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

[Lightning Lord]

Watching something else, when the channel's changed.

Lightning Lord, his mind reeling and confusion abundant

[Rhom]

Bazinga!

It's like you've been waiting twenty years to use that line...

:rofl:

It was good.

[Werthead]

506: The Game

Commander Riker brings back a computer game to the ship that everyone gets addicted. Thankfully, Wesley Crusher shows up to save everyone.

A rather dumb Season 1-at-best premise - the crew tripping out on a computer game - is enlivened by some good pacing and a very good guest performance by Ashley Judd as Ensign Robin Lefler. No great surprises though and the game itself is unconvincing.

507/508: Unification

Picard meets Spock in a blatant advert for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Hmm. This should be a lot better than it is. The two-parter has some good points, like a much more generous budget than normal giving the feeling of a convincing, lived-in universe (the bar set, for example, is the sort of thing that normally they wouldn't be able to splash out on) and the final conversation between Sarek and Picard is beautifully-played by both actors, but beyond that the story is fundamentally unconvincing. The Romulans might be able to land 2,000 soldiers on Vulcan, but that's not enough to captured a planet of billions. Even if, somehow, they did it, the Federation would defeat them almost immediately and the result would be a bloody war. With the premise not making any sense, it falls to some good dialogue and characterisation (the junkyard manager is quite amusing) to keep the thing watchable.

509: A Matter of Time

The Enterprise races to save a colony threatened by the consequences of a meteor strike. A historian from the future arrives to witness this important historical event.

A slightly oddball episode in which a major catastrophe is relegated to the B-story and the main story is about this visitor from the future who is a bit of an arsehole. Luckily, the visitor is played by Matt Frewer who is always highly watchable and keeps the story ticking over. Still, nothing too great.

510: New Ground

The Enterprise tests a new method of propulsion more efficient and faster than warp drive.

Another oddball episode in which a major scientific catastrophe is relegated to the B-story (again) and the main story is about, erm, Worf getting to know his son. It's all fairly predictable, enlivened only by some heroic acting from Jonathan Frakes as he tries to sell two bits of shitty plastic he is holding as alien lifeforms.

[DaarioKnowsBest]

Does anybody know what episode this is?

I can't seem to find it.

All I remember was Riker I think was stranded somewhere away from the enterprise.

And there was a Klingon girl there and I think they had some type of romance.

They didn't like each other at first if I remember correctly

It was new when I saw it so i may be mistaken and she could have been something other than Klingon but I'm fairly certain she was Klingon

[Werthead]

Hmm. One of these?

[DaarioKnowsBest]

I don't see it there, perhaps it wasn't a romance,

They were hostile towards each other at first then became friends, I thought they kissed at the end but maybe not

[Jaxom 1974]

Riker romances away from the include the one with asexual race and the episode First Contact where he gets it on with Bebe Neuwirth...a Klingon though? That's more a Worf thing though, the episode where he fins the colony of Klingon/Romulan hybrids?

[DaarioKnowsBest]

the episode where he fins the colony of Klingon/Romulan hybrids?

What episode is that?

[Werthead]

Birthright in Season 7. It was a two-part crossover with DS9.

[Jaxom 1974]

Birthright in Season 7. It was a two-part crossover with DS9.

And odd in general if I remember correctly as one hour was mostly about Data and the other hour mostly about Worf with minimal interaction between the plots for a two parter....

[Werthead]

511: Hero Worship

The Enteprise crew rescue a young boy who develops a fixation on Data and pretends to be an android. Later, he stops doing so.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

512: Violations

The Enterprise crew take on board a delegation of telepaths, one of whom turns out to be a nutjob.

A hamfisted rape allegory in which both Riker and Troi are telepathically 'violated' in one of the show's weaker attempts at social commentary. This falls apart on several levels, most notably because the guest actors are all so bland, the allegory doesn't really work and also because any social aspects to the episode are utterly subsumed by how bad Picard's wig is in the flashback scenes.

513: The Masterpiece Society

The Enterprise crew race to stop a colony of genetically-engineered 'perfect' people being wiped out by a rogue stellar fragment. As the crew struggle with the scientific difficulties of halting the ultradense material, they also have to handle the disruption their very presence brings to the colony.

