By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
As a writer who specializes in Star Trek, I spend a fair amount of time delving into the production details of my favorite episodes. I’ll often discover cool, behind-the-scenes trivia that makes me enjoy these stories that much more. Every now and then, though, I’ll discover something shocking. Namely, that my favorite creators really despise what I consider their best work.
A perfect example of this is the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Evolution,” which was written by Michael Piller. The episode is so good that it helped him land the gig as TNG showrunner, and he almost single-handedly ushered in the Golden Age of the franchise. Because of this, I always assumed Piller must be proud of the story he crafted. In reality, though, he hated “Evolution,” the episode that helped him land the most important gig of his entire career.
Boy (Genius), Interrupted
In case you don’t have perfect android memory, here’s a recap. “Evolution” was about the Enterprise helping an eccentric genius study an interstellar explosion that occurs every 196 years, the cosmic equivalent of Old Faithful. Meanwhile, Wesley Crusher is conducting a science experiment and accidentally unleashes some nanites on the ship. They evolve and cause mayhem, but after a few wacky hijinks, Picard reaches a diplomatic solution, getting the nanites their own planet just in time to help the visiting scientist complete the research he spent a lifetime working on.
It’s a really great episode, one that most fans think writer Michael Piller should be proud of. However, the future TNG showrunner didn’t agree with this assessment. As recorded in Captain’s Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Voyages, he later said that “Evolution” was ultimately “a B-episode.” His primary concern (one shared by Michael Wagner, who helped develop the overall story) was that “I didn’t have an ending for it.” While there were “some character scenes” he was “very proud of,” he ultimately worried that the episode “didn’t quite come off.”
The Ghost Of Cranky Yet To Come
Interestingly, episode director Winrich Kolbe shared some of Piller’s concerns with “Evolution.” The director enjoyed the plot about a scientist “who tried to push an issue and then suddenly found out there were ramifications he hadn’t thought of, which is the lack of control of the nanites.” He felt that this was “a very serious issue” that “wasn’t dealt with properly” because it was a Wesley-centric episode and “everyone considered it a child’s show, even the writers.”
That last bit was directed at Piller, who primarily saw the episode as a chance to (ahem) evolve Wesley Crusher’s character. He intended cranky visiting scientist Paul Stubbs to be a cautionary vision of what Wesley could grow up to be if he continued to focus only on his studies. “Evolution” is very successful in that regard, and it’s the perfect episode to show friends who hate Star Trek’s resident teen genius. But Kolbe felt the episode spent too much time on Wesley and not enough on the nanites, who were at the heart of the episode’s moral dilemma: namely, whether to put them down as dangerous pests or acknowledge them as a new (albeit unconventional) form of life.
Michael Piller might not have been the biggest fan of “Evolution,” but this opinion was not shared by Star Trek producer Rick Berman. Piller’s script (complete with a baseball speech that impressed Berman, a huge fan of the sport) helped him land the job as showrunner of The Next Generation. After he transformed this show into must-see TV, he went on to create Deep Space Nine and Voyager, solidifying this era as the Golden Age of Star Trek. Ultimately, none of that would have happened without “Evolution,” a killer episode that everyone but its writer absolutely loved.
