Category: Blogging The Next Generation
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Violations”
“It’s Obachan! My grandmother! We arrive at the notorious “mind rape” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Credit where it’s due, at least Next Gen was willing to do an episode about rape, which (in 1991) was still relatively rare – although, in a post-The Accused Hollywood, various television dramas were becoming more willing…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “New Ground”
“You don’t care about me! All you care about is your honour!” In 1980s and 1990s television, there was perhaps no greater death knell for a show’s creativity than the introduction in the later seasons of a new child or dog. Yes, Worf’s son Alexander (who qualifies as a child, not a dog, but it’s…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “A Matter of Time”
“LaForge remained below…!” I’m writing this on November 25th, two days after the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, so it’s perhaps inevitable that the Doctor Who parallels that passed by completely unnoticed when I saw “A Matter of Perspective” back in ’91 now ring clear as a cloister bell. Not that “Perspective” is much of…
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Review: STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT (Blogging The Next Generation Christmas Special)
“Well I sure as hell am not going up there sober.” The popular “best” of the four Star Trek: The Next Generation feature films, Star Trek: First Contact is actually my least favourite. It’s hard for me to imagine a more stupidly, or crassly, conceived franchise property than this. The film drips concept rather than storytelling,…
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Blogging The Next Generation: “Unification II”
“It was I who committed Captain Kirk to that peace mission, and I who had to bear the responsibility for the consequences to him and to his crew.”
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Unification I”
“Indeed, you have found him, Captain Picard!” Ah, this whole thing. Yes, it was a really big deal that someone as central to the original Star Trek franchise as Leonard Nimoy / Spock was finally going to bridge the gap from TOS to TNG; and yes, as an (ultimately, entirely trivial) teaser for Star Trek…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Disaster”
“I’m alive… what the hell happened?!” A disaster movie set aboard the Enterprise, wheee! Of all the latter-day attempts to revive the ‘70s disaster story structure (groups of unrelated individuals coping in parallel circumstances to an unexpected crisis), “Disaster” knocks the pants off Independence Day, Volcano, or Poseidon. (And Sharknado, obvies.) And “Disaster” has so.…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Game”
“Is it true what they say about your birthmark?” Wesley Crusher returns to the Enterprise in a goofy little episode that, as far as “Wesley Crusher saves the ship” shenanigans go, is quite probably the very best one. While Wesley’s busy making nookie with Ashley Judd, the entire adult crew gets hooked on a cortex-stimulating…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Silicon Avatar”
“As you know, I provide the most memorable deserts.” Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when “avatar” was a fairly obscure concept. So it was when “Silicon Avatar” aired, one of those rare episodes to come to the production via the slush pile of Michael Piller’s open-door script policy at…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Ensign Ro”
Like “The Wounded” before it, “Ensign Ro” is one of the key building blocks of what became Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with the introduction of the Cardassians’ other halves, the Bajorans. Those two intertwined races and their decades-long conflict forms the spine of DS9, and if the Bajorans are slightly off-model in “Ensign Ro”…