Star Trek The Next Generation appreciation thread (1 Viewer)

[Philip Verdieck]

Watched two first season episodes tonight, "Conspiracy" and "The Neutral Zone". Man, I forgot how rough the show was back then. The cast chemistry wasn't yet fully developed, and the writing was often stilted.

"Conspiracy" was one of those episodes that I saw as a little kid that's stuck with me every since, particularly the stinger sticking out of the back of the necks, and the bowls full of squirming larvae. The creature horror, while tame by Alien standards, is still kind of shocking for this show. And the idea of a parasitic lifeform taking over the Federation Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style is an intriguing one, but one with consequences too far reaching to really be suitable for a one-off standalone story. And the final beat, implying that the parasites have called in for reinforcements, was never followed up on as far as I can recall.

"The Neutral Zone" is a really odd combination of two stories that don't really go with each other. The A-plot is this satire of the eighties cryogenics fad, with three oversized personalities from 1988's conception of the early twenty-first century. It's fine for what it is, but Trek has definitely done more exciting things with ancient humans discovered in a state of suspended animation. Leon Rippy's addict musician is fun, but feels more like a TOS guest character than a TNG guest character. Ralph is a pretty unsophisticated critique of unchecked Reagan-era capitalism, while Clare is the only one of the three that is really easy to empathize with. Crusher casually resurrecting them all also flies in the face of later depictions of 24th century medicine -- while medicine is far more advanced than today's, the same roughly twenty minute timer of brain death usually still applies. Even more perplexing: the major development of the episode, the return of the Romulans, is the secondary story. And the mysterious common enemy would seem to be the Borg, based on the description of what had happened to the starbases, but as far as I know Q's interventions led to the first contact with the Borg. The writing is rough and out of character even by first season standards, too, starting with Riker dismissing out of hand the discovery of an ancient human spacecraft, and continuing with Picard chewing out Data for inconveniently saving some lives. On the plus side, Marc Alaimo's brief appearance as one of the Romulans is a reminder of why he would later make such a good Big Bad for DS9.

Me and the GF have been rewatching DS9. Marc Alaimo just loved chewing up the scenery and relished the role. He has a very distinctive voice, and was easy for me to pick up in STTNG as a Romulan and as Wild Bill Hickok (card game) in Times Arrow. He was also the head security guy for Ronnie Cox in Total Recall.

 

[Philip Verdieck]

In the series finale, it was intimated that Geordi had married Leah. Picard asks Geordi "how is Leah" when he visits Picard at his vineyard.

Ack, I never picked up on that.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode was "Disaster", from Season 5. The only thing I remembered about this episode from when it originally aired is Picard leading the children in singing "Frère Jacques" to the children to keep them calm as they climb up the turbolift.

Watching it tonight, I really appreciated the writing, which does a number of things that TNG doesn't always do well.

For one, the problem driving the episode is relatively simple: if the Enterprise were car, it hit some debris on the road and tore up the engine. Now it's broken down on the side of the road, and there are a number of problems that could make it explode. The drama driving the plot is a bunch of a very small but very important tasks.

For another, it creates a lot of interesting and unusual character pairings in ways that take our main characters out of their comfort zones:

