Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 172 (Journey's End)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Way back in the first few seasons of The Next Generation, it seemed like Wesley Crusher was always there to save the day. It earned him a bad reputation because it seemed like this teenage kid knew more about the ship than all of the engineering personnel on the flagship of the Federation. Eventually, it came time for Wesley to go of to Starfleet Academy. It seemed like the natural progression of the character. However, things may not have been what they seemed.

In “Journey’s End,” Wesley returns to the Enterprise as the ship is about to go to the newly formed demilitarized zone, or DMZ. In a treaty with the Cardassians, the Federation handed over several colonies. The residents of those colonies have to be relocated before the Cardassians can properly claim their new property and start surveying it. The trouble is that the residents of one of the planets don’t want to leave. Even though they’ve been there for only 20 years, they feel an attachment to the land.

The Enterprise has been sent there to mediate things and see if he can get the colonists to leave. Picard is to use whatever means he sees fit to remove them. Wesley sees what’s going on and feels that it’s wrong. He openly defies the captain and makes things worse. Picard calls Starfleet Academy and finds out that this isn’t unusual; Wesley has been acting up in class lately. Upon being questioned about it, Wesley admits that he’s dreading his graduation from the Academy. He doesn’t want to be in Starfleet.

A solution is worked out that isn’t exactly what Starfleet expected, but is acceptable to everyone. I don’t want to give away how the episode ends. What I will say is that you have to have seen the rest of the series prior to this episode to fully understand it. I don’t think someone could fully understand Wesley’s history by being told. There are several aspects of the series that come into play in this episode. Also, this episode sets up episodes of Deep Space Nine and hints at the series Star Trek: Voyager. This episode is not for the casual viewer.

The writing for this episode is great. Captain Picard is given a difficult problem. Like Wesley, he also knows that what he’s been ordered to do is morally wrong and the admiral giving him the orders argued against it. However, Picard has too much invested in his career to risk it over this. Even if he did, Starfleet could simply find another captain to command the Enterprise.

I’d give this episode four stars. As I said, it’s not for everyone, but someone collecting the episodes on VHS should buy this one. I’d say that it’s not really essential, but has a high replay value.


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Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 106 (The Game)

Drugs, like many things, occupy a spectrum.  You have hard stuff, like opiates.  Then, you have softer stuff like caffeine.  We’ve all been lectured on it by parents, teachers or some other role model.  I remember in 7th grade, my homeroom teacher once telling us how some drugs were so addictive, users would kill someone without hesitating for their next fix.  There are some drugs you definitely want to stay away from.  You might wonder if they even have drugs in the 24th century.  They have the medicinal stuff, I’m sure.  But how do you get the entire crew of a starship addicted so that they’ll do your bidding?

Commander Riker, ever the playboy, is on Risa at the start of this episode.  He’s with the beautiful and playful Etana Jol.  She even throws Riker’s combadge out of a window.  That’s ok.  She has this game that he’ll just love.  You have to get a little disc into a moving cone.  You just relax, let it happen and get rewarded with a jolt of energy.  Meanwhile, Wesley Crusher has come back from Starfleet.  He even hits it off with a member of the Engineering team, Ensign Robin Lefler.

When Riker gets back to the ship, Riker shares it with a few of the other bridge officers.  Soon, nearly the entire adult population of the Enterprise is having little orgasms after beating each level.  It seems that only Robin and Welsey have yet to try it.  Oh, and Lieutenant Commander Data.   Being an android, he’d be the only one immune to the psychotropic effects of the game.  Thus, Dr. Crusher lures him to sickbay to deactivate him.  She then lies about what happened and has Chief Engineer La Forge look at Date, even though La Forge hasn’t been given a game to try yet.

It doesn’t take long for Wesley to figure out what’s going on and what really happened to Data.  He fixes Data so that he can quickly find a cure for the addiction and save the crew just before Etana Jol jas the crew spread the game to the rest of Starfleet.

Ok.  The most obvious thing about the episode is the anti-drug message.  The episode focuses entirely on the addiction and how quickly everyone became to Etana.  It was never really explained in detail specifically what made everyone fall in line so quickly.  I’m assuming that she indoctrinated Riker, who then told everyone else to follow their new leader.  Still, the message I got from this is that that if you try drugs, you’ll be at the mercy of your dealer.  So, just say no kids, because peer pressure is bad.

