11001001 (S1 ep 15)

It was nice to relive a few memories over the course of my last few posts. But I'm sure any future reader will be much more interested in some more Star Treky stuff. So, let's dig in.

My recap, if that's what anyone wants to call what I do here that, starts with the Holodeck about to receive an upgrade. No mention that the ship is brand new and only a two episodes ago Picard mentioned that the Holodeck had just been upgraded already and he was overwhelmingly impressed with it, he also learned what a city block was... sheesh, and so they were going to have some shore leave at a Starbase while the ship's computers were tended to there.

Some smallish aliens show up, folks called the Bynars, and Riker doesn't trust them. To date, if there is anything we've learned, it's that if Riker doesn't trust someone they are up to no good - he is the only person on the ship that has this ability, even Troi is useless... until everything is over and then she'll say she new something bad was up the whole time.

But Riker, nope, he flat out doesn't trust these guys and so puts his best man on the task of watching them - Wesley. Riker then leaves and wonders around until he gets to the Holodeck.

Once there, he meets a woman and falls madly in love with her, Picard walks in and is also smitten by her.

While there, Wesley discovers the ship is about to explode! Everyone evacuates. In the chaos no one remembered to let the Holodeck folks know (Or maybe they couldn't, I forget now) so the ship is warped out of space dock to explode. Except of course it doesn't. Instead it takes off.

Picard and Riker continue being very excited by the Holodeck woman. Eventually Picard realizes that he's been cramping Riker's style and decides to leave. After turning down a very desperate Holodeck woman's offers of, I don't know, menage a trios, Picard walks into a hallway into the midst of a red alert.


Riker joins him, they decide to blow up the ship in a ridiculously complicated self-destruct thing, and go to the bridge to find the Bynars are almost dead. They see the ship was taken over by the Bynars and they figure out how these little aliens did it, they undo the damage and immediately go back to the Holodeck.

Um, the Bynars home-world was almost destroyed because those dummies lived on a world with a star that was about to go super nova and they decided to wait until the last minute to do anything, then the star went super nova, they were all fine, but their computers crashed. So they needed the enterprise's computer. I don't know, it was kinda dumb, but whatever. Everyone ended up being okay in the end.

Except of the Bynars, who I assume went to prison.

Some thoughts:

Best FX shot of the season

• The Starbase was huge, and the shot of the Enterprise docking with it was the best looking fx shot of the whole first season. 
• Riker was really, really into the Holodeck lady. Like, I'm positive that if he'd had a few more minutes with her when Picard walked in he would have found Riker with his jumpsuit bundled up at his ankles while he was banging the Holodeck lady. I'm really thinking Riker has a sexual appetite that he has a hard time keeping under wraps.
• And Picard doesn't knock or anything. He just walks right in on Riker. He clearly has no sense of boundaries. 
• The Bynars are computer people, or something. I liked them. But the whole super nova thing sounded really dumb to me. They might be computer people, but they are very smart computer people.

Look, there was a lot about this episode that was dumb, but it was better than anything else I've seen so far this season outside of The Big Goodbye. That doesn't mean this is great, but it does mean that it's watchable. If you can get past the dumb. So while I'm not giving it a great rating, know that it's better than almost anything else in this abysmal first season.

My rating?

2 out of 5