Babel (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 5) Virus Garbles Everyone’s Speech

Rewatching ST:DS9 Overworked O’Brien is fixing all the things. (The scene in Dax’s lab is great comedy). As he tinkers in a crawlspace, we see an ominous little hidden blinking thing.  Various brief character scenes (is Odo gloating or commiserating over the slow business at Quark’s; Sisko thanks the overworked O’Brien and we get a brief update on Keiko’s school; Dax tells Kira she’s enjoying the attention she gets while…

A Man Alone (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 4) Crime scene clues implicate Constable Odo; Keiko tries to start a school

Rewatching ST:DS9 After threatening a man who later turns up dead, Constable Odo becomes the prime suspect. The episode takes its time getting started, with character-driven bits developing Bashir’s one-sided interest in Dax, Sisko’s adjustment to his former mentor Curzon Dax’s new identity as Jadzia Dax, Sisko’s insistence that the Javert-like Odo play within the rules, Quark and Odo’s grumbly familiarity, the beginnings of a friendship between Jake and Nog,…

Past Prologue (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 3) A renegade seeking asylum tests Kira’s loyalties; Garak befriends Bashir

Rewatching ST:DS9 The pilot of a Bajoran ship under Cardassian fire requests asylum. Tahna is a former resistance colleague of Kira’s. Kira sees Sisko’s level-headed reaction as a sign of weakness, and on her own she works with Bajor to secure amnesty for her former comrade. A camouflaged Odo observes a clandestine meeting between Tahna and the Klingon sisters Lursa and B’Etor.  The suspiciously charming Cardassian merchant Garak arranges to…

Emissary (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2) Cmdr. Sisko establishes a Federation presence on a former Cardassian station orbiting recently liberated Bajor

Rewatching ST:DS9 The episode begins with a slide of text about Picard being assimilated by the Borg and forced to lead a devastating assault on Federation forces at Wolf 359. During that battle, Benjamin Sisko, first officer on the USS Saratoga, gives the order to abandon ship. He rescues his young son Jake, but is too late to save his wife. A few years later, Sisko brings Jake along to…

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All Good Things… (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 25) Picard faces a timey-wimey puzzle in three different timelines

Rewatching ST:TNG When we all first met the crew of the Enterprise-D, I was an undergraduate living in a dorm at the University of Virginia. Seven years later, I was a Ph.D. student in a dorm at the University of Toronto. I saw the series finale on a channel that was hosting a huge live watch party at what was then known as Toronto’s SkyDome. When a certain iconic spaceship…

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Preemptive Strike (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 24) Lt. Ro’s loyalties are tested during an undercover mission

Rewatching ST:TNG The newly promoted Lt. Ro, overwhelmed at a surprise “welcome back from tactical school” party, is disappointed when she sees Picard leaving. When it turns out he did so only so he could order her to report to him (and thus give her an excuse to leave the party), she’s grateful.  After a brief action sequence introducing the Maquis raiders (Federation civilians and former Starfleet officers who oppose…

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Emergence (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 23) Enterprise-D subsystems exhibit emerging intelligence

Rewatching ST:TNG When I first read a blurb about this episode, I thought maybe the ship’s computer would develop an attitude and say, “I’m tired of taking your orders and shutting down systems and whatnot; I want to star in an adventure all about me!” In the cold opening, a costumed Data delivers Prospero’s speech about giving up his art towards the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Picard bardsplains the…

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Bloodlines (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 22) Angry Ferengi threatens a son Picard didn’t know he had

Rewatching ST:TNG The Ferengi whose revenge scheme (s1e8 “The Battle“) involved planting a large thought-control device in the cabin of the starship Picard abandoned 15 years ago in order to force Picard to relive flashbacks of a battle is back, this time using a probe to announce his plan to kill a young man he says is Picard’s son. But soon the Enterprise-D finds the man and beams him safely…

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Firstborn (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 21) Worf prepares his reluctant son for a rite of passage

Rewatching ST:TNG Worf awkwardly rehearses a speech to prepare Alexander for a rite of passage. Doused by a water balloon intended for Alexander, Worf bungles the speech. He’s even more rattled when Alexander admits he doesn’t want to become a warrior. Picard suggests Worf visit a nearby Klingon outpost for an upcoming festival. Wide-eyed Alexander is enchanted by a participatory street theater bat’leth opera, and runs off to see the…

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Journey’s End (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 20) Picard must relocate a North American Indian colony; Wesley faces another loyalty test

Rewatching ST:TNG An obviously troubled Cadet Crusher visits the Enterprise. Picard lays out muchies to prepare for an in-person visit from Admiral Necheyev, in an effort to make their relationship less confrontational. She notices and appreciates his efforts, but still gives him very difficult orders to relocate a colony founded by Native North Americans.  Necheyev (having herself already voiced all the objections Picard brings up) feels this is a reasonable…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In March, 2002, I was blogging about…

In March, 2002, I was blogging about The coming era of participatory news The “Worst Manual Contest” Ancient “Domesday Book” outlives electronic version (that article is also gone… but here’s contemporary coverage from Slashdot) My own text-adventure game “Fine-Tuned: An Auto-mated Romance“ PBS special “Merchants of Cool” (early observations about the cultural feedback loop as teens engage with, internalize, and mirror back the images marketers use to sell products) The…

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Genesis (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 19) The crew de-evolve into hominids, a spider, an amphibian, and such.

