First Contact: The Next Generation Introcast

The Enterprise is answering a distress call when they encounter a Dyson Sphere, not a hand dryer but a gargantuan ball built around a sun designed to house a vast population. They find the source of distress, it’s a transport vessel, the Jenolan, that crashed 75 years earlier. An away team investigates and discovers that the transporter has been rigged to store a pattern over the long term. They d...

The Enterprise transports Ambassador Alkar and his elderly mother to a mediation on a warring planet. The man is clearly a bit sinister and so Troi is obviously drawn to him so he can do something nefarious to her. That’s really just her role in this show. After his mother dies, he performs a ceremony with Troi and after that, she just camps it up and puts on some fabulous outfits. But she’s also...

The Enterprise investigates a missing ship, the USS Yosemite, which is stuck in a plasma streamer with the crew unaccounted for. With weird space rays making a shuttle trip or use of the transporter impossible, Barclay suggests tying the two transporter systems together so that they can get through. But the trouble is, that will make the process take double the time and Reg has a fear of transport...

The Enterprise is called back to Earth after someone finds Data’s head in a cave while doing an archaeological dig along with evidence of aliens on Earth some 500 years ago. Some cellular fossils lead them to Devidia II (the best Devidia) where Data gets sucked through a time hole and arrives in San Francisco in 1893. There, he tries to track down the aliens, claiming to be a Frenchman and winning...

After doing some space stuff to bulk out the Captain’s log, the Enterprise encounters a probe of unknown origin. It emits a pulse which hits Captain Picard. He awakens on an unfamiliar world and is told his name is Kamin, an iron weaver recovering from a fever on a pre-warp planet called Kataan, and he’s married to Eline. Picard is initially is reluctant to accept this as truth but finds the peopl...

Geordi and Ro are killed in a transporter accident as the Enterprise tries to help a stranded Romulan vessel. But are they really dead? They’re both still around but no one can see them. Ro thinks she’s a ghost but Geordi thinks it would be weird to be dead and have a VISOR and clothes. However, he decides to keep them on anyway. Due to some weird Romulan science, it turns out they’re actually clo...

While scouting a system for colonisation, the Enterprise here’s a distress call. Upon answering, they find a lone surviving Borg, Third of Five. Against protests, Crusher insists on trying to help him, eventually bringing him on board the Enterprise. Troi thinks Picard may experience trauma with a Borg on board but he insists that he’s fine, but decides to use the Borg to send a virus into the col...

The Enterprise is exploring a nebula when it runs into a plot from an 80s children’s show. Starfleet brat Clara has trouble making friends as her father moves around so much so she mostly plays with her imaginary friend Isabella. But when a glowy ball from the nebula comes on board, Isabella suddenly becomes real and makes Clara go to places she doesn’t want to go and starts harassing anyone who g...

The Enterprise is transporting a Kriosian ambassador and his cargo to negotiate peace with their distant relatives, the Valtians. But before they can get there, they have to answer a distress call from a Ferengi shuttle, to remind viewers that they exist before Deep Space Nine premieres next season. Their accident was a ruse and they were really interested in the precious cargo – a woman! It...

A wedding episode? A wedding episode featuring Lwaxana Troi? And Worf’s son Alexander? Stop Star Trek, you are spoiling us. If they go to the holodeck and meet some out of work circus performers, then this might be the best episode ever.  There’s also a B plot which seems like it was leftover from season three of The Original Series which sees some weird space parasite turns computer circuits to g...

The Enterprise heads to Earth so Picard can deliver the commencement address to Starfleet Academy, but before they arrive, they receive news that Wesley has been involved in an accident during flight training which means we get to have one of those trial episodes Star Trek does so well. While Wesley is injured, his friend Joshua Albert is killed. During the enquiry, the visual evidence doesn’t sta...

So what is it? ‘Cause and Effect’ is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation all about a time loop. A time loop? Yes, a time loop. It is perhaps, the greatest time loop episode of all time with the Enterprise trapped in a cycle which sees the ship being destroyed after a collision, and no one even gets the chance to exchange insurance details. But everyone is getting a bit of a se...

