Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 147 (Frame of Mind)

Star Trek: The Next Generation tended to show a bright version of the future  Sure, we all had problems, but the episodes were usually pretty light.  Even the more moderate episodes weren’t that scary or much of a downer.  Then comes Frame of Mind.  In it, Riker is starring in a play that Dr. Crusher is directing.  (The play happens to be called Frame of Mind, as well.)  The play seems to be about a man trying to prove his sanity to a psychologist.  We only get to see the last scene of the play, but it’s pretty intense.  Riker’s character is yelling at the doctor about how he’s being yanked around.

The Enterprise is called to Tilonus IV. The government is in disarray after the assassination of a  leader.  Normally, the Federation wouldn’t interfere, but they’ve got a research team there and they want Riker to rescue them.  (While this isn’t Riker’s first solo away mission, it’s never been clearly stated why Riker is the one to do this sort of stuff.)  Before they get there, Riker will be performing in the play.  He gets a standing ovation to which he bows several times.  On the last bow, he arises to find that he’s in the psych ward of the play’s set.

He can’t remember the details of his life on the Enterprise, like his name.  However, Riker is told that it’s all a delusion.  He’s been imagining it all and that Starfleet has no record of him.  Is he crazy?  Riker still looks human.  He still behaves like you’d expect Riker to behave.  Since Riker goes on to finish the series, it’s not spoiling anything to say that Riker’s not crazy.  The question then becomes what’s really going on.

I remember being entertained by the story when it first aired.  It’s odd since we just came off of another episode dealing with layered reality, Ship in a Bottle.  Here, it appears to all be in Riker’s head.  He alternates between the Enterprise and the psych ward, each time thinking that his current location is reality.  It isn’t until Dr. Crusher shows up at the psych ward that things start to get confusing.

The problem, of course, is that you know Riker will work it out.  It would be an interesting way of writing someone out of a show.  How would that even work?  Would there be a real Will Riker?  How would our Riker have known?  Maybe he got mission reports or something.  It’s not the kind of plot device you can realistically use to write an actor out of a show.  Even doing it as a finale is kind of frowned upon by fans, having the entire show be a delusion.

This is probably one to have small children stay away from, or at least have the parents watch it first to decide.  There are some intense emotions shown.  It’s safe for teens and above, who should be able to understand what’s going on.  I don’t know that it would be scary, per se.  I didn’t find it that scary, but like I said, there’s the understanding that it’s not real, even in the context of a TV show.   To see someone yelling and slowly going crazy may be a bit much.

I don’t think I’d recommend this episode as an introduction to the series, mostly because it’s so atypical.  You could watch it without having seen any previous episodes.  You might even enjoy it.  If you were trying to do an abbreviated run, I’d recommend this episode as one that you watched, as it is well written and well acted.


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Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 26 (The Neutral Zone)

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

The Enterprise is waiting for Captain Picard to return from somewhere. As the ship is waiting, an old Earth probe of some sort passes by. Commander Riker thinks nothing of it and is willing to simply let it fall into a star and be incinerated. Data, pointing out the opportunity to study something of Earth’s past, wants to go over and see what’s there. What Data finds is more than ordinary. He actually finds three cryogenically frozen humans. Before he can contact the ship for a decision, Picard’s shuttle comes back. Data makes the decision to bring the three people back to the Enterprise.

Dr. Crusher examines them and finds that all three are from the 20th century. They all died of problems that were pretty serious in our time, but are easily treatable in the 24th century. Both Riker and Picard question Data’s decision; the three people on the probe were already dead. Data pointed out that it would have been wrong to leave them there if they could be helped.

The problem is that the Enterprise is due to go to the Neutral Zone. This is an area between the Federation and the Romulan Empire used as a buffer; entry into the Neutral Zone could be considered an act of war. Several Federation outposts along the Neutral Zone have stopped communicating and there are reports of Romulan activity. It’s a dangerous mission, meaning that the three ‘survivors’ might have been just as well off on the probe.

For their part, the people brought back have varying degrees of difficulty. One is a housewife who’s distraught at the thought of not having her family any more. Another was a businessman who’s almost giddy at the prospect of how much interest he’s earned over the course of 370 years. The third was a country singer who’s just as happy to be singing in the 24th century as he was in the 20th. One venue is just as good as another.

Everything goes well with the Romulans, which is to say that neither the Enterprise nor the Romulan ship destroys the other one. The Romulans report similar instances of their outposts simply vanishing. (Both sides recognize that the other side doesn’t have the capability to do something of this magnitude.) The three survivors are told that they will be sent back to Earth to find new lives. Troi even helps the housewife find a few descendants. And so ends the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The episode, by itself, wasn’t much to look at. We never find out what happened with the three people from the probe or exactly how the probe got so far out. Apparently, it was lucky enough not to hit anything while it was drifting, but it’s amazing that no one else found them first. Also, it was mentioned that cryogenics was popular, but there’s no mention of other probes or ships other than the Botany Bay from the original series. I guess we’re just lucky that not all cryogenically frozen people turn out to be evil, genetically modified dictators like Khan. It would have been nice to revisit one or two of them in the series later on.

Also, how is it that Troi was only able to find one family for that woman? 370 years translates into 15 generations, give or take. Figuring that both of her children were to marry and each couple were to have two children, the number of descendants should be somewhere to the order of 30,000-65,000 people or more. Even if we were to figure far less, Troi should have been able to find quite a number of families. It seems possible that one of her descendants might even be on the Enterprise.

This episode was supposed to accomplish two things, really. First, it was supposed to bring back the Romulans. According to the episode, they had been missing for 50 years. Now, they were back and would be paying close attention to the Federation. The second thing was to set up the Borg. They were never expressly mentioned in the episode, but it would turn out that the cybernetic race was the real reason that the outposts disappeared. The Ferengi hadn’t shaped up to be the enemy that they were supposed to be, so the writers had to think of something else.

