The Unauthorized Trekkers’ Guide to the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine

McFadden was replaced by Diana Muldaur in the second season of The Next Generation and Roddenberry even issued a press release telling fans not to bother writing to him about the decision because his mind was made up—that is, until he changed it again and brought Gates McFadden back to the role in the third season.

Another new character, eventually to be promoted to the post of chief engineer, is Geordi La Forge. The role is named as tribute to the late Star Trek fan George LaForge, a cerebral palsy sufferer whose long survival was attributed to his strong identification with the show. Geordi contributes to the tradition of a multiethnic cast in Star Trek. He is blind, but due to the advanced technology of the twenty-fourth century, can see by means of an electronic visor linked with his nervous system. He can even see visual ranges inaccessible to most human beings. Geordi is a sincere, likable, confident man with slight insecurities. He always perseveres, communicating freely with others. The opposite of Picard, he affects an informal approach to life and is not hung up on protocol. Actor LeVar Burton, best known as the young Kunta Kinte in the classic miniseries Roots, plays the role. This character was reportedly created by David Gerrold.

A KLINGON ON THE BRIDGE

The biggest shock in The Next Generation’s crew roster was Worf … a Klingon. Since Kirk’s heyday, peace has finally been negotiated between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. Negotiations were underway at the time of the events of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, a fact referred to by Commander Kruge in that film. This was further developed in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The two spheres of influence strive to get along and have established some mutual trust. There are no other Klingons in Starfleet.

Worf is unique. He was raised by humans after his family was killed in the massacre of their outpost during a surprise Klingon attack—an event that still haunts him. He is like Spock in that he is the product of two cultures, a warrior Klingon dedicated to his own culture but tempered by exposure to human ideals. Worf was added after the pilot for The Next Generation and does not appear in “Encounter at Farpoint.” For a time, he would be little more than a grouchy guy standing in the background recommending aggressive action. He would be featured in more and more episodes, eventually opening up a window on the fascinating world of the Klingons. The six-foot-five Michael Dorn was cast as Worf. Dorn was born in Liling, Texas, but raised in Pasadena, California, just minutes away from Hollywood.

With the cast set, The Next Generation got under way. Creator Gene Roddenberry handed the executive producer’s reins over to Paramount’s Rick Berman.

CREATIVE CONFLICTS

D. C. Fontana signed on as story editor, but soon left, unhappy with the treatment received by her script “Encounter at Farpoint.” Sadly, the episode kicked off the new series with less than a bang. Fontana’s initial story received a forced graft of Gene Roddenberry’s “Q” subplot and the two concepts didn’t cross over, much less merge. Instead of a genuine, two-hour movie, audiences received two separate stories. Like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, “Encounter at Farpoint” moved slowly, too enamored of its own special effects. It was no surprise that Gene Roddenberry’s name was on the screenplay. Roddenberry said, “In the first Star Trek [series], I rewrote or heavily polished the first thirteen episodes so that Mr. Spock would be the Mr. Spock that I had in mind. This was enormous labor, and then this began to catch on and we got some good writers on this.

“In Star Trek: The Next Generation I rewrote thirteen episodes. I don’t want to act out a big ‘I did this, I did that,’ but as far as the basic original writing, I had to do that again, with few exceptions. It is the way episodic television is. Now as the year’s gone on,” he said during the first season, “I’ve found some good people and I hope to find more. We got some good writing in the old series, and we’ve had some good writing in the new series. Most of the writing comes from very few, very good people who labor hard. Very often they are staff people.”

Special effects for the first season were provided by Industrial Light and Magic, but they soon proved too expensive. Other effects teams were sought out. With a per episode budget of over a million dollars, The Next Generation was a major gamble for Paramount. They had to use the budget to the best of their ability.

GROWING PAINS

The first season of The Next Generation was erratic. The actors had yet to settle into their roles, and the scripts, often rewritten by Gene, were uneven. Controversy ensued when both D. C. Fontana and David Gerrold felt they had contributed to the development of the series concept and neither received credit. Gene never acknowledged them. In fact, in regard to Gerrold, he went so far as to comment that “… Gerrold [had] been condemning the show, constantly. I had him on staff for many, many months, [and] he never wrote an episode we could shoot.” He had, but Roddenberry refused to approve it. This contributed to their professional break.

Fontana is harder to dismiss. She worked on a total of four scripts for the first season of The Next Generation. She left following a particularly ugly encounter with Roddenberry when he supposedly asked her to write an entire script and attach his name as cowriter so that he could meet the studio’s demand for his writing a certain number of scripts during the first season. When she refused because it would be a violation of Writer’s Guild rules, Roddenberry claimed that he was the one who got her into the business (which wasn’t true) and felt that she was ungrateful for not doing him this favor.

