Star Trek: The Next Generation's "All Good Things..." closes out seven-year TV run, sets up the TNG movies
Capt. Picard: We are what we are, and we're doing the best we can. It is not for you to set the standards by which we should be judged!
Q: Oh, but it is, and we have. Time may be eternal, Captain, but our patience is not. It's time to put an end to your trek through the stars, make room for other more worthy species.
Capt. Picard: You're going to deny us travel through space?
Q: [laughs] No! You obtuse piece of flotsam! You're to be denied existence. Humanity's fate has been sealed. You will be destroyed.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on September 28, 1987, I – like many Star Trek fans – was eager to see if series creator Gene Roddenberry could pull off the daunting trick of continuing the story he began in the 1966-1969 original.
At the time, Paramount Pictures had already released a quartet of feature films based on (and starring the cast of)Star Trek: The Original Series. In fact, the success of director Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as a crossover box office hit convinced the studio’s television division that a new show, perhaps set 100 years after the first Starshp Enterprise’s five-year mission, would find an audience if it was a syndicated series.
The challenge Roddenberry had was enormous. Most fans at the time identified Star Trek as a story centered on Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Nimoy), Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and the rest of the original Enterprise crew. Could that fan base embrace an all-new ensemble which played an all-new crew on an even more advanced incarnation of the legendary Enterprise?
Of course, I can’t speak for all Star Trek fans (or even for the ones I knew at the time), but despite some misgivings about the new show’s look, style and setting (a starship in which families of the crew were allowed to live, the initial absence of familiar aliens such as the Vulcans and Klingons, and the introduction of the less-than-impressive Ferengi as the intended antagonists to Capt. Picard and the Federation), I watched the series throughout its entire seven-season run.
Now, even though I liked The Next Generation enough to watch it on a regular basis, I was initially more of an Original Series/Capt. Kirk fan, partly because that’s what I was already familiar with and partly because the first few seasons were rife with writer/producer turnover and saddled with Roddenberry’s dogmatic insistence that there would be no interpersonal tensions among the Enterprise crew.
Many of the Original Series writers left the show halfway through Season One due to creative differences with Roddenberry, and as a result the show didn’t really find its footing until Rick Berman replaced “The Great Bird of the Galaxy” as the real decision maker. (Gene retained the “Executive Producer” credit until his death in 1991,but Berman oversaw the day-to-day operations of Star Trek: The Next Generation and most of its subsequent spinoffs.)
However, after the third season’s cliffhanger The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and the fourth season’s Spock-is-back story arc (Unification, Parts I and II), I embraced the series as part of the entire Star Trek legend.
So when Paramount announced that Star Trek: The Next Generation would end its run on syndication after 178 episodes to make the “jump” to the feature film realm in 1994, I was torn. Sure, nothing lasts forever, not even TV shows, and at least we fans would revisit the 24th Century not only every few years at the movies but also with not one but two 1990s spinoffs – Deep Space Nine and Voyager. But to not see new weekly adventures featuring Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the Enterprise-D….that was hard to take at first.
All Good Things…(Parts I and II)
Episodes 177 and 178 (Originally aired as a two-hour TV movie but split in two parts for reruns)
Original Air Date: May 23, 1994
Stardate 479988.1 (Earth Calendar Date 2370)
Written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Counselor Deanna Troi: [exiting the holodeck] That was an incredible program!
Lieutenant Worf: I am glad you approve. I have always found the Black Sea at night to be a most stimulating experience.
Counselor Deanna Troi: Worf - we were walking barefoot on the beach, with balalaika music in the air, ocean breeze washing over us, stars in the sky, a full moon rising - and the most you can say is "stimulating"?
Lieutenant Worf: It was... very stimulating.
In 1994, after seven successful seasons in syndication and with two spinoff series either airing or in pre-production, Paramount decided to end Star Trek: The Next Generation's ongoing television journey and send Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-D to the big screen.
The challenge facing writers Ronald D. Moore (the SciFi Channel's Battlestar Galactica) and Brannon Braga was how to write a series finale without making it seem as though there would be no more Next Generation adventures or give away anything about the upcoming Star Trek: Generations, which they were already co-writing.
Braga and Moore must have come up with many story ideas (closing the Duras sisters' story arc, or maybe one last battle with the Borg) until coming up with the two-hour time travel-related All Good Things..., in which Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) is caught up in one of Q's (John De Lancie) mind-bending sojourns which has the Enterprise'scommander switching back and forth across three time periods...past, present, and future.
