Star Trek: TNG Season 1 – Lonely Among Us

Link to StarTrek.com Episode Guide

This episode is really all about trying to cross boundaries and reach understandings with different beings.  In this case, they are dealing with different species, but the analogy can carry over to any differences you like.  You’ve got the background conflict that is demonstrated with the very visibly different races, which are also there just to show the abilities of the costume and makeup special effects.

What was more compelling for me is that it introduced a link between Star Trek and the world of literature that would come up several times throughout TNG.  Here, they are trying to solve a mystery and the notion of a private investigator is brought up leading Data to discover the world of Sherlock Holmes.  I realized as I was watching that TOS, TNG, and DSN all had their literary links that were often quite popular episodes.  I love the idea of people looking to the world of fiction for answers to their real life problems.  I think that fiction has a lot of potential to enrich our lives and shed light onto things and I’m always glad when I can see that notion reinforced in TV.

Cool Gadget: The only real technological highlight was the use of the transporter.