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

[Cheeky Devlin]

04 - The Last Outpost

A decent enough episode, even if it is a poor initial appearance for the Ferengi.
They're just too stupid and over the top to take seriously, at least at this point.

[Moggy]

Where No One Has Gone Before

Wesley

I didn't think much of this one. The traveling to another galaxyshould have been a good idea, but none of it really made any sense. I will probably be wrong, but I bet the super fast travel using thought is never mentioned again.

[Moggy]

Lonely Among Us

Another poor episode. The squabbling aliens were annoying as strawberry float, Data doing a Sherlock Holmes impression started out as fun but then got annoying and Picard turning into energy was bollocks.

I went to bed after that.

[Jenuall]

Finished up last weeks episodes last night:

The Naked Now
Not as much fun as the original episode, and they really do shove Wesley down our throats a bit too much at this point in the show, but still - we get to hear Data boasting about being "fully functional" in a sexual capacity so that's always a bonus!

Episodes like this are even stranger to watch now in the post-Covid world - the fact that the away team beam over to the other ship with zero consideration for what might infect them over there - no PPE, going around touching everything etc. Yes I know they expect the transporter to decontaminate everything, but it's still a bit stupid considering the whole point of the ship is that they are encountering new things that have never been seen before and they have no idea if their current technology can defend against it!

And then when Geordi comes back and is clearly infected they just let him wander off!

Code of Honor

One day they will discover a way to do a "primitive culture" episode that isn't massively offensive, but it is not today!

Coming off the back of TOS it's hard not to be a bit bored of another somewhat contrived "lets resolve everything with hand to hand combat!" scenario.

I do like the way Lutan says "vaccine" though.

The Last Outpost
The early parts of this are pretty good, building up the Ferengi and how little we know about them - there's a solid potential new threat established with a nice fear of the unknown thing going on. Then we actually start to meet and interact with the Ferengi and it all goes a bit weak!

Nice to see Quark even though it's not actually Quark at this point

[Moggy]

Justice

I rather enjoyed that, but probably mostly because I'm a pervert.

Riker made me laugh at the start. "They are fit though!". I assume the British slang version of that wasn't known in America at the time, so possibly unintentional comedy.

Wesley is still a little gooseberry fool. He's making me retroactively despise the movie Stand By Me.

TNG is still way too reliant on old TOS ideas though. A planet of perfect (it was a Nazi wet dream of a planet!) people and all powerful beings that look like floating orbs has been done way too often in Trek.

Edit:

I forgot to mention my favourite bit! Worf (Worff?) saying that he can't have sex with humans because they are too fragile.

[Moggy]

One thing I will say about this so far, the production values are amazing for the time. It looks nothing like a 1980s TV show. It puts a lot of the high budget movies of the 80s and early 90s to shame.

If only the scripts were decent.

[Jenuall]

It's aged well in a lot of ways, I think I mentioned before that the "clean" look of the show has not only stood the test of time well but has also lent itself very well to being upscaled for HD. When we get onto DS9 and Voyager there's a bit of an anachronistic regression in how good the show looks because those haven't had the same treatment.

I still think that the LCARS UI system they designed for the ships looks great now and is much better than a lot of the random flashing crap you see on modern sci-fi screens (also props to Cheeky for using this style for the weekly schedule updates! )

[Moggy]

The Battle

I've rushed through this week's episodes

Not bad but the Ferengi are rubbish villains and it ended way too abruptly.

[Lagamorph]

When talking about the look of TNG it's worth remembering that the versions on Netflix are the HD Remasters, not the originals.

[Moggy]

Well that explains that.

[Cheeky Devlin]

I've been watching on the Blu-Rays I got for Christmas and yeah the HD remaster is stunning. Everything for TNG was done on film, meaning all that detail was there and so they essentially recreated each episode from its component elements. They would rescan the original film, and all the effects elements, then recomposite it all back together in HD shot by shot. They've not done too much to what was already there which is impressive. It's crazy how much detail was lost when it's mastered for an SD medium like broadcast TV was back then.

There was some missing footage though, so if you ever see a shot where it suddenly looks like gooseberry fool that's why. They couldn't find it to remaster it.