• Captain Picard, who is notoriously bad with children, finds himself trapped in a confined space with three of them, in a very high pressure situation. As they all work together to escape to safety, I really enjoyed seeing the impact Picard had on the children, and the children had on Picard. Marissa, who was too shy to even talk about her project at the beginning of the episode, really grows into her role as Picard's second in command, rallying the younger kids and also pushing back on Picard's unreasonable expectations. Marissa would be in her early forties in the "Picard" era; it'd be neat to see the character appear as Commander on a Starfleet ship at some point. Picard, for his part, goes from talking at the children to engaging with the children. Like any decent leader, he surveys the crew he has to work with and then makes the most of what they bring to the table. And in the process, a bond forms.
• One of my long running frustrations with TNG is that it doesn't utilize Troi to her full potential. Most episodes have her walking around in a skin tight, low cut catsuit providing only vaguely helpful empathic readings. Both "Picard" and "Voyager" made better use of her in her handful of appearances than most of TNG did. This episode is a rare exception: She is a member of the senior crew, with the rank of lieutenant commander. But her role keeps her out of the normal command structure. So while Troi brings a lot of specialized knowledge to her role, she's also lacking a lot of the basic knowledge that most of the Starfleet officers aboard would know. Placing her in the captain's character definitely brings her out of her comfort zone, but it reveals character because we see how she evaluates competing information and makes decisions. In the end, she acquits herself well.
• This is another big O'Brien episode for TNG, with the birth of daughter Molly. It informs both his position on not abandoning those outside of the saucer component, and creates a great storyline beween Worf and Keiko, as Worf helps deliver Molly. Rosalind Chao really sold the hell out of that delivery, especially since she wasn't allowed to use any naughty words. And on Worf's side of the equation, it really gave Michael Dorn some different notes to play.
• The other two-handers worked well too: Riker with Data (and, later, Data's head) getting to Engineering, and LaForge and Crusher dealing with a radioactive situation.

No bad guys to defeat, no great moral stance to take, just a lot of really solid problem solving and character building.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 15-16
5	2, 5, 7-9
6	6
7

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode was "Schisms", from Season 6. It's a creepy one, playing on those fears of alien abductions and autopsies embedded deeply into our cultural consciousness. Much like "Conspiracy" in the first season, it ends on one hell of a dangling thread: Aliens from another dimension with mysterious and seemingly nefarious purposes are out there, and while they've been shut out for now, they've left a probe or something to help them find their way back. The scene where Riker, Geordi, Worf, and the other crew woman reconstruct to exam table was particularly creepy.

If I had a complaint, it's that neither the alien's operating theater nor the aliens themselves were creepy enough for all of the build up. The audience needed to feel their visceral terror, and I really didn't.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 15-16
5	2, 5, 7-9
6	5-6
7

 

[Kevin Hewell]

This is another big O'Brien episode for TNG, with the birth of daughter Molly. It informs both his position on not abandoning those outside of the saucer component, and creates a great storyline beween Worf and Keiko, as Worf helps deliver Molly. Rosalind Chao really sold the hell out of that delivery, especially since she wasn't allowed to use any naughty words. And on Worf's side of the equation, it really gave Michael Dorn some different notes to play.

This comes back a bit on DS9 when the O'Brien's second child was born, albeit under very different circumstances.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Today's episode: "Clues", from season 4. It's a neat little puzzle box of an episode, which realize emphasizes the ways in which Data is different from the living beings he serves with instead of the ways in which he strives to be more like them.

It's a bit strange that Whoopi is featured heavily in the cold open but then is absent from the rest of the episode. Given that Guinan has, in other episodes, had partial or full awareness of mind-altering events that everybody else was unaware of, it felt like a dangling thread. If they didn't want to delve into those questions, it probably would have been better to exclude Guinan from the episode altogether.

The inciting incident for the mystery felt more than a little contrived, however: A civilization so advanced that it could take over people's bodies remotely and so dangerous that Picard would roofie his entire crew -- twice! -- and falsify records to placate them, yet so fearful of outsiders that it would destroy an entire ship to preserve the secrecy of its homeworld.

This comes back a bit on DS9 when the O'Brien's second child was born, albeit under very different circumstances.

"Well, I'll be sure and call you when she's ready to deliver; you can lend a hand."
"Seven months? Unfortunately, I will be away from the station at that time. Far away. Visiting my parents. On Earth. Excuse me."

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9
6	5-6
7

 

[Sam Favate]

Tonight's episode was "Schisms", from Season 6. It's a creepy one, playing on those fears of alien abductions and autopsies embedded deeply into our cultural consciousness.

I always thought this needed a follow-up. At the time it aired, I thought it would be addressed later in the season, like they were building to something.

I still use this one as an excuse when I wake up with an unknown bruise or scratch, and my wife asks what happened. I shrug and say the aliens must have abducted me, did experiments and put me back.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Today's episode: "The Pegasus", from season 7. It's another great morally questionable character from Terry O'Quinn.

