Where No One Has Gone Before

This episode of TNG has visiting scientist Stanley Kamel better known as Dr. Kroeger from Monk aboard the Enterprise. He's a scientist who's quite full of himself even though both Commander Riker and Data question the validity of his claims that he can increase the travel capabilities of the Enterprise exponentially. But his assistant Eric Menyuk has everyone's curiosity aroused. All but Wil Wheaton who accepts Menyuk at face value and becomes his friend.

The experiment does succeed, but it flings the Enterprise millions of light years from earth to a galaxy where strange thing are happening. It's all to do with the Traveler as Menyuk is called. What can he do to reverse the situation?

A favorite TNG episode of mine. And it has a lot to do with the further adventures and maturing of callow youth Wesley Crusher.

'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 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.

Fans and critics agree that the first and second seasons of ST:TNG were not the greatest, and although one could say confidently that the first few episodes were fun, they weren't particularly noteworthy.

This all changed with episode 5, Where No One Has Gone Before. S1 harkened back to TOS with The Naked Now, and this episode as well references the second pilot of TOS - Where No Man Has Gone Before - with more than just a nod to the episode title. In the original Gary Mitchell was given the power to make thoughts a reality, and this episode includes a similar theme.

This episode is extremely important for a couple of reasons, but the primary reason is that the enormous potential for the series was shown brilliantly with this episode. During the first season TNG was attempting to find its way with with varying results. Where No One Has Gone Before was big jump in storytelling, infusing a philosophical thread into a rousing adventure more based in pure Science Fiction than Space Opera. This is an example of the kind of episode that made TOS so great, and was a solid confirmation that great things were to come from the new series.

The episode also contains one of my favorite scenes in the entire ST franchise, where Picard encounters his long deceased mother, Yvette, whom he refers to as "Maman" (pronounced Mam-Oh) . Herta Ware's portrayal of Maman is quite simply magnificent, and the interaction between her and Patrick Stewart is nothing short of wonderful. Her dialogue where she acknowledges that she's dead but is always with him had an eerie, ethereal quality. The scene is also interesting in that it questions the very nature of reality when Maman asks her son if he sees "this place" as the end of the universe, or the beginning of it.

And so with the airing of episode 5, viewers were shown an example of the series' potential...a potential that was realized fully over seven seasons and many, many fantastic episodes with plots both adventurous and grand.

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.