Author: tederick
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Where Silence Has Lease”
“Isn’t that a little like curing the disease by killing the patient?” You want a good example of how to do a bottle show well? “Where Silence Has Lease” is one of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s best, and for bottle shows, among the most elemental. The majority of the action not only takes place…
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Review: STAR TREK NEMESIS (Blogging The Next Generation Christmas Special)
“Don’t be so vain.” I struggled with how, or even if, to include the Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films in Blogging the Next Generation. They are such weaksauce antecedents to the series. Of the four films, only Generations – yes, Generations – bears any real stylistic, thematic, or conceptual relationship to the television show…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Child”
“Some eager beaver at play.” It is “The Child’s” formidability as a prototype for Next Gen 2.0 that earns it my substantial fondness. The episode’s plot proper isn’t awesome – a hasty affair wherein Troi gives birth to an enigmatic alien child, who then allows himself to die when he realizes he is jeopardizing the…
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Review: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
All good stories deserve embellishment “I think I’m quite ready for another adventure,” 130-year-old Bilbo Baggins proclaimed at the very end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, before stepping onto an Elven ship bound for the afterlife. It was his last onscreen line. A decade later, here’s another adventure at…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Neutral Zone”
“Heck, it’s the same dance, it’s just a different tune.” The last episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation has a lot going against it – it’s a cheap knockoff of the basic plot of the Original Series’ Khan episode, “Space Seed,” and its A-story (the Enterprise encounters a group of…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Conspiracy”
“Tonight’s a quiet night.” We close out the year with two of the most renowned episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, starting with “Conspiracy,” which goes beyond renowned to being outright legendary. It certainly reads silly on paper: a bunch of pink cockroaches take over Starfleet Command. But the execution, largely due to the…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “We’ll Always Have Paris”
“I can’t compete with a ghost from his past.” I was twelve years old, and I had seen Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and, perhaps, a couple of episodes of The Original Series with my mom, who would not have suggested Star Trek to me at all if she’d had any notion of what…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Skin of Evil”
“Au revoir, Natasha.” I never saw “Skin of Evil” in its original run, which I guess is just as well, although it did result in me tuning in for the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and wondering, “Where’s Tasha?” like a dumb kid whose parents were lying to him about the disappearance…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Symbiosis”
“Wesley, I hope you never do.” “Symbiosis” is inevitably a poignant episode of the series for reasons having nothing to do with its content; this is the last Star Trek appearance by Merritt Butrick, who played David in Star Trek II and III, before dying of AIDS in 1989. He’s quite good here, too; as…
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From A To Bond (Appendix B): The Other Casino Royale
Which one is this? The spoof. Who’s who in this one? Niven (Bond); Huston (M); Bayldon (Q); Bouchet (Moneypenny). Where did you first encounter this one? Never seen it before. Who’s the bad guy, and what does he want? Orson! Fucking! Welles!! as the villainous Le Chiffre! AND! Woody Allen as the über-bad, Dr. Noah!…