I thought a lot about DS9 while watching this episode, which gets steadily darker after the (actually pretty effective) humor surrounding "Captain Picard Day". It's the exact kind of moral quandary that DS9 loved to tackle. But one would have to assume that DS9 would have had a very different ending, especially in the later seasons.

Spoiler: Deep Space Nine 6x19

Sisko misled the Romulans into joining a war against their interests, and recruited the assassin who killed the Romulans who learned the truth, all with the tacit approval of Starfleet Command. Now "The Pegasus" took place before the Dominion War, while that was at a moment when the Federation faced imminent defeat. But even so, it's hard to imagine that Starfleet Command wouldn't be willing to overlook a lot to secure such a strategic advantage.

I also liked the back and forth between Picard and the Romulan captain, both of whom make their points clearly without ever actually stating anything truthfully.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9
6	5-6
7	12

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's two-parter: "Time's Arrow", closing out season 5 and kicking off season 6. A wonderfully timey-wimey episode that takes full advantage of having two characters that don't age like humans do.

It's also a different version of time travel than Trek usually employs. Usually, time travel on Trek is cause and effect; either through the creation of an alternate universe, as in the Kelvin trilogy, or through characters going back in time to change the future. In this episode, the events that trigger the time travel are only possible because the time travel has already occurred; Guinan's entire friendship with Picard is a predestination paradox.

I also loved the idea that Data's head would make it back to the Enterprise the long way around. When Data believes his decapitated head is proof that his life is finite, and derives comfort rather than dread from that belief, it really sets up his story arc in the first season of "Picard".

The period stuff in the nineteenth century feels like the kind of story the show would normally do in the holodeck, except this time it's for real. If Mark Twain wasn't really like Jerry Handin portrayed him, well, he ought to have been. A wonderfully colorful performance. And while 1890s San Francisco wasn't a great time or place to be black, it's a time and place where two characters perceived to be black would at least not be completely out of place. Lots of black people headed west after the Civil War, and a lot of the racist passions in California at the time were more focused on Chinese immigrants.

Whoopi Goldberg is always wonderful as Guinan, and she's especially wonderful here as two versions of the same person: one who is very early in her life, and another who is fairly ancient. I liked the care taken in the writing with the different power dynamics between Picard and Guinan in the two time periods, with their roles reversed depending on who was at the beginning of the relationship and who was at the end of the relationship. They're both terrific feature film caliber actors, and they're both always terrific together.

All in all, time travel is very much overused in Trek, especially in the Berman/Braga era, but this was one of the better examples.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 26
6	1, 5-6
7	12

 

[Nelson Au]

Adam, those are some really good episodes and your posts are kind of inspiring me to revisit them soon. I’m running through Voyager now, on the home stretch of the 7th season.

I really like the Romulan Commander Tomalak in his appearances on TNG, not including Future Imperfect. i know it’s not realistic that Tomalak is the only Romulan Commander out there that Picard would encounter but I thought he might have been more a threat in Pegasus then the guy they encountered. The Romulan that was looking for the Pegasus wasn’t bad, I was just wondering, what-if It was Tomalak.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode: "Homeward", from season 7. There is a lot to like about this episode, but it is fatally undermined by what I feel is the writers' misunderstanding of the purpose and intent of the Prime Directive.

It is, inherently, somewhat arbitrary: The Federation avoids interfering in pre-warp civilizations while engaging with civilizations who have crossed the warp barrier because that was the practice and custom of the Vulcans, one of the Federation's founding members. The Prime Directive serves as a safeguard against cultural pollution and imperial ambition. Neither of those concerns are relevant in the face of an extinction-level event; if all sentient life is about to die, than there's nothing to preserve.

But to see a group of people drowning and not offering them the use of the lifeboat you have on hand and ready isn't an act of preservation, it's an act of destruction -- an act of destruction far more certain than whatever consequences arise from engagement. As Jefferson Smith said in a famous old movie: "I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too." The writers seemed to forget that with this episode.

