Category: Blogging The Next Generation
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Schisms”
“Felis catus, is your taxonomic nomenclature an endothermic quadroped, carnivorous by nature?” Between this and “Man of the People,” we’re now deep into episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation whose existence had mercifully been deleted from my memory banks. I used to know this shit like the back of my hand – my brother…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Relics”
“NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D.” Ironically, the (arguably) least consequential of the Original Series / Next Gen crossover episodes, “Relics,” is probably the best of the lot. As befits its guest star, it’s a wild and sloppy affair, but wonderfully entertaining and warmhearted. Scotty has, since about the third Star Trek movie,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Man of the People”
“I don’t know who that woman was, but she was definitely not his mother.” This flatly ridiculous episode casts Deanna in a bizarre reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Deanna herself is the picture. (In case you miss any of the obviousness, the alien race that delivers Ambassador Alcar to the Enterprise…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Realm of Fear”
“There’s a nerve cluster just behind the carotid artery. It stimulates the part of the brain that releases natural endorphins.” It’s back to business as usual on the Enterprise, which brings us the annual Barclay episode (though, I realize, there was no annual episode last year; and there’s two this year, actually). Having previously featured…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Time’s Arrow, Part II”
“MISTER PICKERD. I’ll be reminding you that it’s one o’clock.” [Majel Barrett Computer Voice] Last time, on Blogging the Next Generation… I was working my way through the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray when the braintrust at CBS Home Video gummed up the works completely by delaying the release of the series’…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Time’s Arrow”
“It has occurred. It will occur.” We’ve arrived at the point in modern Trek where a year-end cliffhanger episode is a given, rather than a storytelling flourish arrived at organically. “Time’s Arrow” should be perfectly wired for me – it’s Next Gen’s Back to the Future III episode – but like most of post-Season Four…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Inner Light”
“Tell them of us, my darling.” Here’s another canonized episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation about which I am highly conflicted. Even now, having watched the episode again for the first time in ten years or more, I can’t quite figure out where to land on it. It’s unarguably well-made and is as unique…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Next Phase”
“Now I suppose I’ll never know what you were gonna say about me.” Finally, Season Five gives us an episode that actually feels like a Next Gen episode. And thankfully, it’s a grand old time to boot, an admittedly flyweight science fiction adventure romp in which Geordi and Ro get “phased,” rendering them invisible to…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “I Borg”
“We are Hugh.” I fucking hate the Hugh the Borg episode. I always have. Everyone else loves it; I absolutely loathe it. As you’ve probably realized by now, a) I was a huge fan of the Borg as they were originally conceived in “Q Who,” and b) I couldn’t stand watching them get thoroughly de-fanged…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Imaginary Friend”
“I think she’s real for you. And that’s real enough for me.” We’ve spent a lot of time with the children of the Enterprise in Season Five. This is largely Alexander’s fault, and it steers the complexion of Star Trek: The Next Generation into a disappointingly bland amalgam of family entertainment, with all of the…