Season Three defined the look of the series for the rest of its run. It's the fist year where the new uniforms appeared, the special effects received a nice facelift, the lighting of the show was a bit better, and it even received a new opening title sequence.
But, those are just superficial improvements. The real greatness of this season comes in its choice of episodes, which includes two of the best Star Trek shows ever, and that is out of all of the episodes of all five television series.
I'll get to those gems in a bit, as there are some very good episodes in this third year aside from the obvious biggies.
I really love the opening teaser to Evolution (the season premiere) as it takes its time and sort of establishes that the show has come into its own and is going to be much larger in scope than the previous two seasons.
Ensigns of Command is neat in that it tells the story of a human colony on a planet that is hostile to human life due to radiation. These people have adapted to the hazard, but a race of aliens hold territorial rights to the planet and are on their way to destroy them so someone has to convince the people to leave. Since Data is the only one on the Enterprise who can survive the planet he must convince these people (who have never seen an android before) to leave their homes before they are annihilated.
Booby Trap introduces the character of Dr. Leah Brahms who reappears later in the series as a real person, but appears here as a hologram on the holodeck who Geordi falls in love with while using the Dr.'s knowledge to free the ship from a radiation booby trap. It also lays a little foreshadowing in the Picard/Guinan relationship with a line spoken here that will be explained through the actions in Times Arrow, Part 2 in season six.
The Enemy is one of those classic war stories where two enemy pilots are stranded together. Here, Geordi is stuck with a Romulan officer on a harsh planet while the Enterprise lies on the brink of conflict with the reoccurring Romulan captain, Tomalak.
The Price becomes interesting now as it set up an episode of Voyager. This is the show where the Enterprise is overseeing negotiations for a wormhole that leads to the Delta Quadrant. At the end of the episode, two Ferengi go through the unstable wormhole, where they become trapped and reappear years later in the aforementioned Voyager episode.
Q makes his third season appearance in Deja Q where he pops onto the Enterprise without his powers.
In the latter half of the season, The Offspring is one that stands out. This is the one where Data creates a daughter named Lal. It's a small, and sweet episode that's a break from the heavier stuff in the season. A bit of a flashback to Season Two's The Measure of a Man is here with an admiral who wants to take Lal away from the Enterprise to study her. It's also the first episode directed by Jonathan Frakes.
A big Worf story arc that will continue for a couple seasons really kicks off this year with Sins of the Father where his brother Kurn enters the picture and the Klingon's really start to be defined. This episode (along with last season's The Emissary) set up Reunion in Season Four and that season's cliffhanger finale Redemption.
Everyone's favorite neurotic engineer Barclay shows up in Hollow Pursuits, a somewhat silly episode where the officer is addicted to the holodeck and carries out programs with other members of the Enterprise crew in humorous roles.
Other good episodes in Season Three include The Most Toys where Data is kidnapped by a collector, Sarek where Spock's father enters the Next Generation universe for the first time, the funny episode Ménage à Troi that has Troi, her mother, and Riker kidnapped by the Ferengi, and a popular one titled Tin Man where the crew encounters a living ship.
Season Three would be a good season if it only had those episodes, but it doesn't. It has two episodes that are so perfect they uplift the entire season and define it as the best of all seven years. Four has some choice episodes, and year five has some stunners such as The Inner Light, Darmok, Unification, and I, Borg, but these two episodes in season three are truly in the top echelon.
Of course, I am talking about Yesterday's Enterprise and The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1.
Yesterday's Enterprise opens by establishing a small character trait of Worf that is completely silly for a strong Klingon warrior, but will go down in TNG history as one of the little details about him that is almost always mentioned: he loves prune juice. Silly yes, but it's one of the in-jokes that made this series so fun.
The episode kicks into gear when the Enterprise encounters a temporal rift in space. As soon as a ship exits that rift, something changes on the Enterprise. Uniforms are different, the bridge is darker, and Worf is no longer at tactical but rather the long-dead Tasha Yar is.
We soon learn that the mysterious ship is the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 C. The ship was originally destroyed 22 years ago while defending a Klingon outpost, but since it went forward in time and never faced its destiny, the Federation is locked in a brutal war that isn't going well. They are actually facing defeat.
The Enterprise D is no longer a ship of exploration, and since they never went to the planet where Tasha was killed in the original timeline, she is alive and well and only Guinan can tell that something is wrong.
In the end, Guinan informs Tasha of her fate in the real timeline, so Yar decides the go back with the Enterprise C, which sets up a character who will appear at the end of season four.
This episode is just packed with great moments. Aside from the opening and the first appearance of the Enterprise C, there's the chilling scene in Ten Forward where Guinan tells Tasha that she's supposed to be dead, and then the nice moment at the very end where Guinan asks Geordi to tell her about Tasha.
The real heavy hitter comes in the form of the season finale. The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 is by far not only the best and most popular TNG episodes, but it's also one of the best cliffhangers ever. It's the episode that defined Picard for the rest of the character's life and it also established The Next Generation as one of the best shows on television.
While investigating a disappearance of a colony, the Enterprise learns that the day the Federation has been dreading has arrived: The Borg is coming.
The episode of course draws from the season two show Q Who? where the crew was introduced to the cybernetic aliens by Q. It slowly builds up, until the ship finally runs into the cube ship, Picard turns from the viewscreen, and speaks one of the most haunting lines in the season "Mr. Worf. Dispatch a subspace message to Admiral Hanson. We have engaged The Borg." Haunting, because that line triggers a line of events that will not be resolved until season four.
Picard is captured by the Borg, and assimilated into the collective as Locutus. With Riker in command, the Enterprise crew comes up with a plan to fire a beam from the main deflector to disable the Borg ship. With the words: "Mr. Worf. Fire." Riker ends season three on a cliffhanger, and when it originally aired everyone was left with their jaws on the floor.
The show is a defeat. It ends on a low note. And it's one of the definitive moments in the entire seven year, four movie, run of The Next Generation.
Thankfully, we'll only have to wait two months for part two on DVD.
This season had the strongest writing thanks to a new writing staff, the most character development, and was the most well rounded season of the show in my opinion. There's action, hard drama, and some humor.
If you can only buy one season of TNG on DVD, make it this one. After watching it, you'll find some way to buy season four if only to have part two of Best of Both Worlds.
