One of our favorite ST: The Next Generation episodes aired 31 years ago

This article contains spoilers about an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that aired 31 years ago today. That’s outside the statute of limitations as far as we’re concerned.

Also, Lee Hutchinson did a great job with the image captions in the gallery below.

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  The episode kicks off with a secret, shadowy meeting with other Starfleet captains. [credit:
  Paramount ]

Via the office water cooler, I discovered that today is the anniversary of one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation—Conspiracy.

You know the one. The Enterprise is doing its thing on its way to do something scientific on Pacifica (a place we learn in later years is a beach world, so evidently beach science). Starfleet’s uniforms are yet to sport Nehru collars, the carpet on the bridge still looks new, and Data doesn’t really understand jokes yet. Captain Picard gets an urgent message from Captain Keel, an old friend with very heavy eyebrows, and the beach trip is off as our captain and crew are sucked into an alien conspiracy at the heart of the Federation.