(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break.) A great Trek morality drama, most obviously inspired by the challenges faced by US troops returning from Vietnam, but light on preachiness and heavy on action. Impressed by the cultured and intellectual Angosians, Picard offers to help them recapture a violent prisoner who escaped a penal colony. The prisoner’s…
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(Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break.) A Romulan defector exposes a planned incursion against the Federation, in a slow but gripping character study that comments on the Cold War. As I kid, I remember being transfixed by the 1983 TV movie The Day After, which depicts a nuclear attack on America. I doodled mushroom clouds…
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Possibly, in a few months, we’ll return to some version of the old normal. But this spring won’t be forgotten. When later shocks strike global civilization, we’ll remember how we behaved this time, and how it worked. It’s not that the coronavirus is a dress rehearsal—it’s too deadly for that. But it is the first of many calamities that will likely unfold throughout this century. Now, when they come, we’ll be familiar with how they feel.
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. As Picard mediates a reconciliation between a recently enlightened civilization and its barbarian outcasts, Riker pursues a humble servant girl. After a brief visit to a raided Federation outpost, we get a well-done infodump from the stately Marouk, ruler of the Acamarian civilization. She lets Picard talk her into offering…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. As the Enterprise hosts negotiations for access to a wormhole shortcut to the Gamma Quadrant, Troi becomes intimately involved with one of the delegates. A budget-friendly “bottle” episode that doesn’t feel cramped. We get to see Deanna’s routine, as she spends time decompressing in her quarters, working in her…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. LaForge is stranded on a hostile planet with a nervous, injured Romulan. The “mutual enemies must learn to cooperate” storyline is by-the-numbers, but I still enjoyed it. I don’t remember ever seeing this episode before, but seeing the frequently reused “planet hell” set (featuring a distinctively stair-stepped sloping wall)…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. To escape a thousand-year-old booby trap, LaForge interacts with a holodeck simulation of the designer of the Enterprise’s engines… and gets waaay too attached. The teaser shows LaForge on a date — a failure that he later talks over with Guinan. Meanwhile, Picard, thrilled to explore an old warship, is…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After a member of a landing party dies an accidental, senseless death, Picard must break the news to her young son. “Jeremy, on the starship Enterprise, no one is alone,” says Picard. “No one.” Numerous times on my rewatch, I’ve wished episodes would devote less time to scanning and probing…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After a primitive, rationalist society mistakes Federation technology for supernatural power, Picard must do whatever it takes to undo the resulting cultural contamination. Fortunately for Picard, that involves lots of talking. A grim scene in sickbay memorably demonstrates that humans in the 24th century can sometimes delay but cannot…
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Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After the Federation colony on Raina IV is obliterated, the Enterprise discovers a perfectly preserved house with two elderly survivors. The standoffish Uxbridge impresses Worf by confronting strangers with a non-functional hand phaser, and the hospitable Rishon tells a charming story of how the two fell in love on Earth.…
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Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Data must convince stubborn humans to evacuate an unauthorized colony in Sheliak territory. Meanwhile, Picard must bargain with the legalistic Sheliaks for more time. After a teaser shows Data second-guessing his creative abilities, the main plot follows him as he first tries reason, then rhetoric, then a phaser to…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. The life’s work of an eminent astrophysicist is threatened when Wesley accidentally creates a civilization of microscopic beings. For a school project. The rumpled Dr. Stubbs is friendly enough to Wesley, but he lacks the devoted female companion that Star Trek often gives its male scientific geniuses, so his…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. After routine establishing shots we open with grumpy Riker slouching in a puddle, reporting that something unseen jabbed him in the leg. That’s the most creative bit of storytelling in the episode, other than some decent camerawork as we linger on various not-all-that-impressive props. The script is budget-friendly tribble…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. As part of Starfleet’s response to the Borg threat, Riker refits an 8o-year-old derelict to face the Enterprise in a wargame. Overseeing the simulation is Kolrami, a waddling oddity who takes a disliking to Riker and crushes him in a social game. Pulaski goads Data into challenging Kolrami to…
Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break. Susie Paxton, who appeared as the Vulcan Dr. Selar in a Season One episode, shows off her comic timing as the half-human, half-Klingon K’Ehleyr, who turns out to have a history with Worf. K’Ehleyr was sent aboard the Enterprise to intercept the T’Ong, a Klingon sleeper ship. Everyone expects…