Part II, Chapter XIX: "Standing Tall"
“Season Three is where the show ‘grew the beard’ but I don’t think we peaked until some point around the fourth or fifth season. That’s when we embraced a lot of things that made The Next Generation really good, and much of what makes shows that followed it so good as well. Although that might just be my wanting to be partly responsible for the franchise’s enduring success.”
- Jonathan Frakes, taken from
Where None Had Gone Before. [1]
With its fourth season,
Star Trek: The Next Generation was making history for the franchise. Neither
The Original Series nor
The Animated Series, which was in a dubious state of canonicity at this point, had made it to a fourth season. The success of
The Next Generation was making sure that the
Star Trek franchise would last for many years into the future.
The fourth season would be the beginning of a marked change for the future of the franchise, the embracing of longer arcs. While arcs had been tried before, most notably with the introduction of the Borg and the Iconians, they had never lasted beyond two or three stories. [2]
Although only the first half of the story had been released, the success of “The Best of Both Worlds” led to the decision to leave this season, and presumably future seasons, on cliffhangers. It was the opinion of the producers that this would help to build hype for the following seasons, and keep the fandom actively talking about the show in the rest between seasons.
But
The Next Generation would not only be making history in terms of story, but also in terms of its characters. It was announced shortly before the release of the season that the character of Dr. Amelia Henderson would be revealed to be homosexual, although this fact would rarely be mentioned. Nevertheless, this would be hailed by many LGBT groups as a step in the right direction for representation. [3]
Although homosexual characters had appeared on primetime television before,
Star Trek had never features one as a member of the main cast. As with other homosexual characters, the reveal about Dr Henderson would draw fire from more conservative factions, and resulted in a small-scale boycott of the show by those groups.
The fourth season would also mark the first where there were no major cast changes. Although there had been rumours of Patrick Stewart leaving after the third season, he would renew his contract, along with the rest of the cast. As it stood going into the fourth season, all members of the main cast were signed up until a prospective eighth season, though no seasons beyond the fourth had been ordered as of yet.
The opener to the fourth season would be the concluding part of the third season story “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I”. The episode would see Picard liberated from the Borg, and the cube that was en-route to Earth destroyed, albeit at great cost. This episode would set up many plot lines for future seasons, and even other shows, to explore. [4]
In fact, many future plots and ideas would be set up in this season, to be paid off in the future. In particular, the season finale, “Redemption, Part I”, would set up the Klingon Civil War, which would be the overarching story of a prospective fifth season. This episode would also close with the reveal of Sela, a character that was to be played by Denise Crosby, ostensibly the daughter of the alternate timeline Tasha Yar seen in “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. [5]
As September 1990 came around, the cat and crew prepared for the release of Season 4 of
Star Trek: The Next Generation. [6]
[1] Much as I love the stories it has, as far as writing this timeline goes, S4 is actually a bit of a "filler season". There's some stuff coming up in S5 and beyond that I really can't wait to do. There's something expecially close to home in Season 5 for me.
[2] They're taking the Doctor Who approach for now, namely, arcs over multiple stories that remain episodicity. I really liked how TNG handled their longer arcs, even if I wish a couple had lasted longer. But hey, I'm in charge of this timeline, I'll take it where I want to.
[3] I'd had this in the back of my mind for a while for Dr Henderson, but wasn't completely sure when I was writing last season. As a result, I kept the reveal for this season. It won't come up much, apart from one episode this season.
[4] Spoiler? To be honest, it's getting really hard to write now without revealing something about my plans for the future. Just a warning, Trek may be a bit OTL for another few years, but changes are coming.
[5] Alright, I'm not really a fan of Sela. She felt a little implausible, with her looking exactly like her mother but Romulan. However, I've liked what they did with her in STO (which may be an umpopular opinion, I'm not sure what your opinions on the sotry of that game are), and she definitely had potential, so I've kept her.
[6] You know the drill for the next two updates now. See you when they are released.