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

The Arsenal of Freedom (S1 ep 21)

It's funny, when I think of Season 1 of Star Trek: TNG, I can't help but think of sitting in my living room, in our house, across from the haunted cemetery, with a ouija board that brought demons into my home at night.

And my step-father, always him.

But it's really only a handful of episodes that I distinctly remember from that time. I can't tell you why I remember some episodes so clearly and others not at all, and others are associated with times years later.

But from that time at home: Encounter at Farpoint, Code of Honor, Justice, Arsenal of Freedom, Skin of Evil, Conspiracy, the Neutral Zone...

So, yeah, this is one of those episodes I remember from that time. I mean, specifically. Now that doesn't mean I have some sort of extra affection for the shows I recall seeing - just that I remember watching them.

And I do remember enjoying these episodes back then. Not in any sort of meaningful way. This episode, I've got a fondness for that belies any sort of rational explanation. But all counts, this isn't very good. And again, not much of anything from season one is good.

I think it's a pretty easy story to tell. Three stories this week all rolled into a single larger plot. That in and of itself is a big deal, as there are episodes in the first season where the storylines aren't connected in any meaningful way.

The three stories can be summed up like this: A) Picard and Dr Crusher bond while she's injured and they're lost. B) Riker, Yar, and Data spend time dodging laser shooting floating thingies on the planet's surface and C) Geordi learns to be a captain while everyone else with any authority has left the ship.

A couple of thing happened in this episode that I thought were… well… interesting. First, the Enterprise shows up after hunting for a missing Federation vessel at a world filled with the remains of a long destroyed advanced civilization.

I think this is something that Star Trek did a lot over the course of its run that I really enjoyed, and that’s the idea that all these space-faring civilizations that pepper the cosmos aren’t a new thing. Instead, the galaxy is teeming with the rubble of fallen empires that spanned the stars long ago. Even this early in the Next Generation’s run, we’ve had the, uh, whoever it was in that episode that introduced us to the Ferengi, and these guys, and of course we’ll be introduced to the Iconians later, the alien trap the almost destroyed the Enterprise in the ‘Booby Trap’ episode, as well as the progenitors that seeded the galaxy with humanoid life, and the builders’ of the Dyson Sphere… I’m sure there are others too that I’m forgetting.

Look, my point with all that is that I don’t really remember that much. I think I’ve decided to start a spreadsheet that logs every time Worf gets his ass kicked, every time an alien is just a guy or girl (no makeup at all), every time an alien has a bumpy head, or funny nose, or if the alien is really weird (like, not humanoid at all), or, in this case, the menace is from an artifact of a long dead civilization.

Seems like it would be fun, after the fact, and be able to say, ‘Oh yeah, Picard tugged on the bottom of his tunic 134 times over the course of the series, but only did it twice in episodes where Romulans were the antagonist.’

Whatever. It seems fun to me. Don’t judge me. I don’t judge you. Sheesh.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so there is this planet, full of abandoned tech and weapons, all in ruins, and a missing starship. Once there, Riker and Yar and Data beam down, and Riker gets zapped by an alien thingy and is frozen in some sort of energy cocoon.

Of course, Picard has to come down to save Riker. So he and Dr Crusher visit. Data figures out how to release Riker but then that alien thingy shows up and starts up with its zapper. The away teams get separated and Picard and Crusher fall down a well.

Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, something actually kinda interesting happens. Geordi is left in charge and is immediately told to surrender his command to the Chief Engineer… LOGAN!

So, McDougal, Argyle, Singh… now Logan is the main man in Engineering. But he wants it all, so demands Geordi let him play as boss. In what is typical in first season writing, Logan dismisses Geordi’s rationale for staying in orbit as stupid, so a bit later when Geordi is forced to leave orbit, Logan dismisses Geordi’s rationale for leaving orbit as stupid.

Also typical of writing in this first season, Geordi is the perfect leader, he encourages the crew under him and is great at being inspirational. Then Troi pulls him aside into Picard’s ready-room and admonishes him – telling him that he needs to be encouraging and inspirational.

Uh, okay, that made no sense at all, but Geordi, being the good sport he is, acts like he’s received the best instructions ever on how to be a good leader, so he goes back out and acts exactly the same as he was already and leads the team to victory against the thing in orbit that is trying to destroy the Enterprise.

And on the planet, Picard and Dr Crusher flirt at the bottom of the well, while Data and Riker and Yar wander around shooting the thingies that keep attacking them. Eventually Picard turns on a TV and it’s a salesman that says they have the best weapons ever.

Picard realizes that it’s an automated sales pitch that will only end once the prospective buyers are destroyed, or they agree to purchase the weapons. So Picard agrees to purchase. Everything shuts down.

And justice prevails.

So, super very much of the nature of being quick... some thoughts:

• Behind the scenes, I read that they actually had to shut production down on the series because the script was unfilmable. Everyone took a few days whilst the production staff tried to fix the story. Odd, because this is probably one of the better episodes in this season. Don't get carried away with that statement... this ain't great.
• Chief Engineer Logan is comically Machiavellian in his attempt to usurp authority in this episode. And also, who the hell is he?
• Counselor Troi was not watching the same episode I was when she decided she had to talk Geordi through how to be a leader. He was doing great on his own.
• The floating thingy that shot Riker and chased everyone all over the surface of the planet... I was going to say that the CG was pretty not great on it, then I saw that it was a practical effect, done on set with a guy working that prop like it was a puppet. I was suddenly impressed that they could make a practical effect look like cartoony CG. God, my brain is so confused right now.

So, as much as I have an affinity for this episode, it's no one's finest hour. Parts of it make no sense, and there isn't much here to praise. So I feel really odd saying that it kind of worked for me. not a lot, but kinda sorta. If I gave half stars, it'd get two and a half.

But I don't. So I won't.

My rating?

2 out of 5

Coming of Age (S1 ep 19)

You know, sometimes I lose myself in the minutia of Star Trek and sort of forget where I’m at in the bigger scheme of things. I’m sitting here, watching all these shows and by now I’m so ramped up and ready to hate what I’m watching that I sorta forget to try to enjoy the show.

