In rough order of appearance, here are the main characters we meet in the first episode:

Captain Picard

I…actually can’t think of that much to say about Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Hint: that means he’s pretty awesome and I can’t find anything to complain about.

Being unable to pay him a higher compliment than that, I shall move on.

Commander Data

Irrelevant bit of trivia: if anyone nags you about misusing the word “data” as a singular noun instead of a plural one, just tell them in a scandalized tone that of course you were referring to the android, thank you very much.

Data confuses me. He knows the word “gumshoe” but not “snoop”? I had to look up “gumshoe,” and I’m a lexophile.

Data is TNG’s Straw Vulcan. I have a problem with Straw Vulcans in general, as you might guess, mostly because they are absolutely terrible examples of rationality and intelligent thought. Data, at least, has an excuse – he was programmed that way. He’s literally a robot synthetic person, he doesn’t have emotions, nor does he have access to the wealth of personal experience and context that humans gain in the 20-year journey to adulthood. (Spock did; he should have known better).

For the record, machines are totally capable of everything Data aspires to and more. We already, today, have computer programs that can write poetry. Not especially good poetry, mind, but then again, most poetry isn’t. We will totally be capable of building conscious androids in 2360, if we haven’t managed to wipe ourselves out first.

I guess I’ll just assume that in Star Trek Physics, it’s harder to build a machine that can do creative stuff. Poor Pinocchio Data.

Counselor Deanna Troi

We first get the impression she’s psychic – “Captain, I’m sensing a powerful mind…” Later, the show clarifies she’s empathic, which is not quite the same thing – she can sense strong emotions. And, I guess, some thoughts too, as the series progresses there are hints of that.

This is supposed to reassure us.

I’m not buying it.

Counselor Troi can tell how you’re feeling at any given moment, and possibly sense strong thoughts.

If that sentence doesn’t freak you out at least a little bit, maybe read it again.

Mind reading is serious business. It’s also a massive invasion of privacy, if done without consent. Easily on par with reading someone’s private diary, and possibly much worse. Do you want someone reading your emotions or strong thoughts while you’re having sex in another room? I sure as heck don’t. Talk about snooping.

I would have legitimate worries about being in the same room with even a weak mind reader. The kind of stuff that bubbles to the surface of my mind when I imagine someone reading me is literally the worst things I can think of, even utterly false things. They just come to me as examples of the sort of thing I wouldn’t want read. But they’re still at the surface of my mind. What’s to say a shallow mind reading wouldn’t get just the horrible thought, and nothing else? I have a deep-seated fear of misunderstandings, and shallow mindreading makes that fear even worse.

Ironically, I might be more comfortable with a deep mental probe than a shallow one – while I may have secrets I want to keep for tactical reasons or to avoid awkwardness, I don’t fear a friendly or reasonable person having deep knowledge of my personality. I’m nice. And if I’m not nice, they can tell me and I’ll try to stop. And they would know this if they read my mind all the way. See? Not a big deal.

But not everyone is wired that way. In fact, I don’t know anyone else with my specific set of preferences on the matter. Most people fall closer to the extreme of wanting privacy, wanting to keep their thoughts entirely to themselves. Being in the same room as a mindreader could outright send someone into a panic spiral of terrible thoughts, make them utterly miserable, or just shut them down entirely – I know people like this exist.

I wonder if the crew of the Enterprise all got psych checks and signed something saying they were okay with being on the same ship as an empath? I sure hope so. You don’t spring that sort of thing on people without warning them about it first.

Troi’s ability has to be invaluable to her role on the Enterprise, but it’s also a huge threat to the privacy of anyone on board, if she chooses to misuse it. Thankfully, for the most part she doesn’t. That we know of. Good for Counselor Troi, I suppose. That has to take a heck of a lot of restraint.

Lieutenant Worf

There’s not much to say here, yet. Worf’s a great choice for a security officer, I think. I love that the presence of a Klingon shows that the galaxy’s made yet more progress on the “not being constantly at war” front.

Also, they totally changed the way Klingons look. It must be…erm…

the genophage

they have better makeup artists in 2360

in a fit of teen drama, the entire species is going Goth

…eh, forget it, I’ll just let that one slide.

I’m not going to bother with a Humans in Funny Suits counter, much as I want to. Pretty much every single alien species we meet is going to trigger it, so I’ll just make a note to talk about this trope in a little more depth later.

For now: in the real world, we should expect aliens to be way more alien, physically and mentally, than anything we see in Star Trek. If they exist at all. Do you want to meet a sapient, spacefaring shrimp? I don’t. I doubt they’d like us and our primate priorities. I expect it’d be mutual.

