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Wert's Star Trek: The Next Generation rewatch (now in added HD!)


Werthead

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. What is a bit of a shame is that the Dyson Sphere storyline is completely under-explored, given its sheer size and the alien technology on it could have driven several episodes' worth of plots.

Like most things it gets brought up a bit in Star Trek Online (although the main Dyson Sphere storyline involves a different sphere)

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Like most things it gets brought up a bit in Star Trek Online (although the main Dyson Sphere storyline involves a different sphere)

Star Trek Online is awful.

I do believe that at least one novel went back to explore the Sphere.

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But the season does get better...I think...

STTNG and Buffy seem to have a similar thing that they arguably both only have two seasons where they are must-watch, classic shows (Seasons 3-4 for TNG, 2-3 for Buffy). The rest of the time the average episode is watchable and there are a few classics dotted about, but also a fair few ropey episodes and a fair few that there terrible. Their very likable casts and the quality of the stand-outs do lead to a lot of forgiveness over their weaknesses.

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STTNG and Buffy seem to have a similar thing that they arguably both only have two seasons where they are must-watch, classic shows (Seasons 3-4 for TNG, 2-3 for Buffy). The rest of the time the average episode is watchable and there are a few classics dotted about, but also a fair few ropey episodes and a fair few that there terrible. Their very likable casts and the quality of the stand-outs do lead to a lot of forgiveness over their weaknesses.

I actually loved Season 5 of Buffy, even more than seasons 2-3. As an entire series, I would put Buffy over STTNG (but not over ST:DS9) in terms of quality and compelling drama. (despite my fondness for Worf and Data). Just my opinion...

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  • 4 weeks later...

606: True Q


Q arrives on the Enterprise to claim a young woman, Amanda, who is manifesting the powers of the Q Continuum. However, Amanda is uncertain about becoming a member of the Continuum and is conflicted by the opportunities her new powers present.



Definitely the lesser of the two Q episodes this season, but still reasonably interesting. It's basically a rewrite of Season 1's Hide and Q, but this time giving the powers to an inexperienced young woman rather than a regular character who will more believably reject them (as Riker did first time out). Olivia d'Arbo gives a reasonable (if somewhat unexciting) performance as Amanda and John de Lancie is on superb form, as always. There's also an interesting nod to The Wizard of Oz. However, the episode has the feel of a missed opportunity: the scene where Amanda sends Q hurtling across the room and actually injures him (if briefly), to Q's utter shock, hints at something darker that doesn't quite materialise. It's also left utterly unexplained how the Q killed Amanda's parents or why they didn't just remove their powers. In fact, the episode feels a bit out of touch with continuity with both Hide and Q (the Riker parallels aren't mentioned) and Deja Q (where Q's powers were removed from him). Still, watchably entertaining.




607: Rascals


Picard, Guinan, Keiko and Ro are transformed into children due to a transporter malfunction (yawn) and then have to retake the ship from Ferengi space pirates.



An awful premise is enlivened a little by some game performances, but the Enterprise being captured so ludicrously easily is hard to swallow and the O'Brien/Keiko scenes are uncomfortably icky rather than sweetly bizarre (which is what I think the writers were going for). A daft episode which isn't as terrible as it could have been, but still a let down.




608: A Fistful of Datas


The crew take advantage of some downtime to have fun, with Worf, Troi and Alexander taking part in a holodeck Western programme. When an experiment to use Data as a mobile backup computer for the ship goes wrong, the holodeck programme becomes very deadly.



Another holodeck malfunction may see some viewer eyes glazing over, but it's a game episode with entertaining performances from Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn, and some fun direction from Patrick Stewart. There's a great line of humour, particularly the long teaser where Picard can't get any music done without people constantly interrupting him. The episode suffers a little from its use of doubles, particularly for a long shot in the sherriff's office where it is clear that the second Data is a stand-in (a result of forgiving SD shots being blown up to HD), but that's a fairly negligible problem. This episode is also notable for strongly influencing the Red Dwarf episode Gunmen of the Apocalypse (which won an Emmy Award, something ST:TNG itself never managed), the first time the contemporary British SF show is influenced by the American one rather than foreshadowing it. When Patrick Stewart saw the Red Dwarf episode he nearly demanded legal action, but then found the episode so funny he went and watched the rest of the show and became a big fan.