So, this time, I tried.

How did it go? Well, by any reasonable standard, it sucked. However, and I don’t know if it was because I was actually trying to enjoy it, or if it had something to do with the actual product itself. But whatever the reason, I found this one… well, tolerable.

Not great, not as good as The Big Goodbye, which is far and away the highlight of the season to date, but certainly watchable if one is willing to slum it for a bit.

What happened? Well, Wesley scored high enough on some sort of exam to allow him to officially test for Starfleet Academy, he was overjoyed, and had to work hard to be sympathetic to his friend (I guess) that fell short and wouldn’t even get a chance to try for real along side of Wesley.

I get that, I had a friend that was obsessed with intelligence. I mean, really obsessed. He spent all this time and energy reading about IQ and differences in intelligence between people and correlations between income and wealth… I think he thought that if he was smart that he’d just get money handed to him or something, I’m not sure. But whatever it was, he was always taking these online IQ tests.

‘I scored a 136 on this one, but a 155 over here. And on this one I hit a 160! I’m a genius!’

We argued about it. A lot. Not angry arguing, but the way friends do. You know, when you know the other person is being a little weird but you also want to take their points seriously because they’re a friend and you want them to not feel bad about being weird (because I feel like it’s important that a friend should be able to tell me things that are weird without them having to worry that I’ll call them a moron about it, even if I think they’re being a bit nuts on whatever the topic is).

So, anyway, I was on the side of stating that taking online IQ tests until you find one that tells you you’re a genius (and subsequently wants to sell you a membership to their high IQ society) might not be a great idea… but then I remembered that Mensa was a real thing. And they had a pre-test you could take online to see if you could possibly join their high IQ society (I can see how there could be some irony here, but I’d point out that Mensa has known standards for admission, and it’s pre-test doesn’t pretend that it’s an IQ exam).

So, Mensa requires that your IQ put you in the top 1% of society before you can join. If you use an IQ test, it must be administered by a professional (like a psychologist) and be normalized. In other words, they don’t dick you around.

This pre-test though, it was just meant to say whether or not you should even bother making the attempt to join. He talked me into taking it. So, we talked over the phone, went to the website and took the pre-test at the same time so we could compare results when finished.

We did. And ‘lo and behold, they told me I was a pretty good candidate for their club. I was pretty surprised, that didn’t mean I could get in, just that they felt like I was swift enough of mind that it’s not ridiculous for me to attempt to join.

Cool. I could take the real test. My friend, he was very nicely told that while he’s more than welcome to try to take the real test, they advise against it. He just didn’t quite make the scores on the pre-test that indicates that he’d do well enough to become a member.

That told me a couple of things, 1) they weren’t so full of shit that they’d take anyone willing to take the test, and 2) I was invited and he wasn’t.

That second part made me feel weird. I was unexpectedly excited (what if I really am a super-genius?) and it also made me feel bad for my friend, who had wanted it much more badly than I did (my worry didn’t last long though, he was fine).

So, yeah, I got where Wesley was coming from here. And believe it or not, that whole long story of mine flashed through my head when Wesley and his buddy were having their conversation. I get Wesley’s issue.

So – like I was saying, I was excited that I was invited to move on up to the next level of Mensa membership, but I did feel bad for my friend, just like Wesley was excited to moving on up to Starfleet training but knowing that his friend won’t be joining him.

So, yay, I’m on board with this. And to be honest, they’ve really toned down Wesley’s awfulness in the back half of the first season. So much so that I think almost all of the Wesley hate was centered around that first half-season of the show. He got way less annoying.

That isn’t to say he’s in any danger of becoming my favorite character on the show, but he and Tasha both seemed to have quit with the crazy behavior that made me hate them both so much early in the show’s run.

Huh, I just remembered I was supposed to be doing a recap here. I know it’s tough to read this stuff, my eyes glaze over when I see a recap coming, even though that seems to be the new sexy thing to do on the internet these day. Goofy kids and their episode recaps.

So, uh, Wesley goes planetside and begins his Starfleet exams, meanwhile, Captain Picard gets a visit from an Admiral that orders Picard’s full cooperation in an investigation that his assistant, Commander Remmick, is to conduct about the short history of the Enterprise-D.

So, Remmick begins being a dick, Riker gets pissed, gets very petulant, complains to Picard, is told to quit being a baby, and then we get back to Wesley.

Wesley is competing with three other applicants for a single position in Starfleet Academy. It makes me think right away that they are being way too selective. Granted, Wesley is 15 years old, so I wouldn’t be jumping up and down to let him into Starfleet either, but they’ll only be admitting one (that’s 1!) person from that sector (or quadrant, whatever) to go to the Academy that year.

That’s pretty selective, right? How big is Starfleet? I remember that the Federation has something like 150 worlds, give or take, so that’s a lot of people. Seems like from a pool of, I guess, in the ballpark of at least a trillion people (150 worlds x 10 billion per planet = 1.5 Trillion. I rounded down in case 10 billion per planet is too high, but even if I’m off by an order of magnitude, and it’s 100 billion, that’s still a lot of people) they can come up with more than just a handful of applicants.

Which means that there is a lot of folks out there that might be exceptional people that don’t make the grade.

Actually, let me think this through a bit more carefully, we’ll keep the 1 trillion number for the sake of easy arithmetic, if the average lifespan of an individual in the Federation is 100 years, and we assume a more or less even distribution of age in societies, then we’d probably have 10 billion souls, on average, at any given age you might pick. So if the prime age for applying to Starfleet is 17 – 20 then that means you’d have 40 billion people of the right age.

Let’s take the Mensa percentage of that, 1%, and say that’s our best and brightest, the ones that actually have the mental fortitude to learn Warp Theory and Klingon Poetry and all that, that still means you’ve got 400 million folks to deal with.

I mean, we can really do whatever we want to cut the numbers more. It’s ridiculous to think the top 1% will all apply (although it’s made clear that this is the single best thing to do in the 24th century and just about everyone wants to be in Starfleet, so I’d guess the application rate is pretty high). So let’s say of that top 1% that’s eligible, only 1% actually apply.

