Star Trek’s Best Episode Almost Never Aired
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Measure of a Man” is often considered the best of the series (if not the best in the entire franchise), and for good reason. This episode about Data proving that he is more than Starfleet property touches on all of Gene Roddenberry’s greatest themes, including tolerance, exploration, and discovery.
What most fans don’t realize is that this episode almost never aired: it was previously submitted as a spec script and was selected for a season of The Next Generation that was affected by the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike.
Measure Of A Man
This story of “Measure of a Man” is going to involve a lot of ‘80s history, so buckle up (your captain’s chair does have a built-in seatbelt, right?). To begin with, the episode was written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, and it was one of the first scripts she ever wrote. This was before Star Trek began accepting unsolicited spec scripts (that wouldn’t happen until Season 3) from the general public, but George RR Martin’s agent offered her story to TNG producers.
The Writer’s Strike
It’s weird to think about in retrospect, but if all had gone according to Star Trek producers’ plans, “Measure of a Man” would likely have never been aired. After all, the show had its own bevy of talented writers, so why would they need to use a story from a relative nobody? However, The Next Generation was soon affected by something even scarier than the Borg: the 1988 writers’ strike.
That strike lasted a whopping 153 days, and it seriously affected the Star Trek production schedule. That’s why season 2 only had 22 episodes compared to the usual 26. It’s also why that season finale, “Shades of Grey,” was a crappy clip show episode: it’s the kind of episode that needed very little writing and was extremely cheap to produce, though then-showrunner Maurice Hurley later declared with surprising honesty that this episode was a “piece of s***.”
A Replacement Script
The length of this writers’ strike meant that Star Trek producers had to scramble to find and use any of the scripts they already had on hand, which sometimes meant getting creative. For example, the season premiere “The Child” (about Troi getting pregnant with a space baby) was adapted from a script written for Star Trek: Phase II, the original live-action spinoff show that got scrapped in favor of moving Kirk and crew to the big screen. And the script for “Measure of a Man” got re-discovered, leading to it easily becoming the best episode of the season.
An Award-Winning Episode
As for the writer, Snodgrass had a whirlwind career with Star Trek: based on the strength of “Measure of a Man” (which was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for “Best Dramatic Episode”), this former lawyer joined The Next Generation and wrote other memorable episodes, including “The Ensigns of Command.”
However, she clashed with new showrunner Michael Piller and left after Season 3. She continued writing for other TV series before taking over management of a small natural gas company, and she still works on the Wild Card book series that she and Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin began back in 1984.
One Of The Best Episodes In The Franchise
There you have it, folks: the story of how the best Star Trek episode never made it to the air. In a large sense, the writers’ strike of 1988 may have helped TNG…sure, it led to sloppy episodes like “Shades of Grey,” but it also led to the electrifyingly entertaining “Measure of a Man.” Plus, producers got to learn the valuable lesson that audiences hate clip shows, which remains the second-worst way to end a season.
The first-worst way, of course, is to reveal that everything we’re watching is just Riker’s holodeck re-runs. But that’s a tale for another time, one we’ll have to travel a long road before we can unpack everything from there to here.
