Month: November 2012

DS9 does a 1950s heist movie. You remember, less than 10 episodes ago, when I loved a holodeck episode that was a flashback to an older genre? Well, here’s some proof that it does actually have to be good for me to like it. I love a good heist movie. This is not that. How…

Seven of Nine gets to know the Borg queen. They were shooting for epic here. I respect the ambition, but the result is bogged down by the pacing and structure of weekly TV. There are some decent action sequences, for instance, but they’re obviously broken up by ad breaks (as well as weighed down by…

Janeway decides to try and break into a Borg sphere. What better way to say ‘movie for TV’ than to steal a character from one of the movies. Say hello to the Borg Queen, a character who makes little sense given the established Borg lore (but I’m going to just let that be). Mostly it’s…

Odo meets another of the changeling orphans. An interesting opportunity to explore ‘what does it mean to be a changeling’ without the baggage of the Founders and their objectives. The new changeling is a bit of a dick about it, but that’s part of the point. We do manage to get a good sense of…

The most direct ‘false hope’ episode, with the Voyager crew hypnotised into thinking they’re going home. I think I would’ve preferred the episode done around the other way. We see Seven’s perspective, as she tries to stop the fantasy. But the other version, with Janeway et al convinced that Seven is trying to sabotage them,…

Ezri lets her serial killer side out to help find a serial killer. A few nice moments, but also some really stretched logic and a weapon that just doesn’t make sense. A transporter gun? Why not just beam a tiny knife into and then out of someone’s brain. It’d look just like a stroke -…

Tom and Tuvok crash land, and find a mysterious woman. Seriously, can we just decide once and for all what is going on with Vulcans? Are they controlling emotions, or have they eliminated them? The shows seem to veer from one description to another with little logic. Here it’s firmly in the ‘controlled’ camp, but…

Quark travels to the mirror universe to rescue the Grand Nagus. Oh goody, the Mirror Universe *and* a Ferengi episode. But then Vic Fontaine got shot, so I decided to give things a try. And while this is an overall bad episode there are some glimmerings of something better in there. In a few places…

Voyager can only be saved by finishing Tom’s Holodeck Program. OK, we can all be honest here. This episode is a flimsy excuse to have the Voyager crew run around re-enacting a 50s Science Fiction serial. I loved it. I’m a bit surprised that I did – I hate most Holodeck episodes after all, particularly…

The Doctor has a little meltdown over choosing one patient over another. A more successful-than-usual attempt at an episode heavy on the philosophy, and light on the action. Maybe even a bit too much is tried – the nature of causality *and* the nature of humanity might be a bit too much for one go.…