Okudagrams includes that of longtime Marina Sirtis stand-in Nora Leonhardt, who got a speaking credit as Ensign Maria Finn, the murdered woman; her lover, unidentified in the script, was labeled “Man” for the on-screen credits, dubbed “Indie” on production call sheets—for “N.D.” or non-descript, the term used for unnamed extras—and given the name “Lt. William Hodges” on his file, Guy Vardaman, whose longtime extra finally gained the name “Wallace” last season (“Descent”/252), is another, here with the first name “Darien”, Dan Kwan was an old family friend of Braga’s, while the mentioned “Lt. Amanda” Ziff and “Ens, Bruno” Salvatore, with surnames given only via bio screens, were named for Echevarria’s friends Bitsy Ziff, a member of the all-girt band “Betty,” and a bandmate’s boyfriend Tony Salvatore.

Elsewhere, the story has the first permission granted to break the Warp 5 speed limit (“Force of Nature”/261) and recalls Worf’s fire vision (“Birthright, Part I”/242, “Rightful Heir”/249), psilosynine (“Dark Page”/259), tea from the Yridians (“Birthright, Part I”, “Suspicions”/248, “Gambit, Part I”/256, “Preemptive Strike”/276), and the Utopia Planitia yards (“Booby Trap”/154, “Parallels”/263, et. al.). We also learn that Data’s post-activation months were tough, Napeans are another partially empathie race, Lwaxana Troi’s father looked down upon verbal communication, and Troi’s security override at the time is “Troi delta 2-9.”

Finally, although Kwan’s suicide was not self-motivated, one wonders whether the late “Great Bird” Roddenberry would have sanctioned outright murder among his “flawless” Starfleet personnel, such as Pierce, Ironically, that old GR dictum—usually applied to only humans, amounting to a backlash Echevarrua labeled as a form of meta-racism—did survive in the guise of the alien junior lieutenant Nara, Kwan’s superior. A human until she was described as perhaps jealous of Kwan’s ambition, Echevarria noted, the character species was changed after Michael Piller memoed: “Make her an alien-that’s not a Roddenberry thing to do.” But humanity was uppermost when cast and crew took one morning to film a two-scene sketch written by Merri Howard assistant Dave Rossi for Comic Relief, the annual HBO benefit for the homeless co-hosted by recurring castmate Whoopi “Guiñan” Goldberg—an irony that formed just one of the scene’s many subtle funnies.

GENESIS

Production No.: 271 Aired; Week of March 21, 1994

Stardate: 47653.2 Code: ge

Directed by Gates McFadden

Written by Brannon Braga

GUEST CAST

Lieutenant (j.g.) Reginald “Reg” Barclay III; Dwight Schultz

Lieutenant (j.g) Alyssa Ogawa: Patti Yasutake

Ensign Dem: Carlo Ferro

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

During a shipboard lull, Picard takes Data along to retrieve a wayward demonstration torpedo. In their absence, with Data’s cat Spot and newlywed Nurse Ogawa both recently found to be pregnant, Dr. Crusher routinely prepares a synthetic T-cell to help Barclay fight a flu bug he has no immunity for.

Lieutenant Barclay, part man, part spider.

Soon the crew begin to exhibit odd symptoms: Barclay gets hyper, Troi becomes cold, Riker can’t concentrate, and Worf becomes animalistic and withdrawn. Eventually he attacks Dr. Crusher with an odd venom sac, a new neck appendage, but by now Riker and the others are too far gone to send for help.

Upon their return, Picard and Data are shocked to find the ship slowly looping unpowered through space. Taking stock, Data soon discovers that a synthetic cell—which turns out to be Barclay’s—has activated crewmates’ dormant introns and changed them to various lower life-forms.

Oddly, though, the kittens of Spot are born normal, though their mother is now an iguana. That clue puts Data on the research trail for a cure as Picard—nervously feeling chills himself now—takes on the chore of distracting the “deevolved” and rutting Worf. Picard uses a power cable to stun the Worf-beast when he’s cornered inside a Jefferies tube, but Data’s cure allows a rapid return to normal for all—with Barclay as the disease’s proud namesake.

This story, another creepy Brannon Braga reality-bender, will always be remembered as not only Gates McFadden’s long-sought turn as director and Michael Westmore’s most ambitious makeup show ever but also—by the crew, at least—the show that was struck by the Quake of ’94, The Trek series and Paramount itself were very lucky, noted line producer Merri Howard, with only two days lost on TNG and minimal structural damage: just a sprinkler system wetting down a Jefferies tube set and a little broken shelf decor in the officers’ quarters.

Braga had the idea of de-evolving the crew as far back as Season 4, but Rick Berman had objected to it until a plausible scientific explanation could be devised, Science adviser André Bormanis noted the reality of introns among many other types of dormant genetic material but said the non-fatal shock of the rapid body changes might be chalked up to it being an “alien” virus; even so, makeup designer Michael Westmore said a “reversal” sequence was readied for Ogawa’s simian but never applied or shot.

Working closely with Westmore for the first time, Braga finished his teleplay two weeks early to give the makeup team more lead time for the enormous amount of research and design needed; the holiday break also came in handy. “Makeup was going to make or break this show,” noted Braga, who forwarded examples of physiological details from his “Incredibly Weird” nature photo books as reference for Westmore, “Fortunately, [director] Gates has worked with Jim Henson and the Muppets, so that was good—she did some interesting things.” The writer was also proud to use Spot—by now a confirmed female (“Phantasms”/258, “Force of Nature”/261)—as a plot point rather than a joke, although a scene with Data giving away the kittens was dropped in the final draft.

Westmore noted that all the actors wore their own makeup except for Worf stunt double Rusty McLennon; sculptors Michael Key, John Blake, and Michael Smithson handled the extra load, with the latter working over the holiday on Worf’s creature and Barclay’s “spider”—a fascinating partial design not seen as much as planned, His initial appearance that shocks Picard was to have been a drop downward but was cut for time; McFadden had wanted it and Schulte, appearing here for the first time this season, had agreed to do the stunt himself. Also cut was Troi’s long and hard-to-film scene with waterproofed makeup in Trek’s first-ever bathtub, showing her impatiently climbing in fully clothed, “I wondered about that bathtub; we’ve always seen a shower, but the writers wanted it,” noted production designer Richard James.

Makeup was not the only department who had fun here, though. Along with Monster and Brandy again playing Spot the cat (“Descent, Part II”/253, et al.), Baja the iguana is voiced with the “reptilian purr” of a monitor lizard. “Our editors were real proud of that one,” laughed post-production producer Wendy Neuss; Troi’s amphibian sounds combined human noise and gill sound, while a monster specialist from her regular looping group did Worf’s growls. “I knew we’d scored the show well,” she added, “when the Barclay spider appears and my boss Peter Lauritson jumped out of his seat at the screening, even though he knew it was coming!” The actors all came in to try a few tracks making own noises, she revealed, but none were usable: “We tried them on the dubbing stage but there was too much extended laughter.”

Among the FX-laden visuals was supervisor Ron B, Moore’s last project before he left to work on the upcoming movie: the shuttle’s approach of the looping, powered-down Enterprise, a long approach view, and a reverse shot outward from the bay, With the starship partly seen upside down, the shot also teases Rick Berman’s visual dictum maintaining “upright” spaceships—and, surprisingly, required the first “new” shuttle flyby ever shot. The bay doors are seen closed and we know that shuttles can override them (“Coming of Age”/119), but both Moore and McFadden were disappointed that time ran out on finishing elements planned and filmed to show an exterior view of the door opening.

Worf’s torpedo demonstration used numerous stock asteroid shots (including “Galaxy’s Child”/190) with a new one of potato-sized foam chunks blown up on high-speed film, noted FX associate Michael “B,” Baukaskas; the flammable explosions—illogical but visually satisfying, as visual FX producer Dan Curry had requested—were revamped gasoline-based elements salvaged by Curry from the TV Buck Rogers FX shop when it shut down, The departing shuttle’s shadow cast over the saucer is dramatic but inaccurate, Caught too late to fix: the stunned, de-evolved Riker retains a glow longer than usual.

Worf’s climactic “electrocution”—in a Jefferies tube with a floor of rubber, requiring the hatch unit—was erroneously filmed lighted from above before anyone realized the arcing would make it bottom-lit; the fix was made digitally, Showing cross-team cooperation, the arc animation was based on an element from videotape Joe Bauer shot of a Tesla coil at Los Angeles’ Griffin Observatory; Peter Koczera and Joannie Jacobs at CIS did the animation as a warm-up to their feature work, although DM’s Adam Howard diffused the arcs into the trademark Star Trek look, Finally, the first version of Worf’s of the live venom spray was deemed unsuitable by Rick Berman, so FX associate Eddie Williams solved the minor last-minute crisis with a of couple hours’ work using a tractor-beam element stretched and tinted green-yellow, with added moisture beads.

