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

[Werthead]

That sounds really cool.

On another note, has anyone received replacement discs yet for the defective ones? I haven't yet and they didn't confirm the submission of my disc info.

Are you in the UK or USA? If you ordered through an online retailer like Amazon or Play, they can arrange to send you out replacement discs pretty quickly. Otherwise you can just ask at the store you bought them from. However, different stores are putting different emphasis on you having a receipt or not.

[Aemon Stark]

Neither - Canada. I actually found an email contact to obtain replacement discs, and I sent in the disc serial numbers, but I haven't heard anything yet. I suppose it's one of those 4-6 weeks thing? Or should it be pretty fast as you say?

[Werthead]

201: The Child

There's been some crew movements on the Enterprise. Dr. Crusher has been fired for complaining about the sexism of some of the scripts transferred to Starfleet Medical and replaced by Dr. Pulaski, who awesomely tells Picard to STFU when he berates her for not reporting to him promptly on boarding the ship. The crew have also been joined by Guinan, a bartender who has built her own pub in the front of the ship. We never get a really good reason for this, but it's all good stuff anyway. Also, LaForge has been made Chief Engineer (huzzah!) and Worf is now formally the permanent security chief, although curiously everyone continues to ignore his advice, even when it turns out to have been correct.

Amongst all the changes, no-one really notices when a glowing spark enters the ship (is it Starscream's ghost from Transformers?) and impregnates Counsellor Troi (guess not), who rapidly gives birth to a mutant child that grows to the age of about eight years in just two days. Worf suggests they phaser it to death and the show flirts with abortion issues before ditching them and having a neat resolution. Of course, having been pregnant and given birth, seen her child grow up rapidly in just two days and then vanish would be horrendously traumatic for Counsellor Troi, and probably explains why she never mentions it again. There's also a subplot involving a Gruff Federation Scientist being Gruff, but I literally cannot remember WTF it was about despite watching it less than three hours ago.

This episode has much potential, despite being a rewritten Star Trek: Phase II script. The early scenes where Guinan shows up and it's like she's always been there, where Pulaski proves a substantial foil for Picard and where there is genuine conflict amongst the crew on how to treat the pregnancy are all quite well-written, and thoroughly entertaining. In fact, I was starting to revise my memory of the episode being total crap when it suddenly nosedived in the second half. Once Troi's baby is born the writers don't seem to quite know how to proceed and we end up with a fairly pithy ending which is the definition of lame. The episode's most significant revelation, in fact, appears to be that there are PUPPIES ON THE ENTERPRISE. What happened to them? Were they killed (or assimilated? :shocked: ) in the battle with the Borg? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PUPPIES?

202: Where Silence Has Lease

Riker and Worf enjoy one of Worf's exercises on the Holodeck, which involves beating two aliens to death (note: one of these aliens has a worse costume than the Gorn in TOS). The teaser then ends with Worf getting carried away and preparing to execute Riker, only to remember himself. Ah! An episode about Worf not being able to control his Klingon rage or something. Er no, it's an episode in which the Enterprise gets stuck in a black void and into a battle of wills between Picard and an alien entity which is such a terrible special effect it wouldn't have passed muster on an early episode of Red Dwarf. Picard outwits the alien entity by being stoic and everything is okay.

This is an odd one. The episode starts with a Simpsons-style teaser that has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, segues into a reasonably interesting SF mystery and ultimately ends up going nowhere. There are some effective scenes on the deserted Yamato (including a Portal-style puzzle that reduces Worf to rage: "ONE RIKER! ONE BRIDGE!") but ultimately the episode is the very definition of meh.

203: Elementary, My Dear Data

Data and LaForge (aka Troy and Abed '88*) take part in a Sherlock Holmes mystery that goes wrong because Data knows the resolution to every Holmes mystery. Frustrated by Data's knowledge and Pulaski's smirking assertion that Data cannot perform real deductive reasoning, LaForge challenges the ship's computer to create an opponent worthy of defeating Data. The computer unfortunately does this by creating Dr. Moriarty and giving him access to the ship's systems and knowledge. This is a Bad Idea and Moriarty ends up threatening to take control of the Enterprise. Picard eventually agrees to preserve Moriarty in the ship's computer system until they can work out WTF to do with him.

