troi is useless Archive

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Suddenly Human”

– May 22, 2014 8:00 amPosted in: Featured, TNG Re-Watch

“Suddenly Human”
Teleplay by John Whelpley & Jeri Taylor
Story by Ralph Phillips
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

Season 3, Episode 4
Original air date: October 15, 1990
Star date: 44143.7

Mission summary

The Enterprise investigates a Talarian distress call and finds an adrift training ship full of injured teens and children (but no Scoutmaster). Radiation is leaking from the propulsion system and Dr. Crusher beams the five survivors to the Enterprise just in time. Among the survivors, however, is a human boy…

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Tags: bad parenting, daddy issues, forehead ridges, horrible horrible children, picard hates children, troi is useless

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Family”

Torie Atkinson

– January 2, 2014 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

Family “Family”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Les Laundau

Season 4, Episode 2
Original air date: October 1, 1990
Star date: 44012.3

Mission summary

The Enterprise is docked above Earth completing some much needed, post-Borg repairs and upgrades, so everyone onboard uses the opportunity to phone home. Picard packs his bags for La Barre, his quaint little French hometown; Worf reluctantly prepares to receive his adoptive parents, the very kind, very Russian Sergey and Helena Rozhenko; and Dr. Crusher picks up an old box of Jack Crusher’s things from storage, including a holographic message he recorded for Wesley shortly after he was born.

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Tags: belonging, daddy issues, fully clothed man-wrestling, identity crisis, klingons, parents, troi is useless, wesley's dad, worf identity crisis

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Ménage à Troi”

Torie Atkinson

– August 15, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

Menage a Troi “Ménage à Troi”
Written by Fred Bronson & Susan Sackett
Directed by Robert Legato

Season 3, Episode 24
Original air date: May 28, 1990
Star date: 43930.7

Mission summary

The Enterprise is hosting a trade agreement conference while in orbit around Betazed, which means it’s time for another installment of How I Studiously Avoided Meeting Your Mother starring Lwaxana Troi. Lwaxana seems happy at the chance to further berate her daughter for choosing a career over babies on Betazed, but gets derailed when a Ferengi named DaiMon Tog hits on her in the middle of the reception. For some reason “I would pay handsomely for you” doesn’t work on her, and she spurns him in front of the delegation before storming off. But Tog isn’t superficial–he wants her mind, too. To give him an edge on negotiations.

Riker gets assigned shore leave, so he and Deanna go for a walk down Memory Lane–and also the Huntington Library Botanical Gardens–on Betazed. But their little date is spoiled when Lwaxana and Mr. Homn arrive, and start Meddling. Mr. Homn goes off to pick some berries while Riker, Deanna, and Lwaxana get more and more irritated with one another. Just then, DaiMon Tog beams down! He still has the hots for Mama Troi, and won’t take no for an answer–beaming them all back to his ship.

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Tags: ferengis, Lwaxana Troi Daughter of the Fifth House Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, Picard acts weird, sexism, shakespeare, troi is useless, wesley and picard are BFFs, wesley saves the day

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Hollow Pursuits”

Eugene Myers

– July 25, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“Hollow Pursuits”
Written by Sally Caves
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 3, Episode 21
Original air date: April 30, 1990
Star date: 43807.4

Mission summary

A lieutenant engineer we’ve never seen before, Barclay, is drinking in Ten Forward when La Forge reminds him that he’s on duty. Barclay blows off his superior, then wrestles even Commander Riker into submission and sends the two of them packing, while Counselor Troi looks on avidly. Just as she’s throwing herself at him, he’s ordered to report to one of the cargo bays. Guess they’ll have to pick this up later, which it turns out will be easy as easy as saying “Save program,” because he’s been playing out a fantasy on the holodeck.

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Tags: barclay surprises people, holodeck, holodreck, illusions, lack of holodeck privacy, loneliness, mysteries, not everyone loves riker, sexism, transporter malfunction, troi is useless, Wesley is a smartypants

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “A Matter of Perspective”

Torie Atkinson

– April 4, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“A Matter of Perspective”
Written by Ed Zuckerman
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 3, Episode 14
Original air date: February 12, 1990
Star date: 43610.4

Mission summary

Data interrupts Picard’s art class to tell him that they’ve arrived at Tenuga IV and also that Picard couldn’t paint his way out of a Rothko. It seems Riker and La Forge conducted a survey of Dr. Apgar’s work on Krieger waves, which they hope will become a new energy source. La Forge says in so many words that Riker surveyed someone just a little too intimately and is in a rush to return. But as he beams back, Dr. Apgar’s science station explodes, and Riker barely makes it home intact.