On the trivial side, Dr, Selar is paged again (“The Schizoid Man”/131, “Remember Me”/179, “Tapestry”/241, “Sub Rosa”/266, “All Good Things …”/277-78); T-cells had played a plot point before (“Identity Crisis”/192); Troi taking her first depicted bridge watch (“Thine Own Self”/268); Lieutenant Hoyes is seen later (Generations): a Level I security alert may succeed the term “full alert” (“The Hunted”/159, “Power Play”/215); and Barclay wants to shut down nineteen decks’ power for just a torpedo guidance check. We learn that an “Alpha 4-7” clearance is required for secure channel usage; Data’s computer is independent of the ship’s; Worf doesn’t go for the standard hard Klingon bed (“Unification I”/208); the “Tarellian death syndrome” is for real (see note at “Liaisons”/254). Among many rooms here the arboretum (“Data’s Day”/185, “Imaginary Friend”/222, “Dark Page”/259) is in Deck 17’s Section 21-Alpha, Riker’s quarters are Deck 08/Room 0912, Troi’s are Ox/0910, Sickbay is 12/1631 with Crusher’s office at 12/1629.

Sporting her new junior lieutenant’s pips, Ogawa apparently opted to keep her last name after marrying Andrew Powell (“Lower Decks”/267), but her quick pregnancy would not end happily (“All Good Things …/277-278); from original Trek comes the Symbalene blood bum—a fast-acting plague, suggested by Naren Shankar—and the K-3 cell count from 1967’s “Immunity Syndrome” and “Operation—Annihilate!” “Dr. Hacopian” was Braga’s chiropractor, Riker date Rebecca White was named for a friend of Rick Berman’s wife, and the unspecified shuttlecraft was to have been named the Hypatia, after the female mathematician who was martyred at the sack of the Library of Alexandria.

JOURNEY’S END

Production No.: 272 Aired: Week of March 28, 1994

Stardate: 47751.2 Code: je

Directed by Corey Allen

Written by Ronald D. Moore

Based upon material by Shown Piller & Antonio Napoli

GUEST CAST

Cadet 3/C Wesley Crusher: Wil Wheaton

Fleet Admiral Alynna Nechayev: Natalija Nogulich

Anthwarta: Ned Romero

Lakanta: Tom Jackson

Lieutenant Jack Crusher: Jack Wert

Gul Evek: Ricahrd Poe

Wakasa: George Aguilar

Traveler: Erik Menyuk

The downside of a historic UFP-Cardassian peace treaty becomes obvious when Picard is forced to evacuate Federation colonies outside the newly redrawn border. The case of one colony due for relocation, Dorvan V, is even more poignant because of the enclave of American Indians who settled there after a decades-long search, once they elected to avoid the cultural assimilation of Earth.

As the plainspoken Indians talk but resist—Picard pleads with Admiral Nechayev and the UFP Council in vain for a waiver—The tension mounts when a Cardassian team arrives to survey the planet, unconcerned about the Indians’ refusal to leave.

Amid all this, a moody Wes Crusher arrives on leave from the Academy, unsure of his future but surprised to meet Lakanta, an Indian colonist who says he is destined to offer him help. When young Crusher encounters a vision of his father telling him to seek his own way, the cadet resigns from Starfleet before a stunned Picard, who’d been furious only a moment earlier after Wes warned the Indians of a planned surprise mass beam-up.

Lakanta later reveals himself to be the Traveler, the transdimensional being who offers to tutor Wes and thus fulfill his own prophecy of the young man’s unique destiny. Meanwhile, Picard, Gul Evek, and the Indians finally strike a workable yet uneasy deal: the colonists stay put, trading Federation for Cardassian supervision.

With a glimpse of the new Star Trek: Voyager due the coming winter, winding down episode returns to the family” theme to reveal the fate of Wesley Crusher—a story that was not only a year-old story by producer Ron Moore but a personal one as well, echoing his own departure from an expected Navy career when he realized his yen to be a writer. “There were things in my life pointing me in that direction that I wasn’t paying attention to, sort of like Wesley.” said Moore, “I just thought that everything about this character said he did not belong in Starfleet…. It always seemed he was just doing things that were expected of him,”

But the move did not sit well with everyone, “There was a lot of concern that this character, whom Gene created with his middle name, who was Gene Roddenberry—that it was doing him a disservice to have Wesley leave Starfleet,” recalled Jeri Taylor. Finally, when Michael Piller held out for a unique destiny for Wesley, the Traveler reprise was developed as a fulfillment of his own prediction of the youth’s Mozart-like giftedness (“Where No One Has Gone Before”/106, “Remember Me”/179), Even then, Moore dallied with having the Lakanta-to-Traveler transformation include a Boothby phase (“The First Duty”) until Piller decided it would cheat Picard to make his mentor Wesley’s as well.

Originally the cadet’s aimlessness was to lead him into TNG’s debut mention of the Maquis—pronounced “muh-KEE,” for the French World War II resistance cell—in a plot by Taylor that would eventually be picked up for DS9’s “The Maquis” two-parter and echoed on TNG (“Preemptive Strike”/276) as a well-laid setup for pilot background. Eventually the Maquis, and Wesley’s short-lived involvement with them, became the Native American colony after the credited pitch by Napoli and Filler’s son dovetailed with Taylor’s desire to establish here the implied home of complex American Indian character Chakotay. The name “Maquis” itself isn’t coined until the DS9 outing.

The rest of the story, Moore noted, involved finding the fine line of both fault and sympathy for all the depicted parties—including Picard, who had to have hard orders “without turning into Ouster,” and the Indians, who had been told not to settle so close to the border. At first, direct reference was made to the Hopi Indians and Tribes and others—with Picard’s ancestor being Corporal Everett Picard, who had been with Kit Carson in 1875, destroying a Rio Grande village—but even with the series’ use of advisers the tribes involved asked not to be depicted for fear of misrepresentation, so the terms were generalized: kachina dolls becoming mansaras, the ceremonial kiva now a habak, and so on.

Captain Picard has been ordered to remove Indians from their homeland.

For the art department, that meant the added burden of creating a very visual culture from scratch with the original village set of “Thine Own Self” (268) to build upon, “Nothing could have any [real-life] Indian indications, which immediately means that you can’t rent anything.” set decorator Jim Mees recalled, In fact, note that the tribal council’s chairs bear a striking resemblance to those of a Romulan Warbird wardroom repainted (“Face of the Enemy”/240), Bularian canapés, for the record, are actually just odd crackers with Cheez-Whiz and olives, and propmaster Alan Sims recalled that Wesley’s vision was to include an eagle until it was learned the only trainable one for rent, an endangered batalor eagle, was already booked, The show’s major optical was the freeze-frame of time for Wes and Lakanta/Traveler, which again used an anamorphic lens to pan-and-scan motion into an otherwise static shot (“Attached”/260, “Inheritance”/262)—The foreground man shooting a beam the two walk through was shot against blue-screen and matted in, while his target was part of the live shot; the blasted chunk of building was likewise added with computer effects.

Returning here is Wert as Jack Crusher (“Family”/178, “Violations”/212), with the untold details of his demise now left up to future TNG movies. Moore said the ongoing use of Nechayev and Evek (“Preemptive Strike”/276 and DS9’s “The Maquis”) was a reflection of both continuity and the actors’ work and the border setting of those stories; Nechayev’s won a promotion of sorts, going from a vice-admiral to fleet admiral here. Initially he wrote the admiral as resisting Picard’s overtures of detente in this episode, but later agreed with Piller that Picard actually could get through to her; her threat to temporarily remove him is not the first (“Chain of Command, Part I”/236), Picard in a scene cut for time mentions that he almost washed out in his sophom*ore Academy year, after his father’s death, with Moore implying it was the incident Boothby once alluded to (“The First Duty”), Other cut scenes had Picard waking an oversleeping Wes, who’d turned away in “irritation” from Boothby, and the Indians criticizing artificial weather modification (“True Q”/232, “Force of Nature”/261, “Journey’s End”/272).

For continuity’s sake, Troi’s knowledge of the Pueblo Revolt fits with her interest in Westerns (“A Fistful of Datas”/234), while Evek’s sadness at his lost sons ties in with his people’s high regard for children and family (“Chain of Command, Part II”/237, DS9’s “Tribunal”), Rementioned are the Academy’s Admiral Brand (“The First Duty”), the Federation Council, Dr. Vassbinder (see notes, “Timescape”/251), the latest Cardassisan ship, the Vetar, and Picard’s father (“Tapestry”/241), described as a great oral historian with family roots back to Charlemagne.