Definitely a dumb, fun episode but there's nothing wrong with that. Also notable for its final effects shot, which was pretty expensive (a unique Enterprise fly-past filmed specially just for this one episode) for a visual gag.




609: The Quality of Life


An orbital mining station is experiencing a whole host of problems which the Enterprise crew attempt to help resolve. It turns out that robot workers on the station may be becoming self-aware, and Data becomes a champion for their rights.



An interesting follow-up (of sorts) to The Measure of a Man and The Offspring, with again the ethics of creating and treating AI lifeforms being debated. This episode is less successful, mainly because the Exo-Comps look like remote-controlle vacuum cleaners and have no discernible personality. This makes the whole debate rather distant and uninvolving. Still, a great performance from Brent Spiner holds things together.




610: Chain of Command, Part I


Picard is unceremoniously removed as captain of the Enterprise and is replaced by the more bellicose and discipline-oriented Captain Jellicoe. Picard, Worf and Crusher are sent on a dangerous mission into Cardassian space, whilst the rest of the crew struggle with Jellicoe's command style.



A nicely-gauged episode that prefigures the BSG episode Pegasus, where a hard-assed new commander turns up and is flabbergasted at how cute and fluffy our main cast have become for what should be a disciplined, tight unit. It's actually hard to argue with almost any of Jellicoe's criticisms of the crew, with the exception of his preposterous treatment of Riker, who did, y'know, save the entire Federation from annihilation in The Best of Both Worlds. That aside, this is a pretty strong episode that sets up the second part very well. Oh, and it gets Troi out of that stupid catsuit thing and into a proper uniform, only about five seasons too late.




611: Chain of Command, Part II


Picard is tortured for fricking ages by Cardassian David Warner, whilst Jellicoe and the Enterprise crew try to find a way of saving him.



The Enterprise stuff is fairly risible - the solution to the episode is stupidly neat - but the meat of the episode is the absolutely terrific two-hander between Warner and Stewart. The two actors had worked together on stage before, and their chemistry is superb. Warner's performance elevates the Cardassians to another level altogether, and the decision to give him a daughter and interests in art and archaeology make him a very well-realised character for a villain. The episode is also fairly brutal, with the use of drugs augmented by physical violence and torture to try to get Picard to help his captors. It's an episode that fires on all cylinders, is terrifically well-acted by everyone involved and even enters the pop culture lexicon with "THERE...ARE...FOUR...LIGHTS!" Warner smile of respect as Picard leaves is also perfectly played. Overall, an episode deserving of its classic status and arguably the only Part II of a two-part TNG story which is better than its first part.




612: Ship in a Bottle


Lt. Barclay inadvertently retrieves the sentient Professor Moriarty programme created by Data and Geordi four years ago. Moriarty is unhappy at finding himself still a prisoner on the holodeck, and tries to force Picard to help him.



A clever episode which prefigures Inception with its nested holodeck worlds within holodeck worlds. Clever stuff, especially since with hindsight it's there to pad out a rather thin premise. The storyline is problematic because Moriarty wants to escape the holodeck, Picard wants to help him and the only conflict comes from how quickly they can do it, which seems rather silly given Moriarty's intelligence and logic. But the writers throw enough incident and ideas into the episode to keep it ticking along nicely.




613: Aquiel


The Enterprise crew arrive at a space station to find the crew missing. Studying logs of the two crewmen, Geordi uncovers a complex murder mystery.



A potentially fascinating premise - Geordi falls for a woman through her log entries - is wrecked by both familiarity (there are shades of Geordi's relationship with Leah Brahms), an indifferent performance from the female lead and a rather dumb resolution. DS9's Sound of Her Voice takes on the same idea some years later and does a far superior job of it.




