Author: tederick
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Unnatural Selection”
“Scientists believe no experiment is a failure.” Ah, Dr. Pulaski; we hardly knew ye. I admit my relationship to Lady Bones is heartily impacted by my brother’s spastic rendering of her name – “P’LASKI!” – but on the whole I like her well enough; were it not for my immense love of the character she…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Schizoid Man”
“To know him is to love him is to know him?” I respect the fact that “The Schizoid Man” is a marginally better episode than I’m going to grade it; I just don’t like this one very much. For any of Season Two’s strengths – and I do believe it’s a pretty good year –…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Loud as a Whisper”
“Before him, there was no Klingon word for ‘peacemaker.’” Huh, a whole episode I’d completely forgotten existed at all. “Loud as a Whisper” is a bit of a strange one, not without its merits, though it never became any kind of a memorable favourite for me (obviously). The episode explores its own idea well enough,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Outrageous Okona”
“A monk, a clone, and a Ferengi decided to go bowling together…” I can never quite decide if “The Outrageous Okona” is fucking awful or amazing. It’s certainly memorable. It’s most directly recalled for being the Joe Piscopo episode, where (in the episode’s B-plot) Data enters the holodeck to try to learn the nature of…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Elementary, Dear Data”
“A great monstrous shape, on which I am like a fly stuck on a turtle’s back, adrift in a great emptiness.” I suppose the holodeck episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation don’t really do it for me – which is odd, because on basic terms, I love the setup, especially as it’s applied here.…
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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…