UNCUT - Encounter at Farpoint (TNG S1E1) | REWATCH

"The guy who fired Gates McFadden should be black-balled from the industry." Maurice Hurley sorted self-black-balled, first by calling the rest of the production staff "children" and then by dying. But in a weird twist, Berman did ask him to write an ultimately-unused draft for Star Trek: Generations. And Nicholas Meyer was not too big for TV, he was hired for Star Trek II because he was a TV director and Paramount was trying to cut costs after the TMP debacle. But he ultimately retired from directing, except for a single TV movie, Star Trek 6 was his final directing credit.

That may have been Wesley's only real encounter/interaction with Picard so it would probably stand out even if Jack and Picard were friends on board their ship. Also it seem from later lore Picard kind of avoided the situation more afterward as well so not the most out there thing. Fun to see the reaction going back and seeing how thing's started again! TNG had one of the best finale's but weakest Pilot IMO....still the series grew into itself for sure! Going to rewatch/re-react to other just favorites even if not the entire series? No not just the Bonding and Ensign Gates episodes!

By jove, I think they get it! ;)

A FEELING OF GREAT JOY.

You may have heard this before but Encounter At Farpoint was written as a one hour pilot. But Paramount decided they wanted a 2 hour pilot and that was when the Q part of the story was hatched, not to mention all the other things they did to get the needed runtime (Riker's manual docking, etc). There was a music cue written for the saucer separation but it was not used in favor of the theme reprise. Bones appearence was successfully kept a secret and if word did get out before airing Roddenberry would have it cut. In the script Bones character name was Admiral.

Seeing this as a video pop up was a nice surprise. I might be the only one who'd want this, but I kept imagining you two re-watching your first full watch of this while watching the episode alongside it, and reacting to both the episode and your initial reactions.

I just learned that the sickbay set wasn’t built yet? So the scene with Geordie is in a redress of the Observation lounge? I thought that same sick bay set was originally built for TMP? If you look at the room with all the wounded from TWOK it sure looks like the same room?

John de Lancie has his performance of 'Q' down perfect from the absolute beginning. The writing of Q not so much, bu the mannerisms, the attitude, it's all dialed in right where they will be from start to finish.

Picard was basically an ass for the first season. Thankfully the writers and Patrick Stewart loosened him up over the subsequent seasons.

You know, it’s funny: while the script wasn’t on his level yet, it’s quite obvious that John had Q *all* figured out, right from the start. He knew exactly what Q was all about, long before the writers ever did, and while it took time for his material to catch up, he himself, here, is every bit what he ever was later on. It’s great.

A more accurate comparison of Encounter at Farpoint would not be The Emissary but rather The Cage. Everybody is so stiff and taking themselves so seriously.

The writing in the first season, especially Gene’s dialog writing, just grates on me like nails on a chalkboard. He was a great idea man, but his script writing was stuck back in 1964.

Every time I watch EaF I’m taken back to a high school field trip where I watched a Shakespeare play. It must be the squeaky flooring and feelings of confusion about the plot.

Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana wrote the original script for Encounter at Farpoint as a normal length episode. Paramount decided they wanted a TV movie to kick off the series. Gene rewrote Dorothy’s script adding all the Q stuff, taking half her writer’s credit in the process. Please watch and react to Shatner’s documentary “Chaos on the Bridge”, you’ll learn so much about this show and the people behind it and it’s entertaining too.

When I first saw the announcement for TNG in 86, for some reason the only image in my head was Captain Pike and crew from The Cage, but in the maroon movie uniforms. No idea why but that’s what I imagined

Makes me wonder at the end of the day does Geordie take his visor off & “pop” some pain killers? They seemed to have tuned out when Beverly says “your father liked him a lot.” And Picard “I knew your father.” With tears in his eyes. But no they were never friends.. 🤷‍♂️

Alex and Josh: once you get past Generations you should watch all the bonus features on the blu rays. Even if you don’t post them they are interesting

Rewatch the one where Wesley gets the death penalty for walking on the grass!

Talk of Emissary vs Encounter at Farpoint, having watched both several times, I think Emissary is clearly better, but neither is great. Especially in hindsight, it packs in quite a lot and does it fairly well, but it's still kind of sleepy/slow at times and like most pilots it's weighed down by trying to set everything up.

If I recall correctly, Marc Alaimo was not the original actor cast as Dukat. They didn't like the performance, so they brought Alaimo in to reshoot the scenes (I assume because they liked him so much in The Wounded). Talk about serendipity. (As to why they didn't just rename the character Gul Macet after that, probably just money since the writer of The Wounded would then be owed residuals for every appearance.) I don’t know if it’s ever been revealed who the original actor was. Anybody know? Not the only scenes they reshot in the pilot. They thought Sisko came off too harshly in his first meeting with Kira, so they reshot that as well. (Look at how oddly smiley Brooks is in that scene and you can tell he’s doing his best with that reshoot.)

After watching this again i have to say I miss early TNGs score so bad :(

This is where TNG REALLY begins.

now you see what we all saw lol. you guys loved the premiere back then. just like we all did when it first aired. then you go back after a while and you're like "My God!"

You guys need to look up William Shatner's "Chaos On The Bridge". It's a recent documentary about the turbulant first few years of TNG and all the upheavel that went on and the creative battles that were happening. It really deep dives into why the early seasons were so much worse than the later seasons. no movie spoilers.