To be more precise, Picard is bouncing across three distinct time periods. One is the future 25 years away; Picard has retired from Starfleet and become an ambassador, then gone on to become a farmer in the south of France. In this time period, Data (Brent Spiner) is a physics professor at Cambridge, Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) is the captain of the USS Pasteur, a medical ship, Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) has real eyes rather than his VISOR, and Worf (Michael Dorn) and Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) -now a Starfleet admiral - are at odds with each other.
In this version of the future, Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) is dead.
Another time period is set just seven years in the past, shortly before Encounter at Farpoint, when Picard assumes command of the Enterprise-D. In his bizarre time jump to this era, Picard encounters the now-dead Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) and the reassigned Miles O'Brien, and he has to be careful not to pollute the timeline by letting them know their eventual fates.
Also in this time period, Picard is back in Q's version of a 21st Century court, where the good captain had been told humanity itself was on trial; if Q found humans guilty of various crimes against the universe, then the entire species would be doomed to an uncertain end.
Q: The trial never ended, Captain. We never reached a verdict. But now we have. You're guilty.
Capt. Picard: Guilty of what?
Q: Of being inferior. Seven years ago, I said we'd be watching you, and we have been - hoping that your ape-like race would demonstrate some growth, give some indication that your minds had room for expansion. But what have we seen instead? You, worrying about Commander Riker's career. Listening to Counselor Troi's pedantic psychobabble. Indulging Data in his witless exploration of humanity.
Capt. Picard: We've journeyed to countless new worlds. We've contacted new species. We have expanded our understanding of the universe.
Q: In your own paltry, limited way. You have no idea how far you still have to go. But instead of using the last seven years to change and to grow, you have squandered them.
Finally, Picard is also in the here and now, trying to determine any common thread that ties the three time periods together so he can save humanity...and prevent himself from losing his mind.
The single common element in all three time streams is a strange anti-time anomaly in the Devron system, a sector of the Alpha Quadrant located in the Romulan Star Empire.
Paradoxically, the anomaly is tiny in its 2395 form, but it grows larger in size as time flows backwards to the past.
My Take: This two-part episode is perhaps one of the most complex stories ever depicted in any of the Star Trektelevision shows, involving time travel, the war of wits between Picard and Q, interstellar tensions involving – across three time periods, no less! – the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans, and perhaps even the end of the Universe as far as humanity is concerned.
All this complexity – which I will leave for a new viewer to discover without any more spoilers in this review – stems from the producers’ realization that (a) Star Trek: The Original Series had not been given a proper series finale when it was canceled by NBC in 1969 and that (b) All Good Things…had to sum up the show’s TV incarnationwithout being the end of the Enterprise-D crew’s “trek through the stars.”
Thus, Braga and Moore try to give the episode more bang for its buck, not only by writing a teleplay which features scenes which require lots of visual effects (the introduction of the medical ship USS Pasteur and a three-engined alternative future Enterprise-D in the 2395 timestream), but also links to prior episodes from the series, including appearances by Colm Meaney (O’Brien) and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and other recurring characters, including Romulan Commander Tomalak (the late Andreas Kotsulas).
Director Winrich Kolbe (who has worked on other TV series, including 24) gets great performances from the ensemble cast and guest actors, a feat made more impressive because the regulars – especially Stewart, Frakes, Spiner, Burton, Sirtis, Dorn and McFadden - were also shooting footage for David Carson’s Star Trek: Generations.
Though everyone has his or her moment in the limelight, it is perhaps worth noting that Stewart definitely turns in a stellar performance in All Good Things…. Star Trek: The Next Generation was not a traditional leading-man kind of TV series like its predecessor, but Jean-Luc Picard and his cool-yet-adventurous demeanor made him the heart and soul of his Enterprise, so it’s fitting that Patrick Stewart gets such a huge role here.
As I noted earlier, All Good Things.... is the first TV series finale of the entire Star Trek franchise, and even though Trek fans knew Generations was in the works, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was still on the air and Star Trek: Voyager was due in less than a year's time, it does have a bittersweet vibe to it even if it has no finality to it. It is well-written, nicely paced and doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence by becoming a mere shoot 'em up story with an enemy or a "bring the ship back to Spacedock" tale.
