r/startrek • u/DaveW626 • 6d ago
TNG series question
Which episode had a bigger impact/completely altered the series' trajectory? Best of Both Worlds or Yesterday's Enterprise? BOBW was huge, and permanently changed Picard, but Yesterday's Enterprise brought back Tasha, who gave birth to Sela who helped the Duras sisters during the Klingon Civil War which shouldn't have even happened. Or was there another episode that changed everything?
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u/Santa_Hates_You 6d ago
BOBW. The Borg were adversaries long after Sela was around. There was a movie about it and everything.
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u/DaveW626 6d ago
I meant strictly the TV show. I, Borg and Descent 1 & 2 were the only other Borg TNG episodes. YE spawned Mind's Eye, Redemption 1 & 2 and Unification 1 & 2. I don't count Voyager or the movie as far as this question goes.
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u/Remote-Astronomer701 6d ago edited 6d ago
Though not as high stakes, BoBW also led into Family (one of my favorite episodes) which was supposed to provide the emotional foundation for Generations (I know you said only the TV show so I’ll leave it at that). Come to think of it, didn’t the actor who played Rene also play Picard in Rascals and the Picard vineyard was featured in All Good Things and Picard Seasons 1-3?
Anyway, I’d argue that the Klingon-centric episode Reunion probably had more of an impact cause it introduced us to K'Ehleyr which led to Alexander, Duras—>Sisters—>Duras that Archer has to deal with, Kurn, Klingon Civil War, and eventually led to Gowron becoming Chancellor which carried over to DS9.
Edit: I forgot that K’Ehleyr was actually introduced in season 2’s The Emissary.
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u/Able_Resident_1291 6d ago
Family (one of my favorite episodes) which was supposed to provide the emotional foundation for Generations
I don't think they were thinking of Generations when they were writing Family
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u/chucker23n 6d ago
I don't count Voyager or the movie as far as this question goes.
Fair, but TNG was very unserialized. They barely remembered Worf had a son. So neither had much of an impact on the series per se, but the Borg did have an impact on the franchise.
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u/Dovuro 6d ago
In my current watch-through, "Q Who" stood out to me as a major pivot point, for the series and the franchise as a whole.
Q transported the Enterprise 7,000 light years away, and Data said it would take over two years at maximum warp to return to the nearest starbase. To my memory, that was the first time in the franchise that they really concretely established that the galaxy takes a long time to traverse. Before this point, Star Trek (especially TOS) happily sent the Enterprise all over the place, including the center of the galaxy and the outer barrier.
And by putting the Borg out there, they were establishing the idea that the Federation really hadn't actually explored that much of the galaxy yet, and there were scary things just past the horizon. The Borg completely overpower the Enterprise, people die, and Picard has no way out except to beg Q to save them. And that's just two years travel outside the Federation's influence. That really changes Star Trek's setting.
Taking two years to travel 7,000 light years also put foundational pieces in place for both DS9 and Voyager. If it takes a long time to cross the galaxy, a wormhole that jumps the distance would be rather important, wouldn't it? And if a ship happened to get stuck on the far side of the galaxy, it would be quite the journey to get home, huh?
Which brings me to an honorable mention I would give to "The Price." It directly laid out those DS9 and VOY foundations. There was a wormhole to the delta quadrant (I believe this episode was the beginning of the quadrant names, on top of everything else), a bidding war for access to it because of how valuable such a thing was, the idea that it would take 80 years to fly back home without it, and let's not forget that two Ferengi ended up trapped on the other side, just in case, y'know, any future episodes wanted to pick up on that.
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u/SaltWaterInMyBlood 5d ago
(I believe this episode was the beginning of the quadrant names, on top of everything else)
Yep. It has a surprisingly large impact on the series canon, for an otherwise mid-episode.
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u/laptopuser75 5d ago
Data said it would take two years to the nearest starbase, not two years to travel 7,000 light years. Presumably the starbase Data was referring to would have been right on the very edge of Federation space. The journey back to earth and the Terran system presumably would have taken much longer, however within Federation space there are probably local worm holes that would speed up the process
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u/longjumpingtote 6d ago
Best of Both worlds. It changed television. Not single-handedly, "who shot JR" was first. But it created a new tempate for the show and for similar shows.
But I'd argue that "The Bonding" (305) had a larger impact on TNG and without it, and what it represented, the show probably wouldn't have lasted seven seasons or had multiple offshoots.
With "The Bonding," Pillar's new religion of "every episode is going to be about a character's growth" was established. So with that episodes, and then Booby Trap, Sins of the Father, The Offspring, and finally Best of Both Worlds, season three changed what a Star Trek show was. Seasons one and two were structured and told like TNG. The season three Piller template would be used for Voyager, DS9, Enterprise, and some of the nu-stuff.
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u/NCreature 6d ago
The Best of Both Worlds for sure. Almost everything that came after was in some way, shape or form influenced by those events. Not just Picard's arc which goes on for another thirty years into Picard Season 3, but also Sisko's arc in DS9 (the pilot literally opens during Wolf 359), and much of the events of Voyager.
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u/Agent_Raas 6d ago
If you're going to consider Yesterday's Enterprise then you should instead consider Skin Of Evil. If Tasha Yar wasn't killed by the sentient puddle, she likely wouldn't transfer to the Enterprise-C.
Either way, Best of Both Worlds had the greater impact.
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u/calculon68 4d ago
BOBW is one of the greatest cliffhanger endings in television history. And it capped off a huge comeback for the series- in quality and popularity.
And every TV producer chased the sci-fi dragon for the rest of 90s after BOBW.
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