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Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Déjà Q”

– March 28, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

dejaq285 “Déjà Q”
Written by Richard Danus
Directed by Les Landau

Season 3, Episode 13
Original air date: February 5, 1990
Star date: 43539.1

Mission summary

Enterprise is rendering assistance to Bre’el IV, which is about to say “goodnight, moon”— an asteroidal body on a decaying orbit will slam into the planet in twenty-nine hours unless they can devise a way to shove it back where it belongs. It’s just too damn big for the tractor beams to nudge it, which La Forge eloquently compares to “an ant pushing a tricycle.” To further complicate the situation, they’re paid an unexpected visit by an old adversary: Q literally drops in on the Bridge, in the buff. He smirks and greets them with, “Red alert.”

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Tags: curiosity about humans, data is fully functional, Guinan is cryptic, human bodies, laughter, naked man (no wrestling), one day data will be a real boy, q, selfless acts, space douches, that's no moon ok actually it is, what's a Berthold ray?

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The High Ground”

Torie Atkinson

– March 21, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

highground1 “The High Ground”
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

Season 3, Episode 12
Original air date: January 29, 1990
Star date: 43510.7

Mission summary

The Enterprise has decided to give some medical supplies to ~~Ireland~~ Rutia IV, but it turns out terrorists have been bombing places so shore leave got canceled. Bummer. Dr. Crusher, Worf, and Data are sipping some tea in a cafe (for…work?) when a bomb goes off injuring civilians. Worf says they have to get out of there, but Crusher starts bandaging the wounded and refuses to beam back to the ship until the local medics arrive. Suddenly one of the Ansata–the space IRA–appears out of nowhere, kills a policeman, and abducts Crusher to the void from whence he came.

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Tags: bad metaphors, dr. crusher is pushy, fully clothed man-wrestling, handwaving mumblemumble, man-wrestling, manfighting, picard gets in a punch, picard moralizing, science!, terrorism, the tao of picard, transparent allegories, unfortunate historical allusions, wesley saves the day

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

Eugene Myers

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

thehunted137 “The Hunted”
Written by Robin Bernheim
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 3, Episode 11
Original air date: January 8, 1990
Star date: 43489.2

Mission summary

Picard and company pay a visit to Angosia III to evaluate its people for exclusive membership in the Federation. Things seem to be going swimmingly; Picard and ~~Zefram Cochrane~~ Prime Minister Nayrok are bonding over their moral superiority, and it’s all but a done deal when they receive word that a prisoner has escaped from a maximum security penal colony on Lunar V and stolen a transport vessel. The Angosians are strangely ill-equipped to take care of their own, so Picard offers the services of Enterprise to recapture the escapee. It should be a simple matter, but the pilot is devious and somehow they lose track of him around an asteroid, to Picard’s utter shock and dismay.

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Tags: chasing someone through the ship, diplomacy, federation, fully clothed man-wrestling, handwaving mumblemumble, how to take over the enterprise, prisoner escape, scanning for lifeforms, set phasers on overload, super soldiers, were they drunk when they threw this one together?

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 Vengeance Factor”

Eugene Myers

– February 28, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

thevengeancefactor191 “The Vengeance Factor”
Written by Sam Rolfe
Directed by Timothy Bond

Season 3, Episode 9
Original air date: November 20, 1989
Star date: 43421.9

Mission summary

After discovering a ransacked Starfleet research facility–evidence of encroaching raids from a group of Acamarians called the Gatherers–Picard decides to do something about this problem once and for all. Enterprise sets out for Acamar III, where he meets with the leader of the ruling group of Acamarians, Sovereign Marouk.

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Tags: diplomacy, emotional women, everyone loves riker, handwaving mumblemumble, immortality, loyalty, mysteries, planetary conflict, set phasers to kill, sexy ladies, slavery, were they drunk when they threw this one together?

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

Torie Atkinson

– February 21, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Price”
Written by Hannah Louise Shearer
Directed by Robert Sheerer

Season 3, Episode 8
Original air date: November 13, 1989
Star date: 43385.6

Mission summary

Troi has a fight with the replicator over chocolate, because she’s had an exhausting day or has her space period or whatever. But she can’t even enjoy it because Picard summons her to a diplomatic reception for a first look at a wormhole owned by the Barzans. The Barzan Premier, Bhavani, plans to auction off rights to the wormhole and so the Enterprise hosts delegates from several interested parties: the Federation, represented by Mendoza; the Caldonians, represented by Leyor; and the Chrysalians, represented by a humanoid named Devinoni Ral, with a sexy lady hanging off his arm. He and Troi lock eyes with the kind of vapid, sultry looks Calvin Klein models wear, making it really uncomfortable when Bhavani says “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the first and only stable wormhole known to exist. It’s yours, for the right price. ”

I hope she means the space anomaly.

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Tags: emotional women, everyone loves riker, ferengis, hegemonic masculinity, negotiations, pick-up artists, sexism, total creepers, troi earns her paycheck, troi gets laid, women are emotional wrecks, wormholes

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: “Booby Trap”

Torie Atkinson

– February 7, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“Booby Trap”
Teleplay by Ron Roman and Michael Piller & Richard Danus
Story by Michael Wagner & Ron Roman
Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont

Season 3, Episode 6
Original air date: October 30, 1989
Star date: 43205.6

Mission summary

La Forge is weirding out his first (and last) date by laying it on way too thick in a Margaritaville holoprogram (probably came with the machine, surely the designers didn’t expect anyone to use it), and soon his date can’t take another second and begs off. Just another day on the love boat…

At least Picard is having some fun, exploring a Promellian ship from a forgotten battle waged over 1000 years ago that’s still broadcasting its distress signal. After he beams down, there’s a slight energy blip on the Enterprise–clue #1. The dead ship is full of corpses who have died at their posts–clue #2. But what could possibly go wrong out here in space, isolated, and as lonely as Geordi on a Saturday night? And the law of television says you need three clues, so they’re probably fine, right?

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Tags: geeks, geordi's a dork, handwaving mumblemumble, holograms, ladies can be cool too, loneliness, my girlfriend she lives in canada, nerds, Picard beams into certain danger, picard is a chuck norris joke, science!, taking over the ship from Engineering, tech the tech, the tao of picard

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