[Dentari]

Original Air Date: 28th September 1987
Series: The Next Generation

SUMMARY:
Captain Jean-Luc Picard leads the crew of the USS Enterprise-D on its maiden voyage, to examine a new planetary station for trade with the Federation. On the way, they encounter Q, an omnipotent extra-dimensional being, who challenges humanity as a barbaric, inferior species. Picard and his new crew must hold off Q's challenge and solve the puzzle of Farpoint station on Deneb IV, a base that is far more than it seems to be.

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This is the first of what I hope to be a long run of episode discussion threads. Each individual thread will be dedicated to the events of a single episode.

In this thread, members can discuss Encounter at Farpoint, Part 1 in depth. Do you remember the first time you watched this episode? Who was your favourite character? Do you think it was a strong start for the series? I hope to see an interesting discussion naturally develop in this thread over the next few days. Each week a new episode will be addressed in a similar thread; together we will work our way through episodes from every series.

[Intrepid]

Those clothes tho....

[Mark Okuda]

I find it hard to nitpick Encounter at Farpoint as it being the first episode of the Series. The things i remember about that episode was the only appearance of the short skirt uniform on Troi Leading off strong with one of the few times you see the saucer seperation procedure.

[Allan Hood]

When I was a kid, I loved the episode. My favorite character was Riker and Q. This episode introduced so many concepts to the series, I was really excited. Q, the trial of humanity, the colony/space-borne aliens, the dude with the ax but Riker didn't flinch, an android, Admiral McCoy, the HOLODECK, and the saucer separation.

I remember hiding behind the couch during certain parts of the episode. I also couldn't believe that someone could put humanity on trial; I didn't know of humanity's history at this point and have always looked at humanity's choices with a sharper eye ever since.

[Bridger]

I remember me sitting in front of the TV with an open mouth seeing this beautiful starship doing the saucer separation for the first time, and thinking this this is so cool!

[Tain]

With episode one, I really enjoyed that it was there first mission and no one really knew each other, aside from Riker and Troi. It allowed the audience to grow with the show as it and its characters developed.

I may have been one of the only people who did, but I really liked Wesley and identified with him. He was just a little older then I was at the time and it helped me imagine what it would have been like to be on the Enterprise.

While the episode has become dated, I still enjoy watching it today. Season 1 had some pretty good episodes, but overall the show doesn't hit its stride until Riker grows his beard and ditches the baby face..lol

[KickKat]

This episode (and the next) always annoyed me, not because it was bad, but because the message was too subtle and was lost under and avalanche of emotions like "Q bad. Human good." and "Suck it, you God wanna be. You can't have our starship and your hat is stupid. *High-5s all around*"

It played out like some big bad super aliens decided to pick on humans for no reason and the new captain, who needed to somehow replace Kirk, awesomely beat the odds and won the day for humanity using nothing but human-grade ingenuity, reasoned thought and compassion.

Yeah. No. Humans "put on trial". Humans then stumbled around for a while trying to figure out what was going on. One human eventually incorrectly made a connection between stuff happening on a planet and the trial. The human pulled a positive outcome for the whole planet situation out of his ass only because of his earlier incorrect assumption. The super alien was well aware of this too as the captain guy pointed at his actions back at the trial going "see? see?" The alien leaves and waits for the penny to drop. The penny fails to drop in a weightless environment. The humans fly off to their next mission. Everyone in the galaxy forgets this ever happened by the end of the week.



I don't have time to write a full thing of supporting statements this moment, but for now here's a list of supporting topics.



1. Q was being honest with us

Humans really were in some deep doo-doo. They were probably in it up to their noses, but they couldn't smell it. The Continuum really was very worried about humans. Some probably were scared of us on some level. Our past up to that point did not say wonderful things about us, but the Q were concerned most by what we were doing at the "present" time. The trial was a manifistation of the Q's feeling that something needed to be done but not being sure what to do and Q taking it from there.


2. Q's opinion of humanity was accurate

Humans thought they were enlightened because they stopped killing each other en mass, adopted a more peaceful philosophy and strictly adhered to a try-not-to-shoot-first policy for conflict resolution, and formed a club that others could join to share in their enlightenment. Internal peace was maintained by finding civilizations outside of the club to fight. They did make an effort to fight ones that were probably mean anyway.

