Month: April 2010

The core of the episode is the battle of wits between Picard and his Cardassian interrogator. The acting is superb, both from Patrick Stewart and from guest star David Warner. It’s not an original story, but it’s very carefully and cleverly done, with original notes such as the interrogator’s daughter (good old ‘bring your daughter…

Shortest teaser in an episode? At about 40 seconds, it’s pretty close. I’ve noticed that the shortest teasers seem to go with the best episodes. The premise to take Picard out of command, put him on a secret mission, and put someone else in charge of the Enterprise, is pretty silly, and stretches believability. Is…

Cute robots have rights too! I thought this was a philosophically interesting episode that ended up missing the mark because a bit too much time was spent dancing around the subject of ‘what can the robots do’. It would have been much more interesting if that had been settled quickly, and the debate was instead…

Holodeck malfunction time. Well, I suppose it’s been a while. (Actually, I haven’t commented on how much better things have gotten on that front. No super-powerful aliens except Q in ages, and the idiot plot hasn’t been around much). I’m not really sure what they were trying for here – a better relationship between Worf…

Oh dear, Star Trek babies… (OK, teenagers. But still). So, it’s a silly idea, and I wasn’t a fan from the start. But the actor playing the ‘young’ Picard won me over – he managed a fair impersonation (not perfect, but very good). The others weren’t bad either – I did feel that they were…

Better than the start of the episode suggested, but still not that great. I think the idea just wasn’t strong enough on its own. The real strength of the Q episodes is in Q’s interactions with Picard, and that gets left out here, partly due to the focus on Beverley more than Picard. The young…

Good teaser: the Enterprise explodes. Bad teaser: Data reads poetry and Riker falls asleep. This episode could have been great – aliens from another dimension stealing Enterprise crew members in their sleep? That could be a great horror-style episode. However, this episode features a seven minute scene of people discussing how a table from their…

Scotty! The third of the original crew to turn up in Next Generation, and the only one to get a story about him – Bones got a cameo, and Spock got a lot of Romulan politics. Here the story is squarely about Scotty, and coming to terms with his usefulness in the new world. The…

So, this ambassador who is really a psychic vampire turns up, seduces Troi, but then they work out what’s happening and stop him. Yuck. Bad episode, bad premise, and (after some fairly good recent performances) some bad acting from the main participants. Not ‘cover your eyes’ awful, but not a fun hour of television. 237…

The basis of this episode feels very real – Transporter phobia would undoubtedly be a very real thing in the world of Star Trek. The episode starts out a bit poorly – it seems to be setting things up to be an hour long counselling session for everyone’s favourite whipping boy, Reg Barclay. The actual…