Rewatching ST:TNG After Worf loses a photon torpedo. Picard takes Data with him on a three-day shuttle jaunt to find it. I realize so far that probably sounds like a joke, but it’s accurate. They return to find the Enterprise-D adrift, and the corridors filled with animal noises. (I was listening with headphones, and the audio effects were great.) Picard for some reason decides to stop by Troi’s quarters, where…

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Eye of the Beholder (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 18) Troi probes a crewman’s suicide, finds a ghostly love triangle tragedy

Rewatching ST:TNG An agitated engineer is poised to leap inside a warp nacelle’s plasma stream. He tells Riker “they laughed at me,” and jumps. Picard wants to know what happened so he can break the news to Lt. Kwan’s parents. Data tells LaForge he had great difficulties after he initially became sentient, and considered resetting his neural network, essentially killing himself and starting over, but decided against it. (LaForge approves.)…

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Masks (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 17) Ritual symbols start appearing on the ship and mythological figures inhabit Data’s personality

Rewatching ST:TNG Masks (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 17) Ritual symbols start appearing on the ship and mythological figures inhabit Data’s personality. This script is a mess. The comic opening is good. During an art class in the children’s center, Troi encourages Data to explore his imagination, but his sculptures are comically literal. The ship encounters an uncharted rogue comet, which causes a scanner glitch that will take some…

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Thine Own Self (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 16) Data gets amnesia at a RenFest; Troi preps for promotion to commander

Rewatching ST:TNG In the captain’s chair on a night watch, Dr. Crusher tells Troi why she likes being in command. Troi then tells Riker she’d like to take the bridge command test, too. Data has been collecting radioactive metal from a remote site on an inhabited planet, but something has clearly gone wrong, because he walks, disheveled and confused, into a Renaissance-style town square, where Garvin and his daughter Gia…

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Lower Decks (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 15) Junior officers star in a coming of age drama

Rewatching ST:TNG As Riker and Troi discuss crew evaluation reports in Ten Forward, we spend time with four junior officers who would normally get a few lines each. We already know Nurse Ogawa and Ensign Sito (one of the cadets who obstructed an investigation in s5e13 “The First Duty“). Lavelle is a square-jawed Dudley Do-Right and Taurik is a Vulcan with a dry wit. With their friend Ben (a gossipy…

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Sub Rosa (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 14) Dr. Beverly’s Space Ghost Romance

Rewatching ST:TNG Dr. Crusher eulogizes a grandmother she’s never once mentioned, on a colony terraformed to resemble Scottland (scotta-formed?). A man who looks like he swaggered off the cover of a romance novel throws a flower into the grave. A grumpy old caretaker warns Beverly not to light the candle which is her family heirloom.  Beverly learns her 100 year old grandmother had been in a relationship with a 34-year-old…

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Homeward (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 13) Worf’s foster brother interferes with a primitive, dying culture

Rewatching ST:TNG The Enterprise-D answers a distress call from Worf’s foster brother, a civilian observing a primitive civilization on a planet with an atmosphere that’s spontaneously dissipating because reasons. The dissipation is also creating a plot contrivance field that periodically jams key systems so that we can watch characters react to dramatic in-person discoveries of details we would otherwise learn through a scanner readout on the bridge. When the planet…

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Parallels (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 11) Worf gets technobabbled into a timeline where he married Troi

Rewatching ST:TNG After returning victorious from a bat’leth tournament, Worf is ambushed by a surprise birthday party, where a chocolate cake turns yellow, his big pointy first place trophy turns into a ninth place blob, and things continue diverging from the recent past he remembers. A great comic scene features a terrified Worf reacting when a very relaxed Troy undoes his ponytail and gives him a backrub. (As she sees…

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Inheritance (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 10) A scientist introduces herself as Data’s “mother”

Rewatching ST:TNG Within minutes of hearing about a problem with a planet’s molten core, LaForge comes up with a solution that Data and the visiting scientists from Atrea are convinced will work.  One of the visitors, Dr. Juliana Tainer, introduces herself to Data as a colleague of his creator Dr. Soong. In fact, because she was married to Soong, she considers herself Data’s “mother.” She explains she and Soong wiped…