Category: Blogging The Next Generation
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Samaritan Snare”
“I’m just not overly thrilled at the prospect of my innards being made the subject of Starfleet gossip.” “Samaritan Snare” is one of those rare instances of a premise so oddball it actually works, or at least, is really memorable: it’s the one where Geordi gets kidnapped by the race of… really dumb guys. The…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Q Who”
“The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged. It’s now time to see if you can dance.” What is there left to say about “Q Who,” that hasn’t already been said? It’s a great fuckin’ episode. It deserves its place in the pantheon of the very best that Star Trek: The Next Generation ever had to…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Pen Pals”
“What a perfectly vicious little circle.” “Pen Pals” has its heart in the right place but is a fairly boring affair; both of its plotlines are competent but uninteresting. In the A-plot, Data makes contact with a little girl on a dying planet, and drags the Enterprise into a debate about the Prime Directive when…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Icarus Factor”
“Anbo-jyutsu! The ultimate evolution in the martial arts!” One is called upon to wonder exactly what keeps Riker, a career Starfleet officer, out of the captain’s chair that is trotted out for him so regularly on Star Trek: The Next Generation. (IRL, we know the answer: the producers want to keep him on the show.…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Time Squared”
“We may be on a road that has no turns.” From the ridiculous to the sublime – if “The Royale” is my least favourite episode of the year, “Time Squared” is certainly its opposite number. I flipped my lid over this thing when it first aired, achieving something like a contact high by the time…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Royale”
“When the train comes in, everybody rides.” “The Royale” is far and away my least favourite episode of the season – which means, yes, I am putting it below the dreadful clip show, “Shades of Grey.” I hate this one, and always did, and am amazed watching it now that it hangs even more limp…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Contagion”
“It’s beginning to make me think we should have run these Galaxy-class ships across a few more drawing boards before we built one.” “Contagion” was candy to me when it first aired, its various elements appealing to every single molecule of my teenaged self. The starship Yamato destroys itself via accidental antimatter core dump; the…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Dauphin”
“I dream of a galaxy where your eyes are the stars, and the universe worships the night.” Wesley Crusher’s first love story is so goddamned adorable that I rank it highly among my favourite episodes of the second season, even though I know full well that there are some beats missing in the storytelling and…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Measure of a Man”
“From limitless options, I am reduced to none. Or rather one.” I don’t normally go in for extended cut / deleted scene shenanigans, particularly on things I hold sacrosanct, but the opportunity to see a full cut of “The Measure of a Man” that is well over a third longer than the broadcast version was…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “A Matter of Honour”
“If Klingon food is too strong for you, perhaps we could get one of the females to breastfeed you.” I just find the idea of Starfleet running a student exchange program endlessly charming. It carries “A Matter of Honor” a long way in my eyes. I’m not huge on the Klingon episodes generally, and that…