Star Trek: TNG: Arsenal Of Freedom
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 20th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the second of three occasions in the series in which the Enterprise’s saucer section is separated from the rest of the ship.
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Star Trek: TNG: Heart Of Glory
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 19th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the first episode of the series to focus on the Klingon race – a holdover from the original series and movies that series creator Gene Roddenberry had planned to avoid revisiting until co-producer (and fellow classic Trek producer) Bob Justman convinced him otherwise during pre-production, leading to the very late creation of a “Klingon Marine” named Worf.
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Star Trek: TNG: Coming Of Age
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 18th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In an rare example of what passes for a “story arc” in early TNG, the characters of Admiral Quinn and the disagreeable Commander Remmick make their first of two first-season appearances.
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Star Trek: TNG: Home Soil
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 17th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: When The Bough Breaks
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 16th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: Too Short A Season
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 15th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: 11001001
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 14th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: Angel One
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 13th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: Datalore
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 12th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This episode introduces Data’s “brother” Lore, also played by Brent Spiner, and establishes an origin story for both.
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Star Trek: TNG: The Big Goodbye
The week-long national syndication window opens for the 11th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This episode, the first to take place almost entirely within the holodeck aboard the Enterprise, goes on to win a Peabody Award.
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Star Trek: TNG spawns action figures
Lewis Galoob Toys releases its first wave of toys from Star Trek: The Next Generation, consisting of six characters (all members of the Enterprise crew) and a die-cast metal miniature starship Enterprise. While there’s an instant interest from Star Trek collectors, Galoob is perhaps a bit premature: the series upon which its toys are based is in the middle of a very uneven first season, and has demonstrated more appeal to older viewers than to the age group that normally buys action figures. A more successful line, geared more toward adult collectors, will surface in the 1990s.
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Star Trek: TNG: Haven
The week-long national syndication window opens for the tenth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who played the recurring role of Nurse Chapel in the original Star Trek, makes the first of many appearances as Lwaxana Troi. This is actually one of the earliest episodes filmed. TNG’s first season resumes early in 1988.
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Star Trek: TNG: Hide and Q
The week-long national syndication window opens for the ninth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the second appearance of Q, and the first TNG glimpse of a female Klingon.
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Star Trek: TNG: The Battle
The week-long national syndication window opens for the eighth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the second Ferengi episode, and the first episode to delve into Captain Picard’s previous command, the U.S.S. Stargazer.
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Star Trek: TNG: Justice
The week-long national syndication window opens for the seventh episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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Star Trek: TNG: Lonely Among Us
The week-long national syndication window opens for the sixth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the first episode after Encounter At Farpoint to feature future Star Trek: DS9 regular Colm Meaney as a yet-to-be-named crewman.
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Star Trek: TNG: Where No One Has…
The week-long national syndication window opens for the fifth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Where No One Has Gone Before. This is the first episode featuring the Traveler, as well as Wesley Crusher’s ascension to acting ensign.
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Star Trek: TNG: The Last Outpost
The week-long national syndication window opens for the fourth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the first episode featuring a new alien race devised by Gene Roddenberry, the scheming, money-hungry Ferengi.
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Star Trek: TNG: Code Of Honor
The week-long national syndication window opens for the third episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is the only episode of any of the Star Trek spinoffs whose soundtrack was composed by a veteran of the original series’ music department (in this case, composer Fred Steiner).
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Star Trek: TNG: The Naked Now
The week-long national syndication window opens for the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This episode becomes an immediate lightning rod of criticism since it almost duplicates a popular episode of the original Star Trek (and even points this out in the course of its story). Data also shows Lt. Yar that he is fully functional.
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Star Trek: TNG: Encounter At Farpoint
The national syndication window opens for the two-hour premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Encounter At Farpoint. Written by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and original series story editor D.C. Fontana, this episode introduces the fan favorite nemesis Q, as played by John de Lancie. Though it’s not tied to any network, some of the stations carrying TNG in syndication – including major-market stations – air TNG in prime-time in place of their usual network programming.
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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also has a hand in development of the story, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home premieres in theaters. Directly following up on events in the prior two movies, Star Trek IV closes out a trilogy, and by bringing the action to 20th century Earth, complete with fish-out-of-water comedy, becomes a solid hit with an embedded ecological message. The movie’s success caps off a year-long celebration of Star Trek’s 20th anniversary.
