The first year of a season is always... very tenuous,
because there`s no back story.
The characters don`t really have a history to them.
By the end of the first season, they`ve got 26 episodes of history
that we as writers bring to the characters,
and that the actors bring to the characters.
There was an episode called Skin Of Evil,
in which there was black slime in a pit.
l asked the prop man, ``What is this stuff?``
They said, ``lt`s Metamusal and black printer`s ink.``
``lt`ll be fine. Go ahead.``
Data!
Something`s got me!
l was naive and eager. l said, ``Sure, l`ll get in the black slime pit.``
So l immersed myself over my head in black Metamusal,
and there was an elevator built into the pit
which forced me up through the slime and then vomited me onto the beach.
He`s alive. All signs show normal.
One of my favourite moments took place just after l was vomited out
covered in Metamusal and printer`s ink.
LeVar Burton comes over and leans over me like this.
He goes, ``Frakes, l would never have done that.``
What is that?
That`s Cmdr Riker.
To me it`s just an undefined form,
standing in a... visual frenzy.
Finally we get an opportunity to see not quite what it is Geordi sees,
but we will see what the visor sees.
Finally, we`re going to have a chance to be in his world.
He sees the electromagnetic spectrum,
which means he sees light, sound, colour, infrared, X-ray.
He sees heat and thermal energy patterns.
He has a very broad spectrum of information from which to draw.
Extraordinary.
And the difference... the difference being,
he has learned how to select what he wants to see
and disregard the other information.
The audience, when they see through the visor,
will see all the information simultaneously,
and it will be a blur and a jumble.
lt`s like being in a noisy room.
You can focus with your ears because of a learned behaviour,
on a certain specific sound or voice, and you disregard the rest.
Geordi does that with his vision.
Now l`m beginning to understand him.
Right here on this very spot where l`m sitting, in the first season,
there was some crisis here in Engineering.
We had a crazy engineer on board called Kosinski,
and Jonathan Frakes had one line...
The fact that it brought this whole place to a halt for about 45 minutes
will seem strange, but Jonathan had the line,
``lt wasn`t him. lt never was. lt was his assistant.``
lt wasn`t him. lt never was. lt was his assistant.
And he simply couldn`t say it. And...
..the hysteria spread like a bushfire through the entire set,
to the point where Alan Bernard our sound mixer
had to leave because he couldn`t stop laughing.
One of my favourites is an episode called Arsenal Of Freedom,
directed by Les Landau.
The crux of the story was that the Enterprise goes to investigate
why the entire population of a planet has met their biological demise.
lt turns out that it was a planet of arms merchants,
and they had created an arms demonstration of a little drone robot
that would seek out and destroy living things, and everybody.
And the experiment got out of control.
l have energy readings...
Look out.
First, we had a sculptor come in and do a model for us of the drone robot.
lt was too heavy and inappropriate in design
for the jungle environment that the planet had.
So we were desperate for something.
- No... - Doctor!
So, ... l was looking around.
lt was near Easter and my son had a plastic egg and a shampoo bottle.
l cut the side of the bottle off, and glued it to the bottom of the egg,
and glued a L`eggs Pantyhose container underneath that,
and did the entire sequence as a rod puppet by hand.
And that wound up in the show,
so it was a four-dollar model that looked pretty good.
ln this episode, we have some snake alien creatures,
and basically a type of a dog creature.
We have five of them. Over here, we have the hands.
They`re all lined up and painted.
The nails...
lt`s all ready for the actors to slip into.
This is a snake alien creature.
What the hell?
Sorry. Wrong species.
This is when it comes out of the mould,
before it`s painted and taken care of.
Over here is our painted one that will be going on the actor.
These were taken from your people.
All your weapons, no matter what their basic function,
are being confiscated.
Violence will not be tolerated on the Enterprise.
The first season, we won for editing sound on a show
which involved two aliens that were computeresque
and they were called the Bynars.
We treated their voices, and had some very interesting sound effects
for those two characters.
That won for sound editing.
What is that high-pitched sound you make?
- Our... - Primary language.
How do you process at that speed?
- We store information with these. - We receive information.
- And save it... - Till we need it.
ln the first season, l think in the fifth or sixth episode...
