Category: Blogging The Next Generation
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Eye of the Beholder”
“Mr. Worf, you sound like a man who’s asking his friend if he can start dating his sister.” To tie off the strangest romance inception in series television history – in which Worf went to a parallel universe where he was married to Counselor Troi, then figured he might want to try to hit that…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Masks”
“Masaka is waking.” Buckle your shit up everyone, because things are about to get terrible. With “Lower Decks” behind us, it’s now a nearly straight run of unadulterated garbage from here to “All Good Things…” with only a couple of so-bad-it’s-good reprieves in the meantime. “Masks” is not one of those reprieves. Now, I admit,…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Thine Own Self”
“You are an ice man.” This is such a straight-ahead idea for an episode that it’s somewhat surprising it didn’t turn up earlier in the run of the series: Data crashes on an alien planet, develops amnesia, and is adopted by a local pre-industrial society, where his android skill set allows him to solve the…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Lower Decks”
“Now what do you think that tells me about your character?” If it weren’t for “All Good Things…,” “Lower Decks” would be the clear standout of the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a phenomenal episode, brilliantly structured and entirely forward-looking in its approach. It anticipates the best years of Deep Space…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Sub Rosa”
“You stay on in this house, and you keep that damn candle, I’ll not be responsible for what happens!” Of all the crazy shit Star Trek: The Next Generation ever attempted, “Sub Rosa” might well be remembered as the craziest: the Gothic ghost story-cum-Harlequin romance novel in which Dr. Beverly Crusher – scientist, mother, and…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Homeward”
“I find no honour in this whatsoever, Captain. You will forgive me if I don’t stay.” a.k.a. the One Where Worf’s Brother Is Paul Sorvino. Worf, who doesn’t apparently have a good enough brother already, is retrofitted with a human adoptive sibling here, in the form of… yeah… Paul Sorvino. Now, I love Paul Sorvino…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “The Pegasus”
“’Captain Picard Day?’” One of the few great episodes of Season Seven, “The Pegasus” is a tight morality play which also bears the distinction of being my introduction to the wonderful Terry O’Quinn, who plays the antagonist-of-the-week, Admiral Eric Pressman. It’s the sort of Starfleet-against-itself storyline that certainly wouldn’t have flown in Roddenberry’s lifetime, but…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Parallels”
“I do remember. I just remember it differently.” With nothing better to do in its final year, Star Trek: The Next Generation adopts the craziest “will they/won’t they” pairing in all of Star Trek, and has Worf develop feelings for Counselor Troi – and to make it all the more fascinating, they incept Worf’s romantic…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Inheritance”
“The intervals between blinks were governed by the Fourier system, the same mathematical system my father used to give my blinking pattern the appearance of randomness.” And now, because we’ve done the one with Geordi’s Mom, and had a final lap for Deanna’s Mom, it’s time to do the one with Data’s Mom. Before the…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Force of Nature”
“Geordi, I cannot stun my cat.” Star Trek: The Next Generation’s paean to the dangers of air pollution is one of the series last, and most syrupy, Message Shows. The episode’s hook – that warp drive is destroying the fabric of space, but no one in Starfleet wants to take the science seriously – must…