Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - The Next Generation - Movie Week 2!

[Moggy]

The Measure of a Man

Another thoroughly enjoyable episode. There's some obvious annoyances, the legal system is ridiculous, Riker forced to prosecute?, that are only there to add false drama, but the court case and the questions asked are fascinating.

Data is clearly a living being, stop calling him "it" you banana splits and so there was a fantastic air of tension during the episode, a brilliant performance by Patrick Stewart and some great philosophical food for thought.

Not as good as A Matter of Honour, but it's still two great episodes in a row. I hope the slog of the start of TNG is now over!

The Dauphin

Shite. I couldn't give a gooseberry fool about Wesley's love life.

I did enjoy Riker flirting with Whoopi and Worf explaining Klingon courtship.

Contagion

I fell asleep halfway through this one, but that's because I was up too late, not because of the episode itself.

I love that even hundreds of years into the future, the best solution is always switch it off and on again

I liked this one, while there are some duds, the episodes are really starting to up their game in terms of quality!

The Royale

Stupid Picard, did he not know the equation was solved hundreds of years before his time? https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_su ... 29&org=nsf

I think they should have called it Hotel California

Not an awful episode and was funny. Worf using a phone, Picard's disgust at the crap book.

But it was a bit too weird and very nothingy. It felt like it should have been another "holodeck goes wrong" episodes, but I'm glad they didn't go down that route again.

I want to know what the extra 2 American states are though!

[Cheeky Devlin]

The Measure of a Man

The first proper glimpse of TNG at its best. Classic episode, great performances. Great stuff.

Best episode of the show so far.

[Cheeky Devlin]

The Dauphin

Wesley Crusher gets the horn for an unknowable space terror.

Shite.

EDIT: I concur with Moggy. Riker and Guinan have the best scene in the episode.

[Jenuall]

The Riker Guinan chat-up scene is brilliant. Guinan is definitely one of the things that instantly injects some extra charm to the show

[RetroCora]

As soon as Pulaski drops out and Crusher returns, the show roars along for most of the rest of its run IMO.

[Lagamorph]

The drama around Crusher being gone for a year is so weird.
Basically at the end of Season 1 a bunch of writers left, citing Roddenberry as being really hard to work with, leaving only a few people, one of them being Maurice Hurley. He got promoted to executive producer and he strawberry floating hated Gates McFadden with the burning passion of a thousand sun's because she pointed out to him when his writing was sexist or racist, so before season 2 started he convinced Roddenberry to fire her (over the objections of Rick Berman).

Even at the time fans didn't really like Pulaski and the actress decided to leave after just 1 season. Fortunately Maurice Hurley also decided to leave at the end of season 2, so Berman called McFadden to hire her back the same day.

If that one guy hadn't decided to leave when he did we may have ended up with yet another Doctor for Season 3, or possibly even just the removal of the Chief Medical Officer as a main character (much like Season 1 didn't have a Chief Engineer as a main character and the ship had a different Engineer every week)

[RetroCora]

Yeah it's really strawberry floating weird, and the guy Hurley sounds like a complete twat.

My favourite Gates McFadden fact is that she did the choreography and directed puppet work for Labyrinth and Muppets Take Manhattan. She's been very involved in some of my favourite things.

[Lagamorph]

She was also a University teacher at one point.

[RetroCora]

At Harvard no less! The dream job.

[Moggy]

And her name makes her sound like a lovechild of Microsoft and Eastenders.

[Cuttooth]

Yeah it's really strawberry floating weird, and the guy Hurley sounds like a complete twat.

My favourite Gates McFadden fact is that she did the choreography and directed puppet work for Labyrinth and Muppets Take Manhattan. She's been very involved in some of my favourite things.

There's a later episode where this came in handy.

[Jenuall]

The Measure of a Man

It's a great episode in many ways, although I find the highly contrived nature of the setup off-putting enough for me to probably not rate this one as high as some do. Data has been a known quantity in universe for literally decades at this point - he's trained at the Academy, served on multiple ships and earned many decorations - the idea that his sentience would now be brought into question in such a trivial way is just ridiculous!

Also the point Moggy brings up about the legal mechanisms and nonsense around Riker prosecuting doesn't help matters.

Also Maddox is a massive banana split

But yeah, if you look past the bizarre setup, it's a really great character based episode with some lovely performances. We get a few more great legal/courtroom episodes in the future as well which is nice!