614: Face of the Enemy


Troi wakes up on a Romulan warbird to find that she has been surgically altered into posing as a Romulan intelligence agent. She has been shanghaied into working for Spock's dissident movement and has to find fresh reserves of steel and ruthlessness to carry out her mission.



Another episode which adds more nuance to Troi's character by showing her as a professional Starfleet officer (later episodes, particularly Timescape, will also dwell on this) rather than just a cuddly confidante. Troi getting away with her deception despite having almost no knowledge of Romulan culture is a little hard to swallow, and we're better off not asking about the language situation (can the Romulans not even tell when someone is using the universal translator?), but it's a reasonably tense episode with a great guest star turn from Carolyn Seymour. However, it's also a shame that we are once again denied a proper space battle between the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird.


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Which was, IIRC, the point.

Sort of. But it's hard to feel much empathy for small sub-Dysons that don't talk or really do anything. The moral dilemma is interesting but ultimately a little too remote.

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Sort of. But it's hard to feel much empathy for small sub-Dysons that don't talk or really do anything. The moral dilemma is interesting but ultimately a little too remote.

Disagree. I wonder if you'd have felt more if they'd entitled the episode The Measure of a Cat.

The lone ExoComp dies but the pack survives.

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615: Tapestry


Picard dies on the operating table due to a malfunction in his artificial heart. Q appears and takes Picard back to his days as a newly-graduated officer just before he suffered the injury that led to the loss of his real heart in the first place. Picard decides to play things much more safely...with catastrophic consequences for his career and later life when he returns to the present.



Tapestry is a reasonably strong episode with as-per-normal phenomenal performances from Stewart and de Lancie. There's also a nice air of mystery, as Picard recognises that Q is behaving out-of-character in this episode and suggests it was either a hallucination or something other than Q was involved, although this was not followed up on later (Picard forgets to just ask the real Q when he next shows up in All Good Things). Probably not the stone-cold classic some cite it as, but still a highly watchable and enjoyable episode.




616-617: Birthright, Part I and Part II


The Enterprise visits Deep Space Nine, where an experiment run by Dr. Bashir inadvertently triggers some secret programming within Data. Meanwhile, Worf is informed that his father survived Khitomer and is in a prison camp.



A very odd two-parter, as these are two completely separate stories which could have featured in their own episodes very easily. It's cool seeing DS9 and its amazing sets in HD (DS9 on Blu-Ray must happen; apparently a final decision will follow the release of TNG Season 7 in December) and both stories are intriguing, but the structure of the episodes is distractingly weird and there is way too much "Klingon honour guff" in the second part, not to mention the terribly unconvincing relationship between Worf and the young Klingon/Romulan girl. Alan Scarfe gives a fine performance as the antagonist Tokath, a 'good' Romulan forced to act like a typical Romulan arsehole only by cultural convention.




618: Starship Mine


The Enterprise is powered down so it can undergo a routine-but-rare baryon sweep essential to meep the ship functional. Terrorists board the ship to steal trilithium whilst it is undefended, but Picard gets stuck on board and has to both defeat the terrorists and evade the lethal baryon sweep.



A highly amusing episode in which Patrick Stewart goes all-out Steven Segal (the comparisons to Under Siege may be more apt than Die Hard) to single-handedly rescue the ship from terrorists. It also foreshadows First Contact (the movie) in some of its motifs. The stuff on the ship is all dumb fun, but the subplot on the starbase is much poorer, with the terrorists standing around bemused whilst Riker and co. leisurely concoct escape plans whilst standing five feet away.




619: Lessons


Picard falls in love with a subordinate, resulting in problems when he has to put her in danger.