One percent of one percent means 4 million applicants per year to Starfleet Academy.

Remember, Wesley is in a group of only four people at this facility that will represent their quadrant (whatever) that year, and only one of them will actually make it. Unless there are a million quadrants (if there are, then future people don’t know what that word means, or I should pay attention to what word they actually used in the episode) or there has been a pretty intensive weeding out process.

But why?

I don’t know how big Starfleet is, but I get the impression that they’ve got ships scattered all across the explored portions of the galaxy, and terraforming projects, and starbases, and colonies, and science stations, etc. You need a large number of recruits to maintain that presence. I think we’ve decided that they can be as selective as they want to be and still have more people than they know what to do with at the end of the day. So what’s the deal with only one person making it? Do they plan on having a graduating class of 30 or something? They probably need to graduate 100,000 people per year to maintain all the infrastructure already in place (I pulled that number out of my ass, but now that it’s out there I might as well stick to it).

So, the whole thing here is pretty stupid.

Unless – all the people here are applying as an exception. Wesley is too young, the Benzite is too… um, blue, the Vulcan is too old, I don’t know. Maybe this is some sort of special case application to Starfleet. In which case it sorta might make some sense.

I don’t think so, but if I’m going to watch this episode, I have to come up with some rationale that doesn’t end with me throwing my own feces at the Television like an enraged monkey.

Where was I? Oh, Remmick continues to be a dick, Riker realizes that it’s Picard that’s under investigation, and then he and the crew all say how awesome Picard is, despite the fact that almost every week since they’ve taken the ship out of space dock they’ve all just about died. Often due to decisions that Picard is making.

Wesley bonds with another applicant, not he girl that won’t shut up about how unfair it is that Wesley is on a ship already, or that he’s smart already (she’s out, no complainers in Starfleet) and Wesley and his friend are clearly are the only two candidates for the only spot.

The psych test is the final part. It’s meant to show you your greatest fear. Wesley is scared it will reveal he’s a coward. No one will talk about it, but everyone says it’s pretty brutal. Turns out Wesley’s is just a big thing about having to choose who to save in a triage sort of situation (If it were me, it would be getting eaten by a shark, whilst drowning, in an underwater cave, in the dark… shudder).

Wesley kicks the test’s ass.

So that kid that Wesley beat out to get to take the actual Mensa test? Sorry, Starfleet exam? He steals a shuttle with plans of joining a space circus or something. Then immediately remembers that he can't actually fly a shuttlecraft. As he's plummeting to his death above the planet, Picard calmly saves the day by talking the shuttle out of crashing, not really, he talks the kid into a daring maneuver that keeps him from dying and Remmick, who saw the whole thing, is stunned by how great Picard is.

Remmick decides that Picard and his crew are the most awesome people in Starfleet and wants to be transferred under Picard asap. Picard and Riker roll their eyes and then the Admiral confides in Picard that he had to be sure – that something evil has invaded Starfleet at the highest levels of command and he doesn’t know what, nor can he provide any proof, but Picard better keep his ear to the grindstone… wait, maybe it’s his nose to the ground. Dammit. I can’t remember.

Wesley ends up not getting into Starfleet. It appears it’s because that it’s because the Benzite guy won the math completion, which he wouldn’t have except when the Benzite guy had a meltdown in the middle of the test, Wesley just gave him the gentle coddling he needed so he could finish.

Except that wasn’t it at all. Wesley just flat out wasn’t good enough. Despite the Traveler saying he’s a genius among morons. Everyone gets back aboard the Enterprise, confused, and they all leave.

I didn't really take notes during this episode, I was gonna, but I didn't. So I don't have much more to point out specifically, but for what it's worth, my thoughts:

• Why the Admiral continued to be so coy after the Enterprise checked out as a-ok is beyond me. Of course, knowing what's coming later I understand, but still, it bugs me.
• That Remmick berated the crew for some of the adventures they had over the course of season one seemed weird. Especially about the Traveller incident. Starfleet DEMANDED he be allowed to conduct his experiments, it was over the protestations of the crew that he was allowed to run his tests. 
• Wesley drug a man through liquid hydrogen? Holy Geebus, he's going to have some skin damage.
• Speaking of that test. Wesley was in room 101. I'm pretty sure that's a 1984 reference
• Still speaking of that test. What the hell? That's a very elaborate scheme for seeing how Wesley would react. 

I'm on the fence about this episode, it's not good, but it's not awful either. And for season 1, not being awful is actually a pretty big step in the right direction. I may put together a season 1 summary post ofter I'm done with it, and if I do, this one might be in a top 5 list of the season's best episodes. Maybe. I'm at least thinking that it could be, I don't know. Stop with all the pressure.

My rating?

2 out of 5

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

Haven (S1 ep 11)

I never noticed this until I was way into this rewatch, but Troi looks pretty much exactly like my first wife did. No wonder I'm not thrilled with her character. The disastrously awful portrayal of Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher to date has probably taken a lot of the venom away from Troi in my mind, but when the whole episode is about her, well, it's hard to hide her character in the background.

And listen, I liked Troi just fine when I was watching the show when I was younger. But I never paid that much attention to how much nonsense her character is capable of spewing forth. I'm thinking this got toned down in a major way over the 7 years of this show's run.

I don't have very many strong memories about the first time I saw this episode, but I do remember thinking it was funny that Picard couldn't carry the suitcase at the beginning of the episode, then being really tickled when Lurch... um, actually, the Valet, picked it up as an afterthought after Picard nearly threw out his back trying to drag that thing around.

So it very quickly became clear that Picard and Data where far and away the most charismatic characters on the show early on. Worf became a fan favorite later, and Geordi and Riker and the rest certainly had their moments. But there is no denying that Picard and Data were going to be the core of the show, even in these very early episodes. This one, obviously, hammers that point home, because while it's an episode all about Troi, it's jammed packed full of Picard and Data stuff too.

And this episode appears to have been an attempt at outright comedy. God, I hope this wasn't an attempt at a dramatic one. The B story in Lonely Among Us was amazing, but the A story was such a mess that it ruined the whole episode. In this case, the A and B stories were tied together a bit more tightly. But the whole thing seemed to be played for comedy.