There's some very promising ideas in this episode, especially in light of the later take DS9 has on genetic engineering, and it's fun to see two Babylon 5 guest stars trading verbal blows (John Snyder, the leader of the colony, was the strike-buster in By Any Means Necessary, whilst Ron Canada as his opponent was Captain Pierce of the Hyperion in A Voice in the Wilderness) but the potentially fascinating storyline is undone by the sheer severity of the threat level. A stellar fragment from a destroyed neutron star is a force of nature second only to a black hole in its implacibility, and it's fun to see the crew dealing with this hard SF danger. However, it also means that concerns about disrupting the society seem rather trivial when the only alternative is its utter annihilation. As a result a promising TNG morality play (as promising as they get anyway) is undone by its own stakes.

514: Conundrum

The Enterprise crew lose their memories and discover evidence in the computer that they are at war with an alien race known as the Lysians and are on a war-winning mission to destroy the Lysian high command. However, as they get closer to their objective the crew become more uneasy about their apparent mission.

A nice idea with the crew's amnesia (itself an overused trope) being used to, ironically, explore their basic characterisation: Worf's desire to take command, Ro and Riker's mutual attraction, Data's loneliness (sort of) and Troi's ambivalence over her friendship with Riker. The mystery angle is also very well played, and the crew's amnesia meaning they're not sure what their basic jobs are. This leads to an amusing interlude where Data is convinced he's the ship's bartender. Some good performances and an intriguing premise don't quite pay-off - it's clear what's going on from quite early on - but it's more watchable than other episodes in this dull mid-season period.

[sToNED_CAT]

Conundrum is very good episode with many funny moments. I just wonder why did the aliens give the infiltrator just rank of 1st officer instead of captain? If he was a captain he would be able to influence events much more.

[Aemon Stark]

I do like "The Masterpiece Society" since, if anything, it is philosophically interesting. I admit I hadn't thought about the extremity of the jeopardy premise, though.

What really bugs me about it is Troi's role. She has rarely been a strength in the cast, and her utilization here and the "romance" with the colony leader is pretty nauseating at times, made worse by her later recantation of it.

On the other hand, it's interesting to see how slowly and deliberately "talky" episodes like this proceeded c. 1991. We might get this on cable still, but on network TV everything seems designed to cater to those whose attention span is challenged by a Michael Bay movie.

[Tears of Lys]

Man, I've gotta become more discerning, clearly. I've enjoyed the hell out of all the worst ST:TNG episodes. (Well, except the first season's.)

[Werthead]

515: Power Play

Data, Troi and O'Brien are taken over by entities on an Away Mission and try to seize control of the Enterprise upon their return. They end up taking hostages in Ten-Forward, leading to a tense standoff.

A similar episode to Disaster, in a sense, putting the crew in a difficult position on the ship itself and trying to find a way out of it. It's all a bit predictable, notable mainly for Colm Meaney's extremely creepy performance as the possessed O'Brien in how he treats his wife and child. Interestingly, Deep Space Nine did a mirror image version of this episode where Keiko is possessed instead and that worked even better. Watchable.

516: Ethics

Worf breaks his back and decides to commit suicide, to the crew's horror. Crusher and a maverick doctor work on alternative treatments, but Crusher becomes disturbed by her new colleague's willingness to take risks.

The primary storyline flirts with talking about assisted suicide but doesn't really get into it too much. It does, however, emphasise the alien-ness of the Klingons, which sometimes (okay, quite often) gets a little lost in their more predictable, "Hey fellow, well met, blood wine and a head-butt?" schtick. The second storyline is nice for the inversion: it would have been easier to have had Crusher as the maverick, breaking the rules to save her friend, but doing it this way around makes both Crusher and the doctor's perspectives clearer. One of those episodes which will never be regarded as a classic, but works quite well.

517: The Outcast

Riker and an alien from a species which has no perceived gender fall in love, which is forbidden. Interspecies prime directive stuff results.

It's rather typical that the ST:TNG team wait for Gene Roddenberry to die before doing the most Roddenberry script they ever did. It's an interesting episode which sets up some tough questions and situations. Arguably it cops out of any discussion of homosexuality by making the 'non-gendered' alien blatantly female-looking (and played by an actress, against Jonathan Frakes's suggestion), but given that it's a surprisingly bleak episode held together by a tremendous performance from Melinda Culea as Soren and the interesting idea of presenting a lot of the episode from 'her' POV. Also notable as one of the few episodes (alongside Q Who?) where the good guys 'lose', for lack of a better term.

