Encounter at Farpoint

So, right off the bat fuck you I'm starting with TNG.  It was totally my steez starting in 5th grade when my friend Peter Burns (at the time I thought it was hilarious to call him P. Burns) got me hooked.  So, 5th grade was 1993, almost all the way through the original TNG original airing and right as DS9 and Voyager were starting up as well.  The Star Trek Golden Age.  Also fuck you if you aren't already a Star Trek fan.

Up until that point I had been a Star Wars guy, full throttle, fully subscribing to the adolescent us-vs-them mentality of the sci-fi nerd world.  I was dick deep into playing X-Wing (fuck TIE Fighter) for years, and so thoroughly ensconced in that world of capital ships with fleets of fighters that the Star Trek paradigm of cruising around in an armed pleasure ship seemed frighteningly foreign.

That was what Gene Roddenberry was going for though, albeit not in the manner that I experienced it.  It is over the top obvious in the first two seasons of TNG, his naive vision of humanity's future, even worse than it was in the TOS.  The first episode, Encounter at Farpoint frames his whole sickeningly sweet ideal for the future.

Thank god for Q.

Q, played by the always wonderful John de Lancie (check him out in Breaking Bad), acts as the trollface antithesis to the hack idealism of Roddenberry.  "You can't deny that you are a dangerous, savage, child race!" Indeed, Q, indeed.  If it weren't for the masterful acting of Patrick Stewart, begging for Gene's shitty, pervy worldview the whole series might have been unbearable.  At least until he (Gene) died.

As an intro episode, Encounter at Farpoint serves its purpose well.  We are at first introduced to the stoic Picard, nearly-insufferable-yet-lovable Data, the worthless Troi, humorless Worf, and actually-insufferable Tasha Yar.

On Farpoint, we get the rest of the cast and bridge crew.  It is hilarious how fucking awful Wesley proves to be immediately.  First, he calls his mother a whore, and then tells some stranger about how his dad died like a god damn crybaby.  I challenge you, internet, to find me a more annoying character in the history of art. Also Riker is sort of a dick to Geordi, probably because he is black.  And blind. Picard is in turn a dick to Riker, I guess thats how they feel people out in Starfleet.

I like the scraps they threw to poor DeForest Kelly. Sad bastard never got another legit gig after Star Trek, had to earn his living cruising Star Trek conventions. I can't help but pity these poor bastards, doomed to a life of being hounded by more mouth breathers than you could have ever imagined existed.

Can we talk about how awful Troi's hair is this episode?  Talk about a boner killer, RIKER IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU - HUSSY.

She starts fucking with him immediately too, Imzadi this, Imzadi that.  Just like a woman, can't leave a player alone, hahahahahaha.

Anyways, blah blah there is a space jellyfish and the Enterprise saves it, Wesley is a little bitch some more (a lot more), and is only allowed to because Picard got his dad killed.  And then tries the whole series to bone his mom, the still-hot-for-an-old-lady Gates McFadden. THE END.