My synopsis, I guess, is that Riker was watching, what I believe to be, the early portion of a holgraphic porn video. It was two inordinately pretty ladies in fine evening wear playing the harp. There is no way that his ear to ear grin was because he was stoked about the harp concert. I'm thinking in a few minutes he would have been watching something much different.

But alas, he was called away. A wedding party was beaming up. Turns out it was for Troi's wedding!!!

That's right. Troi was going to get married and retire from Starfleet. She's kinda forgotten about her arranged marriage and now it was time to go ahead and take care of it. So her mom shows up, reads everyone's mind, brags about how awesome she is, and insults the Groom's parents, a lot.

In the meantime, a mysterious alien vessel shows up with the dying crew of a doomed civilization. They carry a disease that has killed everyone, on every planet, that the disease has ever made it's way to.

So Picard throws a party for Troi and the rest of the Wedding crowd. Troi freaks out, knocks things over, and goes to pout on the holodeck, just where Riker was pouting. He loves Troi but not as much as the thought of being a captain, which is much easier when you aren't married. I guess that means you can't date people either, I'm not real sure. Either way, he's pouting, she's pouting. Then her fiancé shows up, oblivious. Riker leaves and the fiance makes out with Troi - despite confessing that he's really not that into her because he wanted her to be someone else. Or something.

After a whole episode of not communicating with the Enterprise, the aliens, who are totally human, show up on the FaceTime app on the view screen and Wyatt (Troi's finance) immediately is in love with the hot girl in the bikini top hanging out in the back. He grabs his stuff and beams over to their ship, leaving Troi at the alter and condemning himself to long and painful death thanks to the disease he just exposed himself to.

Everyone is pretty happy about that decision. The end.


Some thoughts:

• Future TV sucks. Riker's holoset is showing a harp concert? Ick. Well, unless it was porn, then it makes more sense. 
• Someone stuffed Quark in a suitcase! Actually, that was the actor that later played Quark. It was just a very strange visual. It was a suitcase with a face sticking out of the side. It talked. 
• Lurch is Lwaxana's personal servant! And I mean Lurch from The Adams Family. That was him, right?
• I like seeing Picard so uncomfortable. Lwaxana is a mess of a person and thrusts her will upon anyone nearby. Picard did not enjoy that. But his 24th century notions of being super evolved won't allow him to complain. It's great.
• Picard says personal disputes are prohibited on the recreation decks so, uh, he just went ahead and declared them all resolved. Thanks, I guess. I mean, was that a joke?
• Troi's freakout at dinner was awesome. She slapped that little gong like it was a misbehaving toddler.
• Imzadi! I read the book! Great to see that so many throwaway lines from early episodes were seized upon and used in novels. I think the Imzadi stuff spun-off into more than one novel.

  

  Sigh. Yes, I read it.

• Good lord. The split sleeve fashion for boys and men in the 24th century is atrocious. Please make it stop.
• I've been noticing this for a while now, but it really has been notable how many aliens are just humans. I know it's a budget thing, but so far even the 'bumpy headed' variety of alien is a rare sight.
• So, Lwaxana explains how psychic stuff works. Finally, a definition: "All life... all consciousness, is indissolubly bound together. Indeed, it's all part of the same thing." Well, that cleared all that up.
• I bet Wyatt's shirt with the huge triangle in front must catch all sorts of food when he eats. It's just a huge pocket.
• Despite the whole psychic thing being explained to Wyatt as to why he knew the woman on the Terellian ship it still made no sense at all to me. Of course, I say something similar in almost every episode about some plot point or another, but that a human and something that is clearly human, except not, neither one has any psychic ability at all (it's strongly implied that the aliens (Terrellians) sorta thought Wyatt was a fantasy of whatshername, so they have no real expectation of psychic stuff to work for them either. So that means that sometimes it just happens. It's just so weird to me. I know that things like ESP and the like were seriously studied by governments and the like in the 70's, but by the time the late 80's rolled around it had sorta had it's day in the sun as part of serious SF, it had been largely debunked and so was relegated to fantasy. So having such psychic heavy episodes sort of date this as a show that has it's heart in the 60's or 70's moreso than in the late 80's when it was produced. I really wish they'd tone that sort of stuff down).
• For some reason, the Production number on this episode is 105, which means it was produced much earlier than the rest of the episodes here in the mid-season timeframe. I wonder what's up with that.

So, to sum up, this episode sucked. But at this point, they pretty much all have. I can't really give each one a 1 star review and be done with it, I'm looking for some nuance here. So because there were a few moments that made me actually laugh (again, Troi knocking shit over as she storms out of the room just struck me as fantastic) makes this worth a bonus star.

My advice, to anyone in the far future that may be tempted to use this as a recommendation engine for whether or not to watch a particular episode, I'm not sure there has been anything to date worth wasting your time on. Maybe the pilot, but even that is if you're already a fan and want to see how it all started. This series had a very rough go of it to date.

My rating?

2 out of 5

The Battle (S1 ep 9)

At this point I've given up on picking up the thread of the narrative I started talking about my life when these episodes aired, mostly because I realized that, aside from the premier, I don't believe I watched TNG until I was a senior in high school. At that time I was watching a new (to me) episode every day.

I don't know the first time I saw this episode, it was probably in the spring of 89, that's when the bulk of those late night conversations were taking place with my then girlfriend that I didn't have the guts to break up with. So we blew through my time as a Taco Bell employee, my comical time as a construction worker, and are just getting to my rather uninteresting time as a house painter.

It was a time when my step-father's hold on reality was slipping away. He'd taken to purchasing cars by the dozen when he suddenly decided to be the owner/operator of a business focused on, apparently, owning expensive classic cars.

And by owning, I mean borrowing money in order to possess said cars. It's strange to me because in a given week I might drive a tow truck to school one day, and then roll in with a 57 Chevy the next. It was a strange time.

At this point he'd long since left his good (for us) paying job and dedicated all his resources to ruining the family financially. That including pulling out all his retirement, attempting to do so with my mother's, and taking about as many personal and business loans as he could get approved for.