It’s also odd that it was so versatile in the number of people it affected.  Most of the crew are human.  Even Counselor Troi is half human.  Why would it work the same way on Worf?  This is to say nothing of any Vulcan officers, who would probably be more resistant to trying the game.  I have to wonder how it was adapted to work with La Forge, who is blind.  I’m assuming that they found some way around that, since they didn’t lure him to sickbay and hit him over the head.

For that matter, since they were able to get Geordi hooked on the thing, why not wait a little while before turning Data off?  The crew seemed to be able to carry out normal duty functions while not playing.  In fact, the only clue that the crew was addicted was the near-constant use of the game.  It would have made sense to turn Data off and just leave him once they knew no one would turn him back on.  The only reason to damage his neural net is to make Wesley have to buy Data time.

I didn’t really pick up on the sexual nature of the game at first.  I did find it odd that Dr. Crusher was so eager to get her son addicted to the game.  She seemed very pushy about it.  That alone, even not considering the orgasmic aspect of the game, seemed a bit much.

The one big question I have is why Etana would start with the Enterprise.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to do a test run with a smaller ship and work up to a starbase or something?  I could totally see the ship being docked at a starbase to pick Wesley up.  The ship is picking up several scientific teams as it is, so why not have one of them introduce the game?  I guess in this regard, the game could be seen as an STD.  (Riker finally picked something up and passed it on to the crew.)

This was definitely one of the stranger episodes of The Next Generation.  It comes across as one of those awkward talks your parents might have with you about not doing drugs or not having sex.  All of the horrible things that might happen to you are just too horrible, so be careful.  In that regard, I would have liked to have seen a one-off character that had been used and left to rot in a similar scheme.  There were so many other angles that were left off of this.

I have to say that it was a pretty bold plan.  Had it worked, Etana would have had all of Starfleet at her beck and call.  Had she pulled it off, it would have been pretty impressive.


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Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 17 (Home Soil)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

In the 24th century, there’s a government called the United Federation of Planets, of which Earth is a member. It covers a wide area and would seem to include a lot of uninhabited but habitable planets. Still, the Federation has decided to teraform a planet. This involves the Federation first sending a ship to investigate candidates to make sure that they meet the right conditions. One of these conditions is that there be no possibility of life existing or developing on said planet.

The Enterprise is sent to check up on an operation that’s teraforming a planet that met all of the criteria. When speaking to the director, Counselor Troi (the ship’s resident empath) knows that he’s hiding something, and its something major. Of course, you wouldn’t need an empath to know that. The director is hostile towards Captain Picard, who insists on sending an away team unless the director outright refuses.

When the away team beams down, everyone is friendly and the director even apologizes for his earlier behavior. Everything seems to be in order until one of the teraformers is wounded by a laser drill. (He makes it back to the Enterprise, but doesn’t live very long.) When Data has the laser drill reactivated, the drill goes after him. He’s able to save himself, but only by destroying the laser drill.

Data and Geordi La Forge discover that the drill has been reprogrammed with a very complex set of instructions that allows the drill to adapt to someone’s movements. The remaining three teraformers are Picard’s first suspects, but Data and La Forge soon find a blinking light down a shaft that was being drilled. It turns out that the planet does have life. It was simply silicon based and thus not detectable by any known test or scan.

One of the silicon-based life forms is brought back to the Enterprise where the life form accesses the ships computers and declares war on the “big ugly bags of mostly water” that attacked it. Eventually, the crew of the Enterprise is able to appease the life form and it allows itself to be transported back to the surface. Picard agrees that there will be no contact by the Federation for 300 years.

The story for this episode was weak. It took elements from “Devil in the Dark” from the original series and the second Star Trek movie. Given that Kirk’s Enterprise encountered silicon-based life in “Devil in the Dark,” how could a ship looking for life not think to check for some sort of silicon-based life? There is at least some reference point. Also, all four of the teraformers saw signs, but couldn’t bring themselves to think that the Starfleet vessel was wrong about the planet being lifeless.

My biggest concern was that the life form was able to reproduce on the Enterprise with no apparent access to additional materials other than the inferred energy emitted by the lights in sickbay. Granted, one could argue that since it had access to the ships computers that it had access to the replicators, but it seems like a long shot.