The acting was pretty good, but not spectacular. The writing was decent, but not great. The episode does set up later episodes, but could very easily be skipped. It’s a two-star episode. The only thing of any real importance that the episode does is to establish the year as 2364. I really can’t recommend this episode based on that alone. If you’re collecting the series on VHS, don’t waste your money on this one. (Actually, if you’re collecting the series on VHS, you might want to look into the DVD sets and a DVD player.) I suppose that it’s really a fitting end to the first season. It’s worth watching if it comes on TV, but it’s nothing remarkable.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 9 (Justice)

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

Throughout the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there seemed to be a few throwaway episodes that seemed to serve no purpose other than to fill out the season. These throwaway episodes suffered from bad writing, bad plots and/or bad acting. “Lonely Among Us” is one of those episodes. (Most of the throwaway episodes seemed to be concentrated in the first two seasons.)

The Enterprise is taking two sets of delegates to a planet called Parliament. Both worlds have been at odds for as long as each world has had interplanetary travel. On the way, the Enterprise encounters some sort of cloud made entirely of energy. The ship picks up some sort of energy being, which goes into Worf. Worf is knocked unconscious and taken to sickbay, where the being transfers to Dr. Crusher, who then begins to act strangely.

From Crusher, the energy is transferred into the ship’s computers. Once that happens, things start malfunctioning; the assistant chief engineer is killed by the energy being, albeit accidentally. It eventually finds its way into Captain Picard, who also starts acting strangely. The crew knows something’s up, but no one has grounds to remove Picard from command. The episode ends strangely. I don’t think that I could adequately explain it if I wanted to. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.

Part of the problem is that the energy-based life form dominates the story. The delegates seem to be there only to add urgency; it wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the delegates didn’t need to get somewhere. The problem doesn’t pose an immediate problem to them and there’s no hard deadline on their arrival, but it’s still a nuisance.

Then, there’s the body-snatching aspect. How many times has some alien entity invaded someone and left them with no memory of what happened? In Worf’s case, he was unconscious the entire time. However, it would have been nice for someone to be able to convey some sense of what the entity wanted.

I give this episode one star. The story just doesn’t seem to have much substance. There was nothing learned or gained. One could very easily be skipped without gaining or losing anything. I really couldn’t find any redeeming quality to the episode other than the acting, which again wasn’t exceptional.

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Hangar 18 (1980)

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

There are some movies that were destined to be filler.  It used to be that on a Sunday afternoon, you’d turn on the TV and catch some old, generic movie halfway through.  These were the movies that the station didn’t have to pay much for in terms of royalties, so they could easily use a few of them when they didn’t have any original programming to use.

When you have access to movies, either on demand or through streaming, you get a lot of these movies.  I have access to Netflix’s vast selection of movies.  Many are ones that that they didn’t want to (or couldn’t) buy on DVD, but can probably rent the rights to for little or no money.  Customers get access to another title and you don’t have a disc collecting dust on a shelf somewhere.

This is how I found out about Hangar 18.  It’s a movie about three astronauts launching a satellite.  It’s just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill satellite-launching missions until a blip shows up on their screen.  You wouldn’t think a blip would be that big of a deal, except that the satellite crashes into it.  (Oops!)  The blip turns out to be a flying saucer that crashes on Earth.  Two astronauts, Price and Bancroff, manage to make it back safely, but a third astronaut is killed by debris from the actual collision.

At first, Price and Bancroff consider themselves lucky.  That is, until they wake up the next morning to find out that they’ve been blamed for killing the third astronaut.  There are people that can help them, but the conspicuous lack of evidence is a problem.  The wreck has been collected and taken to the titular Hangar 18.  Any data that was recorded has been erased or doctored.  So, the two set off to find some proof.

Meanwhile, the team studying the ship manages to get it open without hurting anyone or doing any serious damage.  By sheer luck, they manage to access the information in the ship’s computer.  They come to realize that the aliens have been gathering information on things like power plants and other important structures.  They even bear an uncanny resemblance to us.  (Yes, there’s a reason for that.)

There’s a lot of evidence that not only are they doing recon on us, but this probably is just a small piece of a large fleet.  Should we be afraid?  Undoubtedly.  Is there a total lack of people wondering where the rest of the aliens are?  Most definitely.  Instead of trying to figure out how to deal with the threat, those in charge go the Marvin the Martian route:  blow it up.

This was not a very good UFO story.  I could see this being the pilot for a TV show, sort of like V or something.  You have an alien race that’s going to potentially destroy us.  Instead, it’s like someone had that idea, but couldn’t get the project going, so they just made the pilot into a movie and ended it there.  We never get to see the mother ship.  We never get to see other aliens trying to find their lost comrades.  The potential for aliens coming later on to finish the job is never really dealt with.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 used this film for one of their episodes, which should tell you something.  I’d be interested to see if I can get that just to see what they did with the movie.  It runs for 97 minutes, which is just short enough that it would work.  It’s not a total waste of two hours, especially if you’re making fun of it.

It was released in July of 1980, right around the time that you had other similar movies, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.  It also has that dated look that makes you think that the only reason someone approved of this project was to take advantage of the alien craze of the time.  (This movie probably wouldn’t have been released in theaters today. Instead, it probably would have been done by the Syfy channel.)

The movie is safe for teenagers and above.  There is no nudity or cursing, but there are a few gunfights and an accident.  It’s not a particularly exciting movie, regardless.  I’d say if you can get it for free streaming, give it a try.  Don’t waste a queue slot on this if you’re using Netflix.  If you have the one-at-a-time plan, you’ll regret wasting the spot. 

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