That isn't to say that I didn't watch to the premier when I did - but my strongest memories are of watching the show each night in the former TOS time-slot at 11 p.m. I remember it so well because I was dating this girl at the time who was very sweet, very pretty, and very not the girl I wanted to be with. I was way too much of a coward to break up with her, so I did what any guy would do, I treated her like shit and hoped she would dump me.
Sheesh. I feel like such a heel thinking about it. All that stuff about the house was all true, but it wasn't until my Senior year that I really hit my Trek stride. So, my girlfriend would call me each night around 9 o'clock or so, and I think I mentioned we'd finally broken down and gotten a cordless phone (by we, I mean my mother). So we would talk on the phone and I'd wander around the house, play guitar (I had rock star dreams at the time), grunt when appropriate, and if the weather permitted, go sit outside on the tree swing in the front yard and look at the stars (not straight overhead though, there was a tree there).
And every night at about 10 minutes before Star Trek came on, I'd get real antsy. I'd start doing my best to wrap up the conversation so I could go watch that night's episode. I have strong memories of a few particular episodes during this time. But it was a real joy to watch them each night. Again, it staved off my blind fear of the Ouija board in the basement and the graveyard across the street. Let me remind you that I was alone in the new house at this time since the adults were working.
So, it was then that I saw this episode for the first time. My senior year of High School. It was in the third season of the show that I got addicted. I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details, as some memories of the show don't mesh well with the airdates, but it was a dark time for me (don't ask about the home life, it wasn't pleasant).
I do remember thinking this was crazy amazing when I saw it the first time.
But I had to go and be a dumbass and watch it again. It's funny, when I was watching the show obsessively a few years later, the first two seasons either weren't being shown as often in reruns, or I was choosing not to watch them when they aired.
But whatever the reason. I don't remember much about this episode.
What happened? Well, Starfleet insists that this guy, Kosinski should be able to help them improve the Enterprise's engine efficiency. He's a dick. Riker immediately pegs him as a fraud, as does Argyle - the guy who apparently replaced MacDougal as the new chief engineer - because A) he's a dick, and B) the technical specs he sent over are meaningless gibber.
Troi stops by to read his mind and quickly notes that she's getting a blank from this misunderstood genius's assistant. This, I might add, is the second week in a row that she's been useless in this capacity. But this is just part of my larger problem with things like telepathy in a show like this. It's as meaningless as Kosinski's technical specs (it might work sometimes, but no one can explain how).
Wesley shows up in engineering, I guess because like I mentioned in a previous entry, kids have complete run of the ship, apparently. Well, except for the bridge itself. But Wesley shows up, wearing another awful sweater and starts hanging out with the assistant. I, as an observant watcher, note that the assistant (later, we'll refer to him as the Traveler, so I'll start now) has hands as big as the Hulk, but with only two fingers on each hand. Yes, each finger is about the size of my closed fist.
I bring it up because his sole purpose, it appears, is to input data into the computer at a rate much faster than a mere human could. And again, his huge elephant fingers seem like they would make that absurdly difficult. Whatever, it's not a real reason to nitpick, but I'd have been much more impressed if he had 20 teeny little fingers or something. It would just make more sense.
It's the details, people.
So, after some fancy data entry by the Traveler, show almost vanishes into nothing, the ship warps a few million light-years into the Triangulum galaxy (M-33 to you Messier Catalog followers). Kosinski realizes he is even more of a genius than he previously thought, he even brags about his awesome Bessel Functions to an incredulous Riker and Argyle.
And Riker and Argyle are even more convinced now that Kosinski is a fraud. Which seems pretty weird to me, he did just shoot them off to another galaxy, but if there is anything that indicates a great storytelling trope, it's that the heroes can sniff out an evil or fraudulent person pretty much every time, even if all the evidence points to that not being true.
Wesley is ignored when he tries to tell Riker that something weird with the Traveler happened, and after a brief debate, Kosinski agrees to take them back to federation space.
Oops. Kosinski is a double amazing genius, because he took them about a billion light-years away this time. Except, this time he sorta realizes he may be in over his head. The Traveler fesses up that it was him all along and even though he's about to die he can probably get them back.
