Star Trek: TNG Reviews - From Start to Finish!

Q Who

Ensign Sonya Gomez? Yeah, I'd nail that.

Oh, yeah, and we finally meet the Borg! This was a fucking awesome episode and it brought together two of Trek's greatest villains, the Q and the Borg. It also provided some backstory for Guinan, who is apparently long familiar with both adversaries.

This episode continues almost exactly where the last Q episode left off. Q had been exiled from the Continuum. And, having nowhere else to go, he has returned to torment Picard and the Enterprise again. And he has returned to teach them a rather important lesson.

Just as Guinan said, this encounter sets into motion a long series of events which will radically change the entire Trek franchise from this point on.

One can almost follow the domino blocks as they fall... this initial encounter with the Borg leads to a massive build-up and militarization of Starfleet, Picard's capture and assimilation, the death of Sisko's wife, etc. Interesting thought... if Q had not sent the Enterprise off to fight the Borg, would the Federation have been prepared to fight the Dominion War years later?

Anyway, the Borg are definitely a cool race, at least as presented in this first episode. I had forgotten how imposing the Borg Cube could be. The scenes with the Away Team exploring the Cube were creepy. Borg drones would walk by, completely oblivious to their presence. I didn't remember the Borg Nursery though. Was this one of the aspects of the Borg that was dropped in later episodes? I guess so (please no one mention the damn Borg children from Voyager.)

The Borg would get a bit of a visual update in First Contact, but even in this early episode the Borg are an impressive and distinct concept for sci-fi at the time.

We also learn more about Guinan. We learn that she has had dealings with Q, that she was part of a race of refugees whose homeworld was attacked by the Borg, and that she was away when the attack happened. This is all later developed in Time's Arrow and Generations.

Like the episode Conspiracy we get another ominous warning of a coming threat. But we know this one will pay off...

Really nothing to gripe about in this episode. Great score, great art direction, cool action scenes, clever writing, an original alien race. Another home run. In hindsight, this is a major turning point in the Trek universe.

Rating:

Samaritan Snare

The incredibly cute Sonya Gomez returns in this episode! (Why isn't Geordi tappin' that ass?) Unfortunately, most of this episode is entirely forgettable and mediocre. This is one of those rare episodes where the B plot is more enjoyable than the A plot.

The A plot is moronic. We are introduced to the Pakleds, who kidnap Geordi and manage to sucessfully threaten the Enterprise despite being complete retards. And what does that say for the Enterprise crew? It would be like the US Marines getting beat up by contestants from the Special Olympics.

Why doesn't anyone ever listen to Worf when he provides sound tactical advice? Why is Riker so smug and self-confident in this episode? Yeah, the Pakleds seem stupid, but why underestimate them? Why so arrogant? Didn't Q just teach you about the dangers of this in the last episode?

Anyway, I don't want to spend any more time talking about this plot. It was just awful, IMO.

The other plot, dealing with Picard and Wes flying off to a Starbase, is far more interesting. Picard and Wes get some good moments alone in this episode and we get some good interaction between the two. Wesley flat out tells Picard that he is like a father to Wes. And we get some backstory about Picard. We learn about his artifical heart and we learn how he got it. The incident he describes in this episode will be re-created almost exactly in Tapestry. Nice attention to detail.

Nice as this plot was on a character level, it doesn't make up for the rest of the episode.

Rating:

Pen Pals - So let me get this straight: Starfleet operates under this oh-so-sacrosanct Prime Directive, but it goes completely out the fucking window 'cause Data makes a friend? Aw. Sorry, Picard...if you don't have the testicular fortitude to stand up for your (claimed) beliefs, you should maybe think of changing your beliefs. More hypocrisy from the oh-so-evolved. That the little alien kid grew up to be 90s hottie Nikki Cox doesn't save this one. *

Q Who - introduces the creepiest (and most interesting) TNG villains: the Borg. Great episode wherein Q shows Picard just how scary the galaxy can be. And this is Q at his most deliciously malevolent. Hints at greater things to come. ***

Samaritan Snare - how did this collection of waterheads ever achieve spaceflight? I'm talking about the Pakleds who are, in their own way, kinda interesting but who really don't seem to have enough gray matter to work a can opener, let alone a starship. Still, they keep zapping Geordi with a phaser in order to keep their ship going, so it's not all bad. But the other subplot? Not only do we find out Picard has a mechanical heart, but he winds up stuck in a shuttle with Wesley for half the episode. 'Nuff said. **

Up the Long Ladder - Enterprise picks up some space-Irish luddites and is transporting them and their livestock God-knows-where in a cargo bay increasingly full of cow shit, when they stumble across a colony of clones who are starting to fall prey to faulty genetic xeroxing. Get the Irish and the clonemakers together you say? Wonderful. But in the meantime, let's have Riker and Pulaski beam down and murder several clones of themselves. Apparently, "pro-choice" in the 24th Century extends to DNA and all derivative works...and is retroactive. Awful. But at least Riker nails the Irish chick...even if she has been wading around in cowshit. *1/2

Up The Long Ladder

Damn, another shitty episode. Now I really want to barrel through the rest of the season so I can compare this season's numbers to last season's numbers. So far, my impression of the season is that it is slightly better than season 1 but still very uneven.