Recommended: Yes
Q: Oh, but it is, and we have. Time may be eternal, Captain, but our patience is not. It's time to put an end to your trek through the stars, make room for other more worthy species.
Capt. Picard: You're going to deny us travel through space?
Q: [laughs] No! You obtuse piece of flotsam! You're to be denied existence. Humanity's fate has been sealed. You will be destroyed.
When Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on September 28, 1987, I – like many Star Trek fans – was eager to see if series creator Gene Roddenberry could pull off the daunting trick of continuing the story he began in the 1966-1969 original.
At the time, Paramount Pictures had already released a quartet of feature films based on (and starring the cast of)Star Trek: The Original Series. In fact, the success of director Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as a crossover box office hit convinced the studio’s television division that a new show, perhaps set 100 years after the first Starshp Enterprise’s five-year mission, would find an audience if it was a syndicated series.
The challenge Roddenberry had was enormous. Most fans at the time identified Star Trek as a story centered on Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Nimoy), Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and the rest of the original Enterprise crew. Could that fan base embrace an all-new ensemble which played an all-new crew on an even more advanced incarnation of the legendary Enterprise?
Of course, I can’t speak for all Star Trek fans (or even for the ones I knew at the time), but despite some misgivings about the new show’s look, style and setting (a starship in which families of the crew were allowed to live, the initial absence of familiar aliens such as the Vulcans and Klingons, and the introduction of the less-than-impressive Ferengi as the intended antagonists to Capt. Picard and the Federation), I watched the series throughout its entire seven-season run.
Now, even though I liked The Next Generation enough to watch it on a regular basis, I was initially more of an Original Series/Capt. Kirk fan, partly because that’s what I was already familiar with and partly because the first few seasons were rife with writer/producer turnover and saddled with Roddenberry’s dogmatic insistence that there would be no interpersonal tensions among the Enterprise crew.
Many of the Original Series writers left the show halfway through Season One due to creative differences with Roddenberry, and as a result the show didn’t really find its footing until Rick Berman replaced “The Great Bird of the Galaxy” as the real decision maker. (Gene retained the “Executive Producer” credit until his death in 1991,but Berman oversaw the day-to-day operations of Star Trek: The Next Generation and most of its subsequent spinoffs.)
However, after the third season’s cliffhanger The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and the fourth season’s Spock-is-back story arc (Unification, Parts I and II), I embraced the series as part of the entire Star Trek legend.
So when Paramount announced that Star Trek: The Next Generation would end its run on syndication after 178 episodes to make the “jump” to the feature film realm in 1994, I was torn. Sure, nothing lasts forever, not even TV shows, and at least we fans would revisit the 24th Century not only every few years at the movies but also with not one but two 1990s spinoffs – Deep Space Nine and Voyager. But to not see new weekly adventures featuring Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the Enterprise-D….that was hard to take at first.
All Good Things…(Parts I and II)
Episodes 177 and 178 (Originally aired as a two-hour TV movie but split in two parts for reruns)
Original Air Date: May 23, 1994
Stardate 479988.1 (Earth Calendar Date 2370)
Written by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Counselor Deanna Troi: [exiting the holodeck] That was an incredible program!
Lieutenant Worf: I am glad you approve. I have always found the Black Sea at night to be a most stimulating experience.
Counselor Deanna Troi: Worf - we were walking barefoot on the beach, with balalaika music in the air, ocean breeze washing over us, stars in the sky, a full moon rising - and the most you can say is "stimulating"?
Lieutenant Worf: It was... very stimulating.
In 1994, after seven successful seasons in syndication and with two spinoff series either airing or in pre-production, Paramount decided to end Star Trek: The Next Generation's ongoing television journey and send Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-D to the big screen.
The challenge facing writers Ronald D. Moore (the SciFi Channel's Battlestar Galactica) and Brannon Braga was how to write a series finale without making it seem as though there would be no more Next Generation adventures or give away anything about the upcoming Star Trek: Generations, which they were already co-writing.
Braga and Moore must have come up with many story ideas (closing the Duras sisters' story arc, or maybe one last battle with the Borg) until coming up with the two-hour time travel-related All Good Things..., in which Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) is caught up in one of Q's (John De Lancie) mind-bending sojourns which has the Enterprise'scommander switching back and forth across three time periods...past, present, and future.
