Why no 'evil TNG crew' episode ?

[Marsden]

Why was Episode Two green-lighted to begin with?

You mean "The Naked Now"? I think it was partly because the premise was a good way to develop the characters. ...

Plus I think they wanted to do one big nod to the original series before moving on.

From the first airing in '87, I always saw the dialog as Wesley implements his reverse-tractor beam as a blatant disclaimer about the aim of the show from there on:

WESLEY: ...Repulser beam hard against Tsiolkovsky. Don't you see? It's giving us a push off. The extra time we need.

RIKER: We're pushing away.

While being an exact replica of a TOS episode, it ends with them "pushing away" from a TOS-era ship and going off on their own path.

Whether or not it was actually intentional, it always has been so in my mind!

That's a remarkable metaphor! Wow, I never thought of it that way, but I think it's an cool observation.

I was probably too distracted by the fact that when Wes says to use the tractor as a repulsor beam that everyone thinks it's brilliant when on TOS all Sulu needed to do was change the setting, they always could do that. Maybe it's lost knowledge that you could do that by the 24th century.

 

[Christopher]

The reason there was none is because TNG was first. There was no precedent set yet.

Err, the precedent was "Mirror, Mirror" in the original series, which aired 20 years before TNG premiered. TNG was not first. It was fourth, after the original series, the animated series, and the movie series. That is, after all, why they called it The Next Generation.

 

[tafkats]

In most trek incarnations, there have been episodes featuring 'evil versions' of the crew, in mirror universes/alternate realities/warped accounts retold centuries later/whatever . TOS, DS9, VOY, ENT, they all feature such 'evil crew' episodes.

Did Voyager ever do this? They had the Silver Blood duplicates and the duplicates from "Deadlock," but never really evil versions of themselves. And if you stretch the definition enough to include the aliens' rewritten view of the future from "Living Witness," you might as well count Riker being accused of murder in "A Matter of Perspective."

 

[Squiggy]

The reason there was none is because TNG was first. There was no precedent set yet.

Err, the precedent was "Mirror, Mirror" in the original series, which aired 20 years before TNG premiered. TNG was not first. It was fourth, after the original series, the animated series, and the movie series. That is, after all, why they called it The Next Generation.

It was the first legitimate sequel to TOS. Before that you had the one episode 20 years before that that doesn't make a tradition. There wasn't a mirror universe episode of TAS nor a mirror universe setting in any of the movies.

But thanks for the Trek 101 lesson.

In most trek incarnations, there have been episodes featuring 'evil versions' of the crew, in mirror universes/alternate realities/warped accounts retold centuries later/whatever . TOS, DS9, VOY, ENT, they all feature such 'evil crew' episodes.

Did Voyager ever do this? They had the Silver Blood duplicates and the duplicates from "Deadlock," but never really evil versions of themselves. And if you stretch the definition enough to include the aliens' rewritten view of the future from "Living Witness," you might as well count Riker being accused of murder in "A Matter of Perspective."

No, the closet VOY got was Living Witness. DS9 is really the only series to run with the idea and ENT had the one off episode at the end.

 

[golddragon71]

That's another reason why i liked the comics from DC. (and the novels of course)
They were able to tell all the stories the fans wanted to see and not have to deal with the budgeting constraints or the production time that would have made the really goodpisodes that were produced, impossible to include, ncluding sequels/recurring character episodes cross-overs etc.

 

[Richard Baker]

'Dark Mirror' is an excellent read- I really like how the mirror Enterprise D is close but not physically identical with a different paintjob.

To be honest I did not care much for the DS-9 mirror episodes- too many and having the main characters in very different positions yet still interacting with each other despite that seemed contrived.

I did like the ST-E mirror shows- it was a good two parter and tied into the TOS show very well.

BTW- 'The Naked Now' would have been better to show later in that season. We barely got to know the characters and having them act atypical would have been better if we knew more about what there typical behavior might be.

 

[Christopher]

BTW- 'The Naked Now' would have been better to show later in that season. We barely got to know the characters and having them act atypical would have been better if we knew more about what there typical behavior might be.

But the idea was that the virus didn't change their personalities, just removed their inhibitions and filters. So the episode was meant to bring the characters' real inner natures and drives to the surface, and thereby help us get to know them better. Much like how "The Naked Time" revealed Kirk's loneliness in command, Spock's conflict between his logical and emotional sides, Sulu's inner swashbuckler, etc. That episode was so effective at revealing character that they thought it would be a good idea to do it again with these characters so we could get to see their innermost selves revealed early on.

Except that "Naked Now" ended up mostly being about the characters' sexual and romantic urges, since Roddenberry was taking advantage of the looser broadcast standards of the '80s. So all we really learned was that Picard and Crusher shared an attraction, Deanna still carried a torch for Riker, Geordi had a thing for Tasha, Tasha just wanted to screw around, and Data was "fully functional." Just about the only non-sexual thing we learned was that Wes was really smart and kind of arrogant.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

In "Parallels," we saw an alternate reality with long-bearded Riker not giving a damn about anybody but himself.

