For me, it would be "Masks." I always love watching this episode whenever it comes on because the concept is really fascinating. Yeah, it fades a bit at the end but I always found it to be a super neat bottle show. The idea of the Enterprise turning into an alien city was a very inventive one. And Brent Spiner proved, once again, why he is such a gifted actor! How about you?
The Enemy. I imagine some people, even fans, don't even know it by name. It is easily the coolest thing they every did with both Geordi, & Worf. It has Tomalak. Picard is the MAN! The Romulans are Bad Ass! Wesley has a useful idea that doesn't come off as shoehorned in, just to play him as the resident prodigy. Troi serves a purpose, & even Beverly's usual bleeding heart righteous indignation actually fits in the situation. It is just good stuff from start to finish, & it hardly ever gets praised as such
Arsenal of Freedom- great pacing (a vastly underrated feature of good episodes), good message worth considering even today, substantial meaty parts for the entire regular cast and even a couple of guest crewman, great tension between characters (LaForge & Engineer Logan). Contagion- ironically, almost a template or a model for a Star Trek original series episode.
A lot of episodes from seasons 1 and 2, just because they were made in seasons 1 and 2 and surrounded by, shall we say, "Star Drek"... Time Squared Contagion Symbiosis The Royale (it doesn't feel like TNG but uses the TNG cast in another trope, which often works) Peak Performance The Emissary A Matter of Honor Elementary Dear Data Samaritan Snare Loud as a Whisper When The Bough Breaks Home Soil The Battle Coming of Age Justice really needed its rough draft made instead, since the rewrites it got turned what was potentially a great story into "planet of the oiled blond hornytoads, where trampling on a common flower garden inciting the death penalty and we'll just use the prime directive as a cheap write-off" comes across more ludicrous than thought-provoking and all... Datalore had some potential, a rewrite and a less hectic shooting schedule (why didn't they do retakes every time Spiner had used a contraction... the number of times that happened is actually worse than Wesley's unending tantrums of "Nobody would care if an adult did it!" )
I've always felt this episode's been wrongfully accused and woefully misunderstood by a loud minority. I'm particularly fond of the Ramsey / Ariel "Silent Partners" angle -- almost like Romeo & Juliet, whilst the Riker / Mistress Beata story was akin to The Taming of the Shrew. The stuff with Riker and The Outfit, where Dee & Troi were concerned was pure gold! And when Riker ends up making his plea to $ave those being wrongly persecuted, it's a hell of a moment for the character. A very entertaining episode, all around.
There is something about that episode that just doesn't work for me. I don't know if it's the cheesy soundstage planet set, or the goofy salesman character that Schiavelli plays.
I also think Masks is underrated. I know it gets a lot of hate but for sheer weirdness, it can't be beat. I've always found it very entertaining.
There are so many from season 1. Too Short A Season is a memorably tragic story about an Admiral's plan for redemption amidst a war scarred planet. Symbiosis gets unfairly dismissed because Tasha makes some speech about drugs; I think it's a solid dramatic prime directive episode. Skin of Evil is a tension filled rescue story and Armus is one of TNG's most unique villains. Watching Riker get sucked into a black slime monster is surely going where no one has gone before... Season 2: Where Silence Has Lease, Up The Long Ladder. Season 3: The Price, A Matter of Perspective. Season 4: Night Terrors. Season 5: Silicon Avitar. Season 6: Man of The People. Season 7: Liasons
Season 2 as a whole is criminally under-rated, but let's go with "Time Squared", "A Matter of Honour", "The Royale" or "Loud As A Whisper".
This is one that I really want to like. I really like the basic idea of the kidnapped astronaut,and the guy who plays Texas does a good job. I think it would have worked better if you only focused on two characters (Data and Riker) and left off almost every scene on the Enterprise. You don't really need Picard reading the novel aboard ship, much less having Troi stand behind him while he reads. That would give you more time with the two main characters interacting with the guest stars and getting more immersed in the plot of the bad novel.
That may have been the way the episode played in the original script. Tracy Torme's original draft had the away team interacting with Col. Ritchie rather than Riker seeing his corpse and reading his diary. Torme was so unhappy with the rewrite that he took his name off the script.
Very interesting. I found this old thread talking about it: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/original-the-royale-script.123944/ It includes some comments from from a Sliders fan page: Tormé recalls that he pitched two stories. One was "The Dream Pool," which never got made, and the second was "The Blue Moon Hotel," which was later produced, heavily rewritten, as "The Royale." "That's a bit of a heartbreak for me. I really believe it would have been a tremendous show," says Tormé, who terms the final product almost unrecognizable. "'The Royale' was really my attempt to do a Prisoner show. The hotel was [The Village] and the astronaut living there was like Number Six. This is all allegory. Every day he woke up and lived this strange life inside the Vegas Hotel. Being among all these people, who weren't really people. It was very surrealistic and kind of sad. Very touching and very lonely and he didn't understand his own existence. It was like being in a Vegas casino in this barren alien planet. And the Enterprise people come aboard and realized there's only one human being there — the astronaut — and you never see the alien entity, the hotel manager, until the end. That's my Number One. The assistant manager was Number Two. It was a very complex and surrealistic story. It's about loneliness and isolation. "What happened to 'The Royale' was that there was a stupid rule that said they had to utilize the cast more. The astronaut was too good a part and took away from our cast. They turned the astronaut into a skeleton in the bed. They decided to rewrite all the casino stuff. To me, it was like bad comedy. "I'll give you a perfect example of someone who doesn't know anything about Vegas writing a cliché Vegas scene. They came up with this whole thing about the book and [the trapped Enterprise crew] had to win enough money gambling to buy their way out of the hotel. "I just watched the whole show in complete horror. I had no idea what the show was about. I still don't know what the show was about! I'm really sorry they couldn't do the original. It was terrific. All through the first season, we talked about doing it. It was just a question of doing it right, spending the money and taking the time. When we were going to do it second season. I thought, 'Great!' and it turned into a disaster." Needless to say, I would love to read this script. p.s. I had no that the son of the Velvet Fog wrote for TNG.
Torme was one TNG's best writers. The Big Goodbye, Conspiracy, and The Schizoid Man are amongst some of my favorite episodes, and he wrote some of Data's funniest moments. He had quite a falling out with Maurice Hurley and after Man Hunt was rewritten he never wanted to write for TNG again.