Review

An intriguing difference from TOS seen clearly in the second part of Encounter at Farpoint is the clear establishment of long term plot arcs. The past relationship between Riker and Troi, Geordi's blindness, and Picard's history with Beverly and Wesley are all plot elements that clearly have more backstory and more developments left to unfold. In this regard, Encounter at Farpoint functions better as setup for future stories than it does as a story in its own right. Q's mystery of the space jellyfish was indeed, as Q noted, too easily solved. And the question of Q's precise motives for toying with the Enterprise crew leaves yet another mystery for a future episode to solve. While it is certainly nice to see the writers show a willingness to develop characters and plots over time which was exceedingly rare on TOS, a better story would've been more notable for its own developments rather than mostly for what it sets up for later.

The biggest flaw with Encounter at Farpoint is the pacing. So many scenes feel padded out unnecessarily to fill time. But there were other notable flaws too. One particularly cringeworthy feature of the episode is the romantic tension between Riker and Troi. They are heavily implied to have had some kind of romantic relationship in the past prior to their assignment to the Enterprise. After what was evidently a relatively amicable breakup, they are now flung back into each other's company unexpectedly by both being serendipitously assigned to the Enterprise. There's nothing wrong with that premise, but how it plays out in the episode leaves much to be desired, with the climax of absurdity being Troi not-so-subtly trying to nudge Riker into going into the underground caverns alone with her and then dropping even the pretense of subtlety when she has her "Don't! If you should be hurt!" outburst.

Troi and Riker both exhibited some unsavory characteristics of their own independent of each other too. It could perhaps go without saying that how Troi's empath powers were portrayed was quite lame. Watching her repeatedly exclaim, "Pain! Anger! Powerful mind!" is an exceptionally lazy way to do exposition, as it violates the principle of "show, don't tell." Heightening the irritation of watching these scenes is the silly degree of overacting that Marina Sirtis brings to the table for them. But we should place the majority of the blame on the writing here, not the acting. Her worst line was clearly an example of bad writing, not bad acting: "I'm only half Betazoid. My father was a Starfleet officer." She says this as if it goes without saying that her father could not be Betazoid if he was in Starfleet; as though those things are mutually exclusive. This strangely contradicts the idea that anyone can be in Starfleet, even a Klingon.

For Riker's part, his scene with Data on the holodeck was especially awkward as well, mostly for Riker's remarks, but partly for Data's as well. Mostly the problem with the scene is Riker's weirdly anachronistic prejudice directed at Data. While it was nice to see Data call him on it, it's surprising to see the show assassinate one of its main characters by depicting him as bigoted out of the gate. But then it gets even weirder when Riker responds to Data's remark about prejudice by interpreting it to mean that Data thinks he's superior, after which Data bizarrely agrees, in fact, he does consider himself superior. Yeesh. The whole point of depicting a multiracial, multispecies society like the Federation that was forged out of the crucible of the eugenics war and the "post-atomic horror" of a third world war is that by the 24th century, people should be beyond these kinds of shallow bigotries. But apparently Riker still has some lizard brain left to beat back. No wonder Q found just cause to test to see if the Federation was still "grievously savage" or if it had evolved beyond its animal instincts.

In any event, despite some awkward moments, Encounter at Farpoint is still a pretty strong story and a good start to a show that does indeed promise to be, as Picard put it, "much more interesting" down the road. Engage!