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Not everyone is broken up over Next Generation's cancellation. In fact, some cast members seem positively blase about it. "Right now I'm in plain old denial," says Brent Spiner, who plays Lieut. Commander Data, the android science officer who isn't programmed to experience emotion. "I have absolutely no feelings about it whatsoever. I'm serious. To me, it's just another season- ender, like all the others."

As with the previous season-enders, the plot of this final episode is being kept top secret. Only a few enticing details have been leaked to outsiders: The story will involve Stewart's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard quantum-leaping through three time periods-his present (around the year 2370); his past (he'll pop back to the show's 1987 premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint," where that cosmic wisenheimer Q, played by John de Lancie, is still holding humanity on trial for its crimes against itself); and his future, in which we get to see what happens to his shipmates 25 years down the line (Geordi La Forge becomes a best-selling novelist, Worf is named governor of a lowly Klingon outpost, and Data inherits the mathematics chair held by both Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University).

"It's a bookend to the whole series," de Lancie says. "It's really a wonderfully poignant conclusion. It should be an amazing thing to see." It's certainly been an amazing thing to film, requiring three weeks of nearly round-the-clock production. "It's been crazy here these past few weeks," says Gates McFadden, who plays Beverly Crusher, the Enterprise's doctor and token single mom (she ends up commanding her own medical ship in the future). "Last Friday I was on the set for literally 23 hours. These have been inhuman hours. People are just exhausted."

And it's not only the work that has been tough. "Psychologically, I think everyone is trying to detach themselves from the show and each other," says Marina Sirtis, sounding like her character, Counselor Deanna Troi, the Enterprise's touchy-feely onboard therapist (apparently, her future is too grim to reveal). "People are subconsciously being pissy on the set so that it won't hurt so much when the show is finally over."

"We're a family in crisis," adds LeVar Burton, who plays La Forge, the blind engineer. "This is the end of seven years of shared experience. You can't end something like this without pushing people's buttons. It's going to bring up strong emotions, and everybody is going to handle it differently." One of those emotions, no doubt, is fear. Right about now a lot of these actors must be contemplating the less-than-stellar non-Federation careers of James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and most of the rest of the original Trek TV cast (who, according to a slew of new tell-all bios, weathered a few family crises of their own). Will any of the Next Generation crew ever again play a role that doesn't require a space suit? "I think we'll all be dealing with that problem for the rest of our lives," says Frakes. "I'm just glad I've become a director. I'm hoping that will keep me from falling prey to it. But I'd be naive to pretend that wasn't a possibility."

Actually, there is some reason for hope. McFadden has already been signed for a 20th-century part in Mystery Dance, a comedy-drama pilot for ABC. And Spiner has reportedly negotiated an antitypecasting clause in his new contract with Paramount: He'll do the big-screen Generations only if the studio casts him in a nonandroid role in another film. Looks like Data's positronic brain is good for more than computing dekyon fields and space-time continuums.


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