However, once they get past the captain's desire to leave everybody to die, the episode picks up considerably. The conflict driving the rest of the episode -- relocating the village to a new planet without making them aware of their place in the cosmos -- is strong enough and interesting enough that I wish they had been assigned from the beginning that as their mission. Worf's adoptive brother impregnating one of the locals, and the historian escaping the holodeck and being unable to cope, would have still allowed for a lot of the episode's explorations of the Prime Directive and its implications.

There's something fun about the fact that Paul Sorvino doesn't even attempt to play Nikolai as Russian, given how deliberately ethnic Worf's adoptive parents were made to be. It also means that a bad accent doesn't get between the two brothers as they work through their issues.

Interesting to see Penny Johnson pop up here as one of the villagers, given her important future role on DS9.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 26
6	1, 5-6
7	12-13

 

[Joel Fontenot]

My oldest son and I have still been slowly going through the whole series. I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread (or could have been another one). We catch maybe 2 or 3 a week. My son, in his early 20s now, is still enjoying it, and wants to carry it to the movies when we get there. Then hit Picard.

The last episode we watched was "Face of the Enemy". So we're about halfway through season 6.

It's been so long that I've seen most of these episodes that it's just nice to enjoy them again. And see how the show got progressively better over time. A few not-so-great episodes here and there of course, but still love it overall.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode: "Conundrum", from season 5. The premise of the episode, with the entire crew of the Enterprise suffering from amnesia, is an engine to explore who these people are innately and how they approach problems with limited information.

Mostly, the episode respects the intelligence and capabilities of its characters. They tackle their situation pretty systematically, steadily adjusting as more information becomes available to them. The red flags that the audience picks up on are also picked up on by the characters.

The one question is why "MacDuff", who went to such effort to take over the ship and manipulate its personnel and records, didn't make himself captain instead of first officer. Worf refused to participate in mutiny, Picard having won his respect earlier in the episode, but he might not have refused the order if he thought "MacDuff" was the rightful captain. I think a line of technobabble about it being too difficult to switch over the command codes from Picard or something was necessary to smooth over that plot hole.

It was fun to see a young Liz Vassey pop up as a member of the crew being treated for a holodeck injury at the time everybody's memories were taken away, and as a result having to spend the episode in a bathing suit with no context clues to help her figure out more.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 14, 26
6	1, 5-6
7	12-13

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode: "Thine Own Self", from season 7. I liked this one a lot.

The main plot, with a damaged Data inadvertently exposing a village to radiation, is the stronger of the two. Ronald D. Moore's script carefully violates the Prime Directive in such a way that nobody in Starfleet, including Data himself, is aware of it. The pre-warp civilization on the planet is at level of development equivalent to the Middle Ages. Data, in the process of (re)discovering radiation poisoning and its treatment, ends up teaching the village doctor and a young girl the principles of scientific theory as well as revealing number important discoveries. In so doing, he might have singlehandedly kicked off the Enlightenment for this civilization; who knows how many centuries his visit may shave off this species's journey to the stars?

The secondary plot, with Deanna testing to become a full commander, is also strong. But it's the kind of story that would have worked better in bits and pieces over the course of the season if TNG has been more serialized. And it would have had more weight had Star Trek been more consistent with rank and responsibility. The episode ties the bridge officer's exam to the rank of commander, but this doesn't make much sense; until this episode, Riker and Crusher are the only two commanders on the ship. Lieutenant commanders and even lieutenants are regularly placed in command when Picard and Riker are not available. If they'd tweaked the dialogue so that the bridge officer's exam was only the last requirement for promotion that Troi had yet to complete, I think it would have played better. That being said, I did like the callback to "Disaster", from season five. And Crusher commenting on how she liked command foreshadowed the possible future in the series finale, when she was the captain of USS Pasteur.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 14, 26
6	1, 5-6
7	12-13, 16

 

[Sam Favate]

Tonight's episode: "Thine Own Self", from season 7. I liked this one a lot.