Okay. Since it came up again, I actually looked it up. Per SAG-AFTRA, any character with a spoken line of dialogue in the episode is entitled to screen credit. Where and how that credit appears on screen is a matter of individual negotiation between the actor and the studio (or their respective representatives). However, it is common practice for characters with either a high volume of dialogue (lots of lines) and/or prominent reputation (big names) to receive credit in the opening reel. That's why John de Lancie is up front and Colm Meaney's in the back for this episode. Actors may sign an individual waiver to opt out of this, or express an individual preference which varies from the show's standard practice. Which is probably what DeForest Kelley agreed to. With a typical 14-16 day turn-around from pre-production start to wrap on a typical episode, I imagine there was not a lot of varying from standard practice. Opening reel credit was also likely a part of the signing cost for many of the actors who received it.

You have to wonder what was the deal in the Seventies and Eighties with the Planet of the Irish concept. They did it in Galactica and then again in “Up the Long Ladder.”

I always skip season one in rewatches.

I wasn’t expecting this video, yay!! I’m excited to watch this!

Outside of the Q stuff this episode is such a dog. The Fairpoint plot is video valium. Amazing to think there was going to be a one hour version of this sans Q with only the Fairpoint story.

The story Stewart tells is that Gene gave him a copy of the Horatio Hornblower books and told him to read them and that Hornblower was the basis for the Picard character.

Deanna's dad is still alive. Lwaxana has him locked in her basement where she tortures him. They mentioned it once in passing; I don't remember which episode.

The show was insane to not bring back Groppler Zorn. His presence lent an air of gravitas to the show. It really wasn't the same when he left.

The actor who played Groppler Zorn (Michael Bell) also played two different characters in DS9 Season 2 (The Homecoming & The Maquis Part 2). He’s best known as a voice actor, having played Duke & Clutch on GI Joe, and eight different Transformers (Bombshell, Brainstorm, First Aid, Gort, Prowl, Scrapper, Sideswipe, and Swoop), and characters in dozens of other animated series.

Sigh. Paid an annual for DS9, and have to wait 2 months... And for a rewatch of a terrible series opener

It’s crazy that saucer separation was only used three times in the entire series: Encounter at Farpoint, The Arsenal of Freedom, and The Best of Both Worlds Part 2. Twice in season 1 and once in season 4. It was referenced/suggested more often, but that’s it.

I miss the days when you thought season 1 was good. The whole reason why I started watching you guys was for the positive vibes. I had a lot of dark stuff going on in my life at that time, and you guys were like a light in the dark to me back then. Exactly what I needed to feel better after hard days.

I got unreasonably excited about this upload.

I hear the rewatch gets good around half way through season 3

TA reacts to Humanity on Trial: Day One... Fascinating. 🖖

I can't believe what Picard did freeing that alien! Think of all the lost shareholder value! Your question about how the alien works, it would presumably be just like a replicator, in that once it has created something, it permanently exists.

..."too much emotion"....eh... The plot is supposed to be humans are on trial. Getting emotional makes sense. Also Shatner got plenty worked up.

In the early writers bible Riker distrusted Data and, like Pulaski, would clash with him. That was abandoned in the show, but can be found in the first novel written for this series titled Ghost Ship. I loved that novel because it kinda shows what might have been.

In the reruns, that line where Picard says “if we’re going to be damned, let’s be damned for what we really are,” was the end of part 1.

The appearance of engineering here was not originally in the script. Notice there’s no dialogue in those two shots. They realized that if they didn’t build the set for the pilot, they’d never afford it during the weekly show, so Gene tossed in two scenes so they HAD to build it for this episode, then cut them in editing!

It was only shown in two parts for reruns. That first night it was a tv movie.

Regarding why Patrick Stewart took the role/was convinced (one of the boys asked): His agent essentially told him that there was no way this thing was going to last a season and that being offered an American television leading role was better than not getting anything. And Stewart went in thinking he was going to be packing his bags back to England at any moment. So he didn't feel like it was a huge commitment.

Yeah, if you notice during TOS, almost all the time references indicate it’s the 22nd century. (“The Squire of Gothos” is a notable exception.) All that was retconned later.

Ever since TOS "The Apple", saucer separation was a much talked about feature of the Enterprise and it only got more feverish as the Fandom grew over the years. It was a BIG deal to watch when it finally happened. Cetacean Operations might be the TNG equivalent. In the blueprints but never actually seen or mentioned and the fans go crazy! This was fun. Can you throw in some more TOS too.

I have to geek out for just one comment. TNG (eventually) established that warp is an exponential scale, so warp 9.7 is like twice as fast as warp 9.4. So Yar's line near the beginning should have been "Hostile is beginning to overtake AAAAACK" as the Q-ball slammed into the Enterprise and destroyed it. But that might not have been the tone they wanted for the series opener, I don't know.

As much as I have wanted to watch Trek in airdate order it generally ends up being one series at a time.

Love the subtle hinting we keep getting from Alex… “Here I am now…single…” Ladies…

Data is actually class of '45 (2345). '78 is a continuity error and has been retconned.

Maurice Hurley was the producer who had a problem with Gates McFadden.

Hey, now you understand our perspective ;P hehe :)

"red line" past safety recommendations

Funny you comment on everyone looking a little thicker in later seasons. I assume that's a mix of looser, thicker material on the later uniforms (the original uniforms were very snug), aging, and that being full-time working actors lets you eat better.

All your questions about the behind the scenes stuff are answered in the highly entertaining and eye-opening "Chaos on the bridge" documentary with Bill Shatner as narrator. You should watch it on the channel in the break. It's on YouTube.

Gene didn’t like Patrick Stewart it was Berman and others who insisted this is supposed to be 2364 ignore what Data said about his class. You said Alimo right this time. Watching Emissary during TNG could have impacted you remembering it.

Picard's accent in the pilot is weird. It's like he considered trying an American accent but then kinda gave up and went maybe 20% of the way there + American word pronunciations. I'm glad they cut that shit out after the pilot (the voiceover in the intro is fine so presumably they did that later)