Are aliens living among us? Would we ever even know if they were? Although the Star Trek franchise claims to be all about seeking out new life and new civilizations, there are very few stories in which the various Starfleet crews make first contact with people that remind us of ourselves. Over the years, Star Trek has doubled down on the idea that most aliens are humanoid in shape, and has even provided a big, overarching canonical reason for that fact. On top of that, most aliens appear to speak English, which we can hand-wave away because the Universal Translator exists. But, since the days of The Original Series, one obvious question existed: If people from the Star Trek universe were to beam down to our planet, how would we react?
Thirty-five years ago, with an episode called “First Contact,” The Next Generation flipped the script on most Trek stories about alien cultures. Though the title “First Contact” is most famously associated with the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact, the Season 4 episode with that title told a smaller, more philosophically complex story. During the week of February 19, 1991, TNG aired this unique episode and gave us a great story in the tradition of classic science fiction.