I also like this one, and it's one of the better latter Data episodes in the series. It always reminds me of The Ensigns of Command from season 3, which is similar, and IMO, superior.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Last night's episode: "Brothers", from season 4. One of two TNG episodes written by franchise head Rick Berman.

The medically dire boy needing to get to a starbase for treatment gave the story a nice ticking clock, but the spat between him and his brother -- clearly designed to provide thematic resonance with the main plot with Data and Lore -- felt like too much screentime for two characters we've never met before and have no reason to care about. I did like Dr. Crusher's bedside manner while acting as a pediatrician, however.

The hook with Data being compromised and quickly and efficiently taking over the ship was a compelling way to get into the story, though, and a reminder of just how dangerous androids can be if they're not on your side. It's an area that I assume "Picard" will continue to explore going forward, especially since two of its main characters are androids. Once he reached the planet, though, it was basically an opportunity for Brent Spiner to chew scenery playing three very different roles. It must have been a production nightmare.

Tonight's episode: "Starship Mine", from season 6. Come for Data's small talk, stay for Die Hard on a starship where Picard basically kills five people. It's an enjoyable episode, but definitely feels like a departure from Roddenberry's vision for TNG-era Trek. In some ways, it feels more like a Kirk plot than a Picard plot.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	3, 12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 14, 26
6	1, 5-6, 18
7	12-13, 16

 

[Sam Favate]

Tonight's episode: "Starship Mine", from season 6. Come for Data's small talk, stay for Die Hard on a starship where Picard basically kills five people. It's an enjoyable episode, but definitely feels like a departure from Roddenberry's vision for TNG-era Trek. In some ways, it feels more like a Kirk plot than a Picard plot.

Of course it wasn’t intended as such, but I always imagined the thieves in Starship Mine were stealing the trilithium for the Duras sisters, who had a trilithium weapon in Generations. It’s just a way of tying a not-so-great movie to one of my favorite episodes.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

Here's hoping we don't have to see the Duras sisters again.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode: "Lessons", from season 6. I liked that Lt. Commander Daren felt like a specifically Picard love interest, rather than a generic love interest. I believed that Picard would fall for her, and there was some genuine substance to their relationship. I also appreciated how the script recognized and confront the power dynamics at play in such a relationship, and the problems that could arise from it. The cheap ending would have been to kill her off; having her survive but neither of them being willing to sacrifice their careers for their relationship was less dramatic but felt more real; Picard is not someone who is prone to indulging in flights of fancy. And Beverly Crusher's reaction to the whole thing was very carefully handled.

I think all of the flute stuff was a callback to that episode where the ancient dead civilization downloads itself into Picard's brain and basically leaves him with the memories of an entire lifetime in their culture. Haven't seen that one since the early nineties; I'll have to revisit it soon.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	3, 12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 14, 26
6	1, 5-6, 18-19
7	12-13, 16

 

[JohnRice]

Tonight's episode: "Lessons", from season 6. I liked that Lt. Commander Daren felt like a specifically Picard love interest, rather than a generic love interest. I believed that Picard would fall for her, and there was some genuine substance to their relationship. I also appreciated how the script recognized and confront the power dynamics at play in such a relationship, and the problems that could arise from it. The cheap ending would have been to kill her off; having her survive but neither of them being willing to sacrifice their careers for their relationship was less dramatic but felt more real; Picard is not someone who is prone to indulging in flights of fancy. And Beverly Crusher's reaction to the whole thing was very carefully handled.

I think all of the flute stuff was a callback to that episode where the ancient dead civilization downloads itself into Picard's brain and basically leaves him with the memories of an entire lifetime in their culture. Haven't seen that one since the early nineties; I'll have to revisit it soon.

Season	Episodes Revisited
1	3, 25-26
2
3	6, 11
4	3, 12, 14-16
5	2, 5, 7-9, 14, 26
6	1, 5-6, 18-19
7	12-13, 16

You’re referring to “The Inner Light”. Not only a great episode of this series, but one of the best in the history of broadcast television.

Why aren’t you watching the entire series in order?