Category: Features
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.”
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Second Chances”
“I know what I want, I know what I’ve got, and you’d be lucky to do so well.” Well, we’re finally here: the One Where They Deal Directly With Riker/Troi (Albeit With A Sci-Fi Twist). If I remember my Star Trek: The Next Generation lore correctly, the unrequited Deanna/Will romance was part of the series…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Timescape”
“He just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic.” Aside from being the source for the bridge of “The Picard Song,” which would secure its place in Star Trek: The Next Generation history forever, “Timescape”…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Rightful Heir”
“Look for me there, on that point of light.” This is a fairly workable episode which deals with a wholly unsuitable (for Star Trek) premise: Worf’s crisis of religious faith. Star Trek, which had been an entirely atheist (or at the very least, secular humanist) treatise on the future of humanity prior to Gene Roddenberry’s death –…
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Blogging the Next Generation: “Suspicions”
“I don’t know, you tell me, you’re supposed to be wise!” “Suspicions” is emblematic of exactly how bland and unmotivated Star Trek: The Next Generation had become by this point in the run. You want to know what I mean when I say “beige storytelling?” Compare and contrast: the last time we had a Beverly…