Another milestone reached: 200 episodes of Star Trek. And, the only century episode that goes to TNG (DS9 gets 300, and Voyager gets 400, 500 *and* 600).
And what’s in store for the 200th instalment? The return of Reginald Barclay in an episode that probably seemed like a good idea on paper, but just doesn’t translate well to screen. The problem is, we don’t know Barclay well enough. He’s only been in one previous episode, and there the take-away message was ‘creep’, not ‘lack of confidence’.
And it turns out that ‘creep’ fits pretty well, as he turns super-powerful and then takes over the ship. And again, it doesn’t work because we don’t know him – we’re supposed to be surprised that he goes so far, but we don’t know him well enough to tell if this is a case of JDD[^1] or something more.
200 down, 537 to go.
[^1]: Judgement Deficit Disorder. Trust me, it’s real.