518: Cause and Effect

The Enterprise is destroyed after being rammed by a starship caught in a temporal rift. However, this incident creates a time loop which the crew have to escape from...somehow.

A very strong episode which starts in an unexpected way (the Enterprise blows up!) and then riffs off it in interesting ways. Whether it makes any sense or not is arguable: apparently the Bozeman crew never noticed discontinuities between the time loops so why do the Enterprise crew? The possibility of tying the episode into others, like Dr. Crusher's experience with the pocket universe in Season 4 (and Crusher is the first to notice the discontinuities) is sadly avoided as that would have been a reasonable explanation. Still, it's a pretty good episode that's very entertaining, even if the Kelsey Grammer cameo feels a little random. All of that said, this is the second time that Red Dwarf did the same premise first, more concisely and in a much funnier way ;)

519: The First Duty

Wesley Crusher returns! As a screw-up!

An interesting episode, taking a peek behind the curtain of Starfleet Academy and showing how Wesley's formerly straightforward morals and outlook have been shifted by his time in the Academy. The mystery element of the episode is a little undercooked, but it's all quite entertaining and it's fun to see Robert Duncan McNeill as a prototypical Tom Paris. It's a bit of a damning indictment of Voyager's tepidness that he couldn't simply play Locarno, as Locarno was 'too morally corrupted'. Whilst he's clearly an arsehole, he's not exactly a BSG character or something.

520: Cost of Living

Lwaxana Troi comes aboard to get married (!) whilst Worf has parental problems in his raising of Alexander.

The worst episode of ST:TNG since Up the Long Ladder in Season 2. Finding something good to say about it is tricky: Majel Barrett is great as a slightly less crazy version of Lwaxana (though it's still not until DS9 and her very well-played relationship with Odo that she fully comes into her own) but beyond that the episode is terrible. Poor writing, iffy acting from the holodeck characters and whatever points it's trying to make about parenthood and childhood are just lost from the sheer awfulness of it all.

521: The Perfect Mate

The Enterprise has to mediate peace between two peoples. One of the races plans to give the other a 'perfect mate' as a gift, but this becomes problematic when she develops an attachment to Picard instead.

This could have been a very lazy remake of the classic series episode Elaan of Troyius, but an unusually sharp and funny script (including a very clear joke about wanking from Riker) and a tremendous performance from Famke Janssen, who has excellent chemistry with Patrick Stewart (later employed, in a different way, in the X-Men films where she plays Jean Grey to Stewart's Professor X), lifts it above the norm. Very watchable, despite the cliched premise.

522: Imaginary Friend

A little girl on the Enterprise is at the centre of a crisis where her imaginary friend becomes real.

A highly meeeeehhhhhhhhhh episode, not helped by some very strong similarities to Cost of Living, which aired just two weeks earlier (particularly the scenes of the alien lifeform entering the ship and floating around causing trouble). A lot of the problems stem from using a character we haven't met before, when they could have perhaps used Alexander instead. I don't think that would have saved it, but at least we'd be a bit more invested in the characters.

[Werthead]

523: I, Borg

The Enterprise crew rescue a Borg drone and plan to use him to implant a virus within the Borg to destroy them, but his exposure to them results in him developing individuality. Everyone angsts about what to do before deciding not to bother destroying their mortal enemy who has slaughtered tens of thousands of Starfleet personnel.

An interesting episode which attempts to do something different with the Borg and - sort of - succeeds. The episode is more of a failure because of what it represents - the departure of the faceless, badass, unstoppable Borg - and the introduction of just another race you can talk to and reason with. From now on the Borg are just another alien race and no longer a serious, believable threat. Taking that as read, the episode has a lot of pluses, most notably a surprisingly vicious performance from Guinan as she cuts through the cuddly, feely bullshit about this representative from a force that annihilated her race. The show undercuts it by having her decide that Huge is cuddly and they need to save him after three minutes of talking to him, but it's a nice gesture. Stewart is excellent as always [/redundant].