We are introduced to some of the most annoying guest characters to ever appear on the show. We have the Bringloidians, who for some reason, are portrayed as stereotypical drunk Irish people.

Commander Riker, ship's slut, gets it on with one of the farmer's daughters while the rest attempt to raise cattle in the Enterprise cargo bay.

What was the point of this episode? There was just one random silly scene after another. In the teaser, Worf collapses onto the Bridge for some reason. Cue ominous music. But in the next scene we find out that he simply had measles. Okay...

And there is another scene where Riker just murders a bunch of clones in cold blood and no one bats an eye? So this is okay, but attempting to save the planet full of people in Pen Pals is unacceptable?

There were a few nice scenes between Worf and Pulaski in this episode, but again not enough to make up for a mediocre episode. When the drunken Irish farmer offered to drink up with O'Brien, maybe the Chief should have accepted. It would have made more sense than anything else that happened in the episode.

In this episode Picard says, 'sometimes we just have to bow to the absurd...'

Umm, no.

Rating:

Dude, aren't you burning out on this yet? Great thread but it just seems like you're watching 6 hours of TNG per day!!

While the look was certainly new, they were basically Cybermen with a higher budget.

They weren't stupid, they just had shit language skills.

Yeah... Riker and Worf seemed to be bonding at the hip.... and later on, Riker assumed command of a Klingon Warbird while in some sort of officer exchange program... This really made me wonder why Worf chose Picard to be his "Cha-deech" in S3 when he dealt with his "dishonor" ordeal.

I'll go even further... In the movie First Contact, Picard and crew destroy a Borg sphere over Earth in 2063. In the second season of Enterprise (I know, I know), the episode Regeneration reveals that some Borg survived in the North Pole region and were brought back to life and actually succeeded in building the interplexing beacon that they attempted to make in FC. So in the year 2063, The Borg were made aware of Earth and launched a cube to assimilate the planet... Which had made it all the way from the Delta qaudrant to the outskirts of the Alpha quadrant by the time Q threw Picard and Co. in the way.

So in Q Who, Q comes off as a menace, but did his actions actually give the federation a year or so heads up? Or did he start the whole loop in the first place?

I think this is intresting to think about.

Sonya Gomez - *sigh*
Lycia Naff is another one of those 80s cuties I've been in love with since first eye-contact.
Who can forget her glorious turn as the three-breasted hooker in Total Recall?

Her and Ashley Judd - two adorable ensigns who appeared only twice each in the show and made such memorable impressions that they live on in fanfic. I even used 'em both at the same time in mine.
http://www.inpayne.com/trekfanfic/wolfx.html

Gid knows I'd like to use 'em both at the same time...

Always wanted to try that...

The story I heard was that it had something to do with sexual harassment on the set by one of the producers. Or something along those lines. I think I heard the story from Garamet, perhaps she can shed some more light on that.

In any event, I was glad when she came back. Can't stand Pulaski. They tried too hard to make her McCoy with the bickering with Data, and it just didn't work.

I preferred Pulaski even if it was obvious she was McCoy 2.0.

They also never had a Pulaski-centric episode where she praises an expert on star formation as being a brilliant mathmatician. (If astrophysics is so complicated today, that you don't hear about a medical doctor/astrophysicist making fantastic discoveries in either field, can you imagine what it'd be like several hundred years in the future when there's more crap to worry about in both fields. )

The TNG writers also showed a distinct lack of brilliance by failing to have Pulaski killed by falling down a turboshaft. (This would have had multiple layers to it. One, her character on another show was killed in a similar manner, and two, she bitched about the transporter, but never the turbolifts, so getting killed by one of them would have been a bit ironic, to say the least.)

Hey, great job on this thread.

You probably should arrange a boycott of TNG then.

You're a fantastic addition to this board.

Says the guy trolling outside the RR.

I was being serious. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply.

Keep it civil in here; take the trolling somewhere else.

Thanks for your firm hand. But don't be too harsh on him. The noobs sometimes don't know the ropes.

Manhunt

Another pointless episode. Well, I guess you could call it a comedy episode. And I did chuckle a bit at some of the dialogue.

But, for whatever reason, the TNG cast doesn't do humor well. The original cast certainly did it well (The Trouble With Tribbles, Star Trek IV) and they had a number of great comedy episodes on DS9.

I dunno... the TNG cast is a great ensemble but they are kind of stiff. Their humor is a little more lowkey. They act so serious all the time, it is hard to see them ever being silly. This was probably the biggest problem I had with Insurrection. But we'll get to that later...

This episode features the return of Lwaxana Troi. She was FAR more annoying this time around. Did we really need an episode based around Lwaxana's horny-ness?

There were some humorous bits here and there. Mr. Homm is always amusing. I liked how Picard invited Data to his dinner with Lwaxana so he could bore them all to death with his anecdotes. And upon seeing the Antedeans, a race of fish-heads being transported to a conference, Worf comments that they are a handsome race of aliens.

