Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 22, 1994 TAG: 9405210011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
After seven seasons, 178 episodes and 16 Emmys, ``Star Trek: The Next Generation'' - let's just call it ``TNG'' - is calling it quits, leaving TV as the highest-rated show in syndication history.
Its finale (airing Saturday, 7-9 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13) is grand indeed. Just like Vonnegut's hapless hero, Billy Pilgrim, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) finds himself shunting back and forth in time between his present, his past and his future.
And, like Billy, our Picard is in a waking nightmare. Shunted 25 years into the future, he finds himself retired, tending his vines in France and suffering the 24th century's version of Alzheimer's disease.
He shunts back to his ``present'' long enough to report his experience and begin a medical examination. Suddenly, he loops back into his past, seven years earlier, just before he is to take command of starship Enterprise.
The trouble is, Picard's consciousness adapts to each of these realities, so that whatever phase he inhabits seems to be the ``correct'' one. He remembers only bits and pieces from his other incarnations. Which is real?
Trek fans begin to hyperventilate at this, fearing the worst. Is it Picard's deteriorating brain? Or is it just cheap plot tricks?
Relax, Trekkers. Screenwriters Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga aren't about to make a ``St. Elsewhere''-style exit. ``TNG'' is not the paperweight fantasy of an autistic child.
As Picard continues to leap around in time, he learns of a phenomenon - ``a space-time anomaly in the Devron system'' - that exists in his present and in his past, during his first mission on the Enterprise.
Yet as Picard (and we Trekkers) recalls, Picard's first Enterprise mission was the series debut, in which he first encountered his etermal nemesis, the capricious, omnipotent Q (John de Lancie).
This time around, there's only the anomaly and no sign of Q. What's wrong with this picture?
That tantalizing clue, of course, will be of absolutely no help to you.
Like so many episodes of ``TNG,'' the central dramatic problem of the finale is a puzzle that its characters must solve. And, ah, what characters.
It's not cheating to tell you that Picard's past contains Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), killed off in the first season, who reprises her role as the tough-cookie security officer.
And it's not cheating to tell you that most of Picard's friends are alive and kicking 25 years in the future. Time, it seems, will not treat all of them fairly.
Picard's No. 1, Riker (Jonathan Frakes), is a cantankerous admiral; Worf (Michael Dorn) is a Klingon politician; LaForge (LeVar Burton) is a novelist; and Data (Brent Spiner) holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge!
Will Picard and friends converge on the anomaly in three time periods? Did we mention that the fate of all humanity is at stake?
The payoff to all this is, of course, spectacular, deft and fitting. It does honor to the series, the characters, and the Star Trek universe.
It also leaves us with one overwhelming question: Why, oh why, is ``TNG'' leaving first-run syndication now, at the peak of its profitable, creative game?
The Denebian slime-devils at Paramount, which owns the Trek franchise (and kept it buried for 10 years), are making cute noises about converting the ``TNG'' franchise to movies, just as they did with classic ``Star Trek.''
Paramount points to its ``TNG'' movie, ``Star Trek: Generations,'' due out at Thanksgiving; its spinoff series, ``Deep Space Nine,'' still in first-run syndication; and next year's second spinoff, ``Star Trek: Voyager.''
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ... but why can't we keep ``TNG'' on the air?
Money. Paramount was looking at a ``mature asset'' that could only get costlier - higher salaries, fees and production costs. At the same time, its revenue would remain relatively flat, maybe even wane a trifle less obscene.
Folding the ``TNG'' tent lets Paramount close its books on one set of syndication deals and open them, more profitably, on another.
Does that sound like a cynical, heartless, Hollywood shuck?
It's the cruel truth, folks. But, hey, that's life in the 24th century.
by CNB