Star Trek: The Next Generation is my first true love when it comes to the Trek universe. Launched in 1987, the original reboot of the Star Trek universe eschewed time-line headaches and simply set itself in the future with a shiny new crew at the helm of an equally shiny new Enterprise. If TNG started out shaky, the first season sowed the seeds on some interesting character dynamics, and in particular some interesting romantic entanglements. However, its main failing throughout its seven year run was never to truly break free of its Trek-adventure-of-the-week format and tackle those same romantic entanglements in a conclusive way.

What TNG did very well right from the beginning was to introduce an interesting set of characters with some very interesting dynamics and history. The first of which involved Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart), the antithesis of Kirk but whose attraction to Chief Medical Officer, Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) was seeded in the pilot and explored further in “The Naked Now” (01.03). It was a great set-up with the suggestion that Picard had been in love with her for years but she had already been taken by his best friend, Jack Crusher, who had subsequently died under Picard’s command. Complicated and messy, it was perfectly created angst. The “Captain, before we die I have something I need to tell you” tease was born in “The Arsenal of Freedom” (01.21), and done again several times through the show’s history.

The best exploration of the couples’ feelings for each other probably happened in “Attached” (07.09) when the two characters were telepathically linked to each other and realized the other’s feelings although ultimately decided not to pursue it. But the arc was carried on more positively in the series’ finale “All Good Things” (7.25/26) when it is revealed the two marry in the future. Still, the Picard/Crusher dynamic was very much my personal favorite even if it remained unresolved (until the novel Death of Winter by Michael Jan Friedman) given the show’s determination to keep the Captain single, with space-lothario duty being given to Commander Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes).

Riker was clearly destined to take over from James T. Kirk as the crewman most likely to be flirting with a beautiful alien woman. But more intriguing than his occasional dalliances with the pretty-guest-star-of-the-week was the past romance he had enjoyed with fellow crew member, ships’ counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis). The two actors had fantastic chemistry and their will-they/won’t-they was the most prominent romance arc for the show. While it was noted in the pilot, the first real exploration of it happened in “Haven” (01. 11) when Deanna is supposed to honor an arranged marriage. The relationship was summed up by the word ‘imzadi’ which was the title of the best Star Trek book ever written. Imzadi by Peter David is a fan favorite and a completely wonderful story, putting the couple and their love for each other center stage. If only the show had done the same.

There are hints that feelings remain unresolved between Riker and Troi all through the show, but possibly the very best episode dealing with it is “Second Chances” (06.24) when a Riker created by a transporter glitch is found -- a Riker who is still very much in love with Deanna Troi. Frakes did a stunning acting job on that episode displaying two very different Rikers. Bizarrely, in the seventh season, Troi embarked on a relationship with everyone’s favorite Klingon, Worf (Michael Dorn) and the pairing appeared in quite a few episodes from “Parallels” (07.11) onward, with Riker’s jealousy a feature in the finale “All Good Things.” Fans had to wait until the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis to finally get a happy ending for Riker and Troi..

I also briefly want to mention the resolved but not-resolved love story of android Lt. Data (Brent Spiner) and Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). In “The Naked Now”, in which the crew were affected by a disinhibiting toxin, Yar seduced Data – after finding out that he was “fully functional” -- but afterward instructed him to forget anything happened between them. Yar, of course, was infamously killed off in “Skin of Evil” (01.23), but the suggestion that his encounter with Yar meant something to him was used in his legal hearing to determine his sentience in “The Measure of the Man” (02.09), and has also been explored in the novels: specifically Survivors by Jean Lorrah.

The remaining member of the usual cast, Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) only ever got to flex his romance muscles in the story of the week, and then, only very occasionally. And it was this adherence to the story of the week format that was the series’ undoing, as far as its romance storylines were concerned. Having set them up brilliantly, it then failed to resolve them to any satisfaction within the series itself, and it was left to the movies and the novels to do the job. Arc-building TV shows were not the norm when TNG began and it struggled to get out of the reset mode on every episode, even in its last season. It would be left to its successors in the Trek ‘verse, notably Deep Space Nine and Voyager, to explore resolved romances between central characters. Still, even with its unresolved romance arcs and now very dodgy-looking CGI, Star Trek: The Next Generation rebooted the Trek universe into years of success and no one can argue with that.

   -- Rachel Day