Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-01: Encounter at Farpoint - Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's the final part of my three-part Encounter at Farpoint review. If you want to jump to earlier parts you can click here: PART ONE or here PART TWO.

It's not really the most interesting looking title card I'm afraid, especially if you're seeing it three times in a row. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the only episode of all of Star Trek to just have a starfield in the background while its title is up and nothing else, but I could definitely be wrong about that. On the plus side at least it has a title for me to show. For later live-action spin-offs like Star Trek: Discovery all I can show up here is the series logo, though I'm crossing my fingers Strange New Worlds will bring them back.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to recap the entire episode and maybe even mention things from earlier episodes and movies. I won't spoil anything that comes after though.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-01: Encounter at Farpoint - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still going through Encounter at Farpoint, the very first episode of seminal syndicated sci-fi series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I feel like Star Trek: The Next Generation probably shouldn't work as a title, but it does for me. It helps that 'generation' is a sciency word and 'next' has an X in it. Plus it's arguably better than just naming the series after the setting like the next four series did (Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Discovery). Though it was really only the next generation in real world terms, as it was made two decades after the original show but set eight decades after the last movie.

This is the second part of a three part review by the way, so if you're on the wrong part and you want to go back to the start you should click here: PART ONE.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to recap the entire episode and maybe even mention things from earlier episodes and movies. I won't spoil anything that comes after though.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1-01: Encounter at Farpoint - Part 1

Episode:

1

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Writer:

D. C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry

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Director:

Corey Allen

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Air Date:

28-Sep-1987

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the 106th story in the Star Trek franchise: Encounter at Farpoint! That's such an old school sci-fi title; it sounds like it's from a tie-in novel.

Encounter at Farpoint is also the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which itself was the first of the live-action Trek spin-offs. The Rick Berman-era of Trek started here. 15.7 million people tuned in for the episodes in the US, and 11.5 stuck around for episode two, The Naked Now. The series then hovered around that level for the rest of the run, with even season seven pulling in 11 million, so it's no bloody wonder they kept making more spin-offs.

I got that information from Wikipedia so you know it's all true. Though hang on, Wikipedia claims that The Naked Now is actually the third episode, not the second. The reason for this is that Encounter at Farpoint is a two-hour telefilm that can be split into two parts. Though I'm going to be splitting this review into three parts, because I've got a lot to talk about. It's a fairly important episode!

CBS spent a lot of money to go back to the original negatives and remaster the entire series, and it really looks fantastic now in HD. It's one of the best remasters I've seen, it's awesome. Though you can just go to TrekCore if all you're after is beautiful high resolution screencaps, you don't need me for that. So instead I've decided to show off the authentic fuzzy 1987 version of the episode...because I've spent money buying the ancient DVDs and I'm determined to get some use out of them. You should be grateful I'm not showing shots captured from a VHS tape recorded off BBC 2 really.

I should also give you a SPOILER WARNING as I'm going to give away absolutely everything that happens in this story. I might also spoil things from other Trek stories that came out before 1987 (so The Man Trap to Star Trek IV: The One with the Whales), but that's as far as my spoilers will go.

Babylon 5 2-04: A Distant Star

Episode:

26

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Writer:

D.C. Fontana

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Air Date:

23-Nov-1994

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm continuing my descent into season 2 of Babylon 5 with the fourth episode: A Distant Star.

This is the first episode this season written by someone other than creator J. Michael Straczynski and the last B5 script from OG Star Trek veteran D.C. Fontana. There'll be a lot of 'last script's coming up over the next few months, as the series became too serialised for outside writers to produce standalone stories any more. That seems like a strange situation seeing as modern serialised TV series are written by multiple writers just fine, but I guess most of them haven't got an elaborate five year arc planned out in advance.

Okay what I'll be doing here is taking a few screencaps from the episode and then writing my commentary underneath, so this will include SPOILERS for the entire episode. I'll also be talking about the episodes leading up to it, so there'll be spoilers for them too. But as far as I'm concerned it's November 1994 right now so I can't say anything about what's coming next.