Title: Where No One Has Gone Before
Airdate: 10/26/1987
Plot Summary
An arrogant starfleet engineer and his alien assistant are ordered to test their warp equations on the Enterprise, much to a skeptical Riker’s annoyance. Unexpectedly the simple attempt to enhance the performance of the warp engines sends them first 2 million light years past their own galaxy and then somewhere beyond the universe where thought and reality are one. The alien mistakenly did this as Kosinski the engineer is a buffoon. Can the crew keep control over their thoughts before what’s in their minds runs rampant all over the Enterprise? And even if they can, how do they get home?
Make It So
Picard has a helluva trip from the bridge to engineering. He almost steps out of the turbolift into empty space, he runs across an ensign in full ballet attire and snaps her back to reality, and runs into his mother. He figures out that thoughts are creating reality.
Number 1
Riker is immediately skeptical of Kosinski’s bullshit. But when Wesley tries to tell him that it’s the traveler, he brushes him off. This is also the first time I notice in Engineering Riker performing the Riker Maneuver when he sits in one of the chairs.
Riker wonders why they have no record of the traveler or others like him ever having visited, and is slightly miffed that the traveler says it’s because they haven’t been interesting enough to visit.
Fully Functional
Data mostly comments on what’s going on but has very little to do.
Today Is A Good Day To Die
Picard takes the time to listen to all opinions after the first jump and whether they should let Kosinski try again. Geordi says who else can do it, Data wants to explore and Worf wonders if its a good idea to let a guy who made this kind of mistake try again. For the first time in what will become a long standing tradition on this show, Worf is rejected and Worf is right, as they end up in the WTF Quadrant.
We also see his pet targ from when he was a kid, I would assume before the Khitomer attack.
Phase Inducers
Geordi also mostly just helms the ship and reacts in astonishment at how far they went.
Counselor Cleavage
Deanna can’t sense the traveler. Not just she can’t sense his emotions, but it’s like he’s a complete void.
Dancing Doctor
Crusher has to struggle to get the traveler from dying. I don’t get the idea she did much but he got better anyway.
Security Chief Dead Meat
Yar has a vision of her cat and then back on her planet escaping a rape gang.
Shut Up, Wesley
Wesley of course figures out everything, and impresses the traveler. He tells Picard that Wesley is like Mozart with warp theory. And the hate Wesley movement intensifies.
Wesley is made an acting Ensign. To Picard’s credit it comes with a lot studying and a non-negotiable demand of entering Starfleet academy. He’s going to have a lot work and studying to do.
Canon Maker
We have a new chief Engineer, Argyle. Amusingly Riker introduces him as “one of our chief engineers” which in hindsight turned out to be very true in the first season as they had a revolving door of Chief Engineers.
The Traveler is introduced, he’s appear again a couple of more times.
With the appearance of the Hood in Farpoint and now the USS Fearless in this one, we can see that the Excelsior class continued service well into the 24th century. I also like how the Enterprise-D looks really big compared to it, the way the Excelsior looked to the Enterprise-A.
Canon Breaker
I just don’t buy that Starfleet’s best engineers would simply accept Kosinski’s bs equations, shrug because they worked, and not have any questions about this strange alien with him. Even worse, no one noticed he phases in and out of reality while running the tests? This even happens on the Enterprise as only Wesley notices and everyone tells him to go away.
For some reason Kosinski has no comm badge. Never have seen that before. Anyone visiting the Enterprise that’s has a Starfleet uniform has some sort of comm badge.
The Enterprise passes Warp 10. For some reason they didn’t devolve into salamanders and had salamander babies. (re: Star Trek Voyager’s Threshold.) Warp 10 is a barrier that can’t really be broken. Picard even says, this isn’t possible.
Picard, the show not the character, shows his mother to be mentally unstable and commits suicide at a much younger age than how she’s portrayed here. I’m calling that entire show the canon breaker.
When Voyager gets 70,000 light years away from home, at maximum warp it would take 70 years to get home. The Voyager is actually slightly faster than the Enterprise but let’s say they are capable of the same speeds. Geordi says they are over 2 million light years away and it would take 300 years to get home. If you can only go 1000 light years every year, then 300 years would only get you 300,000 light years. It would actually take over 2000 years to get home.
A Little Bloody Nose
Somehow no one dies.
Technobabble
I mentioned in Farpoint that the captain had two chairs on each side and then two smaller ones on the outside of the three main ones. However those last two seats didn’t show up until this episode.
I Know That Guy:
Bill Yeager plays Argyle. We’ll actually see him play the role once more this season. He’s never done anything memorable but he’s been a working actor for decades and has kept busy.
Stanley Kamel plays the arrogant Kosinski. His most memorable role was a recurring part in Monk. He sadly passed away at age 65 in 2008.
Herta Ware plays Yvette Picard. Her most recognizable role was in the 80s sci-fi classic Cocoon as Rose.
Eric Menyuk plays the traveler. Menyuk was a runner up to play Data but was beaten out by Spiner. I’d say they made the right choice but I’m glad he got a little recurring character anyway. He didn’t do a whole lot and ended up retiring from acting to be a full time lawyer.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is actually a good episode, marred by more Wesley shenanigans. Still, after NuTrek and the absolute drek that is Starfleet Academy, I realize that Wes has been given a bit of a bum rap. I still stand by my opinion that The Naked Now really did more damage to the character than anything but this really isn’t that bad. Sure, Wesley is still too awesome at everything and the crew is either needlessly dickish to him or he just gets too much handed to him. I get it.
But his heart is generally in the right place, he never is disrespectful to the adults, and even though he is probably rewarded ahead of people that work their asses off to even have a chance to serve on the bridge of the flagship, he still has at least some hoops to jump through and we’ll see that as the show progresses. The criticisms are still valid nearly 40 years later but after seeing how bad it can get, I just can’t get as worked up about Wesley anymore.
But the episode is pretty fun, if you can get past some of that and some of the others things I mentioned. Ending up in billions of light years away where your thoughts create reality? They are lucky things didn’t get a lot more chaotic. I also like how the filmed some of this. The guy playing violins and it just goes quiet when the quartet disappears. Picard nearly walking out of a turbolift into nothingness was pretty frightening in its simplicity.
Season one has a lot of problems but there were some gems here and there. I rather liked this one.