All for this vague belief that he could make himself into a auto/construction/landscaping mogul.

However, I don't think spending 6 or 7 hours a day drinking Whiskey and Coke in one's underwear while watching Days of Our Lives and whatever else daytime television had to offer was a solid business plan.

But that didn't change the fact that he was never there in the evenings when the haunted cemetery across the street was looking for underage people to haunt, or, thankfully, when that evening's TNG episode would air. He was usually out of the house by the time my mother would leave for work. I believe his usual destination was 'Pete's Party Place.' A now defunct pool hall/bar that was probably where most of his business ideas came from.

So it's weird to me, the memories that come up as I consider the episodes I'm watching. I can't always explain why I think about something instead of another, but it is what it is, I guess.

Part of the reason I'm doing this blog at all is because I remember channel hopping one day a few months ago and coming across a TNG episode and being totally dumbfounded about the scene that was playing. I just couldn't place it. Had I seen it before? It sorta freaked me out. I mean, what if I haven't seen every episode multiple times? What if I just thought I had? What if, and I know I'm being crazy here, I've made it this long and never seen one or two?

Lies, blasphemy, trickery. But still, I don't know. Maybe.


 I have no memories of this episode. I knew that Picard served aboard the Stargazer before the Enterprise, but I think I had that knowledge due to some TNG novels, of which I read plenty. But this felt like something either I'd forgotten entirely, or I'd never seen. Ever.

Regardless, I don't remember being a big fan of the Ferengi during the TNG run, and upon this rewatch, was disappointed to see that they've already had two appearances in the nine shows to air so far. This take on them is much less ridiculous than The Last Outpost.

And to this point, that may be my favorite episode of the show, which isn't saying much, since it only managed to garner a two-star review, but you'll also note that's as good as anything else has been able to achieve in these nine episodes.

This episode is probably better than it should have been, considering how awful it clearly was at a script stage... wait, I shouldn't have said that, I haven't read the script, I don't know. I do know that the director of this episode is pretty beloved, and so I'm willing to give him the benefit of belief that he improved on it from whatever its conception was.

My synopsis goes something like this: The Ferengi have asked Picard to meet them out in the middle of nowhere for a surprise. Once there, the Enterprise waits for three days before the Ferengi agree to talk to them. Once they do talk, they say they have a gift for Picard, and it's the Stargazer! The ship that made Picard famous.

You see, Picard as the Stargazer crew were attacked by an unknown enemy many years prior and where nearly destroyed before Picard did some helmsmen-related trickery and managed to win the battle. What he did is now taught at the academy to cadets. But they had to abandon ship and flee on shuttlecraft.

Well, in the present, Picard starts getting headaches, the Ferengi remain magnanimous, sorta, and then the crew discover while going over the logs aboard the Stargazer that Picard is full of lies, that he attacked a Ferengi vessel, knew what he did,  and confessed to it in his personal log.

But Troi, who we know from their previous meeting has absolutely no ability at all to read Ferengi, senses their duplicity right off the bat. Just as she senses that Picard is being 'attacked by memories,' or something.

So there is probably less than a millisecond before Riker states that the Ferengi must have figured out a way to falsify Picard's personal logs, Riker still tells on his Captain to Starfleet, but advises that it will be a day or so before they hear anything back. In the meantime, they get to work trying to figure out how the Ferengi cheated.

Picard's headaches continue to worsen. He starts doubting his ability to correctly remember what really happened, and finally loses his cool and beams over to the Stargazer and starts reliving the events of that day when he destroyed the Ferengi vessel all those years ago.

Wesley basically figures out everything and has an awkward conversation with his mom about how much of a genius he is, but once that is over it's all on the table that the Ferengi have been slowly planting Picard with false memories and Riker confronts the Ferengi about it. The Ferengi arrest their Captain, say they're sorry, and leave. The Enterprise crew figure out a way to counteract the previously believed to be infallible 'Picard Maneuver' and convince Picard that he's been fooled.

And then everything is fine.

Some thoughts:

• The Ferengi where aghast at the thought of being on their view screen a few short episodes ago, they don't seem to care now.
• We learn that headaches aren't really a thing in the 24th century. Except for Picard's, which Dr Crusher takes care of with 'Medical Fakery.' I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like she took care of the headache.
• Again, Troi doesn't blink about getting her psychic vibe from the Ferengi this time. A few short episodes ago they were an enigma to her. But then again, she was reading them just fine later in that same episode now that I think about it. There was some real lazy writing early on.
• An approaching vessel will trigger an 'intruder alert?' Do they even know what that means?
• The Ferengi are way less like monkeys this episode. It's fun to think that they may have all just been high the first time we met them, because they were crazy then.
• At some point I think you have to kill a joke if it is as dumb as the 'Data is second-hand merchandise' one they used during the episode. Just tell the Ferengi that he's not for sale and be done with it. Sheesh. You don't have to go and insult the guy. Data may not have feelings, but they were just mean.
• I hate psychics. Troi sensed Picard was being attacked by his past. Um, okay.
• A few minutes later, she senses 'mechanical thoughts' in Picard. Uh, what? I'm starting to think she's more of a con artist than psychic. She's spewing out enough nonsense that once everything is over she  can go back and say, 'I knew it!' but it's actually no help at all in the moment. She's like Nostradamus - mostly inane ramblings, but if you squint your eyes and say this means that, and not the other thing, then after everything is over you can kinda look back and think there was something psychic going on.
• The Picard Maneuver. Sweet! I thought it was just the name for tugging his tunic down once they started wearing two piece uniforms later on. Glad to see it's a real thing.
• When they are aboard the Stargazer, the display Data stands in front of looks enormously huge.

  

  Yes it's big, but the resolution must suck. Look at the font size!

