In the episodes below, the show has a turning point and matures as a series.
- "Yesterday's Enterprise" is considered to be one of the best episodes of the series. The Enterprise D runs into the Enterprise C--and the timeline changes as a result. Now the Federation is in a 20 year war, and the Enterprise C needs to go back to face certain death in order to make things right. Guinan is the only one who notices the difference. One other factor--Tasha is alive in the new timeline.
- The other guest stars are Tricia O'Neil as the Captain Rachel Garrett and Christopher McDonald as her helmsmen, who falls in love with Tasha.
- Tricia began work as a model, then had a number of TV roles, including both TNG and DS9, with her last role on JAS in 2001.
- Christopher had a number of guest and regular roles including the Dean Cain Superman series, Veronica's Closet, Family Law, and Harry's Law.
- "The Offspring" is a Data-centric episode. He's created an android daughter, Lal, Of course, a stupid Starfleet "expert" wants to take her away (Starfleet members outside of the Enterprise crew are usually idiots, insane, or evil). Lal is played with great subtlety by Hallie Todd. She had a regular role on the early Showtime series "Brothers", but is best known as the TV mother of Lizzie McGuire.
- It's another officer exchange program--this time, a Klingon (played by Tony Todd) comes on the Enterprise as first officer. He also happens to be Worf's brother, and they team up to save their father's reputation on the Klingon homeworld. The episode also ties into events in Star Trek VI. Tony has had a number of TV roles, mostly on genre shows (Andromeda, Stargate, Smallville, Xena).
- Picard gets the ol' switcheroo in "Allegiance"--he's beamed to a holding cell while a doppelganger runs his ship. He's stuck with members of three other races, played by Stephen Markle, Reiner Schone, and Jocelyn O'Brien, so he has to figure out how to escape, and who's the bad guy. Meanwhile, the faux Picard is singing on Ten-Forward and dating Crusher. We even get a rare kiss between the Captain and the Doctor.
- It's a "Captain's Holiday" for a worn out Picard. Of course, it's never that simple--there's a mysterious woman named Vash (Jennifer Hetrick, later seen as the same character on DS9, and per Memory Alpha, was at one point engaged to Patrick Stewart!), a Ferengi (Max Grodenchik, later to play Rom on DS9), time travelers, and an even more mysterious disk.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is available on Netflix--more to come!