In which Wesley commits a crime on the Legalistic Planet of Blond Joggers. (Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break.) We get right into the story by having an away team return to the bridge and briefly report on their first contact with the Edo, a peaceful people who seem to spend most of their time making out with each other. When a follow-up team returns to…
Conflict between two species who petition for membership in the Federation turns out to be the B-plot. On its way past a mysterious optical special effect, the Enterprise picks up a strange glowing spark via the sensor array, and as such entities tend to do in Star Trek, it starts wreaking havoc. We get a lot of exterior shots of the ship, some alien character designs that would have worked better in background shots, a glimpse at a sensor relay room we’ve never seen before (though it’s pretty obviously a redress of Engineering), and some glimpses of the Crushers at home.
While I wouldn’t say this was a strong episode, of the first season episodes I’ve rewatched, it’s the first that really felt like the Star Trek: The Next Generation I grew to love. The young director Rob Bowman went on to direct about 12 more episodes. The arrogant Starfleet propulsion expert Kosinski makes neither friends nor sense as he smirks and bullies his way through his scenes of techno-magical warp…
Rewatching TNG after about a 20-year break. This odd episode introduced the Ferengi, a parody of the capitalist patriarchy. I only remember bits and pieces of this episode, possibly because the pieces really don’t fit together very well. The long opening sequence gives us a good look at how the bridge crew deals with an evolving situation. We open with a chase scene, that quickly becomes a standoff, then morphs…
Rewatching TNG after almost 20 years. (Yes, I know the show is older than that.) When the show first aired in 1986, I was living in an apartment-style dorm. The guy who owned the TV in our common room was flipping back and forth between TNG and a sporting event. When I went to the TV lounge in the basement, someone else was watching the same game and wasn’t interested…
With a large ensemble, we saw many scenes of one person infecting another, which got predictable after a while. Even after they learned the intoxication spreads through perspiration, nobody thinks to put on rubber gloves.
I admit, Data’s interrupted “There was a young lady from Venus” limerick made me laugh, but what sold the scene for me was Data asking Worf, “Did I say something wrong?” and Worf huffing, “I don’t understand their humor either.”
Because this show has so many short two-person scenes, I like to think of this episode as TNG’s versions of the ballroom sketches on the old Muppet Show. (Closeup on chandelier; medium shot of couples dancing; cut to a nondescript couple of muppets; there’s a setup and a cheesy punchline; cut to another couple, repeat.)