“Cochrane” is finally mentioned verbally as the unit of warp field stress for the first time Cardassian communicators are seen, mounted on their wrists. Also, Beverly apparently includes Wes’s repeated year when she calls him a fourth-year cadet since he wears three pips, but Picard notes that he only left “three years ago”; perhaps Starfleet Academy offers a summer school. And the Katowa-led exodus of Indians from Earth occurred about 2170, or just after the Romulan War (from 1966’s “Balance of Terror”) and the Federation founding (“The Outcast”/217).

FIRSTBORN

Production No.: 273 Aired: Week of April 25, 1994

Stardate: 47779.4 Code: fb

Directed by Jonathan West

Teleplay by René Echevarria

Story by Mark Kalbfeld

GUEST CAST

K’Mtar/Alexander at 50: James Sloyan

Alexander Rozhenko: Brian Bonsall

B’tor: Gwynyth Walsh

Lursa: Barbara March

Yog the Yridian: Joel Swetow

Gorta: Colin Mitchell

Quark: Armin Shimerman

“Kahless” Singer: Michael Danek

“Motor” Singer: John Kenton Shull

Eric Burton: Rickey D’Shon Collins

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

When Alexander shows little interest in warrior training, Worf takes him to a Klingon outpost’s colorful local celebration of their people’s Kot’baval festival, marking the Kahless-Molor battle.

But the day almost turns tragic when the two are nearly killed by apparent assailants from the rival Duras family, anxious to kill Worf’s only heir. Only the mystery appearance of K’mtar, a trusted family friend sent to avert such a surprise, saves the day.

Initially K’mtar helps the thankful father in piquing Alexander’s interest in the warrior ethic, but Worf is angered and the boy driven away when K’mtar berates his lack of a killer instinct.

The starship meantime helps track the Duras sisters to accuse them of the incident directly, but the assailant’s knife is traced to a child of B’etor’s that she only just learned she was carrying. Going to confront K’mtar, Worf is shocked to see the man poised to kill Alexander in his sleep.

Finally, K’mtar reveals the odd truth that he is Alexander from forty years in the future, time-traveling traveling back to change the upbringing that allowed him to become a pacifist diplomat duped into allowing Worf’s eventual assassination on the Klingon Council floor. Worf, realizing he must change his own attitude, helps “K’mtar” realize that he can only die honorably if he allows Alexander to become his own person.

Alexander participates in a mock Klingen battle ritual.

Helmed by “rookie” director Jonathan West, the series’ two-year director of photography, this season’s Klingon show returns to the family theme for Alexander’s only appearance of the year. Kalbfeld’s premise concerned only a Federation-marked Romulan ship from a supposedly peaceful future that turned out to be a Trojan horse whose time-travel and future Riker” were both a hoax.

But the idea of a “future fix” hung on, and once Piller again nixed Joe Menosky’s idea of an Alexander accidentally yet permanently aged thirty years in a time portal—“I think it’s a hideous thing to steal somebody’s youth from them,” he said—the eventual Back to the plot evolved. It also reverberates with “Yesteryear,” Dorothy Fontana’s highly regarded 1973 animated Star Trek in which Spock restores a damaged timeline by saving himself as a child.

Jeri Taylor had been impressed with actor Sloyan ever since she screened “The Defector” (158) in her crash-course on Star Trek but had to fight for him as her first choice for K’mtar, over Rick Berman and Michael Piller’s initial objection that he had portrayed Odo’s Bajoran mentor on DS9 only weeks before, “I finally went to Michael and said, look—we can take a lesser actor in this part or we can cast the actor who should be cast,’” she recalled, arguing that the Klingon makeup would help “hide” him, It was during this show that Patrick Stewart was able to miss four days of shooting to host the February 5 Saturday Night Live.

Originally, Echevarria had also wanted to include K’Ehleyr (“Emissary”/146, “Reunion”/181) as young Alexander’s climactic rescuer from K’mtar. Actress Suzi Plakson was interested in the reprise but declined on the timing, citing the beginning of hiatus after an exhausting year on her popular sitcom Love and War, a bedside photo had to make do. “The truth is, it was a blessing,” Echevarria noted, “There was enough exposition to explain at the end of the show as it is!”

The wide-ranging story more than holds its own, switching from Klingon pageantry—with the tale of Motor and Kahless once touched upon (“Rightful Heir”/249)—to the chase for the Duras sisters (“Redemption I-II”/200-201) on the eve of their feature debut in Generations. That subplot opened up when Piller wanted a tougher search for the sisters, and actor Shimerman agreed to do a DS9 scene for “a very reasonable price”; with Quark’s addition, the abandoned alien was switched from a Ferengi to a Dopterian, seen as their kin in DS9’s “The Forsaken,” The outing was the first for Brian Bonsall since his movie Blank Check, while Swetow had been Gul Jasad for DS9’s pilot.

Visual FX coordinator Michael “B” Backauskas, getting a supervisor’s credit with Ron B. Moore’s ongoing absence to work on the feature, had fun with the Klingons’ holodeck fight with stunt coordinator, Dennis Madalone as the frozen” assailant, Backauskas recalled how West and the crew were “sweating it” late one day before young Brian Bonsall’s time limit for work as a minor was running out; as it was, his parents acquiesced to go a few minutes over, and each of three angles needed was snared in one take without mishap, For VCR freeze-framers, watch the stilled fighter as K’mtar passes him: thanks to the interruption of the cutaway shot, the fighter had to be moved a few inches to the left for clearance after the planned pan-and-scan cheat (“Attached”/260) was abandoned for time. Also, live explosive “squibs” for the weaponry hits were eschewed in favor of optical add-ons (“Descent”/252, “Gambit, Part I”/256) to realistically tighten up the timing of the “speed-of-light” weapons.

Although the two actors playing the Klingon Kot’baval grunted their lines on stage, both were good enough singers to reloop and synchronize a new melody to their filmed mouthings when it was decided to make the Klingon opera more lyrical and composer Dennis McCarthy was called in. “We did some temporary tracks for the stage but we wound up doing the whole thing in post-production,” said producer Wendy Neuss. “It was one of our biggest jobs all year—figuring out what the on-camera instruments would sound like, breaking down all the syllables, figuring where the offstage line would be.”

Young Eric, given the surname “Burton” in the script, makes his third showing (“Liaisons”/254, “Masks”/269); his “Fullerene” water balloon, noted science adviser André Bormanis, comes from today’s same-named synthesized molecule of carbon atoms that forms a hollow shell, named for geodesic dome designer Buckminster Fuller; the metallicized wax prop was actually thrown from off-camera for Worf’s dunking by propmaster Alan Sims.

Thanks to TV magic, Worf’s quarter-human son continues to mushroom; he’s already age ten, though he was age three at K’Ehleyr’s death only two seasons ago! Here he is said to have never seen the Home World and is said to be the only male-related heir of Kurn (“Sins of the Father”/165, “Redemption”/200-201). Other Klingon references include leader Gowron (“Reunion”/181, “Redemption”/200, “Unification I”/208, “Rightful Heir”/249), the annually marked Rite of Ascension and painstiks (“The Icarus Factor”/140), and the first-ever mention of Klingon currency, darseks. Whether intended or not, the trusted family adviser “Gin’tak” is also the word for a spear (“Birthright, Part II”); the Koh’manara block (“Second Chances”/250), the curse patahk for “animal,” Qapla for “success,” and gik’tal (“Lower Decks”/267) for “to the death”—the latter sung by the Kahless character—are also not new.

Trivia fans will note the mention of biomimetic gel (“Force of Nature”/261), bilitrium (DS9’s “Past Prologue”), the Corvallens (“Face of the Enemy”/240, “Inheritance”/262), the inept Pakleds (“Samaritan Snare”/143), another Yridian (“Birthright, Part I”/242, “Gambit, Part I”/256, and DS9) and his wasplike ship (“The Chase”/246), and the flashy explosive magnesite—which dates back all the way to 1967’s “Friday’s Child,” Echevarria not only created the U.S.S. Kearsage here after the historic Civil War ship but named the Vodrey Nebula after the fan who wrote in to suggest it. Finally, we learn that Riker is the only one at Quark’s to ever win “triple-down Dabo” and was due gold-pressed latinum, the first TNG mention of either, while Lursa’s offspring is not referred to again [Generations] but may yet be lurking out there for future sequels!

BLOODLINES

Production No.: 274 Aired: Week of May 2, 1994

Stardate: 47829.1 Code: bl

Directed by Les Landau

Written by Nicholas Sagan

GUEST CAST

DaiMon Bok: Lee Arenberg

Jason Vigo: Ken Olandt

Birta: Peter slu*tsker

Lieutenant Sandra Rhodes: Amy Pietz

Tol: Michelan Sisti

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

DaiMon Bok blames Picard for his son’s death in the first UFP-Ferengi meeting, and emerges from prison to taunt the captain again—this time with news that he would kill the son that Picard never knew he had.

