Category: Blogging The Next Generation
Want more posts like these, straight to your inbox?
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Attached”
“Coffee and croissant.” We’re down to the dregs of the Next Generation barrel so, like Riker and Troi at the end of the last season, it’s finally time to do an episode that directly addresses that thing between Beverly and Jean-Luc. What became an unofficial and hilarious runner in early seasons — Beverly, at the…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Dark Page”
“Moment.” Like Geordi a few weeks ago, Deanna’s personal history gets a final-season “enhancement” (in this case, call it more of a retcon) in this strange and complicated episode in which we learn that Lwaxana Troi had another daughter, before Deanna, whose accidental death she has been repressing for over thirty years. It’s Majel Barrett’s…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Phantasms”
“It is a cellular peptide cake. With mint frosting.” Star Trek: The Next Generation answers the eons-old question “do androids dream of electric sheep?” with a resounding NO in “Phantasms,” wherein Data’s dream program gets its inevitable follow-up. A bunch of inter-phasic organisms are infesting the ship, which Data is subliminally picking up on and…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Gambit, Part I”
“I have an open wound. Right here. It hurts like hell.” God, this one is the worst. The actual worst. And they made two of them. I hate “Gambit,” an idiotic two-parter in which Picard has faked his own death to go on a secret mission with a band of space pirates or something. I…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Gambit, Part II”
“If you would overlook this incident, I would like to continue to consider you my friend.” Oh hey – what the fuck is the “gambit” of the title, anyway? Picard going undercover with a bunch of loser space pirates? My theory about these episodes having been written by the chess club is gaining ground. Let’s…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Interface”
“Forgot what a handsome guy I am.” So it’s come to this: the one with Geordi’s Mom. Furthermore, the one with Geordi’s Mom… and Virtual Reality. “Interface” is an example of the deep-cut approach to the seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The characters have long since arrived at lived-in status, so there’s…
-
Blogging the Next Generation: “Liaisons”
“That is an incredibly outmoded and sexist attitude. I’m surprised at you. Besides, you look good in a dress.” In the annals of low-rung Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes which have vanished completely from my memory (of which we will see many this season), behold “Liaisons,” the one where… uh… three alien ambassadors in…
-
Blogging the Next Generation New Year’s Special, Part Two: “Descent, Part II”
“And now, the conclusion.” As has become the unfortunate tradition for the summer-spanning two-parters of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Descent I” raises intriguing questions – about the Borg, Hugh, Lore, and most of all Data – that “Descent II” turns out to have no interest in answering. The material about Data’s emotional discordance falls…
-
Blogging the Next Generation New Year’s Special, Part One: “Descent”
I watched “Descent” in the recently-finished basement at my parents’ place, just after school ended in the summer of 1993. We had the whole posse over, and Mark and I showed some of our movies beforehand, and we got into a waterfight to settle various year-long grudges besides. Everything was damp and hormonal. I had…
-
Review: STAR TREK GENERATIONS (Blogging The Next Generation Christmas Special)
“You know, there was a time when I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Then the Borg came… and they showed me that if there’s one constant in this whole universe, it’s death.”