Star Trek: TNG Reviews - From Start to Finish!

Ooh, you're just flyin' past me now!

I'll refrain from reading your reviews for now, because I still want to try and watch the series as if this were my first time.

I only started watching TNG regularly around the 4th or 5th season. And even during the first run, I know I missed new episodes here and there. And I thought I had caught all the other episodes later in varous reruns, totally out of order.

But even then it has still been quite a while since I've seen any TNG reruns. I think I might have watched a couple back when SpikeTV first picked up the rights to the show.

Shit, why would you even want him in the service? In a real military, if you turn down a promotion, you don't get to hang around. They show you the door.

Jellico was the best Captain in post TOS Star Trek, bar none.

Jellico was an ASS.

Yep. He tried to get the Stargate program shut down, too. What a dick.

But seriously, it was refreshing to see a Captain who had a mission to complete and set about on doing it, regardless of the whining of a spoiled crew led by a petulant Riker.

"But we don't want to work only six hours!"

He seemed like a no-nonsense by-the-book officer who knew exactly how to run a ship. Meanwhile Riker followed him around whining like a teenager about every single order he gave.

Of course, you've actually HAD captains, so I defer to your experience.

Jellico was a bad officer. That's not to say that the crew was in the right the entire episode, they had their BS issues too.

But Jellico was a micro-managing, untrusting, overbearing twat of the type I had the misfortune to work for on a couple of occasions. Unfortunately a lot of people like that rise to command in the real Navy because they do tend to get results; the only problem is that they leave a swath of destruction in their wakes- illustrated primarily by low retention rates, crushed morale, reduced initiative, bitterness, loss of unit cohesion and esprit de corps, and the sudden lack of 'giving a fuck'. When you are trapped under a commander who's going to hammer you, micromanage, and be in your face no matter what the fuck you do, then you tend to throw up your hands and say 'Fuck you! Minimum effort time!' Jellico didn't display any sense of trust or loyalty DOWN the chain of command. He was what we called a 'one-way'- it was all about him and what he wanted. He didn't listen- he just made demands.

Also, crisis notwithstanding, you do NOT assume command of a well oiled machine and then go about scrambling it up from the get-go so that people don't know if they're coming or going. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. And if you assign someone a task, it's incumbent upon you to ensure they have the time and tools (or personnel) to complete it.

One thing that botherd me was that he was probably aware that his stint in command would be short - just until (if) Picard returned from his mission. Why change the way the ship and staff operate for just that short period?

Picards mission was something of a suicide mission. The Cardassian weapon needed to be shut down at all costs.

Also, Jellico seemed to believe another war with the Cardassians was a serious possibility, in which case he would have expected to retain command of the flagship instead of Picard, a captain arguably less suited to fighting a war.

Evolution

Not a bad start to the third season. This episode has A LOT in common with the first season episode, Home Soil. A new undiscovered form of life, the mad scientist, the crew trying to understand and communicate with said lifeform... in fact, it is almost as if the writers re-watched that episode and decided to do it better.

Home Soil had an interesting concept but it was slow, talky, and lacked any suspense, humor or characterization. A very dry episode. Evolution had all those things. And all the baseball references made it quite clear that this was a Michael Piller episode. Seriously, the guy must be obsessed with baseball. Although it did work well as an important part of Sisko's character on DS9, so I'm not complaining.

The crazy scientist, Dr. Paul Stubbs, was an interesting guest character and the guy who played him did a good job. But we've seen lots of mad scientists over the years, both in and out of Trek, so none of this is very original.

This was a good episode for Wesley. Certainly better than The Dauphin, his last major episode. He has definitely grown up more and he even got to have a bit of conflict with his mother, who recently rejoined the ship and is having trouble relating to her son. The parallels between Stubbs and Wesley were also interesting. Unfortunately his character issues were resolved far too quickly. It would have been more interesting if Wesley and his mother remained distant for most of the season, but of course TNG never did that sort if long running character conflict. I'm interested to see what they do with Dr. Crusher this season.

This wasn't a standout episode. Nothing really wrong with it, but it is stuff we've seen before. The nanites are interesting creatures but artificial intelligence is a theme that TNG revisits over and over again. The production values of the show seem to have increased slightly. The Enterprise model looks a little nicer and some of the special effects seem a bit more impressive.

Oh, yeah, and they have a slightly altered opening sequence now. Instead of the flyaway from the solar system, we just see the Enterprise flying away from some random stellar objects. Not sure why they changed it, since it really isn't all that different.

Rating:

Looking back, anyone else find it odd how easily the Enterprise crew seems to create sentient life by accident? Wesley creates the sentient nanites as a science project, Geordi creates the sentient Moriarity with a slip of the tongue...



There's a message there somewhere, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Ken Jenkins (Dr. Kelso from Scrubs)

I can't figger that out either. The original opening showed us moving out from home! Plus, it was a very cool single-secene effect without breaks.

The new opening introduced a cut at the ringed planet, and killed the image of us leaving the home system.

Made no sense to me.