We also saw the return of Picard's Dixon Hill holofantasy. One amusing bit was when he was was trying to re-adjust the settings of the program to make it less violent and more relaxing and it just kept getting more violent each time.

Hmm... guess that is all I really have to say about that one.

Rating:

The Emissary

I believe this is the second episode to really focus on Worf and it is another good one. K'ehleyr is a magnificent woman. She really was the perfect woman for Worf... not Troi or Jadzia.

This is basically a romance story but it has something which most Trek romances lack: chemistry.

As soon they see each other, you can almost see sparks fly between Worf and K'ehleyr and that is really, really important in making a convincing love story.

Of course, this is a Klingon love story so they can get pretty wild on each other when they revisit Worf's holodeck combat fantasy!

The show implies that the two frakked each others brains out between the acts, but since this is Trek they obviously will not show us any of that. But we know they did the deed since Alexander shows up later in the series.

We also get the second instance of the crew playing poker. This weekly poker game actually works really well because it oftens informs us about the characters without being too obvious.

K'ehleyr and Worf have some tense moments but ultimately team up to resolve a crisis with a Klingon sleeper ship that has entered Federation territory. It was pretty cool seeing Worf in command of the Enterprise, at least temporarily.

Suzie Plakson was excellent as a half human, half Klingon woman. They clearly wanted this character, or at least someone like her, on VOY when they created B'ellana. And she was probably one of the better VOY characters, though inconsistently written.

Good Worf episode which introduces some more twists and turns to his long character arc.

Rating:

Peak Performance

This episode wasn't too serious, but it had just the right balance between humor and suspense to be a really enjoyable episode.

Kolrami, the Zakdorn military strategist, was a really funny and entertaining guest character. I don't who the actor was but he was clearly enjoying the role. I loved his facial expressions and the way he would aggravate everyone else with his smugness.

I like the idea of Starfleet using simulated wargames to prepare themselves for a Borg invasion. Nice foreshadowing/plotting. It was pretty neat to see them pit Riker against Picard during the exercise and point out how they differ in command approach.

And it was interesting to see Data lose confidence after losing a game to Kolrami. And it was even more fun to watch him wipe the smirk of Kolrami's face when they re-matched. It is clear by this point that Data and Pulaski are pretty good friends now. Nice gradual development of this friendship over the course of the season.

The Ferengi showed up again to throw a wrench into the wargames. As a plot device, they were fine. It could have been anyone really. I'm fairly certain the Ferengi commander was played by Armin Shimmerman, who goes on to play Quark in DS9.

I really enjoyed this episode. One of the better season offerings.

Rating:

Shades Of Grey

This shouldn't really even count as an episode since the last 20 minutes or so are just clips from old episodes. Bleh.

It's not even that bad. The episode actually starts off decent and has an okay plot but it is a fairly simple one that can't seem to fill up even half the episode's allotted time.

Riker gets some sort of infection and in order to battle it, he must confront his most vivid memories... or something.

Meh. I guess the show was contracted for 22 episodes and they had to come up with this one at the last minute. I don't really know the behind the scenes details for this season, but clearly something was wrong and this season was mostly transitional.

Anyway, let's get to the recap...

Rating:

Season 2

So last season was uneven but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. It started off very badly but towards the end of the season started to get much better.

Season 2 was definitely better overall. The actors were more comfortable with their characters, there was good season long planning and character development, the dialogue was sharper, we had standout episodes, and nothing quite as bad as some of the stuff from season 1. And there were some truly great episodes this season. I do not know if I could say that about the first season.

We still haven't reached the Michael Piller, Ron Moore, Brannon Braga days but so far this show is on the right track and has produced two good seasons. Not great, but I was entertained enough that I wanted to keep watching.

I'll miss Dr. Pulaski. She definitely helped give the show more energy. Dr. Crusher was sort of anemic in the first season so hopefully they will figure out what to do with her when she comes back. And it was nice to see some recurring characters get more time this season like O'Brien, Guinan, Q...

So what were my numbers? There were 17 episodes I liked in the first season. There were 15 episodes I liked this season. But there were only 22 hours of episodes, compared to 26 last season. So...

Season 1 = 65%
Season 2 = 68%

Slight improvement! IMO, anyway. Many would disagree. But the highs were higher and the lows were not as low. Onward to season 3 and, hopefully, further evolution of the show!




Season 2 episodes I liked

The Child, Where Silence Has Lease, Elementary Dear Data, The Schizoid Man, Unnatural Selection, A Matter Of Honor, The Measure Of A Man, Contagion, The Royale, Time Squared, The Icarus Factor, Pen Pals, Q Who, The Emissary, Peak Performance

Season 2 episodes I disliked

The Outrageous Okona, Loud As A Whisper, The Dauphin, Samaritan Snare, Up The Long Ladder, Manhunt, Shades Of Grey

Season two had the wool uniforms with the collars right?

It was also the season with eight or nine wholly untalented actors with high estrogen counts, who talked too much, and did absolutely nothing memorable or compelling.

This is a trend that continued for Trek properties until just a month ago.

Don't bring your B game trolling to this thread. You know DS9 was better than TOS and it's hippie themed space adventures.