But his luck isn’t meant to last, because an Inspector Krag beams aboard and arrests Riker… for murder.

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Tags: emotional women, fully clothed man-wrestling, handwaving mumblemumble, holodeck, holodreck, mysteries, not everyone loves riker, science!, troi is useless

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Defector”

Torie Atkinson

– March 7, 2013 9:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Defector”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Robert Sheerer

Season 3, Episode 10
Original air date: January 1, 1990
Star date: 43462.5

Mission summary

Picard is giving Data lessons in humanity by way of Henry V on the holodeck, but their epiphanies are interrupted by a Romulan scout ship asking for help. Suddenly a warbird decloaks, fires some shots at the scout ship, and turns away as the Enterprise extends its deflector shields around the scout ship to protect it. As life support there fails, Picard has the ship’s only occupant beamed over: Romulan Sublieutenant Setal, bearing warnings that the Romulans are planning to start a war, beginning at Nelvana III.

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Tags: diplomacy, emotion, loyalty, mysteries, romulans, troi is useless, war

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Enemy”

Eugene Myers

– February 14, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

theenemy185 “The Enemy”
Written by David Kemper and Michael Piller
Directed by David Carson

Season 3, Episode 7
Original air date: November 6, 1989
Star date: 43349.2

Mission summary

A distress signal leads Enterprise to a crappier-than-usual planet, Galorndon Core, where a small away team discovers the remnants of a Romulan shuttle–which was apparently destroyed after it crash-landed. Worf stumbles across an injured Romulan and promptly injures him some more to make him easier to rescue. Meanwhile, the hapless La Forge becomes the proverbial “boy in the well” when the ground crumbles beneath him and he plummets into a crevasse. Because of magnetic interference in the atmosphere that disrupts transporter beams, communications, and tricorders, Riker and Worf have to leave their friend behind, but no one really considers a surly Romulan on the verge of death a fair trade for their engineer.

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Tags: angry klingons, blindness, diplomacy, dr. crusher is pushy, hell planet, klingons, magic VISOR, neutrinos, orphans, penis-waving around the Neutral Zone, riker drinks alone, rocks, romulans, troi is useless, Wesley is a smartypants

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Bonding”

Eugene Myers

– January 31, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Bonding”
Written by Ronald D. Moore
Directed by Winrich Kolbe

Season 3, Episode 5
Original air date: October 23, 1989
Star date: 43198.7

Mission summary

An Enterprise away team is rummaging through the remnants of yet another alien civilization that destroyed itself, the Koinonians, when it stumbles across a booby trap that explodes and instantly kills Lt. Marla Aster, the ship’s archaeologist. The sudden, violent death is all the more tragic because she leaves behind a 12-year-old son, Jeremy.

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Tags: aliens, batteries not included, civil war, dead civilizations, emotion, energy entities, evil doubles, horrible horrible children, illusions, klingons, loneliness, orphans, troi is useless

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Who Watches the Watchers”

Torie Atkinson

– January 24, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“Who Watches the Watchers”
Written by Richard Manner & Hans Beimler
Directed by Robert Wierner

Season 3, Episode 4
Original air date: October 16, 1989
Star date: 43173.5

Mission summary

The Enterprise hurries to Mintaka III, where some Federation anthropologists secretly observing a proto-Vulcan race are in jeopardy. Their sooper sekrit compound blows up when the generator fails, exposing their little observation tower to the natives below–a girl named Oji and her father, Liko. The scientists and Liko are injured in the explosion, and Crusher decides to beam them onboard for medical treatment. Oji watches all this from a hiding place, wondering what the hell is going on…

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Tags: moral superiority, native americans, not everyone loves riker, picard moralizing, prime directive, religion, the picard, the prime directive: more like guidelines than actual rules, troi is useless

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Survivors”

Eugene Myers

– January 10, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Survivors”
Written by Michael Wagner
Directed by Les Landau

Season 3, Episode 3
Original air date: October 8, 1989
Star date: 43152.4

Mission summary

Enterprise responds to a distress call at planet Rana IV, which was reportedly under attack by an unknown ship. But by the time they get there, the enemy is gone—along with all life and buildings on the surface. Eleven thousand colonists have been wiped out. No wait, make that 10,998. Scans show that there are two survivors located in an improbably intact square of land that contains a house and plant life.

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