Where No One Has Gone Before

Enterprise tinkers with its engines and appears to travel an incredible distance.

This is reasonably strong episode with a decent concept and some interesting guest characters.

It suffers a bit of clunky exposition dialogue in the introductory sequence, but aside from that the story flows very well.

There is some relatively strong focus given to Wesley Crusher, which is bad news for those who dislike the character, but I do not think he comes across as particularly unlikeable in this episode. Riker on the other hand patronises and ignores Wesley in a rather silly way that knocks some of the credibility he built in the previous episode.

The guest character of The Traveller is for me the most interesting aspect and the sci-fi concept that comes with him is quite intriguing, albeit not fully explained.

I enjoyed the visuals, sound and most performances, particularly Eric Menyuk, Stanley Kamel and (as always) Patrick Stewart. Will Wheaton does nothing wrong, but has the tendency to overuse that goofy smile a bit.

For me it's a 7.5/10 but I round upwards.

The Enterprise's engines are tested by a Federation expert and his assistant in order to boost the ship's engines. When the initial test run goes wrong, the ship finds itself marooned in an area of space far beyond what has previously been explored.

The first episode to really expose Wesley Crusher's role on the ship as a "solve-all", this episode feels far closer to the spirit of the original series than the previous episodes as it explores the human condition as well as the perils of deep, deep space. The effects are a little clunky but the script makes up for it and is easily one of the best season one episodes thus far.

'Where No One Has Gone Before' isn't perfect, but it makes for pretty good first season fair. Unfortunately, it involves a lot of Wesley and sort of fizzles out late in the game, but it does lure you in with some solid science fiction. The pompous engineering guy, Kosinski (onboard to push the ship's engine past its limits with a new formula) drives a lot of this, and I did like Riker politely-but-firmly keeping him in his place (Frakes' presence is surprising me in these early episodes). And the warp sequence was pretty cool.

But trippy effects aside, what surpassing Warp 10 does is give this a distinct sense of adventure; barriers are broken, a new galaxy is breached and we're truly sailing into the unknown. It's the kind of nervous excitement they tried to build "Voyager" on, but . . . eh, that didn't go so well.

Not bad.

7/10

This is the best episode so far. What makes it so is that the laws of physics become accessible to the broad array of characters. The Enterprise and its ilk have the greatest potential but they are limited by their very structures and the forces of time and space. So we need to have a force of some kind enter the picture. This is what happens with the Traveller. We also come to realize that while raw and impulsive, Wesley Crusher is a key figure. I know he is an annoying kid, but he is the focal point here. Something must be done as the crew fly across the universe, arriving at galaxies that could only be dreamed of. The Traveller is the embodiment of an x-factor to go beyond and yet integrate the physics they are dealing with. There are some marvelous twists and turns here. Characters and objects fade in and out during warping. At some point, one has to admit some sense of defeat and draw in the forces that are not understandable to the mere mortal. I found this episode really interesting.

This is a personal highlight from a season with little to have a song and dance about. The Enterprise is thrown many lightyears from home by a mistake made by two guests called Kosinski and the Traveller. Interestingly, the actor who plays the Traveller was in the running to play Data. It's a superb episode which shows the strength of the main cast as well as displaying some great guest performances from the wonderfully arrogant Kosinski and the mysterious Traveller. There are also some rather splendid graphics here and there. However, the corniness of this first season as a whole shines through when Picard is forced to encourage his crew to "believe" their way out of it, but it is a forgivable little cringe.