It’s a very special day here at the Know-It-All Nation. It’s the birthday of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thirty-six years ago today, in 1987, the very first episode, Encounter at Farpoint, aired, and I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about it. So I’m doing a little something special. Today I’m eight years old, it’s the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and we’re going to treat it like that’s the episode we’re reviewing.

Welcome to the very first episode of Mr. Know-It-All reviews. We’re reviewing the brand new pilot for this new reboot of Star Trek, called Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a fun little reboot. I kind of dig it, and it’s one of those things where the more you talk through it, the more you start to get a feel for it. I thought it was pretty rad. The episode’s got everything you’d want from Star Trek, plus they really took their time to make everything feel like old Star Trek. I guess you’d call that old show the Original Series. Yeah. The Original Series.

The Music, the Captain and the Guy From PBS

I’m not sure how you felt, but I know how I felt when I saw and heard that music. Those of you listening keenly at home are going to remember that was the music from the original motion picture, the one they’ve been using in the movies. That was the end credits music, and that’s where they got their theme song from.

This British actor named Patrick Stewart has been brought over, and he’s classically trained. All of the actors are somewhat familiar. Anybody who’s grown up watching PBS will recognize the guy currently at the helm. He’s got this thing on his face, he’s blind, and he’s played by LeVar Burton. Geordi La Forge. What a fun character. You’ve never really seen a character like that, with some sort of ocular impediment thing, so hopefully something fun comes of that.

The characters are all kind of unique, and you can definitely tell this was a setup episode, meaning we got to spend a little bit of time with each of them. It was a two-part episode, the first part last week and the second part this week. Having seen the thing, I’m excited for where it’s going. I know there’s been a whole bunch of criticism out there from various people when it comes to Star Trek. Me, I’m so excited I went out and sewed my own uniform, made my own com badge, and I’m ready to go.

A Maiden Voyage, With Families Aboard

The episode starts with the Enterprise on its maiden voyage. They’re going to pick up some people from an outpost appropriately named Farpoint, and we cut back and forth between Farpoint and what’s happening on the ship. Picard gets introduced to the ship and you get this nice long walk through of it. It’s gorgeous, by the way. And there are apparently families aboard this ship, which I found pretty interesting. They spent a lot of time with each character setting up what’s to come.

A couple of interesting things about the uniforms: they’ve switched departments. In the Original Series, command wore gold. In this one, operations and engineering apparently wear gold, and the red shirts, which were always security, well, now security is gold also, and command is red. It’s very confusing, but I think we’ll get the hang of it over time.

Riker is going to be the commander. He’s this clean cut guy, Jonathan Frakes plays him, and he has a very Captain Kirk type of swagger. They’ve done something interesting here and split it up. Picard is the captain, but he seems like an older, statesman type of person, and Riker is the young, swaggery type. There’s even this one shot where he asks for directions to some place on the ship and this one officer checks him out, and I was like, really?

Unlike the Original Series, where we kind of jumped in and Kirk, Spock and all those people already knew each other, we’re getting to see these people at the ground floor. Picard’s testing Riker right out of the gate. It’s actually a pretty smart decision in my opinion. We’re getting to see them start this whole journey.

Q Puts Humanity on Trial

The whole thing really centers around the fact that on the way to Farpoint they meet a super being, an alien of immense power.

They have this one character named Troi. She’s from an alien race they just introduced called the Betazoids, and she’s empathic. I made the joke to my wife that she’s basically a walking mood ring, because she’s all like, “Pain. Such pain.” Then later on she’s so happy and giddy at this whole thing.

So they get put on trial by this big amazing person. He calls himself Q. It reminds me of the Squire of Gothos episode from the Original Series. It’s this being who can just make things happen. I guess he’s omnipotent, or all powerful, whatever, but he’s just kind of doing stuff, and he accuses humanity of being dirty and terrible and whatever else.

And apparently Picard keeps giving him ideas. Picard’s like, oh, you need to put us on trial, and Q’s like, that’s a brilliant idea, and he puts them on trial and sends them to an old style court setting. Then Picard says, look, judge us based on what we are now, and Q goes, okay, fine, I’m going to do exactly that, this mission. So Picard’s giving him fun ideas the whole way around.