Better than it sounds, and the second episode in a row where the show abandones its usually convoluted set-up so it can do a very straightforward story. After the action hijinks of Starship Mine, this is a simple romance piece which Patrick Stewart and guest star Wendy Hughes sell very well. There's also a spectacular visual effects sequence on the surface of the planet as it is consumed by firestorms (something that worked okay in the original becomes staggeringly impressive in the HD remaster). The problems come in some elements of producton - there's a terrible matte painting in the Jeffries tube sequence which no-one tries to sell at all - and in the writing. There's actually very little reason for Picard's romance with Daren to end and the "putting loved ones in danger" excuse is total BS: Daren works in stellar cartography, one of the least-dangerous jobs on the ship, and in fact putting her in danger in this episode is a huge contrivance. Making her a security officer would have made that excuse more convincing. As it stands, Picard wrecks another officer's career (going anywhere in Starfleet after serving on the flagship is a demotion) just to make himself feel more comfortable. Not to mention that he doesn't seem to have a problem striking up a romance with Crusher later in Season 7 despite her being in danger on a much more regular basis. So, a watchable but highly illogical episode.




620: The Chase


Picard's archaeology mentor is killed whilst investigating a highly significant discovery. Picard's pursuit of the truth leads to a confrontation with multiple other races and the discovery of a potentially mind-blowing secret.



Another romp episode, with Picard breaking all the rules as he tries to find out why his friend was murdered and eventually stumbling across the answer to one of the most inexplicable features of the galaxy: why so many races have two arms, two hands, two eyes etc. This would all be more interesting if the backstory of the Preservers wasn't 100% lifted hook, line and sinker from the original series' The Paradise Syndrome, which had already explained this stuff. Still, some fun moments, particularly in the finale when the Preserver hologram drones on that it's wonderful their successor races have banded together in peace to find them whilst the Cardassians and Klingons are threatening to kill one another. Irony isn't something TNG does well (DS9 is a lot better at it) but it's wonderfully employed in the cynical conclusion to the episode.




621: Frame of Mind


Riker plays a crazy person in a stage play, but finds the lines between reality and fiction blurring.



A very tense and effective episode. We know that Riker hasn't gone crazy and some alien weird shit is responsible for what is happening and the writers and director know we know that, so they get to play around with it. Frakes gives one of his career-best performances and the similarities to Inception are notable as the worlds within worlds collapse (Ship in a Bottle also did something similar, that time on the holodeck). Not a classic, but a nicely-played, clever episode.


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615: Tapestry

Picard dies on the operating table due to a malfunction in his artificial heart. Q appears and takes Picard back to his days as a newly-graduated officer just before he suffered the injury that led to the loss of his real heart in the first place. Picard decides to play things much more safely...with catastrophic consequences for his career and later life when he returns to the present.

Tapestry is a reasonably strong episode with as-per-normal phenomenal performances from Stewart and de Lancie. There's also a nice air of mystery, as Picard recognises that Q is behaving out-of-character in this episode and suggests it was either a hallucination or something other than Q was involved, although this was not followed up on later (Picard forgets to just ask the real Q when he next shows up in All Good Things). Probably not the stone-cold classic some cite it as, but still a highly watchable and enjoyable episode.

Yeah, I'm one of the fans that think it's pretty great. It's my favorite episode after "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Best of Both Worlds", I think it's better than "Measure of a Man", "All Good Things...", "Q Who", and "Inner Light" all of which I also put in the top 10 of TNG episodes.

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Yeah, I'm one of the fans that think it's pretty great. It's my favorite episode after "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "Best of Both Worlds", I think it's better than "Measure of a Man", "All Good Things...", "Q Who", and "Inner Light" all of which I also put in the top 10 of TNG episodes.

Is solid. There are flaws, but they're minor. It's what helps make the episode so good.

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622: Suspicions


Dr. Crusher invites a Ferengi scientist to test out his new metaphasic shield technology on an Enterprise shuttle. When the experiment fails, Crusher is convinced it is the result of sabotage and somone on the Enterprise is a criminal.



A so-so episode. The mystery element is reasonably well-handled, but the flashback structure is a little clunky and the finale is cheesy. Also a bit of a low-key episode for Guinan's last appearance on the show (although she'll reappear in Generations).




