ST:TNG — Yesterday’s Enterprise

Audra and I have been picking our way through a variety of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes -- most recently one of our favorites: Yesterday's Enterprise. For those of you not familiar with the episode -- yes, both of you -- it features the unexpected arrival of an earlier Enterprise (NCC-1701C) from 22 years in the past via a time rift. This sets off a series of ugly consequences in which the Federation never made peace with the Klingons at Khitomer, resulting in a 20+ year war that the Federation is losing. Ranked by many fans as the number one TNG episode -- and among last-episode-leadup "viewer's choice" top ten -- this episode never disappoints.

If you'd like to know more about how the story came to the screen, one of the episode's co-authors, Eric A. Stillwell, has published a book detailing the process. He also sat down for an interview with Gustavo Leao over at TrekWeb yesterday, in which he reveals that both he and producer Rick Berman would likely have saved the story for the big screen if they'd known TNG movies were in their near future.

If you have the DVDs, now's a great time to pull this one out and re-watch it -- or if you don't own the box set to place ST: TNG season three on your NetFlix list.

Yesterday's Enterprise [Wikipedia]