Month: April 2010

And I was just complaining about seemingly minor things overpowering the Enterprise. This week, the Enterprise gets stuck in some kind of galactic snowdrift, which happens to take away everybody’s REM sleep and hence send them slowly mad. The writing and premise are nothing to write home about, but there is some great acting in…

Star Trek does the “Awwwkward” thing. Some of the scenes between Leah and Geordi are excruciating. And I personally found her quick turnaround at the end a little unbelievable – simulating someone on the Holodeck like Geordi did is certainly creepy, and definitely a violation. Other than that, another week, another seemingly relatively minor alien…

For the first time we get to see the other side of the first contact situation that is spoken about often in Star Trek. It’s carefully put together, and the Riker sub-plot adds enough jeopardy to the situation to keep the tension levels up, while underlining the main theme of the episode. One thing this…

Unlike the previous episode, there was a pretty clever premise here – what if everybody lost a day, and just started to notice the little clues that showed things to be off. The implementation doesn’t quite live up to the premise. The reveal is a bit too pedestrian, and the reaction to the xenophobic alien…

One of the worst episodes I have watched. Here’s the premise: Picard has to challenge the devil in a contract dispute about taking ownership of a planet. Which bit of that sounds good? Over-the-top antics to prove the devil’s bona fides? Or the lengthy scenes discussing nuances of contract interpretation on the planet? Or the…

OK, this was a bit confusing. A Federation officer can’t get used to the idea that the war is over, and sees Cardassian conspiracies at every turn. So Picard has to bring him in, which he does eventually. But then it turns out that there *were* Cardassian conspiracies, and Picard was just trying to keep…

The venerable ‘day in the life’ episode, although Star Trek hasn’t actually done one before this. At the end of the day (sorry, couldn’t resist) the episode doesn’t quite work. The trick of a ‘day in the life’ episode is to give us more of an insight into the day-to-day activities that we don’t normally…

Troi loses her power – honestly, if she hadn’t said something would anyone have noticed? As it turns out, we should all be grateful for Troi’s empathic sense. Because it seems thats all that’s standing between the crew and a whiny, mopey person who gives up at the slightest challenge. As any reader of these…

Farewell Wesley, we hardly knew thee. Good riddance, many would say. Actually, the horrible Wesley Crusher who always saves the day is another myth that just hasn’t stood up to re-watching (or, in many cases, watching) these episodes afresh. He doesn’t save the day that often (in fact, if you counted ‘net’ saves of the…

I enjoy a good ‘nothing is as it seems episode’. Although it is a well you need to be careful not to use too frequently, lest the audience get burnt out on it. And I think that the show has been skirting very close to that burn out. But not today. The secret of a…