They had been talking about the Ferengi for several episodes,
in the pilot, for instance.
ln the fifth or sixth, they decided to show us.
l was one of the original four Ferengi,
and in the episode, l had perhaps the most to say.
l sort of put my feet in the wet cement
of that... race of people.
We were a very ferocious, feral sort of creature.
l thought of them as the Richard llls of space, actually.
lf he moves, kill him.
We had an episode that we shot out at this very unromantic spot.
lt was a water reclamation plant in Encino,
which is sort of like a glorified sewage treatment plant.
But it`s very modern in design.
lf you`ll join us, then, please.
We did have a day of fun in the casting arena.
Gene`s idea was that this was a planet of sensuality,
where people didn`t wear much clothing.
So in the casting sessions, we had a bevy of babes.
Conspiracy was the last episode l did in the first season of TNG.
lt involved an unusual effect for us,
where we had to kill and blow up the head of one of our guest stars.
- Can l help you? - No, Will.
We found an old mould and packed it with raw meat,
and had a dummy made of Remmick`s body,
so the dummy`s sat there.
ln the scene, Riker and Picard come in,
and you see a little alien parasite skitter along the floor and go up.
Remmick takes it in his mouth and swallows it.
Mike Westmore did a great neck bladder.
He knelt behind the actor playing Remmick
and blew through these tubes so you see the illusion
that this thing is inside his throat.
We seek peaceful coexistence.
Then we cut to Riker and Picard who are obviously revolted by this,
and they shoot Remmick.
And we come back and we see Remmick`s skin peel away,
revealing raw meat, which then blows up.
Then they shoot him in the chest, and all these parasites spill out.
Finally, the mother alien comes up
and they shoot her, and she meets her ultimate demise.
We had a script called Code Of Honor
which required a kind of ziggurat,
a Tower of Babylon fortress, at the top of a mountain.
We didn`t build a fortress on top of a mountain.
We built a small piece of it,
and photographed the actors wandering through that.
Then we did a matte painting that provides the exterior look
of the entire place.
lnto that matte painting, we composite the live action.
lt`s only used a couple of times in the course of the episode,
but it`s very effective. lt locates the place on the planet,
and gives you the scale of the temple
in relation to the geography of the planet.
Three-quarters of the way into Season One, Denise Crosby asked to leave,
a request that broke everyone`s heart, but we let her go.
After her being such an asset to the show,
and such a pleasant person to have around,
l just felt we couldn`t stand in her way.
She came into me and said she wanted to be released, and explained it,
and said, ``lf it hurts you at all, l`ll wait,`` in the best possible way.
My final episode, where Tasha`s killed...
lt was fortunate that we had one more show to shoot after that.
lt was going to be played as my last show,
but because the script was ready first, we shot it first,
so there was another to go.
lt would have been so difficult emotionally.
- We`re establishing a link now. - We`re ready.
All of you get on the transporter platform. On my signal, energise.
l have their transporter signal. lnterlock complete.
On my mark. Energise.
The day that l had to shoot my will, my sort of hologram,
l came onto this...
The whole crew wore black armbands.
l came on to the set in a funereal black hat with a veil.
We`re here together to honour...
our friend and comrade, Lt Natasha Yar.
We... came to that whole sequence,
and the camera was on everyone else first.
l was giving off-camera lines, doing my speech,
so that the camera could shoot their reactions of what l was saying,
as they watched this hologram.
So l could run it through a number of times, as you can imagine,
eight times at least, before the camera turned on me.
That was good, because l couldn`t keep a dry eye.
Hello, my friends.
You are here watching this image of me because l have died.
lt was... really, er, ... saying goodbye to them.
And the way it was written really addressed personally how l felt
about each one of those actors.
Will Riker, you are the best.
You trusted me. You encouraged me. And most of all, you made me laugh.
lt was one of those magical things where...
..the words of the character were mirroring what l might say as Denise.
So it was very personal.
lt was very tough, and everybody was very, very sad.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
l wish l could say you`ve been like a father to me,
but l`ve never had one, so l don`t know what it feels like.
But if there was someone in this universe l could choose to be like,
it`s you.
lt`s been delightful for me to watch the new cast
get this sort of tribute and attention.
l`ve enjoyed it enormously. lt`s been a delightful year,
with a lot of work, a lot of adventure and excitement,
and l`m glad to say a lot of laughs, too.