The Enterprise is called in to render assistance to the J’naii after one of their shuttles disappears down a weird space hole. Riker works closely with a member of their species, Soren, and they become close. The J’naii are gender neutral and regard other species as more primitive, however Soren confides in Riker that they identify as female, but it is forbidden on her planet and regarded as a sic...

While playing a game of find the plastic melting radiation, some barrels fall on Worf, leaving him paralysed. Crusher invites a neurological specialist, Doctor Toby Russell, to assess his condition and she offers a miracle cure with low odds of survival which involves growing a new spine. Meanwhile, Worf asks Riker to help him commit ritual suicide which he is not thrilled about, but Picard tells...

The Enterprise answers a centuries old distress call solving the mystery of an early Federation starship that disappeared. But Troi senses life so an away team take a shuttle down to investigate as space rays or something make transporting impossible. So Chief O’Brien beams down with a pattern enhancer but before they can return, some glowing lights possess the bodies of Troi, Data and O’Brien, le...

The crew of the Enterprise have lost their memories but still remember how to push all the buttons. Using the ship’s systems, they find their personnel files and their mission. The Federation is at war and they’re on their way to attack a big space station and they can’t communicate with Starfleet or risk giving away their position, which is mighty inconvenient. Upon scanning their enemy, it appea...

While carrying out the Starfleet’s primary mission, following big rocks in space, the Enterprise realises that this one is heading for a previously unknown human colony. While Picard offers assistance, the colonists are resistant. They reveal they have been selectively breeding for eight generations, to create a version of paradise, the very best of mankind where everyone’s life and role is predet...

The writers sat around thinking, you know what? It’s been awhile since an alien entered Troi’s quarters in the night, we better do some kind of psychic violation storyline. A delegation of three memory archaeologist aliens are on the Enterprise on their way to a planet to create some kind of history of some other aliens. Everyone is reluctant to use their services except Keiko because the actor wa...

The Enterprise investigates a missing ship in a wibbly purple region of space. The only survivor is a boy named Timothy who data rescues from under a pillar. Those are always falling on people in these situations. Timothy’s way of dealing with trauma is to pretend to be an android and he starts acting like Data which allows us to play the TNG greatest hits of how weirdos in the future deal with gr...

The Enterprise is helping a scientist with a new form of propulsion, a soliton wave, which offers warp travel without a drive. For this first dangerous test of this experimental technology, they decide to fire it straight at another populated planet. Meanwhile, Worf’s mother turns up with Alexander and buggers off as swiftly as she can, leaving the Klingon working out what it means to be a father....

While the Enterprise tries to save a planet suffering from an environmental disaster, a historian, apparently from the future, arrives on the Enterprise to observe the events. His eccentric manner infuriates some of the crew, except Doctor Crusher, but I’m not sure what they were trying to do there. Anyway, they save the planet with some phasers and deflectors because they can solve all problems a...

Ambassador Spock is missing and it seems he’s gone to Romulus. Could it be that this living legend has betrayed the Federation? Well, we’re going to tease it out for a very long time because Leonard Nimoy doesn’t come cheap but Mark Lenard was also available to play Sarek for a scene to make it feel a bit more like a big crossover event. Data and Picard head to Romulus to investigate while Riker g...

Riker brings something back from Risa and soon all of the crew have it. Except for Wesley, because as we know, there are some games he doesn’t know how to play. The whole crew end up addicted to an augmented reality game which requires players to get little discs into little cups. But there’s something more sinister at work, as the game alters brain chemistry making players highly suggestable. So...

Do you like disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Inferno? Then you’ll like Disaster because it’s basically that but on Star Trek. The ship hits a weird space rock or something and loses all power. Picard gets stuck in a turbolift with some children, Troi is left in command on the bridge with a helpful O’Brien and stroppy Ro, Worf must deliver Keiko’s baby, Data and Riker try...

Riker’s awkward seduction is interrupted by the crystalline entity which devastatingly transforms a colony which looks surprisingly like a California park into a matte painting. The survivors wait out the disaster in a cave until the Enterprise eventually comes to rescue them. They are joined by Kila Marr, an expert on the creature who lost her son in the attack by the entity on Omicron Theta, Dat...