After the young man is hunted down, DNA tests prove that Jason Vigo is Picard’s son, the apparent result of a long-ago brief fling with the now-dead sister of a Stargazer officer. Living a hard, troubled life after his mother’s death, Jason approaches his newfound “father” warily and awkwardly. Bok then appears via a new long-distance subspace transporter to tease Picard all the more.

Bok eventually uses the device to kidnap Jason and threaten his life, but not before the young man’s sudden attack of a genetic disease reveals Bok’s ruse. Suffering from a syndrome that neither Picard nor his mother could have passed on to him, Jason is found to have had his DNA resequenced to match Picard’s. Armed with that fact, the captain uses the risky subspace transporter, races to free the boy, and reveals Bok’s profitless insanity to his mercenary crew, who depose him.

After Jason is cured, he and his would-be father acknowledge the bond they developed and agree to visit in the future, both having grown from the experience.

DaiMon Bok threatens the boy who may be Picard’s son.

This story traces its roots directly back to a set visit during “Masks” (269), Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart were asked about any hanging character threads that could be turned into stories. When Stewart recalled the unsatisfied vengeance of DaiMon Bok (“The Battle”/110), Taylor tossed the brief idea at writer Sagan, asking him (“Attached”/260) to flesh out his pitch about a “created” Picard son.

Sagan’s first take emerged as the aired version after an uncredited polish by René Echevarria but for a time it had been sent in another direction to avoid duplicating Trek novelist Peter David’s script idea in development, about a woman who brings aboard Geordi’s unknown son, Though intriguing, that intense emotional conflict never jelled to Michael Piller’s liking, and Sagan’s original plot was restored, His name of “Cristof” for the boy was changed by Echevarria to “Daniel,” which then became “Jason” at Stewart’s request to avoid using his own son’s name (“The Inner Light”/225), Before the Bok angle is apparent, the tale of the unknown and somewhat hardened son is reminiscent of Kirk and David Marcus in the second and third Trek movies; as personal reference Sagan recalled drawing on his once-icy relationship with his own famous father.

Both writers were sad to lose the sentiment of the original ending, in which Jason and Picard confide mutually that they wish their newfound kinship were real—a moment likely muted to make way for Picard’s “end-of-the-family” moroseness in the coming feature (Generations), While praising the freelancer’s work and the sympathetic explanation Taylor created for Miranda Vigo’s actions, Echevarria was also delighted that no one flagged Picard’s self-deprecating line about his hairline—including Stewart, who loved it. Sadly, a funny line was cut when Picard realizes Ferengi like Bok can “buy” their way out of prison and Birta shrugs it off: “He paid his debt to society.”

Oddly, the Ferengi actors’ fraternity is well represented here, but with a twist. Arenberg, who has played Prak (“Force of Nature”/261) and Gral (DS9’s “The Nagus”), replaced the original Bok, Frank Corsentino, who later played Lwaxana Troi’s suitor Tog (“Ménage à Troi”). slu*tsker had appeared with him as Nibor before playing the tragic Dr. Reyga (“Suspicions”/248). Other Ferengi touches here include the reported debate on the Rules of Aquisition, the first TNG mention of that ubiquitous code created on DS9 and the first indication that they are amendable. Also we learn that the Maxia battlesite was in Ferengi space.

Vigo, of course, was the only Stargazer bridge crewman Picard called by name during the “ghost” sequence of “The Battle,” and a cut line from Sagan’s script actually made Miranda the weapons officer’s sister; he must have been a longtime officer. She and Picard’s involvement “twenty-four years ago” works out to be four years after he stood up Jenice (“Well Always Have Paris”/124), or nine years before the Maxia incident, Miranda’s birth “fifty years ago”—or in 2320, reckoned by the “2364” date of Season 1’s “Neutral Zone” (126)—would have been seven years before Picard’s Academy “Class of ‘27” graduation and made her twenty-six and he about forty-one. Her New Gaul birthplace is apparently not to be confused with New Paris (from 1966’s “The Galileo Seven”) or New France (DS9’s “The Forsaken”), although the prior Bok-Picard confrontation was unknowingly changed in a late draft to Xendi Kabu instead of Xendi Sabu.

Sagan, another Trek baseball fan, named security officer “Garvey” after one of his favorites, Steve, while Jason’s rare disease was dually named for Larry Forrester, the original writer of “The Battle,” and Trent Reznor of the alternative rock band Nine-Inch Nails, a favorite. The other guard’s name, Lieutenant Sandra Rhodes, honored an Air Force officer and Trek fan whose family wrote Taylor and asked about the homage. Picard again here speaks wistfully of his and his father’s estrangement (“Family”/178, “Tapestry”/241) and exceeds the warp five limit (“Force of Nature”) for the first time without express approval—though it is a life-or-death matter. His Saurian brandy harks back to The Original Series (and “In Theory”/199), and—according to Echevarria—the Gorlan prayer stick among Picard’s relics was not intended to be related to the Gorla Colony mentioned in 1967’s “Mirror, Mirror,” but it could be.

The show’s few visual effects include David Stipes and Joe Bauer’s “Princess Leia” hologram of Bok and the “battling transporters” effect; the Ferengi probe was fashioned by Dan Curry from an underground sprinkler sleeve.

EMERGENCE

Production No.: 275 Aired: Week of May 9, 1994

Stardate: 47869.2 Code: eg

Directed by Cliff Bole

Teleplay by Joe Menosky

Story by Brannon Braga

GUEST CAST

Conductor: David Huddleston

Hitman: Vinny Argiro

Engineer: Thomas Kopache

Hayseed: Arlee Reed

A runaway train appears suddenly in Data’s The Tempest program … the Enterprise suddenly goes into warp for no reason … and Picard is convinced he’s lost control of his ship, especially after sensors show it would have exploded had the warp jump not occurred.

Amazingly, Data and La Forge discover a network of self-erected nodes cross-connecting ship’s functions, much like a life-form’s neural web. On the holodeck, the crew finds a train program running with a conductor, engineer, and characters from various existing programs—a hayseed, flapper girls, a hit man, a knight—that they realize represent different ship’s functions.

But when the characters all stop Data from shutting down the power grid within the program, he realizes that the ship is fostering its own embryonic intelligence. A molecular-like form is discovered “growing” in Cargo Bay 5, nurtured by the ship’s arrival at a white dwarf star to “feed” it vertion particles via a tractor beam.

The whole process shuts down when the vertions are exhausted, and the crew must step in to help when ship begins a trip that will exhaust their life support. The colorful train “passengers” are finally convinced to try a nearby nebula as an artificial vertion source, but they disappear when the new life-form departs into space fully matured.

An actual Orient Express parlor car graced this wildly imaginative romp through the unconscious by Joe Menosky and Branon Braga, the series’ lone joint effort by both its offbeat writers, It was “even weirder,” in Jeri Taylor’s words, before staff writer Naren Shankar pulled it back to a more produceable level in an uncredited polish. “Again, I thought Menosky mighta had a couple of mushrooms when he wrote the first script,” laughed director Cliff Bole, preparing his record twenty-fifth and final TNG outing. “We all read it and thought, ‘Jeeesus, you can’t shoot this in thirty-five days!’ I mean, marvelous crazy ideas, but it had to be down-scaled,”

Looking to include one more holodeck story, Braga said the staff discarded a final Dixon Hill adventure in development as “too familiar” in favor of this idea for the “ultimate holodeck show” he’d stewed on but only put into written form at the last minute. With Braga and Ron Moore busy on the finale, Jeri Taylor leaned again on Menosky, still writing from Italy, who took Braga’s idea of the ship achieving sentience and added the concept of the new life-form’s birth—almost a small-scale version of the Ilia/Decker/V’Ger creation from the first Trek feature.

The cast, which includes script coordinator Lolita Fatjo’s husband, Arlee Daniel—previously seen as an alien terrorist (“Starship Mine”/244)—and the familiar face of character actor David Huddleston, also includes Patrick Stewart’s longtime stand-in Dennis Tracy as the “man in the gray-flannel suit,” The taxi driver is longtime TNG stunt man Nick Dimitri (“A Fistful of Datas”/234), here driving for the “Sunshine Radio System”—phone Circle 7232—in location shots on Paramount’s own New York Street, largely unaltered for this show.