  But not especially well formatted for someone only 18 inches in front of the screen. Also, a human using that control system would have carpal tunnel in a few hours. It seems that ergonomics is a lost art in the 24th century.
• Is it just me, or has Picard been through a mind-controling experience two episodes in a row? So in just nine episodes humanity has been judged a few times, Picard has been mind-controlled a few times, and they've run into the Ferengi (a supposedly mysterious race) a few times. TNG is not afraid of repeating themselves here. Damn.
• And Picard has had his voice faked a couple of times! Riker puts Data on the task to figure out how the Ferengi did it. I'm no expert, but I'd say they should ask Wesley, who did it well enough to take control of the Enterprise a few episodes ago when he got space drunk.
• Speaking of Wesley... Goddammit. Did he just figure out everything and then have to explain it to the adults? He

  

  Actual dialog: "You're welcome, ladies." 

  figured out Picard's brain scans by 'glancing at them' when his mother had them out. Jesus! He is so damn smug.
• It's the first time I've really noticed the ship's voice. Not sure if that's the voice I'm used to.
• The Ferengi transporter effect is very cheesy. I guess it was cutting edge TV fx at the time.
• So, that the Stargazer is clearly a fully functional ship doesn't make anyone ask why it was abandoned in the first place? I mean, it's a little singed on the inside, but is there any system that isn't working? It's fine! It was really, really dumb to abandon it.
• Tasha Yar was fine.
• Wesley made up for it, he was god-awful. I hate him so much.

Look, this is not good, but it's miles better than it has any right to be.

And there is a lot to hate here. I watched a TOS episode a few days ago, The Carbomite Maneuver and in that episode, the enemy of the week, after manhandling the enterprise and and telling them that they're all going to die, was rendered helpless near the end. Kirk beamed over to try to save them instead of running away. The whole point of the episode is that we can't judge someone as evil if we don't really know them. Turns out they were just a bit scared.

Contrast that with this one, where the Ferengi are labeled as duplicitous right from the beginning and with only a single encounter with one ship in all of the Federation's history, they are judged and assumed to be wicked from the get go. And of course, like in many a poorly written show, the stars are always correct, no matter how illogical their gut feeling is about something.

I know the show had a limited budget, but even if it had a lot of money to throw around, there is only so much you could have done with it at the time. But the production here isn't very impressive. The script, that was awful. The reason that this isn't rated even lower is that I felt that this did hit on some nice themes. Seeing Picard deal with his demons was a legitimately emotional experience to watch. He looked genuinely tormented and raised the whole episode on his own.

The revenge tale that this turned out to be, about a grieving father trying to make Picard suffer, as poorly executed as the concept was, was still genuinely touching. It was an enemy that saw everything through a different lens and had a justifiable right to seek recompense for his lost son.

So, not bad, my rating?

2 out of 5

Lonely Among Us (S1 ep7)

You know,  I watched this ep a week ago. When I sat down to watch it again this evening (with my notepad out and ready to take notes) I couldn't remember a thing about it.

Literally, nothing. That's not a good sign. Now that it's been over for a few minutes, and even with my page and a half of notes. I'm not sure I'll be able to give a recap of the show.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. When I left off last time I'd had the epiphany that a lot of things I thought happened my Sophomore year of high school actually happened during my senior year. I just lost two whole years of my life. This might be stupid, but it bothers me.

I really liked the layout of the house we were living in. After spending my formative years sleeping in a small trailer (not one of those fancy double-wides or anything) having a room in a real house, while pretty small, was still new, and great. In the short time I was there (aside from it being haunted and stuff... probably) I really liked it there.

During my senior year, my step-father, who had always lived on the edge of what most people would call 'normal' had a bit of a breakdown. Like what most people would be want to do when having a crisis like that, he started stockpiling weapons. I know this so well because I would be awoken sometimes very late at night and told to come into the living room and take some pictures. When I say 'sometimes' I'll go ahead and say this happened maybe three times. Whatever. And I'd be handed a polaroid camera and told to take pics.

So I would. Usually him posing with a small arsenal of weapons with a confederate flag draped over the couch or something. It was a weird thing to be doing at 4 a.m. on a school night, but such was my life at the time.

He was there at all because by this time he'd quit his job. He'd sit there most of the day and drink (Jim Beam & Coke, or maybe Diet Coke. Dammit, can't remember) and sorta fume, I think. But by the time I got home in the evenings he was usually gone, doing this or that. I don't know, there was a lot going on then, some of the timing is a little off for me (but a man who loves guns and alcohol will have some violence appear in his narrative at some point, just not now). I can't remember when he started his construction company, or his classic car business, or when he gave that up and started only sitting there and drinking... I just can't remember.

But regardless, I was still alone most of the time in the evenings. I'd had a job at Taco Bell the summer previous, but quit there and worked as a construction worker for some time on weekends before eventually settling into a job as a house painter. That ended up being the cause of some incredible drama a bit later, but I won't get into that today.

Now, all that it is just to give you some context to my life at the time. I had friends, a social life, I was gone a lot. Home sorta sucked. But I could count of Star Trek: TNG every weeknight at 11.

This episode. I have no memories of it at all. Considering I couldn't remember it from last week, and I'm struggling to remember it half an hour after I watched it says something. It's not that it's bad (it is, though. Really bad), it's that it's so forgettable.

In television, especially in hour long shows, there is often an 'A' story and a 'B' story. Sometimes a 'C' story, but seldom do you get more than that. Unless you're Game of Thrones and you can do half a dozen each week, but that's different because they tend to be weighted more evenly. These older Dramas would devote 2/3rds of their running time to the main storyline and the remainder to whatever else was going in.

In this ep, if I'm already in the midst of my recap, has a 'B' story that it pretty damn awesome. It's the 'A' story that I can't take too much of. Check out the trailer below.


In case you missed it, here's the deal, one solar system has two sets of aliens that have discovered space flight and they both want to join the Federation. Of course, they hate each other immensely. The snake aliens asked to be kept upwind of the rat aliens and much further away than the mere 100 meters Riker planned on keeping their quarters.

Picard and Riker talk about how barbaric humans used to be and marvel, again, at how evolved humans are. I'll say again, seeing what a dick Kosinski was in the previous episode, I'd say that humans aren't that hot in the future, they're just way more smug.