524: The Next Phase

Ro and Geordi die in a transporter accident, but have actually been dephased from their own time. Forced to wander the Enterprise and a Romulan ship they are rescuing like ghosts, they attempt to find a way of returning to their own time whilst halting a Romulan plot to destroy the Enterprise.

A nonsensical, silly episode but played with some wit and energy and ends up being quite enjoyable. Michelle Forbes has found her feet as Ro and this episode gives her a chance to combine Ro's spiritual side and her more pragmatic one. The episode pretty much makes no sense, but it's all good - if forgettable - fun.

525: The Inner Light

Picard gets zapped with decades' worth of memories from a dying alien world.

This episode won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation back in 1992, when TV and film got lumped together, so you know it's going to be a special one. It's basically a one-man powerhouse as Patrick Stewart plays the entire life of an alternate Picard in 44 minutes, showing him married, having children, getting old and finally returning to his old life with some regret. Some pitch-perfect writing, an underlying theme of tragedy (childless Picard finally discovers what he is missing, especially when his 'daughter' grows up to be a brilliant scientist) and the sensible decision to scale back the confrontation drama in favour of the emotion result in an episode that is rightly cited as one of the very best of the entire series and easily the best of this (subpar, it has to be said) season. The City on the Edge of Forever of TNG, only better.

526: Time's Arrow

Data's head is found in San Francisco, having been buried for 500 years. Data subsequently ends up travelling back to 1893 and meeting both a past version of Guinan and Samuel Clemens. Picard and co. discover aliens are using life-energy from humans to feed themselves, or something, and end up time-travelling back after Data in a particularly shit cliffhanger.

This wasn't meant to be a cliffhanger but was changed fairly late in the day when Rick Berman got offended by media reports suggesting that TNG was going to end and the recently-announced DS9 was going to take over. By putting in a cliffhanger, they confirmed that TNG would be back the following year. The problem is that the story is kind of meh. It has a massive continuity error in it, most notably that the aliens are using the same dephasing phenomeon that Ro and Geordi were effected by two weeks earlier but, for some reason, they can't use the same tech to expose them (it doesn't even come up). There's also the fact that Data is adamant his 500-year-old head is unusable, which is rather quickly proved to be not the case in the following episode.

On the plus side, it's good to see Whoopi Goldberg having a lot more to do and this episode amusingly explains her relaxed calm about everything they've encountered so far (she knew everyone would be okay because the flipside of this time loop hadn't happened yet). Jerry 'Deep Throat from The X-Files' Hardin is quite good as Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain, though his appearance is fairly random. The best bit is Data, having gotten used to time periods such as this one through holodeck recreations, not being flustered by his 'man out of time' status and basically owns the entire situation, racking up immense wealth and connections within days of arriving.

However, the cliffhanger ending is utter shit. Season 3: the Borg attack the Federation and Riker orders the death of Picard. Season 4: the Klingon Empire is torn apart in civil war and Worf resigns. Season 5: the crew look rather confused at a light show and then, without dialogue, decide to hurl themselves backwards in time by 500 years before, hey, why not?

[Jaxom 1974]

Yeah, but if the show had been ending and DS9 taking over...we all could have wondered what the heck happened after they all went "into the light"... :p

[Aemon Stark]

I actually remember being pretty excited by the Time's Arrow cliffhanger back in the day. It was actually the first TNG (or perhaps any!) cliffhanger I saw on initial airing, and on talking about it at a family gathering some time later I was naively surprised that they wouldn't be concluding the episode next week.

I still really enjoy Data's rapid acquisition of 19th century street smarts, especially the poker game (where, among others, he plays against Marc Alaimo pre-Dukat), and his ongoing repartee with "Jack". I suppose Jerry Hardin's Clemens is a tad broad but I've always enjoyed that portrayal.

These were generally a strong string of episodes to close out season 5, but I admit that I actively avoid Imaginary Friend. I'm surprised you didn't mention Isabella's glowing red eyes, indicating anger.

[Werthead]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Isabella's glowing red eyes, indicating anger.

I think they took them out, or I missed that moment for some reason. For the remaster, they have taken out some of the shittier special effects and things that didn't work originally. Not much though.

[Joutou43]

Sorry can I ask which TV channel rebroadcast Star Trek and is it just in the United States? Thanks.

And what's the best star trek series in your opinion?