All Good Things... (S70E25/S7E026)
Airdate: 23 May 1994
Written by: Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga Directed by: Winrich Kolbe
Running Time: 93 minutes
Comparing Star Trek: The Original Series with The Next Generation has always been a bit like weighing apples against oranges. They share a universe, certainly, but they occupy entirely different cultural moments and television landscapes. Still, you'd be hard-pressed to find a convention hall or online forum where self-proclaimed "Trekkies" haven't argued passionately that TNG surpassed its predecessor in both quality and cultural impact. Where this debate finds its most poignant evidence is in how each series concluded. Gene Roddenberry had envisioned The Original Series running for five years—a full exploratory mission—but NBC pulled the plug after three, leaving fans with the traumatically abrupt cancellation and the insultingly inadequate finale Turnabout Intruder, which saw William Shatner camping it up as a woman trapped in a man's body, trading in lazy gender stereotypes that embarrassed everyone involved. The Next Generation, by contrast, bowed out entirely on its own terms after seven seasons, not five, with All Good Things..."—a feature-length finale that delivered closure without sacrificing the spirit of exploration that had defined the series.
The episode opens with a deliciously soap-operatic scene that only a seven-year investment could properly earn. Worf and Troi emerge from a holodeck programme—specifically, one of those romantic encounters the show had been teasing for seasons—discussing how best to break the news to Riker about their relationship. It's the sort of character-driven moment that rewarded patient viewers, and it's immediately shattered when they encounter Captain Picard wandering the corridors in his nightgown, visibly distressed, claiming he's jumping back and forth through time. It's a jarring juxtaposition that sets the episode's tone perfectly: the personal and the cosmic colliding, intimate relationships interrupted by universe-ending stakes.
Those temporal shifts coincide with troubling developments along the Neutral Zone, where Romulan vessels have begun massing in suspicious numbers. Starfleet responds in kind, dispatching the Enterprise to monitor the situation. Intelligence reports soon filter through about a strange anomaly in the Devron sector—something unprecedented that sits squarely within the Neutral Zone. Picard becomes convinced, through his fractured temporal awareness, that he must reach this anomaly even at the risk of sparking interstellar war. The stakes couldn't be higher, yet the episode never loses sight of the characters navigating them.
Picard's temporal displacement sends him nearly seven years into the past, landing precisely at the moment he first assumed command of the Enterprise for the Farpoint mission. It's 2364 again, and Picard finds himself confronting the same anomaly he encountered in 2370—only here, in the past, it's somehow larger and more threatening. He makes the difficult call to divert the ship from its maiden voyage, a decision that immediately raises eyebrows among a crew that hasn't yet learned to trust his instincts.
But the episode doesn't stop at mere past-and-present duality. Picard also catapults twenty-five years into the future, to 2395, where he's an elderly man enjoying semi-retirement at his family's vineyard in France. He's a former captain turned ambassador now, but those strange temporal visions persist. His old friend Geordi La Forge—now with cybernetic eyes and a family life—initially dismisses these episodes as symptoms of Irumodic Syndrome, the degenerative neurological condition diagnosed decades earlier. Yet Picard convinces him to seek out Data, who has settled into academic life as a professor at Cambridge University. Together, they investigate whether the Devron anomaly might exist in this future period, though reaching the sector proves complicated. By 2395, there's no Neutral Zone anymore—the Romulans have been conquered by the Klingons, and Federation-Klingon relations have deteriorated into cold hostility. Admiral Riker refuses to involve Starfleet directly, forcing Picard to arrange passage aboard the USS Pasteur, a medical vessel commanded by Captain Beverly Crusher. The episode quietly reveals that Beverly is Picard's ex-wife in this timeline, adding bittersweet texture to their reunion. They collect Worf along the way, now reduced to governing the minor Klingon colony of H'atoria, bearing grudges and scars from a life of disappointments.
Back in 2364, Picard's temporal knowledge proves invaluable. Remembering his previous encounters, he correctly suspects Q's involvement in these temporal shenanigans. When the omnipotent being finally appears, he drops a devastating revelation: the trial of humanity that supposedly concluded in the pilot episode never actually ended. Q has been watching, judging, waiting—and thanks to Picard's actions across these fractured timelines, humanity stands condemned to annihilation.
