Category: Features
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…