Picard and the gang notice a large cloud hurtling through space at warp speed. They figure it as a naturally occurring phenomena... sure, why not.... and seek to get some sensor data. They get close and then Worf, down in a sensor station or something, is struck by lightning  and collapses.

While he's recovering in sick bay, the lightning goes from him to Dr Crusher. And from her to... uh... the ship? Then it kills the Engineer that for whatever reason seems to be in charge (Not MacDougal, not Argyle, but Singh - although they mention Argyle at least).

The rat and snake aliens have been having a private war amongst themselves while on board the ship. Weapons are confiscated and they make threats to the other parties in vague terms. Riker and Tasha are frustrated, but patient.

Data takes on a Sherlock Holmes persona and discovers that Singh was killed by an unknown alien entity. Troi pipes up and said she senses an alien presence and has the whole time, but she didn't want to say anything because humans are primitive, or something, I don't know, it seemed kinda dumb to me, like the kid who always shouts out, 'I knew that' right after you say something they obviously didn't know.

Anyway, Picard gets possessed and decides to beam himself into space to be part of the cloud. Then, Data remembers that Transporters are magic and so beams Picard back, because once he was in space, he possessed the ship and put the letter P all over the place, I suspect Picard was trying to call the crew pricks.

Once he's back, Tasha reports that the rat aliens probably just ate one of the snake aliens. Riker scolds Tasha for not having her priorities straight and Picard decides to take a nap.

Some random thoughts:

• This episode had some genuinely funny moments. The alien delegate storyline was hilarious.
• Troi shouting that she as being blinded was also hilarious (it's in the trailer - but it's a bit out of context). I don't know why. I might just be a bad person.
• The logic used to first find, then later, reassemble Picard was hilarious. But only hilarious in the way that stupid things are.
• The rat alien delegate looks at Tasha and does a sexy growl early in the episode. That's gold.
• Worf is pretty cool. I didn't used to like him in the older TNG episodes, but the idiocy of Wesley and Tasha's characters overshadow everything else. Even Troi, who I should be pretty frustrated with by now.
• That said, Tasha was fine. I don't even recall seeing Wesley.
• The Rat alien looks goofy when it tries to talk. Real goofy.
• Data doesn't understand a lot of words. He's been doing it throughout the series. Not knowing what a word is. That seems weird to me.
• Data actually smokes a real pipe. Enterprise is NOT a smoke-free spaceship.
• Possessed Picard acts weird and Troi wants him to explain his strange orders. He asks Troi if a captain should explain every order. She should have said that he probably should explain stupid ones. But she acts like he just caught her.
• Crusher and Riker confronting the possessed captain is super awkward. She orders him to sick bay and he flips it around and orders HER to sickbay. Check and mate.
• Rat aliens lasso Riker as he walks down the hall. They catch him and then look all disappointed. One of them says, 'wrong species.' Seriously, no one seems to care that they are clearly trying to kill each other.
• Also, no one cared at all that Singh was killed. Data can be forgiven for being silly, he has no social awareness to speak of. But the rest of the crew don't care at all. They are some cold hearted sons of bitches.

In summary. This episode is funny at times, sometimes unintentionally, but it can't be called good. Because it's not. It's not Code of Honor bad, but nothing is.

2 out of 5

Where No One Has Gone Before (S1 ep 6)

As I was saying last time, I just had an epiphany. I don't think I saw all the first season episodes as they aired. It was my Senior year of high school when I really fell in love with Star Trek. It all makes so much sense to me now.

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

The Last Outpost (S1 ep 5)

So, some apologies for freaking out over the previous post about Code of Honor, which of course Jonathan Frakes himself called "... a racist piece of shit" episode. So, that's all I got to say about that.

But what I am here to discuss today is how, finally, after a couple of really, really bad installments, one finally showed up and had an actual story to tell.

Now, to back up a bit, I think I'd mentioned in one of my previous posts that I'd been living in a newly built home (one that I helped in the construction of) at the tender age of 15. Since my mother and step-father both worked graveyard shift I was usually at home alone, and totally freaking about about the haunted cemetery across the street. I don't really remember much about this particular episode save for the fact that it came on weekly, each Saturday, I think, around 7 p.m.

Except I don't recall ever watching this in that time slot, except for the premier. So this has me scratching my head a bit. Memory can be a fuzzy thing, and we are going back just a hair short of 30 years here trawling my memories.

I think that they were rerunning these episodes multiple times per week. Namely, on weeknights around 11. It's funny because we'd just gotten our first cordless phone and I was... sheesh, I'm getting really mixed up here. Because I just remembered that the story I am talking about took place during my SENIOR year of high school, nearly two years after this episode aired.

So scratch all that. I have no idea about what and where I was when this episode came out. Except to say that mullets weren't that big yet, but were the cutting edge of what's cool, and I also had a cool button up shirt that had tuxedo tails. It was the most badass thing I ever owned.

Whatever.

So, about this show. Look, I'm not saying it's good. It's not, not at all, but compared to the last two episodes this thing should be given an Emmy or something.

What happens? Well, we open with the Enterprise crew chasing down a Ferengi vessel that stole something. They're mysterious, roughly equal to the Federation in Tech, and apparently, eager to push the boundaries of what they can get away with.

So the Enterprise gets close and then their ship gets caught in a trap! The Ferengi have some super advanced tech that the Enterprise is helpless to fight. It has them trapped like a fly in amber. Stuck and without enough power to break away, or really fight back.

They figure out a delay in the Ferengi's ability to hold them in place, so they decide to go from reverse to warp 9 as fast as they can, because that should break them out of the hold. After a very embarrassing "Woo Wee!" from Geordi, the plan is executed and fails. Picard reluctantly calls the Ferengi to discuss terms of surrender.

BUT WAIT! The Ferengi agree to surrender to the Enterprise instead! They thought it was the Enterprise that trapped their ship and is threatening them! Wow! I'm using tons of exclamation points!!

Naturally, Picard pretends that was what he meant all along and blusters for a bit before the Ferengi realize he's full of shit. After an awkward moment or two they all agree to go to the planet and try to figure out who has them trapped.
Once there, they are met by an AI guardian that decides to judge the trespassers. Riker passes and the AI offers to kill the Ferengi for him. Riker says to leave them alone because they're pretty much just like humans a few centuries earlier. So they all go their separate ways.