What follows is a masterclass in science fiction plotting as Picard works across three distinct time periods, slowly piecing together the mystery. The anomaly, he realises, doesn't exist in 2395 at all, and appears smaller in 2370 than it does in 2364. It's composed of "anti-time," a temporal inversion that's somehow tied to Picard's own consciousness. The solution requires all three versions of the Enterprise—past, present, and future—to coordinate across time itself, creating one of those satisfyingly complex climaxes that only this franchise could attempt with a straight face.
Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga's script deliberately avoided the conventional series finale trap of trying to "end" the story definitively. Instead, they crafted something that provided genuine closure for seven years of character development while ending precisely where the series began—with the Enterprise sailing off toward new adventures, Picard at the helm, the mission continuing. It's a structural choice that acknowledged what fans already knew: four feature films awaited, beginning with Star Trek: Generations. Yet things were fundamentally different after this episode. The characters had been tested across time itself, and we'd glimpsed roads not taken.
Those glimpses into possible futures proved catnip for longtime viewers. The time-travel framework offered hints—perhaps alternative timelines, perhaps destined fates—of where these characters might ultimately land. For "shippers," the episode delivered long-awaited payoffs. Picard and Crusher finally share a kiss, though the circumstances suggest their relationship ends badly in at least one timeline. Worf and Troi nearly kiss as well, only to be interrupted by Picard's temporal intrusion—a moment that implies this romantic triangle creates lasting friction between Worf and Riker. (Subsequent films would largely abandon this thread, returning Troi to Riker's orbit and quietly forgetting the Worf romance ever happened.) Even Geordi gets a happy ending in this potential future, married to Leah, director of the Daystrom Institute—a lovely nod to Leah Brahms, the married woman he fell for during that memorable holodeck episode years earlier.
Moore and Braga cleverly fused the series' conclusion with its origin. The extended sequences set in 2364 allowed heavy reliance on Encounter at Farpoint, bringing back former regular cast members Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar and Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien. These weren't mere cameos; they served the narrative while acknowledging the show's history.
Most significantly, the finale brought back Q, arguably the series' most iconic recurring character. Putting humanity on trial once again provided perfect symmetry, and John de Lancie delivered another formidable performance, matching the menace and mischief he'd brought to the pilot seven years earlier. His return felt inevitable rather than forced—the universe's most powerful trickster would naturally want to witness humanity's final exam.
Winrich Kolbe directed with considerable skill, particularly in the transitional sequences between timelines. The production team had clearly saved budget for this farewell, and it shows in special effects that pushed 1990s television technology to its limits. The brief battle sequence near the climax demonstrates what they could accomplish when resources allowed.
Kolbe and his team matched props, uniforms, and production details meticulously toEncounter at Farpoint, creating genuine visual continuity with the pilot. Still, practical constraints forced some compromises. Jonathan Frakes refused to shave his trademark beard to portray 2364-era Riker, relegating that version of the character to viewscreen appearances only. Wil Wheaton had aged too visibly to convincingly play young Wesley Crusher, so that character doesn’t appear.
The episode's quality found official recognition when it won the 1995 Hugo Award for Dramatic Presentation—a rare honour for television that placed it alongside genuinely cinematic company. Its influence extended beyond the Star Trek universe itself; the creators of Lost later cited All Good Things... as direct inspiration for The Constant, their celebrated time-travel episode featuring Desmond's consciousness shifting between past and present. That Lost episode is frequently cited among the finest pieces of television ever produced, and its debt to this Next Generation finale speaks volumes about the original's narrative sophistication.
When Q finally intones that "all good things must come to an end," he's speaking to Picard but also to us, the audience who'd spent seven years with these characters. Some television finales disappoint. Some anger. Some simply fade away, forgotten by the following autumn. "All Good Things..." managed something genuinely rare: it honoured what came before while suggesting that the best adventures still lay ahead, even if we wouldn't be there to see them. That's more than The Original Series ever got with "Turnabout Intruder," and it's certainly more than the subsequent film Generations managed when it clumsily invalidated both this finale's careful character work and Star Trek VI's elegiac final voyage for the original cast. In the end, some things simply end better than others. This one ended about as well as anyone could have hoped.
RATING: 9/10 (++++)
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