Lieutenant Tasha Yar

Lieutenant Yar is interesting, too. We don’t know much about her, yet, other than that she managed to survive a terrible background, so I’ll save my commentary for later.

Commander William T. Riker

The “T” stands for Thomas. I looked it up so you don’t have to.

He has the smuggest, most self-satisfied grin of anyone I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

These are all from the first 5 minutes of Riker being on screen:

Does my face do this when I smirk? I hope not. 

We’ll see more of this dashing fellow later. Moving on.

Dr. Beverly Crusher

I like Dr. Crusher.

She’s collected and professional. She’s obviously and casually good at her job. She doesn’t hesitate to call out Riker when she thinks he’s trying to pull something, and she just as swiftly apologizes and starts taking his concerns seriously when she sees evidence that they’re legitimate.

CRUSHER: “I was accusing you of inventing work in order to curry favor with our new captain. I apologize.”

As with many of the characters in TNG, Dr. Crusher has mastered the art of the mea culpa. We’ll see more of this later from the rest of the crew, but you heard it here first. Also, note that she manages to simultaneously a) apologize, b) look even more competent, and c) advance the plot.

It’s totally possible, even easy, to apologize to someone without losing face. And it’s important, too. To apologize, that is. The saving face part is optional.

Dr. Crusher’s husband died while serving under Captain Picard, but she remains professional about it when she brings it up. Another point in her favor.

Wesley Crusher

The “Oo! Oo! A starship!” kid. Also a technical genius. According to the much-beloved Memory Alpha wiki, he’s 15 when the show begins. He looks and acts old enough that it kind of weirds me out when they keep contemptuously calling him “the boy.” It’s no fun for him, either.

Geordi La Forge

We’ll talk about Geordi later. For now: he’s cool and has a cool visor.

Q

Short name. Loooong rant. Buckle in, explorers.

Q seems to be a recurring…villain? Nemesis? Annoyance? Distributor of terrible exams, like that middle school teacher everyone hated? Well, he shows up a lot in the series, so much that I still remember his goofy face years later.

Better analysts than I have pointed out how Q-as-the-new-Khan represents the more cerebral nature of TNG compared with TOS. And it’s a really good point. His antics may be funny to watch, but Q’s power combined with his callous disregard for human life make him both creepy and scary. Like if Superman were raised by Lex Luthor’s parents instead of Johnathan and Martha Kent. Or maybe if Jesus were raised by the Mongols. I dunno.

In this episode, he’s presented as a sort of judge of humanity. But that role kind of falls flat with the way he acts. He’s awfully hypocritical, accusing humanity of grievous wrongs while committing a bunch of them himself. I’m with Picard in considering him an obnoxious pain in the ass at best, and a grave threat at worst. He’s not really qualified to judge humanity on anything. He still wouldn’t be, even if he had created humanity himself – and as we’ll see, he certainly has that much power and more.

“We call ourselves the Q…”

I note that there seems to be both a person called Q and a species which he belongs to, “the” Q. We don’t actually meet any of the other Q, yet, but we may later if I recall right. Maybe they’re not all obnoxious, judgmental jerks? One can dream.

Let’s look at what Q does, just in this episode:

• Blocks the path of the Enterprise with a force field
• Teleports to the bridge
• Shows up in old (European? Spanish?) sailor garb and uses “thee” and “thou”, then switches costumes a bunch
• Makes a somewhat hamfisted reference to “A Few Good Men” in the process; well done, writers
• Freezes a redshirt who tries to stun him
• Tries to punish a small group of humans on a science vessel for the crimes of their entire species (seriously, what is with this guy?)
• Teleports the bridge crew to a kangaroo court
• Creates (?) a bunch of people (?) who may or may not be real but who are all going to be erased when he’s done with the kangaroo court (!)
• Freezes Lieutenant Yar for yelling at him, and has to be talked out of it by Picard
• Pulls a “Surrender AND die“, where he threatens to kill Picard’s crew unless Picard admits guilt (of course, the punishment for guilt is “Q kills everyone”). Still not quite sure how Picard managed to weasel out of that one.
• At the last moment, shows up on the Enterprise viewscreen to taunt and threaten the crew again, and to give them a 24-hour time limit. For no apparent reason. I guess he’s bored.

Q claims to be judging humanity by humanity’s standards, or some such drivel, but there are a million practical and philosophical reasons why this is a terrible idea and also not at all what Q actually does. You probably know them already and I’m not going to bore you with them here.

