Here's an interesting picture of the cast. They seem to have originally put Tasha Yar in a skirt as well. I'm glad the whole dress nonsense stopped, but what is really embarrassing is why it was there in TNG to begin with. Nichelle Nichols said on numerous occasions that they didn't put her in that skirt to objectify her.
She explained that it was part of the women's liberation movement and getting to wear the short skirt with all the leg and kick pants showing was a liberating and freeing feeling. I can't believe how stupid and gullible political correctness has made people. So, in the 80's they now assume that sexual equality was represented by putting men in the dresses too. Now we're going to emasculate men as revenge for women being objectified by the short skirts in the 60's... smh.
Or, I guess you could call them tunics. Whatever. I could go on and on about how doing "black face" in the Vaudville and early cinema times was simply a celebration of other cultures when they weren't allowed into the mainstream, but now it's considered racist and we're banning the black centaur women from Fantasia, etc. This man dress thing is another example that keeps cropping up throughout the first season. and one of the reasons I squirm with discomfort when watching the earliest episodes of TNG. Personally, I just thought the skirts seemed unprofessional, even in the old show. I know it's a fantasy show, but they took care to make it seem realistic, and since the women's movement involved bra burning and scantily dressing just to prove a point that had long been proven, it was really time for the skirts to go.
The plot of the pilot episode was actually a very simple one. I'd label it as a classic Roddenberry plot, comparable to the plots devised for TOS. It was actually simple enough to fit into one episode, but, of course, being the first episode of the next big thing a lot of time was devoted to character introduction which is not a bad thing. It was a well constructed script. Not everyone in the first episode was seen all at the same time. It also took time to show everyone how this show was different and could stand apart. In particular, the way this new Enterprise could separate the saucer section and now had a battle bridge that would only be sparsely manned in case of very dangerous situations.
This was such a smart, smart improvement since the ship was depicted as having so many people on board (even in TOS it was over 400, I believe) and although the ship's ideal purpose was one of diplomacy and mundane tasks, it was in one dangerous situation after another because it wouldn't have been much of a show otherwise.
The antagonist for this episode was Q and he was a very charismatic and formidable presence. I've complained in general about the political implications of TNG before and I'll probably complain specifically with each episode. I think this is an attack on the progress of civilization. To paint America and even Europe in the colonialist sense; conqueror's; pillagers; quick to go to war with people who are different than us because that's the only reason, in the person's mind who believes such things. However, John de Lancie was charming enough to make that part of the script bearable. Omnipotent beings were not a new idea, and even in TNG there were allusions to other types of omnipotent creatures, but the Q Continuum, was a very unique idea and my hat's off to the writer's for coming up with something unique right off the bat when so much of the first couple seasons was just copycatting of TOS.
I also thought it was clever that there was a Klingon in Starfleet now, but they chose not to address it. To me, that's more of what equality is. Equality means that nobody is given special consideration because they're different. Nobody on the bridge thought it was unusual that a Klingon was serving in the Federation. After a few episodes though, it became obvious that they just hadn't thought this character through much yet and had no immediate plans (at least in the first season) to develop him, making him almost a throw-away character... just there to be the muscle... which was disappointing.
On the whole I rate the pilot episode 4 of 5 stars for special effects, a well balanced script and the smallest hint of originality in Q.
Departing with music from the soundtrack. I mentioned yesterday that I like music scores and they're very much a part of directing the audience's emotions even without them knowing it. This is the pretty music played at the climax when the two ship-like aliens are reunited. Aww! Lol!
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