The dispute between Gene, Fontana, and Gerrold was settled behind the scenes for a monetary sum. No on-screen credit was given. Some regard this as more important than a lump sum payoff, because without screen credit there is no public acknowledgment of what a writer created. In spite of the settlement, Roddenberry may well have felt that he’d won.

The second season of The Next Generation showed marked improvement. Changes were evident. Jonathan Frakes now sported a beard. Some viewers, unimpressed by the first season, now use the sight of a clean-shaven Riker as their cue not to watch a rerun.

TWO NEW SECOND-SEASON ADDITIONS

Doctor Pulaski, ably played by Diana Muldaur, a veteran guest star of the original Star Trek, joined the cast in the second season. Despite Muldaur’s fine acting, this character didn’t work. Perhaps the problem was that the crusty, no-nonsense Pulaski seemed to be a female “Bones” McCoy. The character provided much-needed friction on the bridge, but never really came to bear on the plots much.

Another new character also came onboard in the second season, although she may have been there all along for purposes of continuity. Guinan is a mysterious alien woman of great age who functions as bartender and freelance counselor in the Enterprise’s open lounge, Ten Forward. She serves synthehol, a marvelous brew whose mildly intoxicating effects can be shaken off at will. Guinan’s background is intentionally shrouded in mystery. Although not featured on a weekly basis, she is a recurring presence.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

By this time, Gene had developed a stable of writers he could trust. His production team was learning to work the way Gene worked. On future plans for The Next Generation, Roddenberry stated, “We have a lot in store, and a lot of things we want to talk about. We can no longer claim we’re brave because we have mixed races. Twenty-three years ago, that was very exciting. We had women in jobs other than secretaries. People were saying, ‘My God, how far can they go!’

“Now we want to talk about hostage situations. I am amazed to see the hostage (takers) treated as bad guys always. Many of these people have legitimate complaints. The world is not as simple as we lay it out—good guys here, bad guys there. I am very concerned and want to find a way to get into the fact that most of the warfare and killing going on in the world is going on in the name of religion: organized religion. Not that I’m saying that there are not great plans and that we are not part of some great thing, but it is not the type of thing you see preached on television. I don’t hold anyone up to ridicule. My mother is a good Baptist and she believes in many great things. I cannot sit still in a series of this type and not point out who’s killing who in the world.”

Roddenberry did do an episode questioning religion, “Who Watches the Watchers?” in season three. On a primitive planet, an off-world survey team is accidentally discovered by the inhabitants, who come to regard the Enterprise crewmen and their miraculous feats (appearing and disappearing) as the actions of gods. “I’ve always thought that, if we did not have supernatural explanations for all the things we might not understand right away, this is the way we would be, like the people on that planet,” Gene explained. “I was born into a supernatural world in which all my people—my family—usually said, ‘That is because God willed it,’ or gave other supernatural explanations for whatever happened. When you confront those statements on their own, they just don’t make sense. They are clearly wrong. You need a certain amount of proof to accept anything, and that proof was not forthcoming to support those statements.”

HARD WORK BUT FEW REWARDS

The one thing that did disappoint Roddenberry about doing The Next Generation was the little recognition it first received. Even though it did achieve a Peabody Award for the first season episode “The Big Goodbye,” it remained largely ignored thereafter, in spite of episodes like “Who Watches the Watchers?” and “Justice.”

“It is a source of considerable amusement to me that we can do shows like this and get little or no public reaction. If these things were to be done on Broadway or in motion pictures, they would have stunned audiences. The audiences would have said, ‘How wild, how forward, how advanced.’ Because these subjects are done on a syndicated television show, in our time slot, no one really notices them.

“I thought several times that the world of drama would have stood up and cheered us, but no, only silence. There is one advantage. All of these episodes are brought back and rerun every year. What will happen with Star Trek: The Next Generation is almost identical to what happened to the original Star Trek as larger and larger audiences become acquainted with the program. The original Star Trek audience now says, ‘Hurrah, what fine shows!’ This has brought us considerable pleasure that they would notice it. Star Trek: The Next Generation is on that path now and more so. The time will come when the second series will attain its true stature. I just hope some of it happens while I am still alive. I’m not jealous that I don’t have praise. This happens very broadly in contacts with humans. The world is not necessarily poorer because a painter or playwright is not recognized in his or her lifetime.”

NEW BUT FAMILIAR

Since Gene Roddenberry understood his audience, he did not stray far when he re-created Star Trek. Andrew Probert, who had contributed to the redesign of the Enterprise for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was tapped for the job of redesigning the Enterprise for its new and far more advanced version. Although looking more sleek with a slightly squashed appearance, it was still quite recognizable. The biggest change was internal, such as the addition of the holodeck. The kinds of recreation areas on the original Enterprise were rarely referred to outside of the first movie. The only one that comes to mind is a reference to the “bowling alley” in “The Naked Time,” and it has never been established whether or not this was a joke. After all, with the way the original Enterprise would periodically hurl its crew back and forth, the thought of bowling balls having similar violence done to them could only cause one to imagine large holes in the bulkheads on a fairly regular basis.

