Encounter at Farpoint

I've been talking a lot of Star Trek with friends lately. There are a handful of later season episodes that were begin bandied about as examples of ST writing at its finest, including Darmok, a personal favorite... even if the episode itself doesn't quite deliver on strength of its premise fully. 

It occurred to me that I had access to the entire show, and that I hadn't really watched 'the entire show' since it originally aired.  Skipping Encounter at Farpoint wasn't an option, as Q was a highlight.

You have to understand, I watched at least the first four seasons as they aired, religiously. Not personally religiously, but because my family were pretty die hard 'trekkies'... to this day I am aware of the two factions of Fandom, the Trekkies and the Trekkers, but I'll be damned if I can find more difference between them than the name of choice.  

Encounter at Farpoint is... bad.  Really bad. Rewatching it I realized that John de Lancie probably saved The Next Generation, singlehandedly, from oblivion.   Not unexpectedly, a large number of simple problems were artifacts of it being a Pilot Episode. I'm talking about exposition dumps, massive overuse of musical cues and drastically overamped scenes to demonstrate this or that facet of the new crew.  

But not all of them. Take Q himself. His introduction is handled incredibly sloppily, a callback to the Original Series, but without any real setup.   He's a 'designated nemesis', which is simply piss poor writing. However, he sells it very well so we forgive the writers for being hacks.   If you must rematch this episode, pay attention to the opening bit, where John de Lancie is changing costumes. Its practically an actor's workshop of using subtle changes in behavior to sell entire characters instead of relying on the costumes or dialog, and given that he's just playing one character doing 'dress up' its notionally unnecessary. Only, without it I don't think we would a have bought Q as a proper nemesis at all. 

Curiously: The court Announcer is one of my favorite under appreciated actors, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, in what IMDB labels as his fourth acting gig, after an episode of MacGuyver! Huzzah!

Seeing the entire episode again, I was reminded of something that had stood out even to my young self on first watching: Tasha Yar, while hot, was a terrible character.  My older self isn't quite as sure she was as hot as I thought back then... old crushes don't always stand up to scrutiny... who knew? Of course, since I'm set to watch Naked Now in a little bit I may change my mind (I seem to recall my voice dropped an octave after she seduced Data, a couple of years ahead of schedule...), and Denise Crosby did herself no favors as an actress playing her, though I recall seeing her more recently in her Romulan character and finding her much improved.

I note that Marina Sirtis is Greek by way of London, which is all well and good, but for some reason discussions about her casting reference her Exotic Looks. Greeks are Exotic now?  Oy.  Of course, it could have been worse: She could have played Macha Hernandez, the character that eventually became Tasha Yar.

Of course, Farpoint has one thing going on for it that later episode lacked: The return of the short skirts for women, notably Marina Sirtis.

On the other hand, it had something that thankfully disappeared: Short Skirts for men!  The fuck??? 

Yup, there is a random dude in Engineering wearing a Starfleet Uniform dress, and you see him again (or another dude, maybe) evacuating to the Saucer Section during separation, still in that fucking dress.   

Let me note for the record, however, that if Humanity is ever being judged on its fitness by some powerful alien creature that I do not want Picard as my advocate.  He almost seems to agree with Q about how pathetic and savage humans are in general... at least up until the Federation came into being.  What a prick.

No, seriously: Picard is an asshole in this episode.  Pretty much the first thing he does when he meets his first officer is punish him by making him manually attach the saucer back in place, something even Data thinks is incredibly difficult and risky, and later he simply calls it routine.  He more or less tries to fire Dr Crusher her first day on the job... pretty much everyone pulls rank and ceremony bullshit to the other crew members, but Picard is the worst example of 'I'm the Captain, so I'm gonna be a dick to remind you that I'm the boss' I've seen in a sympathetic character in some time!

Lord help me, but I'm not sure I will be able to make it through seven seasons of this...