My latest novel, Bog Queen, comes out in paperback on October 13. Tour dates coming soon!

I’m teaching a class on essay-writing with the Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop on September 25. We have a few spots left!

Hello and welcome to my newsletter! My plan here, for now, is to recap one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation per week. 

Why Star Trek? First, because it’s one of the foundational texts of my childhood. I was never a fan of the original series, but I watched TNG obsessively with my family in the 1990s, and the show is probably a bigger influence on my work and personality than any book. 

I have not revisited the series much as an adult (I’m not a big re-reader, generally). But lately I’ve found myself craving a project, and rewatching a seven-season TV show is nothing if not a Project. (Will I make it all 176 episodes? Time will tell!) 

I am also thinking a lot about future narratives, especially those that are not specifically dystopian. There’s a lot of talk about how we are actually living in dystopia right now, and while I sometimes wonder if that’s too easy (many previous moments in history probably also felt very dystopian), I do find myself with an appetite for other -topias. 

TNG is, on its face, a utopian story, imagining a 24th century in which human beings have all but eliminated war and poverty, and live in a peaceful Federation with species from other planets. Part of the tension of the show, however, is the question of how fully humanity has, or even can, eliminate suffering.

That tension is very much on view in the pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

This episode, which first aired in 1987, has two plots, one nested inside the other. In the frame story, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the new USS Enterprise, en route to their very first assignment, are waylaid by a mysterious entity calling himself Q and appearing in the guise of actor John deLancie. 

Q has not forgotten humans’ checkered past. “You slaughtered millions in silly arguments about how to divide the resources of your little world,” he points out. Omniscient, all-powerful, and adept at quick costume changes, Q recaps some of Earth’s bloody history, culminating with World War III, apparently fought by soldiers in bubble-wrap flightsuits who did a lot of whippits.

Q then decides to put Picard and his crew on trial for the past crimes of their entire species. Because this entity is capable of time travel, or at least the appearance of time travel, he sets up his courtroom in the “post-atomic horror,” the dark ages following World War III when humanity was at its lowest. 

The courtroom scene is bizarre (derogatory), including a character credited as “Mandarin bailiff,” who just reads like a manifestation of anti-Chinese paranoia. But deLancie is perfect, dressed like the Red Queen and toying with Picard like a cat with his mouse. This relationship will become one of the defining threads of the show, and though it’s not fully developed yet, it’s a joy to see Q here in all his glory.

Picard, for his part, does his best to argue that humanity is different now, no longer the species whose members once murdered one another in cold blood. He suggests that Q set the crew free to proceed with their mission — their actions will show how much their kind have evolved.

Q agrees, and Picard and the Enterprise proceed to Farpoint, a potential base they’re evaluating on the planet Deneb IV. Things are good there. Too, too good! When Commander Riker, soon to join the Enterprise as first officer, wishes for an apple, one appears out of thin air. When Dr. Beverly Crusher wants cloth in a particular pattern, it changes before her eyes. There must be some mysterious energy source at work here — but what is it?

The amazingly named Groppler Zorn (Groppler, to be clear, is his official title) tells the crew not to worry about it and just accept the nice apples and stuff. But they do worry about it, because they are explorers and it is their job to be curious about other planets, and also because a mysterious spaceship shows up and starts attacking Deneb IV.

Picard and his team soon realize that Zorn and his guys on Deneb IV (they are called the Bandi, and are one of the many alien species on Star Trek who just look like humans in wigs) are basically siphoning off the life force of a huge being that lies trapped beneath the planet’s surface. 

Counselor Deanna Troi, whose Betazoid heritage gives her empathic abilities, senses its pain and suffering. But she also senses rage coming from another source — the mysterious spaceship, which has come to find the buried entity and save it from its cruel imprisonment.

The Enterprise directs an energy beam at Farpoint Station, liberating the entity and allowing it to join the ship, which is actually its mate. In their true forms, the two creatures look like enormous, glowing jellyfish, and they drift off into space together, their filamentous arms delicately touching. 

By helping the jellyfish, Picard and company have apparently passed Q’s test, because Q agrees to leave, though he notes “I will not promise never to appear again” (he definitely will).

“Encounter at Farpoint” is a divisive episode (Wil Wheaton himself later gave it a C-). I remember that when we watched it as a kid, my parents found the loving jellyfish couple unbearably cheesy. But I was kind of taken with them this time around, in part because they are so clearly practical effects and thus hold up pretty well.

I think the other reason I like this episode, though, is that it gives the viewer some really fresh and unexpected alien encounters.

In science fiction films and TV shows, especially those from the 1980s and before, alien characters typically exist for humans to fight. Sometimes the humans might befriend the aliens, or save them, but usually there’s some bombing or lasering happening, otherwise we don’t have a show.

But “Encounter at Farpoint” figures out how to make a show out of humans who neither fight nor really even save a giant space jellyfish. They basically just recognize it, and then help it rejoin its beloved. It’s a relatively new kind of plot, one that eschews the conventions of the genre while still delivering some intrigue and suspense.

It’s also less violent than your classic phaser battle. I definitely do not demand pacifism from my sci-fi, but I do appreciate what TNG was trying to do here, in staking out its territory as a different kind of show.

Just to wrap back around to the frame story for a minute, I think Q is doing much the same work as the jellyfish in terms of setting the viewer up for original and unusual alien-human interactions. Q kinda fights the Enterprise crew — he does freeze-dry several characters, although, implausibly, they get better.

But ultimately what he wants to do is way weirder than murder or conquest, and “Encounter at Farpoint” leaves us uncertain what his ultimate goals even are. I walked away from this episode remembering a lot of what I loved about this show — namely, that it was able to tell stories that were cool and surprising, even within the confines of both a franchise and a genre. I’m excited for episode two!

Some stray thoughts:

• I remembered that Troi wears a sort of comically short minidress uniform in this episode. I did not remember that male crew members also wear them! Apparently the uniform was called a skant, and was meant to be available for male and female Starfleet officers, as an example of 24th century gender equality. I honestly love this and am sad that the show quickly phased it out.

• The Enterpise splits into two parts in this episode, a move called a “saucer separ” that is sort of iconic for Star Trek viewers. The special effects for the separ were apparently very expensive and it was rarely used in the remainder of the series, which is honestly fine. It serves little narrative purpose here, other than to force Riker to put the ship back together again. 

• Even in the pilot, some of the best characters on the show already stand out for their charisma and originality. You can really tell that Brent Spiner’s Data and LeVar Burton’s Geordi LaForge are going to be great.

What I’m reading:

• My big kid is reading Impossible Creatures. It’s her first time reading a chapter book independently, and she is obsessed.

• Speaking of Star Trek, Charlie Jane Anders is writing a Star Trek comic called Zero Point! It launches in October.