Richard James’ ambitious Art Deco designs for a scratch-built car were about to be reined in to save money when a shop carpenter mentioned he’d worked on the train car used for Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola, The car, rented and delivered to the studio’s Stage 6 on a flatbed trailer, saved enough to still allow extensive refurbishing of its Edwardian interior to the desired 1920s look. “That train was marvelous,” Bole said, “If we’d built that there would have been another 120 grand that would have been subtracted from everything else,” Stock footage from the classic Murder on the Orient Express in Paramount’s vaults added an odd period mystique to the show, but Bole had to beg Rick Berman to get a close-up of the wheels braking and ignore the point-of-view logic that no one would be in the holodeck to see them, “The sparks coming and all that—I had to have it!” he said, “Sometimes for drama’s sake you gotta break the rules, so I got away with it once.”

Worf and Deanna on the malfunctioning holodeck.

Series visual FX coordinator Phil Barberio, this episode’s fill-in supervisor for Ron B. Moore, opted to take Rick Stembach’s openspaced design for the “helix” directly to computer creation to avoid a miniature’s matting and mounting problems. Amblin Imaging, the Steven Spielberg auxiliary that handles the FX for SeaQuest DSV, brought it to live on a Video Toaster, The MacPherson Nebula was taken from never-used elements Dan Curry shot years ago of lasers bouncing off plastics.

The show features the last Shakespeare theatrics of the series (“Hide and Q”/111, “The Defector”/158, “Devil’s Due”/187)-shot here on a darkened comer of the late season’s much-used village set (see “Journey’s End”/272)—and the only TNG mention of vertions, another artificial kind of matter in the vein of verterons and tetryons.

PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

Production No.: 276 Aired: Week of May 16, 1994

Stardate: 47941.7 Code: ps

Directed by Patrick Stewart

Teleplay by René Echevarria

Story by Naren Shankar

GUEST CAST

Ensign Ro Laren: Michelle Forbes

Macias: John Franklin-Robbins

Fleet Admiral Alynna Nechayev: Natalija Nogulich

Santos: William Thomas, Jr.

Kalita: Shannon Cochran

Gul Evek: Richard Poe

Fresh from a year away at Advanced Tactical Training, newly promoted Lieutenant Ro Laren finds herself at the center of the growing Maquis crisis when Starfleet asks her to infiltrate the rebel colonists.

Gaining access to the Maquis in the guise of a Cardassian-killing Bajoran fugitive, Ro soon learns that the group suspects the alien empire of smuggling biogenic weapons into the Zone to use against the outsiders there. She gains the local cell’s full confidence by staging a daring raid against the Enterprise for medical supplies—brought off with Picard’s acquiescence, of course—but finds herself more and more sympathetic to the Maquis’s plight.

Picard, the troubled officer’s longtime supporter, is concerned to hear of Ro’s new selfdoubts about loyalty and sends Riker along with her on the next mission: a trap to lure Maquis in for capture. But when her elderly Maquis mentor Macias is killed in a surprise Cardassian raid at their base, Ro’s mind is made up: during the mission she holds Riker hostage long enough to reveal the Starfleet ambush to her comrades.

Before leaving to go with them, she sadly hands over her Bajoran earring to Riker and lets him return, asking him to tell Picard her greatest regret is betraying the trust he put in her.

The long-awaited return of Ro Laren, with Patrick Stewart in his fifth turn at directing and the second this season, was another late-season tale borne of desperation for Jeri Taylor and the writing staff—but even more so it depended on a near-miracle that actress Michelle Forbes, who’d spumed a DS9 transfer to keep busy in films, would even consider it. After having one premise after another turned down by Michael Piller in search of the best final shows possible, Taylor found herself pursuing the actress anyway just days away from prep—the design week before live filming—after coming up with a bare-bones Maquis idea to follow DS9’s two-parter (see notes, “Journey’s End”/272).

“Her agent had said last year Please leave us alone!’” recalled Taylor. It came down to her agent and manager, saying, ‘You—Jeri—get on the phone with Michelle and tell her what the story is, and if you can sell it she might do it.’ So that was a phone call I really had a dry mouth about, because it was all on my shoulders. But I guess desperation and the clock ticking inspired me, because I just … spun gold out of straw—à woman torn, and her choices are …’—and I knew I had her.” Now all that had to happen was for René Echevarria, the only staffer with free time, to plunge directly from “Bloodlines” (274) into this teleplay, His first draft saw Ro pull off her trust-earning raid alone against a freighter, but just three days before filming Piller asked for a restructuring of Act III to its present form—both to make her task more credible and to get the regular cast more screen time.

One scene Echevarria was sad to lose from the first draft was based on the elder Macias being Bajoran and not wearing his people’s traditional earring: after Ro’s successful “raid” he asks her if she’s ready to stop wearing hers because “you’re not Bajoran, you’re Maquis now.” The moment was meant to add even more poignancy to her final request that Riker take her earring to Picard, which already harks back to her memorable run-in with Number One in Ro’s very first time onscreen (“Ensign Ro”/203). Another rewrite change, he said, converted Macias’ death from a greatly disfiguring one caused by the “mutagenic” weapons described previously (“Chain of Command, Part I”/236); when the staff didn’t want Picard and Starfleet to be caught so “flat-footed,” the filmed version mentions only a rumor of “biogenie” arms in the area and Macias’ death is more routine. His name, though mispronounced from the namesake “mah-SEE-us,” was inspired by a Cuban freedom fighter in that nation’s War of Independence from Spain.

On an undercover mission, Captain Picard gets a report from Ensign Ro.

Along with yet another hair change, Ro herself—in her first real TNG role in two years (“The Next Phase”/224) after a brief turn last season (“Rascals”/233)—has jumped a whole rank to full lieutenant but is without the original Bajoran nosebridge piece she debuted and that Michael Westmore gradually phased out on DS9 due to the constant re-gluing needed, Her quarters are seen to be Deck 8/Room 4711; references to her father’s death and her court-martial are now new (“Ensign Ro”), For the record, Forbes has told more than one interviewer she’d consider turning up as Ro again on DS9 if the story and role were up to par.

Nechayev and Evek, those denizens of the Demilitarized Zone, again lend continuity to the Maquis arc (“Journey’s End”/272), while the village extras—as with DS9’s “The Maquis”—include Klingons, Vulcans, and the Dorvan V Native Americans (“Journey’s End”) as subtle setup for the Voyager cast; the resigned lieutenant commander Ro speaks of from Tactical Training is a veiled reference to the new series’ character Chakotay, Ongoing set-swapping between the sister series has DS9 art director Randy Mcllvain’s council room from the two-parter redressed for use here; the village itself, with an added catwalk to provide yet more depth of action, is the fourth revamping of Richard James’ original Barkon IV community (“Thine Own Self”/268).

One of either series’ largest space battles, storyboarded and supervised by visual FX coordinator Joe Bauer, featured many of the newer ship miniatures; its Star conflict of smaller craft attacking the larger Cardassian Galor-class warship was a virtual first for any Star Trek, which tended to keep its rare space skirmishes to the ship-on-ship variety, DS9 illustrator Jim Martin designed both the Maquis fighter first seen on the DS9 two-parter, built by Tony Meininger, and Ro’s fighter/transport debuting here as built by Greg Jein—with a co*ckpit window matching the regular “alien shuttle” interior set, Two Bajoran ships Meininger built for DS9’s second-season opening trilogy, Kira’s “attack ship” and a troop transport, are also in on the action here. The first-ever nighttime phaser fight also used more complex live interactive lighting from FX man Dick Brownfield’s flashbulb arrays and live squibs fired from a converted paint gun, designed to spark on impact.

Trivia notes: Bajoran references include the belaklavion instrument Ro’s father played and the foods foraiga and hasperat—which propmaster Alan Sims revealed was simply Armenian flat bread coated with cream cheese, lettuce, dried tomatoes, and black olive bits, then rolled burrito-style and cut in half to reveal the colorful cross-section. Also, “Type VIII” phasers are here said to be large and ship-mounted, in contrast to the long-established hand, pistol, and rifle phasers dubbed types I-III, Old references include the Pakleds (“Samaritan Snare”/143, “Firstbom”/273), the Yridians (“Birthright, Part I”/242, “Suspicions”/248, “Gambit, Part I”/256), and biomimetic gel (“Force of Nature”/261, “Firstborn”/273). Lastly, until someone realized that its title and the finale’s both contained the same word, this episode was known as “The Good Fight.”

