Month: June 2012

The Doctor falls in love with a patient. Don’t date your patients. It’s a pretty fundamental rule of medical practice. I’m pretty sure it applies to holograms too. But it doesn’t get mentioned once, so keen is everyone to do the ‘hologram learns how to love’ plot. It’s a nice plot, done well, but not…

Sisko’s position as the Emissary is challenged. The ’emissary’ arc is an interesting one, with Sisko’s acceptance of his role growing. But here rather than come from internal growth, greater acceptance is ‘forced’ by the external events. His reactions all make sense, I just don’t see how we get from ‘I have to be the…

Q visits with the crew of Voyager. This was a pretty good story. It’s a case of not even trying to hide the real world issue (assisted suicide), but it’s handled for the most part with taste and care. Jon de Lancie is great as usual with Q, and it was nice to see a…

Quark and Rom re-enact the [WorkChoices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorkChoices) debate. Pretty good stuff. So long as you’re willing to accept that the Federation (or Bajorans) don’t impose many laws on things like labour contracts, it is an interesting conflict. It makes sense that the Ferengi would not be very pro-union. And it’s a nice development to finally see…

B’Elanna has to disarm an old weapon she made. I don’t mind massive logical leaps to get a story started, but this one doesn’t work. So the weapon got to the Delta quadrant by the same way Voyager did? But wasn’t the Caretaker looking for organic material? No way he’d have grabbed the Dreadnought. (Disengaging…

Worf’s brother has trouble coping with his new status in life. Probably the best Klingon culture episode I’ve seen. Usually it’s all ‘Hulk Smash’, but here we see the other side of it. Worf is particularly good as the man with no home, but Kurn is pretty strong as well. The main weakness is a…

Tuvok investigates a murder on board Voyager. Interesting, but something about the two main performances *just* missed for me. Suder is good, but not quite creepy enough. And Tuvok doesn’t quite get the feeling of rage. Although the long scene in the sickbay is excellent, the rest kind of almost but not quite gets it.…

Dukat and Kira track a Klingon ship attacking outposts. The first half of this episode feels like a seminar on sexual harassment. Dukat clearly wants Kira, and will do anything to try and get her. It’s a bit icky, but more importantly it distracts from the main plot. But things pick up in the second…

Tom Paris tries to break a warp barrier (which we’ve never heard of before). Janeway and Paris ‘hyperevolve’. That’s worked well [before](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2012/03/trekathon-317-genesis-tng/), after all. And then they mate, which is way more information than anyone wanted. It’s an episode that could have been fun, but it’s played for gross and horror. So – they invent…

Odo learns the first lesson of being in love: don’t keep it a secret. Against the odds I kind of liked it. It’s a silly premise, and relies too much on people choosing to not talk to each other like adults. But because it is mainly Odo, with his ‘fish out of water’ background, it…