Want more posts like these, straight to your inbox?
-
The Gulf of America Until I was well into my thirties, the only Stallone movie I’d ever seen was Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot. I gave the Rocky and the Rambo franchises a clean miss, though growing up in the 1980s, they were part…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
Join 900+ subscribers
Stay in the loop with everything you need to know.