Picard faces aggressive Romulans and an archeological puzzle as a computer virus threatens the Enterprise. Some good Neutral Zone brinksmanship, and a formulaic but fun quest right out of a CD-ROM point-and-click adventure game.
A pretty 16yo destined to bring peace to a war-torn planet falls for Wesley, but 1) her governess disapproves and 2) well… Wesley. The puppy-love story is cringe-worthily wholesome (influenced by the long dark adorable shadow of “The Wonder Years”), but still enjoyable.
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Data’s autonomy is at stake in a taut, character-driven courtroom drama that resists pandering — no distracting fist-fights or space battles. This episode not only succeeds as a stand-alone meditation on the human condition, it meshes narratively with events from past shows and offers affordances for future story arcs…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Riker accepts a temporary assignment as first officer of a Klingon vessel. “A Matter of Honor” offers a thoughtful, enjoyable dramatization of differences between Federation and Klingon culture, and a good B-plot in which Wesley helps a visiting officer adapt to routine operations on the Enterprise. It’s a nice touch…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. Tension mounts between Captain Picard and Dr. Pulaski as the Enterprise encounters a rapid-aging disease. I rather liked how Picard, who just last week quoted part of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, is in his ready room reading a book when Troi reminds him he wanted to…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. In his final hours, an arrogant, crotchety cybernetics genius takes a liking to Data. After the genius dies, Data starts acting arrogant and crotchety. Hmm. This early in the run of TNG, we’ve already seen the trope of a brilliant, older professional man supported and…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. A pony-tailed pirate-shirt-wearing pile of charisma steps out of a Renaissance Festival sideshow onto the Enterprise for a silly low-stakes caper. Meanwhile, Data tries stand-up comedy. I cringed when the guest star put the moves on the pretty transporter technician (played by a before-she-was-famous Teri…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. LaForge works on his model ship in main engineering (?) and invites Data to enjoy a Sherlock Holmes holodeck adventure. Sounds fun, but a slow start, with low stakes. We can forgive the director for spending a lot of time showing the characters reacting to…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. The Enterprise spends a lot of time in a budget-saving black void, where the crew scans things, searches databases, launches a probe, navigates in circles, gives up, sets a self-destruct timer, philosophizes about death, shuts off the timer, and warps away. I had never seen…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. As science fiction, this was an interesting premise with great production values and character moments, that ultimately didn’t deliver any real drama because our main characters lacked any significant agency. The Child opens with some lovely footage of the Enterprise alongside another starship, and a…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. Unfrozen humans from the 21st Century annoy the crew while the Enterprise investigates the destruction of several Federation outposts near the Romulan Neutral Zone. The episode begins and ends with the cryonics story, so technically it’s the A plot, but there’s little at stake. Nobody…
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. Another episode that I had never seen before (so this is technically not a “rewatch”). The Enterprise traces time blips to the laboratory of a brilliant scientist on a remote research station, where a woman Picard stood up in Paris 22 years ago re-enters his…
My rewatch reflection on the Star Trek:TNG episode “Skin of Evil,” in which the crew encounters a malignant oil slick. Some good character moments with Worf and Yar, and some good solo acting from Marina Sirtis as Troi psychoanalyzes a disembodied voice. While I appreciate the Roddenberrian argument against playing along with a power-mad enemy’s sick games, dramatizing a that philosophical concept is not enough to carry a full episode. If you’re a fan the final holodeck send-off scene is worth watching but overall it’s a weak episode.
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. Picard mediates a dispute over a shipment of medicine. This disjointed episode has an actiony/sciencey opening, a worthwhile medical/cultural mystery in the middle, and a morality play with a moderately Trekworthy finale. I have no memory of seeing any part of this episode. While I…
With an A-plot that comments on the Cold War arms race, a B-plot that tests LaForge’s command skills, and a C-plot that explores the Picard/Crusher dynamic, I wanted to like this episode more than I did. Yar wisely observes that it’s kind of pointless for the landing party to strategize against a system that has already wiped out all the intelligent life on a planet, yet the characters still peek through the bushes at the wobbly floating plastic menace, and leap out of the way of its space-zapper ray gun blasts, because TV.
Rewatching ST:TNG A character-heavy episode, full of familiar tropes that add up to little. Starfleet seems much darker than we’ve ever seen it before, in two parallel storylines that intersect only thematically. Wesley, who we know full well isn’t leaving the show, applies to Starfleet Academy, and a grumpy admiral friend of Picard brings aboard…
The concept was good, and the production values were decent (I really liked the main lab on the planet); however, it starts out as a murder mystery and spends some time developing the human suspects, only to drop them abruptly when the “microbrain” starts growing, so this episode ends up lopsided and disappointing. I did like Troi’s speech: “We see and hear you now. We didn’t know you were there. You are beautiful to us. All life is beautiful.” Yes, it’s corny enough that I couldn’t help but think of the reformed Sour Kangaroo at the end of Seussical. But it captures one of the enduring appeals of Star Trek — it lets us envision what it would be like to be part of a society where idealism and selflessness and intellectual curiosity is mainstream culture.
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Advanced aliens from a mythical civilization kidnap children from the Enterprise to repopulate their dying world. The premise sounds pretty schlocky, and the script is full of familiar Trek cliches, such as the utopia with a dark secret, arrogant aliens who tsk-tsk at the very weaknesses that make humans…
Rewatching ST:TNG. I was underwhelmed. The Enterprise delivers an elderly Admiral Jameson on a mission to negotiate with terrorists on a planet where he brokered a hostage release decades ago. The regular cast has very little to do because the story follows the visiting admiral, who ends up being rather unlikable. When we meet him,…
With the Enterprise in drydock for a computer refit, Riker ends up in the holodeck, fascinated by the sultry hologram he asks the computer to create so someone will admire his trombone talents.