Author: tederick
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Price”
“Who needs rational when your toes curl up?” Hump Trek: The Next Degradation! I recall there being quite a flurry of indignation when “The Price” first aired, because it was (supposedly) quite graphic for Star Trek; whatever vanilla era we lived in that could produce such a judgment is long past. Aside from a very…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Enemy”
“I never lie when I’ve got sand in my shoes, Commodore.” Here’s the second great Geordi episode in a row, “The Enemy,” in which the good chief engineer is stranded on a storm-ridden planet with a single stranded Romulan. It’s David Carson’s first episode in the director’s chair – he would go on to direct…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Booby Trap”
“My God, I bet I had a Promelian battlecruiser too…” Against the claim that there are no good Geordi episodes, I stake that there are at least two, and they are (oddly enough) back to back in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season. The first is “Booby Trap,” which became rather more… controversial?… in…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Bonding”
“Go on. You’ve wanted to tell him for a long time.” I really hated this episode back when it first aired. It’s better than I remember, but still skeeves me out – something in the execution is way, way off. There’s too much going on at an emotional level, for one thing – three major…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Who Watches the Watchers?”
“The Mintakans are beginning to believe in a god – and the one they’ve chosen is you.” This Prime Directive morality play and anti-religious fable doesn’t play as strongly as I remember, although the pieces are all here. Picard and the gang accidentally reveal a camouflaged Federation observation post to a group of “proto-Vulcan humanoids…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Survivors”
“I didn’t just kill one Husnock or a hundred or a thousand… I killed them all. All Husnock, everywhere.” Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Four is coming in hot – released in just ten weeks – so I’ll be double-timing it on Season Three, starting this week… “The Survivors” is a good example of…
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Review: STAR TREK INSURRECTION (Blogging the Next Generation – Movie Release Week Special)
“All field units. Intercept the android.” There’s a new Star Trek movie in theatres, and I’ve got pretty serious problems with it; which makes this a perfect time to continue my backwards troll through the endlessly problematic Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films, bringing me to Star Trek: Insurrection, a.k.a. Star Trek 9, and…
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Review: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
Bandersnatch in a Bandit Hat So here we are. Star Trek has completed its metamorphosis from a science fiction framework built on new and innovative storytelling into a “greatest hits” reboot where the entirety of its narrative tension is derived from the current article’s relationship with the audience’s knowledge of the original version – specifically,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Ensigns of Command”
“That’s the short definition of ‘captain.’” It took 23 years but I finally found out what the title, “The Ensigns of Command,” refers to, which has been kicking the back of my head all this time. It’s a line from “The Wants of Man,” and refers to the ensign as a flag, rather than, say,…