The other design alterations on The Next Generation extended to the expected: the uniforms, hand weapons and other items such as the tricorder. Just as they had been redesigned for the Star Trek movies, they were redesigned for the TV series. Again, the designs were superficial and seemed to have been done mostly for purposes of merchandising: more new Star Trek toys could now be licensed by Paramount.

Although set seventy-five years after the original series, the technical changes were not as major as they could have been. By making the changes so slight, Roddenberry insured that the old Star Trek fans would more willingly accept this new version in spite of the completely new cast.

FINE-TUNING THE STAR TREK PHILOSOPHY

In describing the future life he envisioned for Earth in the twenty-fourth century, Roddenberry stated, “I do not perceive this as a universe that’s divided between good and evil.”

For The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry chose to expand the Trek philosophy, and perhaps he went a little too far. Roddenberry decided that his crew of the Enterprise-D would, frankly, be perfect. He decreed that they would get along without complaint and never have the kind of personality clashes experienced by Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The only time disagreements appeared on TNG was when someone who was not a part of this tightly knit inner circle came aboard, such as when Ensign Ro stepped aboard in the fifth season (about the time Gene Roddenberry died).

Otherwise the main crew members, consisting of Picard, Riker, Data, Dr. Crusher, Geordi, and Troi were always in harmony. Worf was the only wild card, but then he’s allowed to be—he isn’t human. Tasha Yar seemed to have the makings of a character with spunk and personality, but she was quickly dispensed with.

Roddenberry remained the eternal optimist, in spite of all the failures, disappointments, and difficult times he had endured during the years between the cancellation of Star Trek in 1969 and its return to life in 1979. Roddenberry continued to promote his philosophy of life that consisted of bold optimism (there will be a future and it will be wonderful), a belief in social progress, the benefits of technological advancement (he did not equate progress with the diminishing of the quality of life), the pursuit of knowledge, life affirmation (he objected to Captain Kirk’s casual killing of the Ceti Eel in The Wrath of Khan), the tolerance of other cultures, and secular humanism (the dominance of reason and experience over supernatural deities and mysticism).

MAKING THE OLD WAYS BETTER

It is because Roddenberry’s basic Star Trek philosophy had been reinterpreted and sometimes altered in the motion picture treatments that he made certain that all of his beliefs for the Star Trek universe were firmly in place for The Next Generation. With that as an underlying philosophy, the shows therefore exhibit a point of view and occasionally moralize.

There were some contradictions in the original philosophy, though, which Roddenberry himself sought to correct in The Next Generation. Instead of having the Klingons dismissed as being just the bad guys, he rewrote them as a proud warrior race with a culture as deep and diverse as anything seen on the other worlds in the Federation.

The Next Generation continued the use of the transporter with little alteration other than in visual effects and the sound. This is explained by the difference in technology. For instance, in The Next Generation episode “Relics,” when a ship is found with the old-style transporter in it, the old-style sound effect is used when the transporter beam materializes. The transporter is perhaps the prime example of Star Trek magic. Created for the convenience of scriptwriters, it allows for the characters to move from the ship to a planet and back again instantaneously, thereby dispensing with scenes of ships landing and taking off again.

REWRITING THE RULES OF REALITY

Which brings us to another device of magical technology: the holodeck. The holodeck that Roddenberry introduced on The Next Generation clearly alters our views of what is possible in reality in any number of ways. The computer can be programmed to create virtually anything in the holodeck, from the lush surface of a planet with jungles and a waterfall to London in the 1890s. The holodeck creates images of substance. In “The Big Goodbye” those images strike back with potentially deadly force. In that Peabody Award-winning episode, Captain Picard creates a realm in the holodeck based on his favorite detective stories. Set in the 1930s, Dixon Hill is clearly based on the hard-boiled detective thrillers of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Like Sherlock Holmes, they are archetypes that are very much a part of their era.

It’s not unusual that a science fiction series should be so captivated by images from detective stories. Mystery fiction tends to be very popular among screenwriters and science fiction writers. Using this to create a film noir setting, The Next Generation created a tech noir in which the holodeck world became a reality. The people projected by the computer evidently are not just images that move according to a design but have a sense of self, which as time went on was enhanced, as shown in “Elementary, Dear Data.” In “The Big Goodbye” the hologram people debated whether they were real and struggled to prove their individuality. One of them, who possessed memories of a wife and family, even questioned what would happen to all of them when the program was ended. This question would ultimately be addressed in the sixth-season episode “Moriarty.”

