New To Star Trek? This Is The Episode You Should Watch
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S2 E9
As someone who’s watched (and rewatched) almost every episode of every Trek series (still working on Star Trek: The Animated Series), I found myself wondering: if someone who knew next to nothing about the franchise asked me to recommend an episode so they could gauge their interest, what would I tell them? The answer: Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “The Measure of a Man.”
The Story
There aren’t a lot of space battles, phaser fights, or hand-to-hand duels with lizard men in “The Measure of a Man.” Instead, the episode is a part of Star Trek’s long tradition of courtroom episodes.
While the Enterprise is getting maintenance at a starbase, Commander Bruce Maddox (Brian Brophy) approaches Data (Brent Spiner), the sentient android hero of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Data’s creation is a mystery to all but his creator Noonien Soong, so Maddox wants to upload Data’s memory to his computer and dismantle the android physically in the hopes of learning to reverse-engineer and create more of him.
Data thinks Maddox’s goals are good, but he isn’t confident the cyberneticist can accomplish what he wants without wiping the android’s memory completely.
When Data refuses to submit to Maddox’s experiments, the cyberneticist takes steps to wrestle the choice from the android. The conflict culminates in a hearing to determine whether or not Starfleet considers Data to be a sentient being capable of making his own choices, or if he’s as much Starfleet’s property as a uniform or a phaser.
Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) is assigned to represent Maddox, while representing Data is Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), who caps his defense of the android with one of the most stirring speeches ever delivered in Star Trek.
Why “The Measure Of A Man?”
The Measure of a Man” is not the best Star Trek episode. It isn’t even the best TNG episode. It’s a great episode. Ask me for my personal top ten TNG episodes and it would probably make the cut.
But its quality in comparison to the rest of the franchise isn’t why I recommend it those uninitiated to Trek.
Appreciating Star Trek sometimes means asking big questions. This is particularly true of “The Measure of a Man,” which not only asks a lot from its audience, but was asking even more when the episode first aired in 1989.
In 1989, the news wasn’t practically choked with people from every profession you can imagine worried artificial intelligence was going to replace and/or kill them.
[W]ith “The Measure of a Man” Star Trek was asking an even bigger question that didn’t fundamentally have anything to do with artificial intelligence. It was asking,”What is life?”
To your average person of the time, artificial intelligence maybe wasn’t quite as fantastical as the idea of dragons or wizards or unicorns, but it wasn’t far off. In 1989, A.I. made for fun movies, like The Terminator, but worrying about it was like worrying about Leprechaun Riots.
Yet that was the audience that Star Trek: The Next Generation was asking to care about the question of whether or not the android Data was a real person, or as much of a soulless tool as a TV remote or a microwave. The show succeeded, in spite of it attempting something not dissimilar from asking audiences to get emotional over whether or not Santa’s Elves were unionized.
Sure, the performances and the writing deserve credit for the impact the episode had on audiences, but it also made a dent because with “The Measure of a Man” Star Trek was asking an even bigger question that didn’t fundamentally have anything to do with artificial intelligence. It was asking,”What is life?”
So the reason I choose “The Measure of a Man” as the perfect gauge for whether or not Star Trek is your thing, is because if you watch the episode from beginning to end and don’t care about Data’s fate then you can probably skip the rest of TNG and the rest of Star Trek for that matter.
In 1989, A.I. made for fun movies, like The Terminator, but worrying about it was like worrying about Leprechaun Riots.
If you can hear Stewart deliver the sledgehammer of a line, “Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life. Well there it sits!” without getting chills — if you don’t absolutely hate Riker’s bearded guts when he pulls his little surprise move in the hearing — then Star Trek probably isn’t for you.
And that’s fine. Not everyone has to watch Star Trek. Someone’s got to watch, like, The Real Housewives of New York City. Or Love Island USA.
Could I find a better Star Trek episode? Sure, but anyone can enjoy the best. And if I give you the best to start with? Well, then it’s all downhill from there anyway.