One minor point was when Picard first contacted the teraforming operation. Picard wanted to talk to Troi without the director hearing what Picard was saying. The computer said, “Channel closed” when it was really muted in one direction. (The director said something that came through to the Enterprise.) I’ll admit that this could simply be a misinterpretation on my part. It caught my attention, though.

I think this might be the only episode where a restroom is mentioned. (Someone actually mentioned a programmers’ restroom, I think.) Also, it’s the only time that I can recall a translation request being announced. Usually, the translator either works or it doesn’t work.

It would be interesting to see what happens in 300 years. There were very few episodes that dealt with a timeframe that far into the show’s future and there was usually some ban on mentioning future events to people of the 24th century.

The episode is a two-star episode. The story was interesting, but wasn’t developed too well. I think it could have been done a lot better. 

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Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episodes 1 & 2 (Encounter at Farpoint)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

As a kid, I remember watching the original Star Trek series whenever I could. I had missed the original run, which ended in June of 1969. (I was born almost seven years later.) I was in elementary school when it was announced that a new series, based on Star Trek, would premiere. Here, we have the pilot episode, which is listed here as the first two episodes. You have to be careful because there are a few different varieties. This is the one released as an individual tape. From what I hear, there’s one that’s part of a set; that version has additional footage. (I have no idea what’s included with the first-season DVD set.)

The premise is simple. A new Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, has been commissioned. Captain Jean-Luc Picard is in command. His first priority is going to Farpoint Station to pick up several members of his crew, including First Officer William Riker and Chief Medical Officer Beverly Crusher. Picard is also to discuss using the technology and architects that built Farpoint to build other stations.

On the way there, they meet Q, an omnipotent being that wants to put humanity on trial. Q abducts Picard, Chief of Security Tasha Yar, Counselor Deanna Troi, Chief Science Officer Data and another crewmember and puts them in a court to stand trial. With a gun at his head, Picard pleads guilty, but asks for a chance to use the Farpoint mission to redeem humanity. Q agrees

Meanwhile, at Farpoint, Commander Riker and Dr. Crusher start noticing strange things. Riker wants an apple and one magically appears before him. Dr. Crusher is looking at fabric and it strangely acquires the pattern that she wants. It takes some investigation, but Picard figures out what’s going on. That, coupled with a few other things, is enough to satisfy Q that humanity has progressed and is worthy of venturing out into space. (If things hadn’t worked out, this would have been a very short-lived series.)

Now, pilot episodes have it hard. Most series take a while to establish themselves. The Next Generation is no exception. These two episodes are dedicated mostly to showing off the new ship and establishing the characters. Having the original series saves the writers from having to explain certain things.

However, fans of the original series might be surprised to see Worf, a Klingon who would go on to be chief of security. (In the original series, Klingons and the Federation had been adversaries.) There’s also an 80-year difference between the two series. (The original series took place in the 23rd century while The Next Generation took place in the 24th.)

Those that haven’t seen the original series might miss out on a few things, but I don’t think that it will detract from the series or these episodes too much. Very little of the original series is mentioned. There is a guest appearance by DeForest Kelly as an aged Admiral who has many traits similar to Dr. McCoy of the original series. (The writers deliberately didn’t mention him by name in the script to keep it a secret.)

The acting isn’t as good as later episodes; the actors haven’t quite gotten the feel for the characters. For that matter, neither have the writers. Troi and Data seem a little more emotional here. Riker doesn’t quite seem as serious, but that might have to do with the lack of a beard. What really stands out is the graphics. It looks like most of the graphics budget went into the saucer separation/reattachment sequences. Other things may look cheap. (The transporter effect is different in this episode than in later episodes.

There seems to be a great deal of debate as to the overall quality of this episode. I, personally, have a high tolerance for pilot episodes. This is helped by the fact that a lot of aspects are developed pretty well, either because they carry over from the original series or because the writers and creators had the time to do so. (It’s really the next several episodes that I have problems with, but I’ll save that for another review.)

I’d give this tape four stars. It’s an interesting start to a great series. I’d encourage people to watch these episodes to get used to the series. (If you are looking to rent the entire series, though, I’d recommend getting the first disc of the season one set; the next two episodes aren’t worth the money to rent individually.) 

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