ALL GOOD THINGS …

Production No.: 277 Aired: Week of May 23, 1994

Stardate: 47988 Code: ag

Directed by Winrich Kolbe

Written by Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore

GUEST CAST

Q: John de Lancie

Commander Tomalak: Andreas Katsulas

Admiral Nakamura: Clyde Kusatsu

Lieutenant (j.g.) Alyssa Ogawa: Pattl Yasutake

Lieutenant Tasha Yar: Denise Crosby

Chief Miles O’Brien: Colm Meaney

Jessel: Pamela Kosh

Lieutenant Gaines: Tim Kelleher

Ensign Nell Chilton: Alison Brooks

Ensign: Stephen Matthew Garvey

Computer Voice: Majel Barrett

Picard is disturbed to realize, after several dizzying episodes, that he is slipping back and forth among three distinct time periods: the present; seven years in the past, when he first took command of the Enterprise; and twenty-five years into the future, when his crew has scattered or resigned from Starfleet.

The captain opts to keep his past crew in the dark, leading them to question their new leader’s sanity, while those in the future think he’s crazy due to Irumodic syndrome, a rare mental degradation of aging. Picard, amidst more unpredictable time travels, realizes that the link with his maddening situation is an odd anomaly in the Neutral Zone—and as Q makes a sudden reappearance. The superbeing admits to being the cause of Picard’s time-shifting but insists that the captain, not he, is responsible for the impending doom of humanity. He even shows Picard how the first amino acids of life never connected under an anomaly-filled sky on primordial Earth.

The anomaly is the key, but the captain and his various crews can’t figure out why it is larger in the past than in the present—or why it’s absent in the future. Scanning with a tachyon pulse leads nowhere until Picard realizes the rift is a fracture of time and “anti-time” that enlarges into the past, by scanning the same point in 3 eras. The rift is healed after the apparent destruction of all three Enterprises, but Q restores the present time by quietly telling Picard that his insight into the problem-solving was a mere glimpse of what humanity is truly capable of beyond mere space and science exploration.

Worf decides to join his old comrades for one last mission.

With “reality” restored, Picard tells his officers of the future he glimpsed—Riker and Worf estranged when neither married Troi and Dr. Crusher a captain and his ex-wife. In the end he joins in the others’ weekly poker game—to their surprise and delight.

This highest-rated and most complex TNG effort ever had anything but a smooth ride, as one might expect from its scope, humor, mystery, and surprises-with writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga still dealing with their year-old Generations screenplay, a crew already exhausted by the long, ambitious season, a blaze of national media scrutiny, and a cast mindful of both the onrushing movie and their pending unemployment for the first time in seven years.

The studio had asked for a two-hour series-ender by December. When thoughts began turning to a plot, Michael Piller pulled elements from a “time-slipping” story by Braga (with Worf and Alexander) and followed Moore’s suggestion to “bookend” the series by revisiting the “Encounter at Farpoint” courtroom with Q, while suggesting the three-era crew format with Picard as the conduit—an intentional homage to Slaughterhouse Five, an early personal influence. Jeri Taylor decided the movie duo would get enough of a break to do the finale’s writing chores.

In a February 7 memo to the co-writers, Piller hit on two themes for the finale: the idea of family” in each time period—as symbol of “the cast, the crew, the fans, the writing staff … all the families of Star Trek: The Next the realization that every moment is precious, affecting all those before or after (a theme he also explored in the DS9 pilot “Emissary”), “You can revisit it, you can remember it, laugh about it, hold reunions, go to conventions, show reruns forever, but you can never live that moment again,” he wrote, leading to Picard’s self-learned Q lesson that “if man is to evolve to the next level he must leam to explore the moment.”

But Moore and Braga couldn’t start until “Genesis” and “Journey’s End” (271, 272) were put to bed. So, thanks to the due date being moved up a slot ahead of “Preemptive Strike” because of the finale’s scope and complexity, the writers found themselves with only six days to finish a draft. “A two-hour show—they should have had a month to write it!” moaned Taylor, Originally, a fourth timeline was part of the mix: a revisit of “The Best of Both Worlds” (174-175).

Still, the finished product had a long way to go and became perhaps the mother of all TNG under-the-gun writing jobs. Director Rick Kolbe, here working his sixteenth and final TNG outing, recalled that “I don’t think we ever had a production meeting with a full script. It always was ‘Well we have Part I and an outline for Part II, we have Part Il and an outline for Part I, we have everything but Act 10’ … it was difficult.”

“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” Braga said of the writing process, “We were running out of time; we couldn’t get the story approved—and this was to be expected, since there was a great deal of scrutiny on everyone’s part and rightfully so. But things were heating up with the movie, we had to rebreak the finale three times, we had to rewrite the whole script twice; Ron’s dog got sick; we had a computer failure and lost an act…. There was a two-week period there where we wrote like three hundred pages! By the time it was over, I got some sort of carpaltunnel syndrome between my thumb and wrist from hitting the space bar,”

Cast and crew alike fell in love with that first draft, a “Valentine to the characters” as Braga put it, but Piller caused a ruckus with a major restructuring of Part II that tightened up the story while losing several character moments—including Picard’s future crew “stealing” the mothballed Enterprise from a museum! The late rewrite led to unhappy actors and a weekend meeting requested by Patrick Stewart, when many of the character moments were restored amid the new framework.

Q tells Picard the human race will be destroyed.

“I knew there were problems, structural problems in Part II,” Kolbe said. “But I think we might have gone a little too far in solving those … and it lost the charm and the freshness of the original.” For his part, Piller agreed that the rewrite brought more technobabble” to Part II and that the restored scenes helped “warm it up a little,” but said his initial concerns about the weak, slow-developing second half still stand. “I won’t argue at all with the fact that we lost some cute things, but it wasn’t good storytelling,” he said, noting especially the ship-stealing sequence. “The problem was, the future Picard needed a ship, and he got one by going to Beverly…. And just because the writers wanted to go and hijack the Enterprise because it would be neat—‘OK, you’ve got the ship, now go get another one, too’—didn’t make it good storytelling.”

But getting a shootable script was just the beginning, recalled Kolbe—who had hoped for more than five days to prep his long-sought Q show. Aiming to make this finale TNG’s best-ever segment, he came to feel the project was taking a backseat to various unrelated distractions: the actors’ ongoing contract negotiations for the movie, their anxiety about job hunting, and a revision to the already complex production schedule so Gates McFadden could leave long enough to shoot a new series pilot in Oregon—a change that led to an extra seventeenth shooting day only at Kolbe’s insistence. “For a time I felt like I was the only guy doing anything, and it came to blows about halfway through—we had a big argument,” Kolbe said. “And I said, You gotta focus on this show! … and then everybody—producers, cast, crew—just came together; it was amazing!” Adding to the frenzy was a virtual media circus tromping by the set daily to record the series’ final days—promoted by the studio with the curious theme “Journey’s End,” a confusing overlap of titles (272)—and led to a couple of run-ins with camera crews by an exhausted Stewart, who never liked to be filmed while rehearsing anyway.

“I was at times anxious as to whether I would get through that last period of work, and I’m not being melodramatic,” he said, noting his Christmas break spent onstage in London and his directing the previous episode. “This was followed then immediately by the final two hours, and I was in every single scene of the show…. Towards the end I just got so tired….; I was just trying to do the best job I could. And at the same time there were a lot of people with other needs and demands and I found it all just a bit distracting.”

Fatigue was a concern for everyone, Kolbe added: “I was about as dead as you can be, which is not something I like to do, especially on a two-hour show…. It was the end of the season, everybody was basically tired and worn out, and tempers were short,” But he gave credit to the stage crew, who not only supported his beyond-the-norm camera shots but gave a lift during the most hectic times—such as the last day of all, when eleven takes were needed to film Q’s entrance on the floating camera crane while a second crane helped film it. Shooting’s end for the whole cast together in their final scene—the poker game—was an emotional affair shot the Thursday before, which Kolbe recalled was slowed down by another brand of visitors-the Paramount brass. “I had the feeling that Sumner Redstone himself was in there,” joked the director, referring to the chief of Viacom who had recently bought out Paramount, Ironically, with the Stage 16 courtroom not yet struck, the last first-unit shooting on April 5, 1994—the primordial Earth sequence—took place on DS9’s Stage 18 cave set in the same soundstage where another famous Paramount swan song was filmed: Gloria Swanson’s Nora Desmond uttering “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr, DeMiIIe” from Sunset Boulevard.

The script that finally made it to film featured one big break from past Treks: a “future” that could be revealed on the pretense that no one wanted it to happen, “Since the feature’s not anything like this, we had to get out of that by the end of the show,” Moore noted. “Rick [Berman] felt very strongly about that—we have to keep our options open,” But by doing so the door was open for all kinds of fun tweaking the known characters and background in two alternate timelines—“lt was all about just playing with the audience’s expectations,” Moore said-and there was much throwaway that only a true fan could love: the Klingons’ vengeful defeat of the Romulans (“Redemption”/200-201), with the subsequent end to the UFP’s cloaking ban (“The Pegasus”/264); and the addition of a third nacelle to the future Enterprise, heretofore a design taboo, and its ability to go warp thirteen.