The real shame is that because DS9 and Voyager were done on video, not film, they're much harder to remaster in HD. All the CGI effect work was rendered for TV so there is no HD version to rescan, so the only way to do it would be to recreate every single effects shot from scratch. Basically it's far too expensive to be worthwhile.

AI upscaling is probably going to be the best bet for those two shows, but it's far from ideal.

[Jenuall]

I've seen a few AI upscaling tests on YouTube and they're getting pretty good to be fair. Can't see us getting anything official anytime soon though, or ever in all honesty

[Cheeky Devlin]

Where No One Has Gone Before

I quite like this episode to be fair, even if it is a little Wesley-centric.

Best part is seeing Kozinsky being brought crashing back to reality when they realise it was all the Traveller.
Worf and the Targ was great as well.
Random crewmember playing the Violin was gutted when his fantasy ended.
Just a shame the resolution was a bit gooseberry fool. Never a fan of "Everybody needs to believe really hard" resolutions as they just seem like a cop out.
Wesley being made an acting-Ensign is good because it means they can pile work on the little gooseberry fool. Get him to clean out the holodeck biofilter after Rikers used it.

[Jenuall]

Had to take the train to London today so have used the opportunity to blitz through this weeks episodes!

Where No One Has Gone Before
Yeah this is decent enough all in all, I quite enjoy just how much of a twat Kozinsky is to everyone

I do hate these “Wesley is some kind of demi-god elements that start to slip in though

Lonely Among Us
It’s no award winner but it’s a solid enough episode, although it’s another one that involves a certain amount of “plot required stupidity” on behalf of the crew - again their lack of rigour around investigating and restricting the movements of people who have been attacked/infected by something unknown and are behaving oddly is frustrating!

Nice to see O’Brien again, although he still hasn’t got a name yet!

I like how the B plot of the diplomats being on board is largely here to facilitate a “ruh roh” joke moment from Riker at the end!

Justice
If only they’d have stuck to the prime directive, we could have been free of Wesley!

Never been a fan of this one, it gives us a bit more lore about the prime directive but otherwise it’s a bit of a nothing episode. Worf bragging about not being able to get jiggy with humans because he’s worried about strawberry floating them to death is probably the highlight.

The Battle

Not a bad mystery episode. Patrick Stewart does a convincing job of portraying an increasingly pissed off and stressed out Picard. Feels like they should have been able to identify what the Ferengi were doing to him more easily though, or at least they should have been a bit more interested in finding out just why Picard was suddenly suffering from such bad headaches just as the Ferengi show up.

Oh wait, magic Wesley suddenly knows how to read brain scans and he has the answer!

EDIT: I do love the design of the Stargazer though!

[Cheeky Devlin]

Lonely Among Us

It's an alright episode, but that's about it.

I do like the two factions of delegates being at each others throats, especially the end where one side eats one of the others. Silly side-plot shenanigans.

Beyond that it's just another chance to see O'Brien pop up again. I think he's just "crewman" at this point though.

[Cheeky Devlin]

[Cheeky Devlin]

Justice

One I usually skip and to be honest it didn't change my opinion of it here.
Stupid utopian society, with their stupid outfits and stupid legal system.
Main plus point was the suggestion that Wesley "could" have been executed.
Not the best Prime Directive episode to be honest.

The Battle

Much better use of the Ferengi here, though they are still a bit cringe-inducing.
Nice to see the Stargazer. I'm a sucker for seeing other Starfleet ships, especially when they're older and more in line with TOS movie ships.

[Moggy]

Hide and Q

I really enjoyed this. Q is a ridiculous character but I'd very entertaining

I like that it calls back to a previous episode, a lot of the original series relied on assuming the crew had amnesia of previous events, so it's good to see the next gen actually remember things.

I thought Riker was a little to quick to change personality when he got his powers. He went from laughing at Q to "I have ultimate power, have these gifts!" almost instantly.

I did think that Worf made the wrong choice though. She was too violent for my taste, but he'd have had a lot of fun with the hot Klingon!

It probably wasn't meant that way, but it was a little creepy how Jordi looked at Wesley and said "looking good!", he's still a kid you sick strawberry float

[Moggy]

Haven

Meh.

[Moggy]

The Big Goodbye

Another meh episode for me. It wasn't bad as such, but it didn't seem to really go anywhere. The detective and old timey gangster thing has also been done a few times in Trek.