Category: Blogging The Next Generation
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Blogging the Next Generation: “A Matter of Perspective”
“You’re a dead man, Apgar! A dead man!” Sooner or later, everyone does their Rashomon – and so we have “A Matter of Perspective,” a fucking terrible episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season, in which Picard programs the holodeck to help recreate three different personal recollections of the events leading up to…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Deja Q”
“Red alert.” This period of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is quite likely its longest (nearly) unbroken string of best-in-class episodes. The run stretches from “The Defector” to “Sins of the Father,” fully a third of the season as a whole, and with only a couple of exceptions is a ceaseless…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The High Ground”
“Jean-Luc, there are some things I want to tell you…” The best outcome of Gates McFadden’s return to Star Trek: The Next Generation was the emergence of proper Beverly episodes, which (strangely enough) never happened in Season One. With them, we have the arrival of what I’d call the True Beverly, and it begins here:…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Hunted”
“We cannot interfere in the natural course of your society’s development. And I’d say it’s going to develop significantly in the next few minutes.” An intense and focused thriller, “The Hunted” is another highlight of a season full of highlights. The presumed allegory – Vietnam vets weren’t treated well by America upon their return home,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Defector”
“These are not my stars. Even the heavens are denied me here.” A favourite of mine, not just of the third season but of the entire run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Defector” brings epic badassery to the long-simmering Romulan conflict on Next Gen, delivering a stunning first act and equally stunning climax,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Vengeance Factor”
“Parthus à la Yuta!” Strongly into the gooey middle of the endless run of “The _______” episode titles in the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we find “The Vengeance Factor,” which I’ve never really liked much. I guess it’s an attempt at a Riker romance-of-the-week type episode of the sort that Kirk…
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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…