Star Trek: The Next Generation (often abbreviated to TNG) is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production. The show was created 21 years after the original Star Trek show and set in the 24th century from the year 2364 through 2370 (about 100 years after the original series timeframe). The program features a new crew and a new starship Enterprise. Patrick Stewart's voice-over introduction during each episode's opening credits stated the starship's purpose, updated from the original to represent an open-ended "mission", and to be gender- (and even species-) neutral:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
It premiered the week of September 28, 1987 to 27 million viewers with the two-hour pilot "Encounter at Farpoint". With 178 episodes spread over seven seasons, it ran longer than any other Star Trek series, ending with the two-hour finale "All Good Things..." the week of May 23, 1994. The number of episodes is somewhat controversial as the pilot and series finale are counted as two episodes each, even though they were initially aired as single two-hour episodes not intended to be divided, which would bring the total to 176.
The series was broadcast in first-run syndication with dates and times varying among individual television stations. The show gained a considerable following during its run and, like The Original Series, remains popular in syndicated reruns. It was the first of several series (the others being Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise) that kept new Star Trek episodes airing continuously from 1987 to 2005. Star Trek: The Next Generation won 18 Emmy Awards and, in its seventh season, became the first, and currently only, syndicated television show to be nominated for the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series. It was nominated for three Hugo Awards and won two. The first-season episode "The Big Goodbye" also won the Peabody Award for excellence in television programming. The series formed the basis of the seventh through the tenth Star Trek films.
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Deanna Troi-Riker is a main character in the science-fiction TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation and related TV series and films, portrayed by actress Marina Sirtis. Troi is a human/betazoid hybrid and has the empathic ability to sense emotions. She serves as the ship's counselor on the Enterprise. In the seventh season, Troi takes the Bridge Officer's Exam, and (with the help of William Riker) is promoted to the rank of Commander, but continues as counselor.
Character background
In the series, Deanna Troi served as ship's counselor aboard the Starfleet starship USS Enterprise (designated NCC-1701-D & NCC-1701-E and referred to as starships in the series). She served under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (portrayed by actor Patrick Stewart).
Deanna Troi was born on March 29, 2336, near Lake El-Nar, Betazed. Deanna's parents are a Betazoid mother and Ambassador, Lwaxana Troi (portrayed by the late actress Majel Barrett, real life widow of television director/producer/writer and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and Nurse Chapel in the original series as well as voice of the Enterprise computer) and a human father, deceased Starfleet officer Lt. Ian Andrew Troi (portrayed by Amick Byram). In the character background, an older sister, Kestra, drowned during Deanna's infancy (note: "Dark Page"). Although Deanna Troi has little exposure to planet Earth culture, she attended Starfleet Academy from 2355 to 2359, as well as the University on Betazed, and earned an advanced degree in psychology.
In depicting a possible phenomenon of galactic travel, the series creates several fictional alien races including a Betazoid race that have telepathic abilities. Due to a half-human heritage, Deanna Troi has partial telepathic abilities and is an extra-sensory empath with clairsentience. As viewed in Star Trek: Nemesis, Troi has the ability to connect to another psychic and follow that empathic bond to its source. In this instance, her ability enables the Enterprise-E to target and hit the Romulan vessel Scimitar, despite the fact that it was cloaked. There are several species who are resistant to the telepathy of Deanna and other Betazoids; most notably are the Ferengi and the Breen.
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"Darmok"
Star Trek: TNG episode
Episode no. 102
Prod. code 202
Airdate September 30, 1991
Writer(s) Joe Menosky, Phillip LaZebnik
Director Winrich Kolbe
Guest star(s) Paul Winfield
Year 2368
Stardate 45047.2
Episode chronology
Previous "Redemption"
Next "Ensign Ro"
"Darmok" is an episode of the television science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation, first broadcast in the United States on September 30, 1991; it was written by Joe Menosky. The episode contains a brief, but notable recounting of the Gilgamesh epic, which is communicated by Picard to the Tamarian captain. The episode has an average rating of 4.4/5 on the official Star Trek website (as of September 8, 2007).
Synopsis
The episode examines the interactions between the USS Enterprise's crew and a race called Tamarians, or "The Children of Tama." A Tamarian captain abducts Captain Picard in an eager attempt to bridge their language gap through archetypal, intense shared experience. The Enterprise captain and crew must decipher the Tamarians' metaphorical language, or risk failing in the opening of diplomatic relations and losing Captain Picard to a meaningless death at the hands of an entity with the capability to disappear.
The story centers on Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Captain Dathon of the Tamarian race (Paul Winfield). The Tamarian language is unintelligible to Starfleet's universal translators because it is too deeply rooted in local metaphor, so its sentences do not have any meaning to other civilizations. When the Tamarians realize that this attempt has failed, the Tamarian captain has Picard and himself transported to the planet El-Adrel IV, which is occupied by a hostile entity.
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Commander Sela is a fictional character on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the daughter of an alternate timeline version of Tasha Yar and a Romulan official. She was played by Denise Crosby, who also played Tasha Yar.
Overview
The circumstances that led to Sela's birth are somewhat convoluted. Her mother, Tasha Yar, was born in 2337 on Turkana IV and in the "normal" timeline died in 2364, killed by Armus on Vagra II. But in an alternate timeline, seen in the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", Yar either survived or avoided the confrontation with Armus and continued to serve on the Enterprise-D until 2366, when the Enterprise-C came through a spacetime anomaly. It was determined that the accidental time travel of the Enterprise-C drastically altered the timeline after its disappearance, and that the original timeline should be restored by sending the ship back. After Guinan informed Yar that she will die in the normal timeline they hope to restore, she volunteered to serve on the Enterprise-C, which went back in time to 2344 in the "normal" timeline to complete a mission involving the Klingons. Some personnel from the Enterprise-C were captured by Romulans, and Yar became the consort of a Romulan official only to save the others. This union led to the conception of Sela, possibly in 2345, while elsewhere in the galaxy the normal timeline version of Yar was barely eight years old.
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