Category: Features
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Frame of Mind”
“I may be surrounded by insanity, but I am not insane.” I’d always had it in my head that I’d been somewhat unfair to “Frame of Mind” when I was younger. I quite disliked it, but I’ve heard it spoken of fondly over the years and was looking forward to giving it another go. No…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Chase”
“Graciously, Mister Picard! You could accept it graciously!” I love this episode. I love it on principle: an in-diegesis explanation for why all the aliens we’ve ever met on Star Trek look like human beings with bumps on their foreheads, rather than something (anything) else. That’s the kind of tack-into-the-wind storytelling ballsiness that I can…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Lessons”
“I have a few things to do between now and then.” Let’s settle one thing up front: everybody understands that the Captain is in love with Beverly Crusher. This was revealed at the beginning of Season 1, paid off at the end of Season 7; and in the meantime, we waited. That makes episodes like…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Starship Mine”
“The light in this room would make colour selection exceptionally problematic.” DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE! DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE! Man, remember the early ‘90s, when every ten minutes someone was doing a “Die Hard on a [something]”? It was probably inevitable that Star Trek: The Next Generation would get around to it (and…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Birthright, Part II”
“You do not kill an animal unless you intend to eat it.” The problem with Klingons is laid bare in this shame-faced episode, which is so morally and conceptually muddled that it ends up arguing for race-hatred, religious zealotry, and even fascism. “Birthright, Part II” finds Worf garrisoned at a penal colony inhabited by Klingons…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Birthright”
“Data – you are the bird.” With a flourish of Deep Space Nine’s main title score, we arrive on the first glimpse of the space station and its characters in high definition in “Birthright, Part I,” and the world feels consequently bigger. Can you tell I’m a DS9 geek? I love Dr. Julian Bashir’s crossover…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Tapestry”
“Your life ended about five minutes ago, under the inept ministrations of Dr. Beverly Crusher.” After “Face of the Enemy,” Season Six’s other best episode is “Tapestry,” which ends up on more top ten lists, although I like it slightly less. Still, there’s little arguing against it. It’s the series’ last great Picard episode before…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Face of the Enemy”
“Hod’laii.” This is easily my favourite episode of Season Six; and it’s certainly, far and away, the best Counselor Troi episode in all of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s such an achievement over its sixth-season running mates that I actually find it startling. I mean, last week we were on “Aquiel,” and the season…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Aquiel”
“Lt. Aquiel Uhnari.” The ceaseless romantic tribulations of the perennially hapless Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge reach their dizzying zenith in “Aquiel,” where Geordi falls in love with a dead woman. Who turns out not to be dead. It’s a terrible episode, as boring as they come. At least Geordi gets the girl – although I…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Ship in a Bottle”
“My past is nothing but a fiction.” I didn’t have much use for this episode back in the day; it played into my various “meh” factors at the time like holodeck conceptual mysteries; weak use of Barclay; the Sherlock Holmes fantasy; and Data. I’ve come around on some of those, and I’ve nursed a suspicion…