Farpoint, the Apples and the Space Jellyfish

Then we cut to Farpoint, and at Farpoint all kinds of magical stuff is happening, things that are unexplainable. Riker goes in to talk to the guy who’s running the place, and the guy is definitely uncool. A complete wastoid, if not a butt face. The guy’s terrible. He’s so gnarly I was just like, Riker, why don’t you just tell him to eat your shorts, bro? He’s utterly detestable. I’m not a fan.

At one point this guy offers Riker some fruit, Riker says he’d rather have apples, and the next thing you know, like magic, a bowl of apples shows up. And I’m thinking it must have something to do with Q, because he’s the only one so far that we’ve seen just making things happen like magic.

Q keeps coming in and he keeps trying to test them. And boy, did they lay the melodrama on thick.

The episode, by the way, is written by a veteran writer. The credit says D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry. D.C. Fontana, those of you who recognize the name, has written some of the most memorable episodes of the old series, the Original Series if you will. Seeing someone familiar at the helm was very comforting for me. All right, cool, we’ll give this a shot.

Sure enough, this whole thing turns out to be about space jellyfish, and it was interesting, to say the least. They look so radical. I couldn’t believe it. Come to find out, the actual place is built on this alien jellyfish that apparently crashed and needs power. The planet makes power geothermally, so they’ve been giving it power in trickles, as food, and meanwhile it can essentially do what replicators and transporters do, which is how it makes stuff appear for you.

Then its mate, or another one of it, comes from deep space and comes down. That’s when Q shows up, and he’s all like, go ahead and kill it. Picard the whole time is like, whoa, whoa, what? They go over, they ultimately find out how this whole thing went down, and they show it mercy. And that’s when Picard’s all like, dirt off my shirt.

It won me over. I didn’t know what to think of this show when they announced it, but I’m convinced. I can’t wait to see the next episodes. They look like they’re going to be really fun.

Data, and the Kid From Stand by Me

Everybody is cool. I can’t wait to see the character of Data, who’s an android. I cannot wait to see what comes of him.

They also have our first kid character, which I thought was really cool. Back in the day they used to say Chekov was the answer to the sixties, the Beatles and the Monkees and whatnot. This kid, I think, is going to be really fun. They got a big time actor, and I say that even though he’s a kid. Wil Wheaton is his name. He was in that teen angsty movie Stand by Me, which I thought was really cool. So they got some gravitas, in terms of hey, this guy is an actual actor in this thing. He’s kind of goofy in the beginning, but whatever.

Back in 2023, With Mrs. Know-It-All on the Couch

That was so much fun. Now I’m going to be very honest. It was long, it was arduous, and clearly they were trying to put out as much as they could, like, oh my God, please, guys, you’re going to love the show, please love the show.

You’ve got the melodrama, with Tasha Yar standing up for everything and pontificating in the old court. You’ve got Worf being overly Klingon. And we never could reconcile Data back in the day, because apparently they just switched him on and he was going. They didn’t switch him on last week, but that’s how it came across. He’s only just now discovering everything, even though he’s been alive long enough to have gone to the Academy and gotten his degree and the whole thing. So there were a lot of early things. Plus, of course, the outfits, which were not flattering. And Deanna Troi, thank God she became more than the walking mood ring.

But I was watching this with Mrs. Know-It-All. She sees that scene with Data whistling, the one that we saw again in Picard, and she goes, “Well, now I understand why that scene mattered so much.” The fact that you can follow everything back! Then later on, at the big reveal of Farpoint Station being the alien jellyfish, she goes, “This is just like the ones that were birthed in Picard.” I said, dude, Terry Matalas knew what he was doing.

The Verdict

Encounter at Farpoint, the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, would probably be a 6 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index today.

I super very much loved these things, but I have to be very honest. The acting was bad. The VFX were as good as they could possibly be. At the end of the day, I’m so happy that it only went up from there. But as birthdays go, God bless you, Next Generation. Happy birthday.

Hopefully you’re enjoying an episode of The Next Generation today. If you’re not, give one a watch. I know that I intend to go watch Picard again. Now that Mrs. Know-It-All has seen the origins, I want to revisit the end, because I think even for her it’s going to matter that much more, the fact that Q started there and ends there.

Tell me what you thought of the original Next Generation episode, Encounter at Farpoint. I was only eight years old, to be fair, but if you were there firsthand, how excited were you? How pessimistic were you? The news articles were all over the road, and it sounded an awful lot like people today when new Star Trek gets announced. We’re all Trekkers, Trekkies, lovers of Star Trek. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.