OK, that's pretty snarky, but what else did they do? For the humans, it was a lot of work and more sacrifices. For humans, rapidly recovering from a devastating series of events and learning such a new inter-cooperation with each other and alien cultures was nothing but monumental. Humans deserved to be proud of all of that. Unfortunately, humans were smug and arrogant about it. They were preachy about it to others and not in a, "I understand what you are going though, but there is hope." kind of way, but a "We figured how to stop being that stupid a long time ago. What's your problem, stupid?" They were getting a little ahead of themselves.

Q shows up and reminds them that they were ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s through most of their history. He doesn't aknowledge any accomplishements, but from his point of view, I guess all they have accomplished is that they learned how to be all over the place. He finds them arrogant, prideful, willful, egocentric, aggressive, and limited in their thinking. He is obviously worked up about something, but I find it hard to believe, even knowing nothing else, that he is upset over what mortals do in general and Humans in particular. So, Q doesn't care about their technology and is instead keenly focused on their social, intellectual and emotional states, which he says have not changed at all despite what humans believe.

Why does he care? While he acts like .. well, Q, his warning seem pretty dire. If whatever they are doing is serious enough to get the attention Q and his buddies, why isn't it serious enough to just snap them away and be done with it? It's easy to pick up the general attitude the Q have about the worth of lower life forms just by talking to them, yet not only do the Q not stomp out the human problem on the spot, they make a personal appearance to warn them and give them a chance to do ... something. That they are allowed to do anything at all considering how seriously the Q seem to be taking this says something. This is not just Q ♥♥♥♥ing around either. Well, it is, but he is also there representing the Continuum. If they wanted to the humans gone, I don't think Q would get any playtime with them at all.


3. Q really liked humans .. like, for reals <3


4. Q was honestly trying to help


5. Q knew wasn't going to hold our hands


6. Picard proved nothing and won nothing


7. Q's real motive was for Picard to realize #6 on his own


8. Picard didn't, adding validity to #2




That's a loaded list right there. It's full of plenty to argue about, but I will have to finish this later. Sorry =-/

[Dentari]

Those clothes tho....

I always wished that Q appeared in those robes more often to be honest. They suit his character really well.

[Infinity]

I always wished that Q appeared in those robes more often to be honest. They suit his character really well.

Agreed, whenever I think of Q I just imagine him in that outfit sitting on that chair.

I'd better get on topic, silly Infinity!

My first time watching TNG was probably around late December 2013. I had never seen any Star Trek series before (except 5 minutes of TNG at 7am on a random british TV channel years ago.) and I needed a show to watch, I fired up Netflix and looked through the Science Fiction category and there it was; staring me in the face. Star Trek - TNG. I thought, why not give it a try (I did have a couple of doubts if it was worth watching in my mind since it was a fairly old show by 2010, let alone 2013.) I heard my mother say that she watched Star Trek back in the day so how bad could it be if my mother liked it! I remember how cool it was seeing the opening sequence for the first time and it had my attention so I watched more of the first episode. When they introduced Wesley & Dr Beverly Crusher at Farpoint Station I was happy to see that it was someone around my age at the time. Someone I could relate to.

Let's move on a little bit to the saucer separation otherwise I'm just going to ramble like Infinity always does!

I was a geek back in 2013, and I still am, having just recently watched Stargate SG-1 for the first time ever but that's for another place. Seeing this starship seperate made my inner geek just squeal and I definitely wanted to continue watching this show and see what other technical marvels this show possesed. I was pretty amazed when the computer of the Enterprise gave Commander Riker instructions to where he could find the Holodeck, and my. having never seen anything like the Holodeck on any other Sci-Fi show I have watched previously, it was pretty cool to look at and to just imagine what cool things it was capable of generating.


(Only clip I could find of the computer directional thingamajig)

Time to wrap this up before I go on a tangent.

All in all, as a kid who first watched TNG Encounter at Farpoint in 2013 it still amazed me and had me hooked on Star Trek TNG, and later (when I found out they existed) the spin off series of Star Trek. Pretty glad I made that choice a little over three years ago to sit down and watch TNG, otherwise I never would have discovered other shows like BSG, Stargate and Firefly. Star Trek really ignited my passion and love for Science Fiction shows, and so Science Fiction will always be one of my favourite genre of Movies/Television Shows and nothing will ever change that.