The Hunted - fleeing from the authorities, a soldier who looks kinda like a bad-ass version of Kevin Nealon leads the Enterprise crew on a merry chase. Turns out he's one of many soldiers the planet Angosia imprisons because they're unable to re-integrate them into society. James Cromwell plays the Angosia high muckety-muck, into whose lap Picard dumps the problem before beaming out. Another one of those eps where the Enterprise crew is useless in providing any kind of solution, but simply leaves the aliens to work it out themselves. Some fun, though. **

The High Ground - a terrorist leader kidnaps Dr. Crusher and threatens to destroy the Enterprise in order to call attention to his people's plight. The terror leader, Finn, is passionate and well-written, but the writers can't bring themselves to depict terrorists accurately (e.g., their murder of 60 schoolchildren is claimed to have been an accident). Once again, Wonderboy Wesley comes up with the breakthrough that resolves the situation. Ugh. Still, some good action and dialog keep it from being worse. **

Deja Q - Q is thrown out of the Q Continuum and must face the difficulties of living as a human aboard the Enterprise! Quite a few laughs lift this episode above average. And Q (Corbin Bernsen!) appears, too! **1/2

A Matter of Perspective - Star Trek done Rashomon-style! Riker is charged with murdering a scientist and, in the course of a hearing, several differing accounts of the events are told. Like Akira Kurosawa's classic film, explores the idea that people can be at odds with one another, yet convinced they are telling the truth. **1/2

Yesterday's Enterprise - Another fantastic episode! When the Enterprise-C passes through a space anomaly into the 24th century, it causes profound changes to Picard's reality: the Federation is at war with the Klingons and Tasha Yar still lives! In order to restore the timeline, the Enterprise-C must return and face a hopeless(?) battle. Tasha goes along for the ride and presumably earns a death worthy of her character. Terrific alternate reality episode and the basis for some other events later in the series. ***1/2.

Yesterdays Enterprise loses points for providing a plausible setup for Nemesis.

Aye, there's the important word.
It's too bad she died in a prison camp a few years later.

This is the episode that Voyager remade a few years later. Same story exactly, slightly rewritten for V'ger characters. As if I didn't revile V'ger enough before.

I'll repeat my standard criticism of Yesterday' Enterprise - Guinan did not belong in this ep, and it would have been MUCH better without her. She served the purpose only of exposition - telling characters what was going on and what they should do. To me, this lessened the characters. Picard didn't need to know the timeline might be wonky to know he should send the C back to save the Federation, in fact, he would have seemed smarter and stronger for doing it as his own idea. Yar should have been brave enough to go back with them and risk death without Guinan's mystical "you should be dead" speach.

Plus, if there's no councillor on a battleship in the middle of a war, WTF is a civilian bartender doing there?

Great epiosde, would have been greater if everyone had the opportunity to show their own intelligence and bravery without Guinan leading them by the nose.

With the Federation having to surrender, Spock would probably have never been able to stop that supernova that threatened to destroy the galaxy.

So really, this episode, or any episode that dramatically alters the timeline, would have most likely resulted in the eventual total annhiliation of everybody and everything in the Milky Way. So go ahead and toss them all out the window.

The one episode of Star Trek that actually got extensive discussion in law school. It was an evidentiary issue - are these 'recreations' admissible? Relevant? Overly prejudicial? Interesting discussions of technology and the law.

It's not a battleship, but the Canadian Forces base in Afghanistan has civilian employees running a Tim Hortons.

If nothing else it is to boost morale. We had civilians on our base in Iraq running internet cafes. I don't see a problem with the bar tender on the ship; Especially in a time of war when tension is high, you have to have some outlet for that stress.

I agree that the episode probably could've been done without Guinan, but she did provide a means of bridging the timeline and giving Tasha's character some extra reason to be on the Ent-C.

Still, it would've been an easy enough affair for Tasha to be aboard the Ent-C when the Klingons arrived and, being unable to return to the Ent-D, took command and sent the Ent-C back through the rift.

In any event, I have no problem with Guinan's presence in this (or any) episode, really.

Ah. I bow, then, to experience.

Or she could have done it just because it was in Tasha's character to be brave and self-sacrificing for the greater good. No other reason was necessary.

Oh, aye. It's just my opinion in this particular case. I normally loved Guinan.

I sometimes can't watch Yesterday's Enterprise. I get as far as Yar's early "N..C...C...one seven zero one....C... U..S..S...Enterprise... " line and have to change the fucking channel. I think I liked the idea of that character better than the way Crosby played her.

Paladin, please stop pre-empting Robotech Master.

The show must go on!!!

He'll get to it, your reviews aren't in depth enough to compete though. I think you should slow down and let him keep the lead. Another idea would be for you to do your own DS9 review thread. Go at your own pace and we could keep that discussion going too.

Keep the petty stuff in the Red Room please. Sorry if you got your feelings hurt yesterday but I see no reason to derail a good thread. This will be the last responding I do on the subject in here.

I started doing this simply to add my opinions to RM's reviews, which were more thorough in their summations. I basically wanted to give TV Guide length opinions of each to people who didn't need ALL the gory details recycled...

He's done ONE in the last few days. I'm pretty hard-pressed to go slower than that.

What's DS9?






Seriously, although I liked DS9 a lot, I didn't see all the episodes multiple times (like I have TOS and TNG). In fact, there were many episodes I missed altogether. I don't feel as well-prepared to critique that show...