The Dauphin

Not brilliant but it's got some moments - the aforementioned Riker and Guinan flirtation, Worf getting overpowered by the old lady monster, Geordi shocking lack of oversight of lovestruck Wes when he's doing important work on the ship's engines ("the kid's head is gone, but he's probably fine to be strawberry floating about with important parts of the ship - what could go wrong?!" )

Contagion

Overall a solid episode. Season 1 and 2 have plenty of wobbles and I think one of the reasons is just how often they just strawberry float up the basic 3 act structure of a story or don't really know what they're doing with it. There's nothing especially standout about this episode but it's well put together, has an obvious and well established plot and threat with the ship problems and Romulan threat, and it resolves itself in a way that (yes whilst a bit trite) makes sense within the logic of the setup - as such it leaves me feeling happy in a way that many early episodes just don't!

Like that we get some more "Picard wants to be Indiana Jones" setup here as well, always enjoy that aspect of his character.

The Royale
Never really liked this one, it has some fun "fish out of water" stuff with Riker, Worf and Data in the hotel, but it's a very TOS feeling episode to me - in a bad way!

The setup really doesn't make sense either - "Aliens create an everlasting hotel for one dude who got stuck on the wrong side of a wormhole because they thought it would make him happy because it's what was in his book, but turns out he hated it LOL!" ... WTF?! Couldn't they have just asked him what he wanted to do now he was stuck? He's been dead for centuries - why didn't they stop doing it when he died?

Be careful what books you travel with I guess!

[Cheeky Devlin]

Contagion

[Moggy]

Contagion

That was my joke you thief

[Cheeky Devlin]

Contagion

That was my joke you thief

Didn't read your spoiler is why.

[Cheeky Devlin]

The Royale

It's daft and you can picture Kirk and co doing the exact same things, but I quite like it.

Silly fun.

[Jenuall]

I love the fact that Data can apparently fix a loaded die by just crushing it in his mighty android grip!

[Cheeky Devlin]

Since Season 2 has 22 episodes instead of the usual 26, this week and next will be 5-episode weeks.

Gets us to Season 3 a week earlier and saves us having a 2-episode week.

[Moggy]

Time Squared

Decent but stops short of greatness.

The near future Picardplot is a great idea and Patrick Stewart does a great job. The resolution was great as well, I guessed that future Picard would break the loop, but didn't think present Picard would shoot him

I can't help feeling that there was something missing though, a long run time or being a full 2 parter might have made it much more satisfying.

The Icarus Factor

More of a character building episode than anything else. Trouble was, I don't give a gooseberry fool about Riker's daddy issues or the annoying doctor wanting to strawberry float Riker Snr

I did love the secondary Worf plot though! It's a shame that wasn't the sole focus of the episode.

Pen Pals

Now there's an episode title that would make no sense to anybody under 30.

The prime directive is a fascinating idea and far more complex philosophically than it first appears. Kirk and Co obviously just ignored it, but this crew take it pretty seriously. It's a good problem, the prime directive is 100% correct. But also monstrously callous.

It's just a shame discussion of it was wrapped up in an episode that was basically just Data grooming a child.

Q-Who

At one point I thought this was a crossover with Red Dwarf. The first Borg looked just like the simulant, I assume Red Dwarf were spoofing the Borg rather than Star Trek stealing ideas

I strawberry floating love Q, such an immature bellend, but wonderfully entertaining.

And we now have a 3 boobed prostitute on the Enterprise!

Samaritan Snare

I am smart, I am strong.

Bit of a meh episode. Neither of the plots were that interesting.

[Lagamorph]

So the Borg we see in Q Who aren't actually the Borg as originally planned.

Remember "Conspiracy" from Season 1? Those parasites were originally intended as Borg 'scouts' with the Borg themselves being an insectoid race. The following episode, The Neutral Zone, was originally intended as a 3 part episode where it would be revealed that The Borg were behind the disappearing outposts (this plot point was kept) but The Borg themselves were to be introduced in part 2 with the Enterprise and Romulan Warbird being forced to team up against a Borg ship.
The writers strike put a stop to those plans at the time and when they got back to the Borg threads it was determined that the originally conceived humanoid insect race would be prohibitively expense, leading to them being reworked into a cybernetic species instead.