To be more precise, Picard is bouncing across three distinct time periods. One is the future 25 years away; Picard has retired from Starfleet and become an ambassador, then gone on to become a farmer in the south of France. In this time period, Data (Brent Spiner) is a physics professor at Cambridge, Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) is the captain of the USS Pasteur, a medical ship, Geordi LaForge (LeVar Burton) has real eyes rather than his VISOR, and Worf (Michael Dorn) and Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) -now a Starfleet admiral - are at odds with each other.
In this version of the future, Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) is dead.
Another time period is set just seven years in the past, shortly before Encounter at Farpoint, when Picard assumes command of the Enterprise-D. In his bizarre time jump to this era, Picard encounters the now-dead Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) and the reassigned Miles O'Brien, and he has to be careful not to pollute the timeline by letting them know their eventual fates.
Also in this time period, Picard is back in Q's version of a 21st Century court, where the good captain had been told humanity itself was on trial; if Q found humans guilty of various crimes against the universe, then the entire species would be doomed to an uncertain end.
Q: The trial never ended, Captain. We never reached a verdict. But now we have. You're guilty.
Capt. Picard: Guilty of what?
Q: Of being inferior. Seven years ago, I said we'd be watching you, and we have been - hoping that your ape-like race would demonstrate some growth, give some indication that your minds had room for expansion. But what have we seen instead? You, worrying about Commander Riker's career. Listening to Counselor Troi's pedantic psychobabble. Indulging Data in his witless exploration of humanity.
Capt. Picard: We've journeyed to countless new worlds. We've contacted new species. We have expanded our understanding of the universe.
Q: In your own paltry, limited way. You have no idea how far you still have to go. But instead of using the last seven years to change and to grow, you have squandered them.
Finally, Picard is also in the here and now, trying to determine any common thread that ties the three time periods together so he can save humanity...and prevent himself from losing his mind.
The single common element in all three time streams is a strange anti-time anomaly in the Devron system, a sector of the Alpha Quadrant located in the Romulan Star Empire.
Paradoxically, the anomaly is tiny in its 2395 form, but it grows larger in size as time flows backwards to the past.
My Take: This two-part episode is perhaps one of the most complex stories ever depicted in any of the Star Trektelevision shows, involving time travel, the war of wits between Picard and Q, interstellar tensions involving – across three time periods, no less! – the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans, and perhaps even the end of the Universe as far as humanity is concerned.
All this complexity – which I will leave for a new viewer to discover without any more spoilers in this review – stems from the producers’ realization that (a) Star Trek: The Original Series had not been given a proper series finale when it was canceled by NBC in 1969 and that (b) All Good Things…had to sum up the show’s TV incarnationwithout being the end of the Enterprise-D crew’s “trek through the stars.”
Thus, Braga and Moore try to give the episode more bang for its buck, not only by writing a teleplay which features scenes which require lots of visual effects (the introduction of the medical ship USS Pasteur and a three-engined alternative future Enterprise-D in the 2395 timestream), but also links to prior episodes from the series, including appearances by Colm Meaney (O’Brien) and Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) and other recurring characters, including Romulan Commander Tomalak (the late Andreas Kotsulas).
Director Winrich Kolbe (who has worked on other TV series, including 24) gets great performances from the ensemble cast and guest actors, a feat made more impressive because the regulars – especially Stewart, Frakes, Spiner, Burton, Sirtis, Dorn and McFadden - were also shooting footage for David Carson’s Star Trek: Generations.
Though everyone has his or her moment in the limelight, it is perhaps worth noting that Stewart definitely turns in a stellar performance in All Good Things…. Star Trek: The Next Generation was not a traditional leading-man kind of TV series like its predecessor, but Jean-Luc Picard and his cool-yet-adventurous demeanor made him the heart and soul of his Enterprise, so it’s fitting that Patrick Stewart gets such a huge role here.
As I noted earlier, All Good Things.... is the first TV series finale of the entire Star Trek franchise, and even though Trek fans knew Generations was in the works, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was still on the air and Star Trek: Voyager was due in less than a year's time, it does have a bittersweet vibe to it even if it has no finality to it. It is well-written, nicely paced and doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence by becoming a mere shoot 'em up story with an enemy or a "bring the ship back to Spacedock" tale.
Recommended: Yes
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