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.

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.

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.

The Next Generation had a very bad start. This episode marks the first glimmer of what this series would become and why I love it: a great mix of fantastic storytelling, sciencefiction and philosophy.

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.