AIMING FOR THE STARS

Although Roddenberry was intensely involved with the creation and development of The Next Generation, the show had problems from the start.

In spite of a series bible that established who all the regular characters were, no detailed background had been worked out for them. Their personalities were largely being established during filming by the actors and their various directors, with a result that the characters were often inconsistent from one episode to the next, particularly Captain Picard. Worf was a late entry in the character roster because initially Roddenberry didn’t want to bring the Klingons back. It was only when he decided to give the Klingons a real background and make them richer characters that he agreed to include them.

Although episode twelve of The Next Generation, “The Big Goodbye,” won the coveted Peabody Award for television excellence, far too many of the first-year episodes suffered from a distinct lack of excellence. One of the other few exceptions is “Heart of Glory,” the episode that established Worf as being more than just a fixture on the bridge.

The second year improved consistently, demonstrating that all involved had learned from their mistakes (and the mistakes of others) and were ready to finally get down to work.

Seasons three through seven continued the process of fine-tuning the characters and establishing them as individuals with distinctive personalities. Picard went from being an inconsistent leader to a seasoned starship captain worthy of the position as commander of the flagship of Starfleet. Episodes were done which spotlighted the many facets of Jean-Luc Picard while capitalizing on the fine acting abilities of actor Patrick Stewart.

Riker was the steadiest of the crew from the beginning, and subsequent seasons insured that he became even more firmly established as the finest first officer in Starfleet.

Data, who has no emotions, has been at the center of some of the most moving stories told in the series, including “Pen Pals” and “Hero Worship.”

By year four, even the female characters, Deanna Troi and Dr. Crusher, were getting episodes that spotlighted them in powerful stories such as “Remember Me” and “Power Play.”

LOOKING FORWARD

While all too many series have run out of steam long before they complete seven seasons, and start repeating themselves endlessly, The Next Generation continued to search for ways to grow and strengthen itself. The series carries with it a proud legacy. It is not just a Star Trek spin-off: it was shepherded by the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry. The dream Roddenberry first brought to life in 1966 has been revised and expanded as Gene looked on like a proud parent.

The dream called Star Trek has lasted for more than twenty-eight years—The Next Generation gave it new life and exploration in new directions. It’s evident Roddenberry’s dream will never die.

ABOARD THE NEW ENTERPRISE

The Enterprise NCC 1701-D is the fifth starship to bear that name. It is twice the length of Captain Kirk’s ship and has nearly eight times the interior area to house the crew. The basic structure is the same, even though the vessel looks more sleek and cohesive.

While the first starships to bear the name Enterprise were designed to represent the Federation in political and military matters, the 1701-D was designed for exploration, de-emphasizing the importance of being a battle cruiser. This Enterprise serves as home to 1,012 people, which is two and a half times the ship’s complement of the Enterprise 1701. This is the result of a century of technological evolution emphasizing human interaction with the hardware they use.

This new class of Starfleet vessel enables families to stay together. As the first captain on this bold new experiment in human exploration, Picard is uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with families. He’s accustomed to a crew of professional, Starfleet-trained men and women who know their duty and understand their jobs thoroughly. The concept of children and other non-Starfleet personnel running around unnerves him even though he understands that it contributes to the morale.

The sophistication of the new Enterprise includes a variety of single and group family modules, various levels of schools, study facilities and other features designed so that children and spouses can live lives as normal as possible aboard what is practically a colony ship. Recreation has always been important on starships and now takes into account children.

THE HOLODECK

There is a large selection of entertainment, sports, and other recreational forms, but the most elaborate is the holodeck. The holodeck, as seen in “Encounter at Farpoint,” can simulate almost any landscape or sea world complete with winds, tides, rain or whatever is needed to make the illusion convincingly real. The special reality of the holodeck helps prevent the crew from feeling a sense of confinement from their prolonged voyage onboard the starship. The holodeck can also be used for purposes of exercise, as an opponent can be conjured up who is capable of responding to various modes of self-defense, as shown in the episode “Code of Honor.”

The living and working areas of the Enterprise reflect an emphasis on the quality of life, being brighter and designed more for comfort than utilitarian compromise. Gone is the clutter and profusion of gauges, instruments, and control buttons. Instead the consoles feature black panels with touch-activated controls and voice-activated displays. This enables swifter activation of the necessary controls that could be crucial in emergency situations.

This new technology is especially important for the bridge. The new bridge is much larger and combines the features of ship control, briefing room, information retrieval area, and officers’ ward room. Much the same kinds of things happen here as on the old bridge, but with less emphasis on the mechanics of steering the starship. It is a place where the starship officers can meet, check information, make plans or just catch up on what has been happening.