Month: March 2010

Poor Star Trek fans. After the shock of how bad Star Trek V is, what do they get when they turn back to the TV? A Lwaxana Troi episode. I do have to admit – I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the previous one. The first appearance of Mrs Troi was played just…

The famously bad fifth movie. And while it’s bad, it’s really bad in an ‘inept and dull’ kind of way, rather than the sort of transcending badness that some things manage. A lot of the problems come from the film trying to be light and funny, but with a group of people who just aren’t…

Oh dear, it’s comedy Irish accents. There’s probably a good funny episode to be written with the Enterprise transporting a primitive colony, but it’s not this one. There’s a much more interesting story in the second half of the episode, when Riker and Pulaski get into a ‘right to choose’ argument. Probably one of the…

You would think that an episode that is half ‘Picard and Wesley in a shuttle chatting’ and half ‘the chief engineer is kidnapped’ wouldn’t end up with you wishing that you got more time in the shuttle. So, the A plot starts with aliens who seem to be stupid. But then they turn out to…

Attention writers of the Ferengi episodes: *this* is how you establish a convincing, scary threat to the Federation. It’s a bit hard to judge this episode in isolation from what it’s setting up, but I think that it’s fair to call this the single best episode of The Next Generation to date. The plot is…

The little known ‘it’s OK if it’s a cute little girl’ exception to the Prime Directive. Data seems off in this episode. It just doesn’t seem in character for him to develop this kind of attachment – he’s not sentimental, as he has no emotions. Just a strange kind of off note. The Wesley B-Plot…

Urk. Star Trek goes full on soap opera. Riker resolves his conflicts with his father, while Worf’s friends help him come to terms with being the only Klingon on the ship. The writing acting isn’t terrible, but the story is just dull as ditchwater. The final resolution is also silly: Riker is always going to…

Star Trek’s first time loop. We’ve seen a bit of time travel before, but it’s previously just been to get the Enterprise to a new setting. I actually like this kind of story, when done well it can be engrossing (if a little hard to follow). The build up is very well done, with a…

Important message for the writers of Star Trek: just because you say that the book the culture is based on is bad doesn’t excuse you from the bad writing. Oh well, the run of good episodes had to end. The episode is a flashback to The Original Series, with Riker, Worf and Data trapped in…

Personally I blame Enterprise Tech Support for the problems in this episode. Surely they would have come up with the final solution – “shut down and reboot” – quicker if they weren’t all drunk, or playing World of Borgcraft. There’s a bit of stupidity going on here: it’s pretty obvious that there’s some kind of…