“I run a clean place.”
“BACK BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT!” screamed the cover of Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine’s issue #9, proudly trumpeting the return of Dr. Beverly Crusher to the series as though it were the modern equivalent of the letter-writing campaign that had saved the original Star Trek. I don’t know the real reasons behind Gates McFadden’s return, though I doubt it was anything so dramatic; nonetheless, no single piece of entertainment news probably made me happier in the entirety of the 1980s. Dr. Crusher easily cemented herself as my favourite character throughout Season One of Next Gen – and the Dr. Crusher who returns to the ship after a year at Starfleet Medical in Next Gen’s third-season premiere, “Evolution,” is even more my favourite. Call her Dr. Crusher 2.0.
With Crusher’s awkward semi-romance with the Captain now largely sidelined and replaced with a much more resonant platonic friendship and mutual respect between Beverly and Jean-Luc (and a tiny bit of awkward semi-romance), Crusher immediately becomes a more appealing character, defining herself as a person in her own right, rather than in relation to male characters. This, of course, is largely lost in “Evolution,” where Beverly’s primary concern is the state of her relationship with Wesley, who has grown two inches since she last saw him (and developed a riot of zits, as the unforgiving blu-ray release of Next Generation Season Three makes all too clear). It’s one of several cases where an episode’s B-plot is more interesting than its A-plot, as Beverly consults with Picard and Guinan and Wesley himself about how to successfully mother a 17-year-old Starfleet officer who never gets into trouble and doesn’t really need her any more. The only thread left to drop is Wesley’s relationship with the nanites, a race of microscopic cybernauts he accidentally creates while snoozing in the lab one night. “Evolution” can be accused of trying to keep a few too many plates spinning – Wesley’s mistake; Beverly’s concerns; the plight of the nanites; the requisite action beats; the ego and downfall of Dr. Paul Stubbs; and a runner about baseball; and a runner about mothers in general. In spite of all this, it’s a downright flyweight episode, especially for a season premiere. (It would be The Next Generation’s last season premiere that would not be the conclusion of a two-part cliffhanger story.)
As a science fiction plot driver, the nanites aren’t a bad idea, even if they’re never quite able to muster up an equivalent level of threat to, say, the more chaotic computer malfunctions last season in “Contagion.” Their status as sentient life forms, too, is never questioned by the Starfleet crew, only by Stubbs, which makes them a bit of a non-starter as conflict drivers. Here’s a question the episode never thinks of: if the nanites are producing whole generations every couple of minutes, wouldn’t their perception of time be dramatically accelerated compared to ours? When a team of nanites take over Data’s body to conduct a negotiation, wouldn’t they return to a nanite civilization that would have, in the intervening fifteen minutes, jumped forward, relatively, by millennia or more? Poor robot bugs!
Nonetheless, I don’t really mind any of “Evolution”’s faults. The episode brought me so much profound pleasure when it aired that it probably remains the fondest memory of the entire run of The Next Generation for me. This is where I started taping each episode, doggedly cutting out the commercials as they aired (I got very good at hitting “pause” on the VCR just as the fades to black ended), and then re-watching them over and over again every day after school; and of these, “Evolution” is probably the one I watched the most. Ron Jones creates a signal anthem to open and close the episode that is among my favourite cues of Star Trek music of all time, and when I hear it or think about it, I can just drift away, like Paul Stubbs thinking about baseball.
As a midstream relaunch of Star Trek: The Next Generation in general, “Evolution” announces the changes to the series quite nicely. There’s a new director of photography bringing a slightly augmented lighting style; colours are richer and the palette is more complex. The mens’ Starfleet uniforms have been redesigned into a two-piece ensemble, which will lead to the creation of “the Picard maneuver.” The opening credits have been replaced and enhanced. And, most importantly of all, the episode is the first in the tenure of Michael Piller as showrunner and executive producer – one of the all-time heroes of Star Trek, who essentially rewrote the bible on how screenwriting for the series, and all Star Trek series thereafter, was meant to be done. Piller also, notably, kicked off Star Trek’s fifteen-year open-door policy for spec scripts, gladly accepting script submissions from any writer in the world, so long as they signed a waiver. Did I ever send Star Trek a script, under the open-door spec policy? Yep. Twice.
I can’t adequately summarize Piller’s contribution to the Star Trek canon in a single episode’s write-up, and suspect I’ll be returning to him again and again over the next five seasons. Piller would go on to co-create Deep Space Nine and Voyager, write Insurrection (but don’t blame him for that), and permanently cement his approach to running the writers’ room as the model to follow ever after. Episodes like “Manhunt” were no longer accepted as credible professional work under Piller’s Star Trek banner; dramatic arcs needed to be engineered and satisfied in a much more holistic manner. “Evolution” is his first time at bat, and though the script is overcrowded, you can see Piller’s style in residence nevertheless; everything he sets up gets knocked down, and every ball thrown in the air eventually lands. Michael Piller brought Star Trek writing back to dramatic basics: what’s the story? What makes it personal? And what makes it fly?
A fond four Enterprises out of four.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Three is available now.