Having the Borg take over everyplace in the galaxy and your ship completely wrecked will do that to you-cut that Riker some slack.

A Mirror Universe TNG crew was already dealt with in the novel Dark Mirror, and there are also some great concepts shown of the TNG/DS9 characters at deviantArt: Star-Trek-MU

 

[Mr. Data]

"Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Parallels" both dabbled in the idea.

In "Yesterday's Enterprise," we saw an episode based around the premise of what if the Enterprise was a battleship, which was not utterly unlike the premise of the original "Mirror, Mirror."

In "Parallels," we saw an alternate reality with long-bearded Riker not giving a damn about anybody but himself.

That was damn unnerving. I remember being quite freaked out by that as a kid.

 

[Nebusj]

I'm surprised nobody's pointed out the obvious: the whole series was the Evil TNG Crew! We could barely imagine what it'd be like seeing their Good Twins!

 

[2takesfrakes]

... DENIED!!!

Mirror Universe episodes have always sucked, in my opinion. I'm not a big fan of them and that TNG rose above the temptation to follow suit is a great relief, to me. The cheesiness of The Original Series was something that was most easily avoided, even by 80's television standards.

 

[Leviathan]

Not so in TNG AFAIK (though I could be forgetting an ep that does just that)

Yes, it's Sub-rosa.

The episode works much better if you assume it's just in a parallel universe of utter suckitude.

 

[Kor]

In most trek incarnations, there have been episodes featuring 'evil versions' of the crew, in mirror universes/alternate realities/warped accounts retold centuries later/whatever . TOS, DS9, VOY, ENT, they all feature such 'evil crew' episodes.

Not so in TNG AFAIK (though I could be forgetting an ep that does just that) -- the most we get is some members of the cast becoming evil due to alien posession. Why ? Mere coincidence ? Or is there something more to be said ? (like, 'tng took itself quite seriously and an evil crew episode would have been too farcical')

Mind you, I'm not saying it should have been done, or that it would have been 'cool' -in fact I'm not particularly fond of such cliché ideas myself- -- just curious as to why it didn't happen in TNG, as it is a trope the other trek shows obviously couldn't resist.

It's said that they wanted to distance TNG from TOS, and avoid re-hashing old ideas. The Ferengi were supposed to be the new menacing villain, since the Klingons were now allies. And Romulans were not featured on the show at all for quite some time.

So it's interesting that we got "The Naked Now" so early in TNG's run.

Kor

 

[at Quark's]

Did Voyager ever do this? They had the Silver Blood duplicates and the duplicates from "Deadlock," but never really evil versions of themselves. And if you stretch the definition enough to include the aliens' rewritten view of the future from "Living Witness," you might as well count Riker being accused of murder in "A Matter of Perspective."

I don't think there really is a clear 'definition' in this case that could be stretched? However, I was just interested in episodes depicting entire crews as being evil, regardless of whether such a crew actually 'exists' within the trek (prime or alternate) universes. In that regard, 'living witness' certainly qualifies in my opinion as an 'evil crew episode'. Imho, 'A matter of perspective' does not, as it is only riker (not the entire crew) that is portrayed as 'evil' -- and as already indicated, TNG features quite some examples of "evil versions" of individual crewmembers (datalore, troi/o'brien/data in 'power play'/troi in 'man of the people'/ etc )

 

[Trekker4747]

You mean "The Naked Now"? I think it was partly because the premise was a good way to develop the characters. There's an old saying (not that I really believe it) that you don't really know who a person is until you've seen them drunk. "The Naked Time" was a strong episode for defining the characters of TOS and what motivated them, so Roddenberry figured the same premise would do the same for fleshing out the TNG cast -- and for establishing that it was a more modern, less prudish era where the show could go to more overtly sexual places than the original could.

I'd always heard that it was a Phase II script that they simple adapted to fit TNG. It was lying around, there may have been a pending writer's strike, so fuck-it, let's use it.

 

[Christopher]

I'd always heard that it was a Phase II script that they simple adapted to fit TNG. It was lying around, there may have been a pending writer's strike, so fuck-it, let's use it.

Umm, no, that makes no sense. "The Naked Now" was the second episode of the series, meaning it was one of the first scripts developed before production began. If there'd been a strike at the time, it wouldn't have been possible to develop and produce the show at all. The writers' strike was nearly a year later, in 1988, not 1987. It affected a couple of episodes at the end of the first season: the climax of "We'll Always Have Paris" had to be improvised on-set because they weren't able to do a rewrite when the scripted action didn't work out, and "The Neutral Zone" had to be shot from a first-draft script, which is why it's so bad. The strike also delayed the start of the second season and caused it to be shortened by four episodes. (And, contrary to popular belief, it had nothing to do with "Shades of Gray." That episode happened because the producers agreed to do a clip show in exchange for getting more money to produce "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Q Who.")

The only TNG episodes produced from leftover Phase II scripts were "The Child" and "Devil's Due," which were put in the development pipeline just before the strike. "The Child" was the second-season premiere, but "Devil's Due" went through a bunch of rewrites and got delayed to season 4.