Writers hated Q’s story in Encounter at Farpoint

D.C. Fontana originally wrote “Encounter at Farpoint”

When Star Trek: The Next Generation was in production in 1987, the task of writing the pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint” was given to D.C. Fontana, a writer well-known to Star Trek fans. Fontana had penned the popular Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, “Journey to Babel” and “The Enterprise Incident” as well as one of the best episodes of The Animated Series “Yesteryear.”

There was some question as to whether the pilot would be two hours long or an hour and a half. Originally, Gene Roddenberry instructed Fontana to write a story for a 90-minute episode. Afterwards, it was decided that a two-hour episode would be used, but Roddenberry told Fontana not to worry about expanding her story as he would “put a frame on it.”

Gene Roddenberry made a major change to “Encounter at Farpoint”

Roddenberry’s change came in the addition of the Q character, an all-knowing godlike being who judged the Enterprise’s crew on its humanity. And according to David Gerrold, who had written the popular Trouble with Tribbles episode for TOS, after the writers read Roddenberry’s contribution, all of them considered it to be “Trelane [from the original series] all over again.” Gerrold added that the writers all hated it, and they “gently suggested” to Roddenberry that it wasn’t very good. Roddenberry’s response was that “the fans will love it.” [Source: The Fifty-Year Mission The Next 25 Years pg. 67]

As it turns out, Roddenberry was right. Not only was the episode nominated for a Hugo Award, it still receives positive reviews to this day, with Nerdist saying this year that the episode introduced two “fascinating” aliens which included the space jellyfish and franchise favorite, Q. And Tom’s Guide said that  the episode “perked up with [Q’s] rapier wit, gaudy costumes and playfully threatening attitude,” then adding that “without the energy Q brought to the TNG premiere, the show might not have worked at all.”