Star Trek re-generated
Paramount’s television division makes an announcement that sparks geek wars for years to come: Star Trek is coming back to television, but with a new cast and set in a different century, as Star Trek: The Next Generation. With Gene Roddenberry at the wheel once more, the new show – which will circumvent the network system completely by being sold directly to stations in syndication – will be set further in the future than the original series, with a new Enterprise and a budget of over one million dollars per episode. Paramount has decided on the risky syndication route after overtures to the three major networks provoke little enthusiasm; the new Fox network is more interested, but is unwilling to risk money on an order of more than a dozen episodes.
Roddenberry generates a new Trek
Four days after a party at Paramount Pictures to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original Star Trek, the studio sends Trek creator Gene Roddenberry a memo detailing its plans to restart Star Trek on television with a new cast. The studio is aware that a new Trek series has an even chance of succeeding or failing, and challenges Roddenberry to come up with a better idea than the studio’s in-house concept of putting the movie Enterprise in the hands of a team of Starfleet cadets (a concept Roddenberry greatly dislikes). Roddenberry pitches a different concept back to the studio, involving the crew of a starship Enterprise set further in the future than Captain Kirk’s era. With the pitch approved and a new contract in hand, Roddenberry begins recruiting fellow behind-the-scenes veterans of the original series to refine his ideas.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
With producer Harve Bennett now firmly in creative control of the movie franchise, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock premieres in theaters, directed by Leonard Nimoy (who, since his character is being searched for, plays only a small role as an actor in the film). The movie is a direct sequel to the events of the previous film, and sets up story developments for the fourth Star Trek movie, effectively serving as the middle chapter of a trilogy. The movie’s success confirms Nimoy’s graduation from actor to director.
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
Produced and co-written by Harve Bennett (The Six Million Dollar Man, The Invisible Man) and directed by Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan debuts in theaters. The story follows up on the first season TV episode Space Seed, bringing back Ricardo Montalban (who is now a star thanks to his stint on ABC’s Fantasy Island) as Khan and introducing Kirstie Alley as a new member of the Enterprise crew. With faster pacing, increased action, and a more contemporary military sci-fi feel, the sequel is a hit that guarantees future sequels, as well as gradually increasing interest on Paramount’s part to return the franchise to television years later.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
After a tortured development history dating back to aborted early 1970s attempts to relaunch Star Trek on the big screen, Paramount premieres the much-anticipated (and much hyped) Star Trek: The Motion Picture in theaters. At over two hours, and boasting one of Jerry Goldsmith’s best movie scores, the movie bewilders viewers as much as it thrills them. Paramount claims not to make a profit on the movie at all – primarily by including all of the development costs of years of early movie attempts and the never-made Star Trek Phase II television series as part of the movie’s price tag – but, despite its assertion that the movie lost money, the studio begins making plans for a sequel.
Exit Star Trek v2.0, enter The Motion Picture
At a meeting at Paramount, studio head Michael Eisner formally cancels plans for a Star Trek television series reuniting the original cast (a decision made easier by the other networks strong-arming potential advertisers into freezing out Paramount’s network startup attempt) and sets the wheels in motion to revamp the pilot script, Alan Dean Foster’s In Thy Image, into a feature film. Contracts for the series are renegotiated (or in some cases cancelled) for the movie, but scriptwriters and designers continue to work on Trek TV scripts just in case the movie leads to a small-screen resurgence. The impetus for finally getting the long-stalled Star Trek movie underway? 20th Century Fox’s runaway success with Star Wars.
Paramount announces network, new Trek
No sooner has Paramount’s movie arm axed Star Trek‘s big screen comeback than the studio’s television division announces the unthinkable: Paramount will form its own network, to premiere in February 1978, taking on ABC, CBS, and NBC in prime time. Leading off the new network’s first night will be a two-hour, made-for-TV Star Trek movie starring William Shatner and most of the original cast (with Leonard Nimoy notable by his absence), who will then go on to star in a weekly series chronicling the further adventure of the Enterprise. Gene Roddenberry will return as the creator of the new series. But within just a few weeks, it becomes apparent that the “big three” networks are ready to play hardball to keep Paramount’s network off the air, from leaning on their advertisers to avoid buying ad time on the new network, to quietly threatening to stop picking up Paramount-produced series for their own fall schedules.
First Star Trek movie… cancelled?
After spending months in development, the much-publicized big-screen relaunch of Star Trek is cancelled by Paramount. Unable to find a satisfactory script, and having great difficulty negotiating with the stars of the TV series, Star Trek: Planet Of The Titans is dumped by the studio, with no other plans to revive Star Trek in the works. Mere weeks later, a record-breaking movie not originating from Paramount convinces the studio to get back into the big-budget science fiction space race.