The characters themselves were affected even more, although some setup scenes were among those cut. One at least referred to in the aired version—Worf asking Riker’s permission to date Deanna—was a straight rehash of the Klingon’s earlier bungled try (“Eye of the Beholder”/270); in it Riker gives his consent, then thinks a moment before surprising both Worf and himself by withdrawing it. Another omitted scene saw Alexander tell his father he knew he’d just been with Troi because “you’re always in a good mood after you see her” and in effect give his permission for them to go on; the future Worf was initially a Council member on the Home World. Still another scene, dropped even before the break session as “too contrived,” Moore said, would have had Lwaxana Troi in the future bring the news via “long-range transporter” (“Bloodlines”/274) of Deanna’s recent death—providing a shock to her old friends and a first step in the Worf-Riker thaw. Oddly enough, though the season-long Worf-Troi plot finally veers into “reality” here with their holodeck date, the subject is not dealt with at all in the upcoming Generations.

Another lost first-draft scene, setting up Geordi’s surprise career as a novelist, saw him in the present confiding that he’d probably always be in Starfleet and disagreeing with Data over great literature, preferring holodeck versions to the original prose—a sly poke at today’s nonliterate videophiles. For Geordi, the eternally disappointed dater, his passing reference to his wife “Leah” is a subtle sign that he and Leah Brahms somehow did get together (“Booby Trap”/154, “Galaxy’s Child”/190)—though Moore revealed that the first thought was to have him wed Aquiel (“Aquiel”/239). “And everybody said, ‘You really want to summon those bad vibes, the way that show turned out?’” he recalled. “And we said, ‘Maaaaybe not!’”

Crusher’s captaincy was another fulfillment of a season-long drive (“Descent, Part II”/253, “Thine Own Self”/268), while Moore noted that the writers were finally able to answer fan demands to really get her and Picard together (“Attached”/260)—only to turn that on its ear as well with their eventual divorce. Among the logical turns of Data’s life were his easy use of contractions and his position as the Lucasian chair of physics at Cambridge—an homage to not only Isaac Newton but current holder Stephen Hawking, two of his famous holodeck buddies (“Descent”/252). For the record, Critters of the Cinema had ten of its cats on-set as successors to Monster and Brandy’s “Spot” (“Descent, Part 2”/253, et al.): Bacall, Uma, Zeke, Bandit, Wendy, Shelley, and doubles Crystal, Sinbad, Sascha, and Justin filling in for Aspen, Caesar, Buffy, and Fido!

Though covering known territory, the “past” timeline provided almost as much originality. The only scene lost here, squeezed out in the later rewrite, would have had a conn officer named “Sutcliffe” upset at the perverseness of that era’s Picard and finally request a transfer—an homage, suggested by Piller, to the original “fifth” Beatle who likewise left his group on the eve of its greatness. Actor Christian Slater, a big Trek fan who’d cameoed in Star Trek VI, was up to play the part until it was penciled out; later tries at getting him in as the Romulan commander or other walk-ons didn’t pan out.

Many of the “past” choices were dictated by visual needs, Moore said “Tasha was something that would tie us into the past, and so’s O’Brien,” said Moore, “and Troi’s hair and go-go boots, and the ships on the wall in the obs lounge.” Of course, here O’Brien—with Colm Meaney stealing a break from DS9 filming—is given a name and backstory with the Rutledge (“The Wounded”/ 186) and model-ship-building (“Booby Trap”/154) long before they were ever heard on the series; though his uniform is the command-division cranberry he first wore in “Farpoint,” his pips show the revisionist rank of “chief” (“Realm of Fear”/228) and not ensign as they did then.

In the future, Professor Data and Captain Crusher discuss what Captain Picard has told them.

The past also recalls the early “babbling” Data—a fun recreation for the writers as well as Spiner—and the first season’s confusing lack of a chief engineer. A clip of “babyfaced” Riker from Season 1 (“The Arsenal of Freedom”/121) was inserted to provide a link to the period; a succeeding viewscreen moment between Picard and an uncomfortable Beverly was trimmed for time. There’s also the bit that Picard’s trademark “Tea—Earl Grey—hot” is not yet programmed, while the “future” includes the obvious smart comeback to the command by Professor Data’s housekeeper Jessel—whose name is a repeat Turn of the Screw homage by Braga (“Sub Rosa”/266). Also, the “past” Troi recounts that she and Riker cooled off “years ago,” although established dates (“Second Chances”/250) would make it only two years before this point.

Back in the past, Data and O’Brien meet for the first time.

Even Q’s demeanor changed throughout the rewrites, with Berman pushing to pull back the sight gags so the tension would not be undercut by the alien’s various guises as a croupier, the Grim Reaper with a scythe, and a game-show host flipping question numbers à la What’s My Line? Still, de Lancie makes the most of all his chemistry with Stewart in his eighth and final TNG outing. “I did not want to make it a ‘Q test,’” Piller said, wishing instead to echo the omnipotent being’s observance of humans solving a problem as in the pilot. But Q’s influence had to be injected when Stewart, as shooting commenced on the stage, pointed out the logic problem that the anomaly would not have occurred had Q not sent Picard in the time motion in the first place.

Visually, the production staff did all it could within reason to re-create the past as well as postulate its future, such as returning the laid-back conn and ops chairs to the bridge; several details, such as set and carpet color, main viewscreen details, Q’s courtroom chair, and so on, were not altered—although the “future” viewer used details from past “alternate” looks (“Parallels”/263, for one). The observation-lounge ships are the originals, safely stored ever since production designer Richard James opted not to return them when the set was rebuilt. Still, with a pricetag of about $281,000 for thirty-one sets to ready or revamp for the time-switches—including four all-new sets—construction chief Al Smutko recalled that his crews worked their fourth weekend in a row after a busy season windup to get the show ready. Makeup wizard Michael Westmore regretted not being able to experiment more with aging and youthening the regular cast, but kept “the little things” of the cast’s prior makeup jobs while opting not to shave Denise Crosby’s hair as Yar.

A shuttle “07” named Galileo is the art department’s parting homage to the original series craft, built for the namesake 1966 episode—though of course the Type 6 shuttle used here was not around at the time of the TNG pilot. The bridge plaque seen hung in the “past” is another Mike Okuda touch, replacing the original’s production staff “admirals” with a design including only “authentic” Starfleet personnel mentioned in the series—including the Utopia Planetia technicians seen only weeks before (“Eye of the Beholder”/270).

The show was also a family affair for the visual effects team, with everyone divvying up the chores to have a hand in the last hurrah. With Phil Barberio handling some minatures and compositing, even Ron B. Moore took a moment from his ST: Generations duties to handle the transporters: “I can’t possibly work on the series seven years and not be involved with the last one.” Dan Curry created the “Very radiant” anomaly and the primordial Earth, matting in backlit lava and rocks against actual ocean footage enhanced with “Boraxo spray.” Artist Eric Chaubin, an Emmy winner for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and supplier of the Dyson Sphere interior (“Relics”/230), provided Data’s futuristic Cambridge environs, one of this season’s few matte paintings. Matte touch-ups also enhanced the “Picard” vineyards, shot this time near Temecula because the Lancaster area used previously (“Family”/178) was drably out of season.

The climax of the opticals featured Rick Sternbach’s future Klingon ship, built by Greg Jein after a less inexpensive redress of the attack cruiser (“Reunion”/181, et. al.) almost had to make do, in a two-plane battle sequence intended as a Hans Solo-like homage by David Stipes and storyboarded by Joe Bauer. Beverly’s medical vessel, the NCC-58928 Pasteur, was christened the Hope class after the World War II hopsital ship, a suggestion of Don Beck with the series’ previews-producing Beck-Ola. Bill George of ILM had already built the miniature in his spare time to TNG shooting specs for possible use, dubbing it Olympic class and basing it on an early original Enterprise concept by Roddenberry and Matt Jefferies, but the series’ policy forbid accepting unsolicited models—that is, until Peter Lauritson won approval when a ship was needed in a pinch!

Among other scattered trivia, the first draft originally featured Admiral Blackwell and the Romulan Sirol (“The Pegasus”/264) until final casting of familiar faces Kusatsu (“The Measure of a Man”/ 135, “Phantasms”/258) and Katsulas, the latter making his first showing as Tomalak since Season 4 (“Future Imperfect”/182) and bringing some of the bravado of his Babylon 5 ambassador to the part; he’d also appeared as the one-armed man in 1993’s film remake of The Fugitive. A scene cut for time featured actress Martha Hacket as Androna, who would have been the first-ever depicted Terellian despite her having only two arms (see notes, “Liaisons”/254); as it was, Braga still inserted mention of the Terellian Death Syndrome, perhaps the same as the Terellian Plague (“Genesis” 7271). Ensign Chilton was played by Alison Brooks, his girlfriend.