Sometimes cited as the first 'classic' episode of STTNG (I'm not sure I agree, but it's certainly the best to date), this ep takes a dodgy premise (the whole thing happens because Geordi misspeaks one word) and makes it work through tremendously good acting from both the regulars and Daniel Davis as Moriarty and a strong script. There's also a nice continuation of the story arc where Pulaski questions Data's status as a sentient lifeform with real human abilities (something that, thematically at least, culminates in The Measure of a Man). Some ideas are under-developed and the scenes where Moriarty threatens to take control of the ship seem like fake jeopardy thrown into the mix for the sake of it, but overall this is an episode that is much more than the sum of its parts.

* As coined by Charlie Jane Anders from io9.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Polaski's early mistrust of Data was a bit annoying, as her gruff manner was clearly meant to be an echoe of McCoy and her issues with Data seem to be meant to echo the McCoy/Spock bickering. It's not like Starfleet promoted him to Lt.Commander and made him 2nd Officer of their flagship for the hell of it.

[Rhom]

Huzzah! I'd been waiting for this to return.

[Jaxom 1974]

Wert, you missed an essential change from Season 1 going into Season 2: The beard. The beard arrives and really, nothing is ever the same again on the Enterprise...I'm not so sure that the beard wasn't manipulating things the whole time, a distant cousin to the slug aliens from Season 1 that went no where...

[Winter's Knight]

Polaski's early mistrust of Data was a bit annoying, as her gruff manner was clearly meant to be an echoe of McCoy and her issues with Data seem to be meant to echo the McCoy/Spock bickering. It's not like Starfleet promoted him to Lt.Commander and made him 2nd Officer of their flagship for the hell of it.

Polaski irritates me intensely. Mocking Data for his inhumanity is less like McCoy/Spock bantering and more like picking on someone disabled. Unlike Spock, Data is by virtue of his android status, incapable of fully attaining human emotion. Furthermore, while Spock was more than capable, not only of retorting to McCoy but also able to prove that he dies feel (as shown in this clip from TOS episode

.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

Polaski irritates me intensely. Mocking Data for his inhumanity is less like McCoy/Spock bantering and more like picking on someone disabled. Unlike Spock, Data is by virtue of his android status, incapable of fully attaining human emotion. Furthermore, while Spock was more than capable, not only of retorting to McCoy but also able to prove that he dies feel (as shown in this clip from TOS episode

.

Agreed. Put another way, McCoy needled Spock because he wanted him to display more of his human side, while Data did not have a human half to display.

I think the writers wanted Pulaski to come across as cantankerous and feisty (a lame TV trope in itself), but too often she seemed a little mean-spirited and thus felt out of place in the context of the show. Not a fun character to watch.

[DaveSumm]

Wert, you missed an essential change from Season 1 going into Season 2: The beard. The beard arrives and really, nothing is ever the same again on the Enterprise...I'm not so sure that the beard wasn't manipulating things the whole time, a distant cousin to the slug aliens from Season 1 that went no where...

I used to watch random episodes here and there as a child, so I never really knew which season I was watching. When I rewatched recently and knew it was the Season 2 opener, suddenly the establishing shot of the bridge made sense: slowly panning across.......everything looks normal.......there's Worf.......oh, he has a metal looking sash now........there's Ri---HE HAS A BEARD!!!!! And he's WEARING that beard.

And henceforth, upgrading you facial hair, be it tache, goatee or stubble, to a full beard, was known as going full Riker.

[felice]

Mocking Data for his inhumanity is less like McCoy/Spock bantering and more like picking on someone disabled.

