We'll Always Have Paris (S1 ep 24)

So, remember when I was doing these quickly? Those days are gone.

I’ve been thinking about just how much of Star Trek there actually is out there. I’m a bit daunted by my task for watching (and recording my thoughts) on all of it. I mean, there is an awful lot of “it” to get through.

I think the count, according to the internet, is that there are 546 hours of television and movies combined across everything produced to date (everything official, that is, so no fan-films are counted here) which totals around 737 individual installments.

And I think I’ve been spending about 3 hours per post (remember, I watch each episode twice, then spend some time actually writing my thoughts down. So I’m figuring I’m looking at a minimum investment of 2211 hours – which is over 13 WEEKS of time in order to get Star Trek done. That’s working 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, by the way.

If I put up a post per day it would be a year and a half before I got through them. At my previous pace of 3 per week it would have taken me almost 5 years.

And at my more realistic pace of a single post per week?

14 years

It’s going to take me a significant portion of my life to get through these. I mean, damn. Did I do my arithmetic wrong? Lessee – 737 episodes at 1 per week = 737 weeks. 737/52 weeks is 14.2 years.

So, I’ll quite possibly be doing this series until late 2029 – as long as I don’t keep taking weeks off because I don’t feel like it.

So, I’ll take a deep breath and ponder my place in the universe and if it’s worth my effort. Even if I want to have these for myself, it’s still daunting. I could accomplish a lot of stuff in 14 years if I dedicate some time and energy into it.

So, we’ll just have to see where that leads me.

But regardless, it’s episode 23 I’m up to now, right?

We’ll Always Have Paris. Funny, it wasn’t until last winter that I saw Casablanca for the first time. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed up until 1 a.m. on a night when I had to get up for work the very next morning. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. I don’t tend to have many late nights like I did when I was a kid.

This was pretty obviously an homage to Casablanca. How sure of it am I? Well, Picard goes so far as to mention the Blue Parrot Café as some great bar when he and Riker are talking. That is the name of the bar most of Casablanca takes place in, if I recall correctly.

And it’s close to the same plot. And not surprisingly, it’s one of the better episodes of a pretty dismal season of television.

And it’s funny, I’ve recently found out that there have been many episodes of Star Trek that were adaptations of other works of fiction, the one that comes to mind is the TOS episode, Journey to Babel, which I recently found out was a remake of an early 50’s movie about submarine battles in WWII.

And apparently, there were others. So, like I said, go figure. Can’t figure out how they get away with that. Don’t know if they obtain the rights, or if it’s considered an homage if the details are different enough. I know in fiction if I want to write fan fiction I can, but if I want to sell it I have to change the names of the characters and alter their descriptions slightly – I’ve been told that the 50 Shades of Grey phenomena was originally Twilight fan-fic.

But then again, George Lucas famously became very litigious regarding things he regarded as capitalizing on the success of Star Wars, and I heard he once tried to sue the creaters of Star Blazers for that very reason – despite Star Blazers pre-dating Star Wars. That might be an apocryphal story though, I’m not that into fact-checking at the moment. Mostly I’m just typing to see what I’m going to talk about next. It’s a somewhat surreal experience.

Boogers.

So, what is this episode about? Well, like every other episode this season, I’m not really sure. Picard is fencing in the, uh, fencing gym on the ship. When time sorta hiccups (according to Data, it’s a different body function, but he never elaborated, so it’s going to stay as a hiccup) and Picard then gets a call from his ex-girlfriend saying that her genius husband is ill.

Picard rushes in a short, pointless, scavenger hunt to track down the distress call. Once there he beams them up to the Enterprise.

So, false drama seems to be all over the place here. The scientist guy is ranting about being in another dimension and transporting the away team down to the scientist guy’s lab results in ‘some sort of bouncing effect’ and so they have to bypass a bunch of booby traps first. I guess.

So Data goes down to the planetoid, um, Picard says reality is falling apart due to the time science running amok, and his ex-girlfriend flirts a lot with Picard while her husband struggles to not be a multi-dimensional being.

Time distortions continue to plague the galaxy, apparently, and Picard’s ex-girlfriend’s husband calls Picard to his bed to ask Picard to take care of his wife if he should die, or something, and Data goes back to the planetoid. The professor gives them the secret code so they don’t ‘bounce back’ or whatever.

Data arrives, dodges more lasers, and then goes into the lab. Seriously, why is this guy creating a villain’s lair for his studies? He doesn’t just have a vault, the facility actively tries to kill everyone that stops by. And again, the scientist guy doesn’t even remember what security measures he has in place - what? ‘Sorry guys, I forgot to mention the killer lasers that will shoot you as soon as you land.’

So dumb.

Anyway, Data goes to the lab, drops a metal thing in the mirror thingy at a specific time - which is hard for him for about one second because the time-thingy makes three Datas, or something, but he doesn’t really have a problem with it, he just drops the thing and it’s all fine.

Makes no sense.

So, some thoughts.

• Vacation time for the Enterprise! Picard starts by fencing. Actually pretty cool scene. 
• Deja vu
• Music in the teaser is very synth heavy. Dates the episode a bit. 
• Up until the teaser - nothing has put me off regarding this episode. I know that’s not high praise, but for season 1 - well, I think it is.
• Have I ever mentioned how amazing the final shot of the Enterprise looks in the introduction each week? You can actually see people walking around the in the observation deck, or ready room, whatever. 
• Troi says she’s not interested in Picard’s personal life, but then proceeds to ask about his personal relationships. 
• I’m trying not to talk about future episodes while I’m watching these early ones, but seeing Picard program and then use the Holodeck makes me think that it was more advanced in season 1 than it was later in the show’s run. 
• Data comparing the time disruption to bodily functions is funny. 
• So, the Enterprise gets a distress call, then arrives at the coordinates and it’s a buoy telling them to go somewhere else. I don’t know, that seems pretty stupid to me. 
• The scientist guy’s wife’s explanation of what his work on ‘time’ is about it almost as new agey as Troi’s mom explaining how telepathy works. It’s complete gibberish. Seriously, I’m looking forward to the technobabble to come, this early stuff is laughably bad. 
• I just realized how dark Picard’s uniform was in season 1. I mean, it’s barely even red. It’s very dark. 
• Picard’s moment with his ex in the conference room is actually an almost genuine moment. With almost real emotions. Again, for this first season, this is beyond great thing to see. 
• The scientist guy appears to be attempting a Sigmund Freud impression. 

I’m not going to pretend this episode is good. It’s pretty bad, the difference between this one and the bulk of the first season episodes is that this one is at least semi-competently done. The story makes very little sense on a technical sense, but I can at least get the love triangle part. Picard and his lost love from his youth is nicely attempted. The Casablanca thing is pretty cool. All in all, it’s bad, but not irredeemably so.




My rating?






2 out of 5