But the Real Problem Here Is…

The biggest condemnation of Q, and by extension, his entire species, is not in their actions – it’s in their inaction. If they really think that humanity is running around committing a bunch of horrible wrongs against themselves and against other species, why wait until now to do something about it? And why do it in such a crappy way – pick on one lone science vessel instead of the entire Federation, or at least its governing bodies? (The real answer is because this story is about the Enterprise, not the Federation, but I’m talking in-universe here).

I used to think that there was some kind of moral difference between causing harm and refusing to prevent it. I’ve changed my mind on that. Now, though I acknowledge there may be some practical difference, I think that inaction can be almost as bad as deliberate harm.

If I had the power to snap my fingers and eradicate cancer, I would. No question about it. And I think that if I could do that, and didn’t, humanity would rightfully have a grievance against me. Maybe not quite as bad as if I had created cancer, and chosen to inflict it on humanity. But still, pretty bad. Some kid whose parent died from cancer would be entirely justified in coming up to me and asking “but why did you let them die?”

Q has that power, or seems to. His entire species could right a lot of the wrongs that Q accuses humanity of causing, and they could do it without murdering anyone. They aren’t doing that, and they offer no explanation as to why. I conclude they probably just don’t care.

Frankly, I don’t even need to meet Q in person to conclude that he’s a moral fraud. All I really need is evidence that Q exists and has godlike powers. Then, just by looking around, I can figure out “well, I guess he doesn’t care about any of this, does he.” The Federation may be a nice place to live, but people still die when they don’t want to, and the frontier and wider galaxy remain treacherous and unforgiving.

Now, it’s possible that the Q have some compelling reason not to intervene. They could have their own version of the Prime Directive (and we know how I feel about that) or they could have precognition that tells them that several trillion humans and aliens need to suffer and die before things improve. I guess either of these would make Q himself a rogue element, acting against the knowledge or wishes of the Continuum? It’s vanishingly, laughably unlikely, but it’s possible. The simplest explanation is usually right, and the simplest explanation is that the Q want to feel smug about judging us, but can’t be bothered to help.

Jerks.

Cameo: The Mysterious Admiral

I didn’t get a chance to squeeze this in at the end of the last post, but the episode actually concludes with a brief visit from a mysterious, unidentified admiral. Who is totally Dr. McCoy from the original series. Data walks him around the Enterprise, and they have an endearing and heartwarming conversation.

THE ADMIRAL: “I don’t see no points on your ears, boy. But you sound like a Vulcan.”

DATA: “No, sir. I am an android.”

THE ADMIRAL: “Hmf. Almost as bad.”

You get me, Bones. You get me. Sniff.

Data and The Admiral bounce off each other wonderfully for a bit, and the episode concludes, leaving me alone with my one remaining question.

Why is McCoy an admiral?

No, seriously. He was a medical officer. Command was never his specialty. Did I miss something? Did he get the rank by virtue of sheer age and crotchety stubbornness? Or has he survived so much utter balderdash in his day that Starfleet keeps him around as a ward against evil, like a saintly relic? When he dies, will a superstitious captain carry around the Skeleton of Bones for the next five hundred years, behind a panel that reads IN CASE OF NONSENSE, BREAK GLASS?

Maybe I’m revealing my lack of Trekkie credentials here, but I really want to know how Bones got his new rank.

And…

I’m sorry, but you knew I had to go there, I can’t not, it’s just too perfect…

Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a fleet commander!

…I’ll see myself out.

Bonus: The Enterprise’s Character Sheet

Here’s my guess, for this silly comparison that nobody needed.

Data is Intelligence. Banks of knowledge, massive processing power, very little experience and poor communication skills. That’s the easy one.

Riker is Charisma. Courage, presence, confidence, that absurdly smug grin, sexual attractiveness, and a tendency to get into trouble he can’t get out of without help. He’s every bard ever.

Picard is Wisdom. Experience, level-headedness, decisiveness, Shakespearean poetry, and gets flustered around kids and that one lady he likes.

Why is Wisdom running the show? I think Picard is in charge because he knows what to delegate to Intelligence and Charisma, and what to decide for himself. He asks Data for information, and he asks Riker to lead away teams and help him not get frustrated and awkward around kids. He knows his own flaws, and that, too is a trait that belongs to Wisdom.

I tried doing some of the other crew, but I sort of stalled. Worf might be Strength, Tasha Constitution based on her determination and what she’s endured, but we don’t really have a Dexterity aboard, and when I bring in Troi and Wesley and Dr. Crusher we start to see overlap. So I stuck with the highest-ranking officers. Maybe Dr. Crusher is Dexterity, given the fine motor skills involved in surgery? Hmm… I am open to wild speculation.