Is she really mocking Data, or mocking the rest of the crew for treating an overgrown chatbot on legs as if it was a real person? (It's been a long time since I've seen the show)

[Winter's Knight]

Is she really mocking Data, or mocking the rest of the crew for treating an overgrown chatbot on legs as if it was a real person? (It's been a long time since I've seen the show)

I remember her being quite mean to Data himself, during the Sherlock Holmes episode for example. Data may not have access to all levels of human emotion but he does feel. He displays sentiment, holds on to keepsakes and shows affection for Geordi-hardly an overgrown chatbot on legs.

[Jaxom 1974]

I used to watch random episodes here and there as a child, so I never really knew which season I was watching. When I rewatched recently and knew it was the Season 2 opener, suddenly the establishing shot of the bridge made sense: slowly panning across.......everything looks normal.......there's Worf.......oh, he has a metal looking sash now........there's Ri---HE HAS A BEARD!!!!! And he's WEARING that beard.

And henceforth, upgrading you facial hair, be it tache, goatee or stubble, to a full beard, was known as going full Riker.

Man, I'm sure if I can do it any longer, but I used to be able to watch about 10-15 seconds of any TNG episode and be able to tell you its title and the season it was in...

[felice]

Data may not have access to all levels of human emotion but he does feel. He displays sentiment, holds on to keepsakes and shows affection for Geordi-hardly an overgrown chatbot on legs.

Displays and shows - that's not the same as actually feels. He's a very good simulation of a sentient being, but is he actually self aware? Is there an actual person inside his brain that knows what he's doing, or is it nothing but a machine that calculates appropriate actions and responses based on appropriate input? I don't there's any way to test this, though, so treating him as a person is probably the safest option.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Polaski irritates me intensely. Mocking Data for his inhumanity is less like McCoy/Spock bantering and more like picking on someone disabled. Unlike Spock, Data is by virtue of his android status, incapable of fully attaining human emotion. Furthermore, while Spock was more than capable, not only of retorting to McCoy but also able to prove that he dies feel (as shown in this clip from TOS episode

.

Yeah, Spock gave at least as good as he got, whereas Data just stood there and looked like he'd been kicked by the mean woman.

[Kaldaur]

Displays and shows - that's not the same as actually feels. He's a very good simulation of a sentient being, but is he actually self aware? Is there an actual person inside his brain that knows what he's doing, or is it nothing but a machine that calculates appropriate actions and responses based on appropriate input? I don't there's any way to test this, though, so treating him as a person is probably the safest option.

The question you're describing is the exact one that is taken up in The Measure of a Man, the crowning achievement of the first two seasons.

[Bronn Stone]

The question you're describing is the exact one that is taken up in The Measure of a Man, the crowning achievement of the first two seasons.

I really hope the new expanded version of The Measure of a Man fixes the gaping plot hole that made me hate it from the moment it was first broadcast.

For twenty seven years, Starfleet treats Data like a person. He has quarters. He is allowed to attend Starfleet Academy. He is commissioned as an officer. He gets promotions. He has all the rights of a person. Then Maddox comes along and suddenly he is not. But nowhere in the episode is a mention that for over two and a half decades, Starfleet treated him like a person and that establishes precedent. But the episode says bupkus about what has changed that makes this even a question.

Melinda Snodgrass is a law school graduate. There is no way in he** her scripts do not address this issue. I am guessing the legal mumbo-jumbo was cut for flow. But apparently the Season 2 DVD has eleven more minutes of footage for that episode. I can't wait to see it.

[Jaxom 1974]

That would be something to see actually...

[Kaldaur]

The traveling Star Trek exhibit working its way through the States had the expanded script for Measure of a Man out on display as you entered. I remember it being a good ninety pages long so hopefully the additions will flesh out some of the rough edges.

[drawkcabi]

I vaguely, perhaps erroneously, recall a Peter David Star Trek: TNG book where Data is able to get a good burn on Pulaski.

[Baitac]

This is great. I remember the return. I was a newlywed and we were so thrilled! Picard is my captain. The Gilgamesh one was my favorite. Now with Big Bang, it's great to see "Will Wheatonnnnn!" :)