Which is great because, sigh, apparently, a billion light years away it's all thought - whatever that's supposed to mean - and they can possibly think themselves to death, or something. It made no sense to me, but the crew took it seriously. Picard ordered everyone on the ship to think good thoughts and then they went home.
What a shitty recap I gave. But you know what. This is for me, not you. So if you didn't like it you probably should find one of the many recaps that are, you know, good, and read one of them.
All that said, I did have a few thoughts:
- Wesley took a look at the Traveler's equations and said something like, 'Space and time and thought aren't the separate things they appear to be.' Okay, fine, that means less than Kosinski's rambling, but what really gets me was the Traveler's response which is something like, 'shut up, before they hear you!' It was really weird.
- Part of my frustration with Star Trek is that it presents itself as Science Fiction show where everything in the universe is understandable. Then it descends into new agey blubberfest about pure thought means you can go really fast, or something. I don't know. This is why I actually prefer the technobabble the series got famous for later. Because that stuff may also be nonsense, but at least its it's not so easily recognizable as such because it gets covered up with better sounding words.
- Jesus, Tasha and those damned Rape Gangs again. This is three times in six episodes.
- And those pure thought things, sometimes they're hallucinations and sometimes they're real. I mean, Picard is talking to his grandmother and Riker sees nothing, panicked people are running down the hall and Picard sees nothing. But then again, everyone sees the fire in the hallway. Who knows.
- So the Traveler is dying. Does this guy have absolutely no idea what he's doing? He'd been doing the same thing for some time on other ships, but loses his self-control on the Enterprise and is killing himself sending them all over the universe. Then Dr. Crusher says he's dying of fatigue. FATIGUE! What?
- The Traveler spews out his pure thought drivel and for the first time in the show, Kosinski notes that he's saying stupid things. Everyone metaphorically rolls their eyes at Kosinski. It's my firm belief, based on this episode, that in the Star Trek universe, being right about something is a matter of being nice, not, you know, about being right. Ugh.
- We learn Wesley is like Mozart, except the universe is his music and that ship is his instrument. So Picard is sworn to secrecy by the Traveler but is also told to let the kid play his song, or something.
- Wesley is soon thereafter promoted to acting Ensign.
In conclusion, this is one of those strange tales that make me angry, but I still kinda like. Only kinda, but I do. Tasha didn't have any ridiculous blow ups, Wesley wasn't too awful. The space shots were pretty (in a very dated kind of way). I'm not sure there are any episodes from this season I'd really be able to recommend, but this one at least hinted at what the show is sorta supposed to be about, exploring strange new worlds.
My rating?
2 out of 5
You know, I was never as annoyed by Wesley as every one else was. I mean, I went into TNG with the lore "Wesley is annoying and should die," but I never saw that when I watched it.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I still haven't seen the last couple of seasons.
Wesley didn't used to bother me that much either, but on this rewatch I grew to hate him with some passion. What surprised me more is how awful Tasha is as a character. I'm fine with the actors, but the writers were incredibly lazy (I refuse to believe they were that poor at writing characters, it had to be willful laziness) with how they were treated. Some Wesley-centric episodes are on the horizon (I'm about 10 eps ahead of these posts) and I really, really, can't stand his character at this point.
ReplyDeleteBut he's all but non-existent in the latter seasons of the show. He gets shipped off to Starfleet and then washes out of Academy. After that he's quietly brushed under the rug until someone remembered he was a character so he popped back in one of the very last episodes for a hastily done story that ties back in to some of this early stuff I'm sitting through now.
It sounds like Wesley was a character they had bigger plans for but got rid of because the audience hated him.
DeleteThat's my best guess too. He was so badly mishandled as a character for the most part. If you hang around long enough, I think I've got a rant or two in the pipeline to be published in the next week or two about Wesley.
DeleteI just watched an documentary about those early season episodes this evening. It explained so much about the quality of the writing I've been harping on. The short of it. Gene Roddenberry thought the writer's were his enemy and he rewrote every single script as it came in. People couldn't quit fast enough. He was pretty badly out of touch with what made good television.
Oh, you know, I'd heard that about him. Not about TNG specifically but about the way he treated other writers. He was involved in some kind of comic book thing back in the (I think) early 90s, and he pretty much killed it. Wouldn't listen to anyone, all of that kind of thing. I wish I remembered what that was.
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