Also, Ogawa’s baby dies an unborn hero (“Genesis”/271), with extra B. DeMonbreun finally seen as her elusive husband Andrew Powell (“Lower Decks”/267); Braga’s USS Bozeman is back (“Cause and Effect”/218, ST: Generations), as is a mention of Dr. Selar (“The Schizoid Man”/131, “Remember Me”/179, “Tapestry”/ 241, “Genesis”/271, “Sub Rosa”/266), Admiral Satie (“The Drumhead”/195), the USS Yorktown (1968’s “Obsession”), acetychloline (from 1967’s “Immunity Syndrome”), a “fleetwide yellow alert” (“The Defector”/158), and Starbase 247 as Shanti’s home (“Redemption”/200). Rigel III, Geordi’s “future” home, is one of the few planets of that system not already mentioned as harboring a population.

“It’s not like it’s a perfect episode—it was done in quite a hurry—but I’m quite proud of it,” Piller said, “and proud that we’ve done something very much Star Trek, very much that deal with this strange universe, the universe of ideas.” “It’s the kind of show that only be done now, and by people who know it forward and backwards—and have done it for a long time,” Moore said. “It was a tall order but I think we pulled it off by the skin of our teeth,” Braga agreed. “And I got to blow up three Enterprises in this one!”

PRODUCTION STAFF CREDITS-SEASON 7

(In usual roll order; numbers in parentheses refer to studio’s episode numbers.)

EMMY NOMINEE: Best Dramatic Series

Casting: (*) Junie Lowery-Johnson, C.S.A.; ****Ron Surma

Music: John Debney (264); ***Jay Chattaway (253, 255-257, 259, 262, 266, 267, 270, 272, 275, 276); (*) Dennis McCarthy (254, 258, 260, 261, 263, 265, 268, 269, 271, 273, 274, 277-78) (EMMY NOMINEE, music/composition/dramatic underscore, series: “All Good Things …”/277-278).

Main Title Theme: (*) Jerry Goldsmith, (*) Alexander Courage

Director of Photography: ****** Jonathan West (all but 272, 273); Kris Krosskove (+/*******) (272, 273)

Production Designer: **Richard D. James (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, art direction: “Thine Own Self”/268)

Editor: ***J. P. Farrell (253); ****Steve Tucker (every third episode, 255-276); ******David Ramirez (every third episode, 254-278); Daryl Baskin (every third episode, 256-277); (latter two: EMMY CO-NOMINEE with supervising editor, single-camera editing, series: “All Good Things …”/277-278)

Unit Production Manager: ******Brad Yacobian (+/***

First Asst. Director: Jerry Fleck (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-277 except 275, plus 278); ******Adele G. Simmons (+/*) (all even-numbered episodes, 254-276); Richard Wells (275)

Second Asst. Director: ******Arlene f*ckai

Costume Designer: ***Robert Blackman (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, outstanding costumes, series: “All Good Things …”/277-278)

Co-Costume Designer: ( ) Abram Waterhouse (272278) (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, outstanding costumes, series: “All Good Things …”/277-278)

Set Decorator: **Jim Mees (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, art direction: “Thine Own Self”/268)

Visual effects Producer: (******) Dan Curry (+/*) (EMMY CO-WINNER, with staff, visual effects: “All Good Things …”/277-278)

Visual Effects Supervisor: ******Ronald B. Moore (+/*) (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-269, plus 277-278); ******David Stipes (all even-numbered episodes, 254-278 except 276, plus 277) (EMMY CO-WINNER, with staff, visual effects: “All Good Things …”/277-278); Michael Backauskas (+/*******) (271, 273); Philip Barberio (+/******) (275); Joe Bauer (+/******) (276).

Post Production Supervisor: ******Wendy Knoller (+/***)

Supervising Editor: (******) j. p. Farrell (+/***) (EMMY CO-NOMINEE with editors: single-camera editing, series, “All Good Things …”/ 277-278)

Senior Illustrator/Technical Consultant: (***) Rick Sternbach (+/*)

Scenic Artist Supervisor/Technical Consultant: (***) Michael Okuda (+/*)

Makeup Designed and Supervised: (*) Michael Westmore (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, with crew, makeup: “Genesis”/271)

Art Director: ******Andy Neskoromny (+/****) (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, art direction: “Thine Own Self”/268)

Set Designer: ***Gary Speckman

Visual Effects Coordinator: ******Phil Barberio (253-263, then “series”); Michael Backauskas (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-269, plus 277-278) (EMMY CO-NOMINEE with staff, visual effects: “All Good Things …”/277-278); Joe Bauer (all even-number episodes, 254-274, plus 277-278); Edward L. Williams (+/******)(275, 277-278)

Visual Effects Series Coordinator: Philip Barberio (+/ *******) (264-278)

Visual Effects Associate: ******Edward L. Williams (253-274, 276); Frederick G. Alba (277-278)

Script Supervisor: (*) Cosmo Genovese

Special Effects: (*) Dick Brownfield

Property Master: (*) Alan Sims

Construction Coordinator: (*) Al Smutko

Scenic Artist: ******Jim Magdaleno (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-277, plus 278); Wendy Drapanas (all even-numbered episodes, 254-278, plus 277)

Hair Designer: ******joy Zapata (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, with crew, hairstyling: “Firstborn”/ 273)

Makeup Artists: ***June Abston-Haymor; Gil Mosko (EMMY CO-NOMINEE, with crew, makeup: “Genesis”/271)

Hairstylist. ******patti Miller; Laura Connolly (258-278) (both EMMY CO-NOMINEES with crew, hairstyling: “Firstborn”/273); Michael Moore (253-55); Lee Crawford (256-257)

Wardrobe Supervisor: ****Carol Kunz (+/**)

Sound Mixer: Alan Bernard, C.A.S. (EMMY CO-WINNER, with crew, sound mixing: “Genesis”/ 271)

Camera Operator: Kris Krosskove (+/******)

Chief Lighting Technician: ******R. D. Knox

1st Company Grip: ******Steve Gausche

Key Costumers: **Kimberley Thompson (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-277, except 257, plus 278); Deborah Hall (even-numbered episodes, 254-276); ******Dave Powell (all even-numbered episodes, 254-276); ******Matt Hoffman (all odd-numbered episodes, 253-273); Carol Kunz (+/****) (257); Maurice Palinski (275, 277-278)

Music Editor: *Gerry Sackman; E. Gedney Webb (277-278)

Supervising Sound Editor: ******Mace Matiosian (+/ *) (EMMY NOMINEE, with crew, sound editing: “Genesis”/271)

Sound Editors: ******Miguel Rivera; ******Masanobu Tomita; ******Guy Tsujimoto; ******Ruth Adelman (all EMMY CO-NOMINEES, with crew, sound editing: “Genesis”/271)

Re-Recording Mixer: Chris Haire, C.A.S., Doug Davey, Richard Morrison, C.A.S. (all, credited only 277-278) (EMMY CO-WINNERS, with crew, sound mixing: “Genesis”/271)

Post Production Sound: Sound

Production Coordinator: (*) Diane Overdiek

Post Production Coordinator: ******Dawn Velazquez

Assistant Editors: Lisa de Moraes, Michael Westmore, Jr. (both 277-278)

Visual Effects Assistant Editor: Arthur J. Codron (277-278)

Production Associate: ******Kim Fitzgerald (+/****); Kristine Fernandes (+/****); Dave Rossi, Cheryl Gluckstern, Zayra Cabot (all 277-278)

Pre-Production Associate: ******Lolita Fatjo (+/**)

Casting Executive: (*) Helen Mossier, C.S.A.

Stunt Coordinator: (***) Dennis Madalone (253, 254, 256-260, 262, 266-278)

Location Manager: ( White (253, 256, 260, 265, 277-278)

Original Set Design: (*) Herman Zimmerman

Science Consultant: Andre Bormanis

Filmed with PANAVISION Lenses and Cameras: (**)

Monitors: (**) Sony Corp. of America (253, 256-257, 271, 272-278)

Special Visual Effects: (*) Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd.

Motion Control Photography: (*) Image “G” (253-276); Erik Nash (277-278) (EMMY CO-WINNER, with staff, visual effects: “All Good Things …”/277-278)

Video Optical Effects: Digital Magic

Special Video Compositing: (*) CIS Hollywood (253-276); Don Lee (277-278)

On-Line Editing: John Carroll (277-278)

Editing Facilities: (*) Unitel Video (253-276)

The number of * denotes a returning company or staffer’s initial season of credit in that position; ( ) denoted they are an original credited or co-credited person in that position; a ( + ) following indicates prior TNG work in another position