623: Rightful Heir


Worf sets out in search of his spiritual side, hoping to find a vision of Kahless. Instead, the apparently real Kahless reappears fifteen centuries after his 'death'. As Klingons flock to the resurrected Kahless's banner, Chancellor Gowron sees it as a threat to his political power.



TNG and DS9's Klingon meta-arc continues with a small-scale episode but one with interesting ramifications, speculating as it does on the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of the Klingon Empire, Gowron's growing political pragmatism (and corruption) and on the nature of belief, something the series (set in the apparently-secular Federation) didn't do very often but became a mainstay on DS9. A very solid episode, perhaps a little let down by Kahless's failure to appear in later episodes (although he is mentioned).




624: Second Chances


The Enterprise returns to a planet where Riker was nearly killed in a dangerous beam-out. They discover a second Riker was created during the transporter incident, a more brash and less disciplined officer and one who is still very much in love with Troi.



A potentially fascinating episode is let down by some ropey effects (which even the HD remaster can't entirely save), some iffy dialogue and a lack of real stakes. Kudos to the production team for not simply killing Tom Riker off (an easy way out of the situation) and also for not following through on their original idea of killing off Will Riker, promoting Data and having Tom Riker take over at ops. It sounds edgy, but this late in the show's run wouldn't really have been worth it. An okay episode made up for by some excellent Data/Worf humour.




625: Timescape


Picard, Troi, La Forge and Data find the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird caught frozen in a temporal bubble, both on the brink of destruction. They have to find a way of saving both ships and both crews without getting caught up in the temporal distortion themselves.



A highly underrated episode IMO, with a great sense of purpose as the crew thoroughly investigate the problem and find a way to resolve it through intelligence and deduction. The science is total bobbins, of course, but there's some great moments of humour such as Picard's impersonation of a boring lecturer and his drawing a smiley face in the expanding cloud from a warp core breach. It's also nice to see a runabout being used on TNG (apparently to help pay for the cost of DS9's sets when its first season budget overran), even though it's never used again on the show.




626: Descent, Part I


The Enterprise and Starfleet respond when a sector of the Federation comes under attack from what appears to be a rogue band of Borg who have developed individuality and emotions. This coincides with Data experiencing emotions for the first time.



There's a nice idea here, with the idea of the crew's well-meaning attempts to save Hugh backfiring and creating a new threat to the Federation, but it's lost thanks to an utterly dreadful script which attempts to cram too much in. There's some downright appalling direction (Brent Spiner dramatically spinning around in half-focus as the Borg attempts to 'seduce' him feels like it wouldn't have flown even in Season 1) and some completely incomprensible plotting. The Enterprise beaming down an Away Team whilst it's still being menaced by the Borg ship in orbit doesn't make any sense, but Picard stripping the Enterprise of its entire crew to search the planet for Data is beyond moronic. Not quite as pointlessly boring as Time's Arrow, but still one of the weakest cliffhanger episodes in Trek's history. It is only redeemed (somewhat) by the amusing opening scene featuring Stephen Hawking schooling Einstein at poker (apprently the only time someone has ever appeared in all of Trek "playing themselves").



And that's Season 6 done. Only one more to go. Season 7 will be released on Blu-Ray in December, so not too far off.


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Timescape is a favorite of mine that never makes my favorites lists. Always enjoy it when it comes on via some randomness.



Also very much enjoyed Frakes' performance(s) in Second Chances. I also totally related to Deanna's situation - having been friendzoned and accepted it, perhaps not even aware how reluctantly. Of course, I've never had the luxury of having said past lover's transporter-duplicated doppleganger reappear. Though this is where Deanna and I diverge - my first thought would be 'threesome with both versions", but such is not the way of Trek.



I really wish DS9 had chosen/budgeted to explore further the idea of Thomas Riker defecting to the Maquis in an arc, rather than an episode. Though that episode includes one of my favorite Dukat-isms "This is a very entertaining story, but why am I listening to it? "


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Picard stripping the Enterprise of its entire crew to search the planet for Data is beyond moronic.

I've heard the original plan was to crash the saucer section as was later done in Generations, stranding most of the crew on the planet that way.

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