page_title: Lonely Among Us
section_title: Reception and home media release
hierarchical_section_title: Lonely Among Us / Reception and home media release
caption_attribution_description: Taken on August 6th, 2005, at a Star Trek convention in Bellevue, WA.
context_page_description: "Lonely Among Us" is the seventh episode of the American science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which originally aired on November 2, 1987, in broadcast syndication in the United States. It was written by D. C. Fontana, based on a story by Michael Halperin. It was the first episode of The Next Generation to be directed by Cliff Bole.
  Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Federation starship Enterprise-D. In this episode, as the ship is en route to an interplanetary conference with delegates from the Selay and Antican races on board, a non-corporeal alien entity takes possession of various Enterprise crew members, including Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
  This episode marked the first appearance of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine recurring cast member Marc Alaimo in a Star Trek series, as well as the second appearance of Colm Meaney who would later play The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine character Miles O'Brien. The Antican and Selay make-up were created by Michael Westmore from designs by Andrew Probert. Following the airing of the episode, fans wrote in to complain about a scene referencing cannibalism.
context_section_description: "Lonely Among Us" originally aired in broadcast syndication on November 2, 1987. It received a 12.1 rating, meaning that it was seen by 12.1 percent of all households. This was an increase from the previous week's "Where No One Has Gone Before" which received a rating of 10.5.
  Following the broadcast, the producers received a significant amount of mail from fans criticising the apparent cannibalism on the part of the Anticans in this episode. Several reviewers rewatched the episode following the end of the series. Keith DeCandido reviewed "Lonely Among Us" for Tor.com in May 2011. He gave it a score of three out of ten and was uninterested in the episode, finding the alien delegation subplot to be "mostly just silly", and the majority of the episode was a "weak-beer mystery that's mostly an excuse for Gates McFadden and Sir Patrick Stewart to act weird and for Brent Spiner to be a silly Sherlock". James Hunt thought that Spiner's Sherlock impression was "completely brilliant", in his review for the website Den of Geek in October 2012. He thought that the episode shared some similarities with the third season of The Original Series, saying "By which I mean it looks cheap and appears to have been written by a child, in yellow crayon."
  Cast member Wil Wheaton rewatched the episode for AOL TV in November 2006. He criticised the writing of Fontana in this episode, saying that around this time she appeared on a panel at a convention about how to solve "The Wesley Problem", but when rewatching the episode he thought that "maybe instead of sitting on this panel and trashing me, D.C Fontana could have written intelligent dialogue for me and helped solve the "Wesley problem" herself. I don't know, maybe she tried to do that and didn't get a lot of support from the rest of the producers and writing staff, but even I know of Dr. Channing's theory of not writing cliched dialogue for kids in science fiction, and then blaming the actor who is forced to deliver it." Overall he criticised the "very stiff" dialogue throughout the episode, and called the set-up "incredibly forced". He did highlight that Data acting out as Sherlock Holmes laid the foundation of future episodes which would expand on this.
  Zack Handlen reviewed the episode for The A.V. Club in April 2010. He too thought that the alien delegation subplot was poorly executed in a comedic fashion, and said that this "combined with the slow pace and a number of dialog scenes that can be charitably described as 'character development' (or more accurately as 'padding'), this is an unmemorable episode that shows a series still unsure of its greatest strengths." He gave the episode a grade of C-.
  The first home media release of "Lonely Among Us" was on VHS cassette, appearing on April 1, 1992 in the United States and Canada. The episode was later included on the Star Trek: The Next Generation season one DVD box set, released in March 2002. The most recent release was as part of the season one Blu-ray set on July 24, 2012.
caption: Brent Spiner received both positive and negative reviews for his Sherlock Holmes impression whilst portraying Data in this episode.
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