Some thoughts:

"Tee hee!"

• According to the interwebs, the Ferengi were meant to the TNG's main antagonists throughout the series. Good god. That would have been horrible. These guys are a joke. They hop around like middle-aged men auditioning for a Michael Jackson video (hmmm... maybe I need to update my pop culture references) and hiss a lot and can barely speak with the huge teeth they are forced to wear. Thankfully, the reactions the whole world had after seeing them on screen squelched that idea almost immediately. No one could take them seriously, could they?
• All that said, I liked the ship design for the Ferengi. The mid section even extended out. Cool. 
• The camera work in this episode was interesting. The director, I suppose, was a fan of zooming in on characters. It was very noticeable. 
• Thank god Tasha nor Wesley did anything stupid in this episode. Actually, Wesley wasn't even in this one. But Tasha was. She was fine. Yippee!
• The children playing in the Captain's conference room was really weird. Can they just go wherever they want? Seriously, it's the flagship vessel of the Federation. That's just stupid. 
• The Chinese finger trap thing, Data is a robot without much in the way of sense. I assume he's not going to use his inhuman strength to get out, but surely he understands basic design well enough to understand how the things work. That said, I can forgive this because it was funny. It only doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than a second.
• Troi said, flat out, that she could sense nothing from the Ferengi, like they can mask her ability to read them. Then, a few scenes later, she can sense their duplicity. I can almost forgive this sort of thing if they were from different episodes, but these scenes took place only a few minutes apart. C'mon. At least pretend like your trying to be good. 
• So, Riker and Data give a list of the sins of the Federation. It's pretty awful. I'm thinking that the prime directive is an excuse to not have compassion for people in need. Riker seems especially proud of the sociopathic traits the Federation has exhibited to people that don't have warp tech. It's insane. 
• The guardian AI give a test, which is more or less, 'you need to know when to fight, and when not to fight.' So Riker stands there and doesn't flinch when the thing almost chops his head off. Then Riker responds with something like, 'Fear is the real enemy,' or something. Look, Sun Tzu was already mentioned earlier in the episode, and gets credit for this amazing wisdom here by the alien AI. All I know is that it didn't seem to make much sense to me. 
• Speaking of tests, this is the second time in four airings (I know, it's episode 5, don't make me explain this every week) that humanity is being put on trial by a super powerful alien. Except this time it's for humanity's current behaviors, not its history (and it's Riker, not Picard). How the hell do Romulans, Clingons, Ferengi, Cardassians, etc., survive when the universe it willing to kill anyone who isn't enlightened?
• And I haven't really brought it up before now, but humans as a group seem pretty smug about how evolved they are. If I were floating around out there in space I'd be tempted to tell them to shut up a bit about it. Very preachy of a show in these early episode.

In the end, this was fine. I actually sort of enjoyed it, in the so bad it's good sort of way (not like the last couple, which were in the 'so bad I threw up' category). I won't go so far as to recommend this to any future viewer, but this at least works as a story.

My rating?

2 out of 5

Encounter at Farpoint (S1 eps 1&2)

I was in high school when this show came out. I remember, oddly enough, reading about it in the paper. They were about to air a new Star Trek show. I’d spent the summer watching all the TOS episodes (they aired each weeknight at 11 p.m.) and had really dug it. It was my first time through all the old Kirk episodes and I was anxious for a bit more.

I can’t swear I watched the premier as it aired live. But I think I did. I remember sitting in my living room and watching Data throw a rock at the Holodeck wall. My mind was already blown. It wasn’t real? What?? The whole babbling brook was a computer simulation that people could just walk in to?

Yeah, great memories.

A few weeks ago I sat down to watch it again. Not one of those fancy ‘remastered’ blu ray editions. No, none of that. I watched it the way nature intended me to. In my underwear.

Wait. That’s not what I meant to say. I watched it in the crappy Netflix version that makes everything look wonderfully scratchy and poorly lit.

My take, quickly, is that this was clearly a two hour movie that was intended to be re-aired later in one hour chunks. The first half of the episode and the second half are pretty disparate. One half is about a portion of the crew wondering around the Farpoint station and marveling at how advanced the place is – with no explanation about why an open air market and an office is so amazing – and the other is about Q, the godlike entity that is about to judge humanity of its crimes (to itself) in the past.

Picard manages to turn the show-trial into an opportunity to show how amazingly evolved humanity has become (and Tasha Yar screams to Q about the Federation saving her from Rape Gangs). All they have to do is solve the mystery of Farpoint.

Easily said, I guess, but not so easily done. They totally had to wonder around some more, and wait until an angry alien started blowing stuff up. At which point they figure out that that Farpoint isn’t a station… it’s an alien!

They free the alien, Q begrudgingly accepts that humans are awesome, and the show is over.

A couple of things of note:

• Rape Gangs? That sounds pretty awful. But it also makes me wonder about where Tasha comes from. I thought she was human. Does that mean her home was a Federation colony gone bad? I’m sure it’s explained somewhere in the lore, but it really bugged me. I mean, how far does society have to fall before you have gangs of people running around looking to, primarily, rape people. Ugh.
• Troi is a weepy mess in the episode. At some point all the tears do is make me roll my eyes.
• Wesley was fine. I only remembered being somewhat annoyed with his character. No reason to hate on him here.
• The water in the holodeck was real. Again, I’m sure this is all worked out in some technical manuals. But I wanted to note that the water, it was water. Not the mere illusion of water.
• On a practical level, the production isn't that impressive. Right there in the opening sequence it appears the cameraman bumps into something on set and the camera jitters. It seemed very not-on-purpose. 
• Not thrilled with the jumpsuits.
• And man-dresses aren't great. 

  

  Man-Dresses!

In all, the show is oddly paced - way too much time dealing with the battle bridge and all that, then also too much time wondering around Farpoint Station and all that - but I was able to muddle through it just fine. I don't think a new viewer could sit through this and think it anything except torture. Still, it's where the legend began.


Rating?

2 out of 5