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  1. - Top - End - #151
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Alrighty, we are back on our viewing schedule. Let's finish our first season rewatch, as we are almost done with the first season of TNG

    Season 1 Episode 21
    Symbiosis
    Stardate: Unknown

    [Plot]
    The crew go to visit a star that has weird effects going on. The star has higher magnetic stuff. The crew detect a distress call. They rescue the crew people.

    It's Kirk's Son and Khan's right hand friend. (Not really, but the two actors playing some people are played by the actors playing those characters in the Wrath of Khan movie. Khan's right hand friend also shows up as a Romulan in the episode where the Doctor is sent to the Alpha Quadrant using the Hirogen Black Hole Communications systems network)

    One side of the people want some drugs made by the other side. In the end, Picard gives them the drugs, but won't help fix the ships that remain on planet.

    [Rating]
    3 - Average episode: OK to watch, but nothing amazing. This should be the default score.

    {Episode Commentary}
    This episode is pretty much just meh. It doesn't really hook with you, and the plot about drugs has been done before, elsewhere. The only really interesting part aside from a suggestion that Yar might have been a drug user is that both peoples can generate electricity, from their hands. So if Roy Greenhilt needed somebody that could produce lightning, he could call on one of them.

    Learning that Yar had a drug thing, is actually interesting, but sadly by this point the writers have basically failed the cast. This is Yar's last episode before she quietly leaves our group.

    We learn about why the Federation has its Prime Directive, which is nice, even though the Prime Directive ends up getting used to justify pretty much abandoning worlds to die, and what have you.

    3 episodes to go before we get to "One of the Worst Episodes of Star Trek Ever Made", in my oh so humble opinion (Conspiracy)

    So? Do fellow playgrounders agree? Disagree? Comments of your own? Get some discussing going on

    Trackers)
    Hidden Gems: 2
    Funny Guest Star Appearances: 1
    Rank of Miles: Ensign
    Prime Directives: 2
    Patrick Stewart Speech: 2 (Did I miss an earlier one? I don't think so)
    Riker "Patrick Stewart Speech": 1
    Riker Romances Something/Someone: 1
    Pithy Aesops: 1
    Klingon Proverbs/Beliefs/Sentiments: 1) Drink not with thine enemy; A) Several in the Episode, "Heart of Glory";
    Worfed (Worf loses to establish danger): 2
    Holodeck Mishaps/Breakings/Issues: 1
    Actually Alien Aliens: 1
    Lore's Appearances: 1
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  2. - Top - End - #152
    Troll in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Ah, an episode I've seen and can remember. A rarity for the early seasons...

    I was a little disappointed by this - I see no reason why they can't simply tell them that the drugs are just addictive placebos (yes, I know that's not quite the right word).

    But they weren't abandoning anyone to die here - all that would have happened would be that they ran out of the drug, went through withdrawal and then realised that the drug did nothing useful. Reparing the ship would have prevented that.

    A reasonable episode, but not one that reaches for greatness.
    Warning: This posting may contain wit, wisdom, pathos, irony, satire, sarcasm and puns. And traces of nut.

    "The main skill of a good ruler seems to be not preventing the conflagrations but rather keeping them contained enough they rate more as campfires." Rogar Demonblud

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  3. - Top - End - #153
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    I think you got this one about right. It was an okay episode but not a great one. Simple moralizing in the Star Trek tradition, with a side dish of "the Prime Directive isn't perfect, but events contrive themselves to allow us to do something anyway, therefore the Prime Directive is good."
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  4. - Top - End - #154
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Season 1 Episode 22
    Skin of Evil
    Stardate: 41601.3

    [Plot]

    The crew go to meet a shuttle that was carrying Troi back from some place. The shuttle had crashed on a planet with an oil slick. Who happens to be intelligent, and named Armus

    Armus is made up of the aspects of a group/race that cast off all of their bad stuff. That basically congealed into Armus. The crew must deal with Armus, who is essentially a bully.

    Armus kills Tasha. Then Armus grabs Riker and covers him in goo, then Armus lets Riker go. Armus visits Troi to chat with her in the shuttle. That happens a few times.

    Armus is looking to be entertained or amused, rather than deal with Armus and existence. Picard figures out Armus and speechifies Armus to ineffectiveness. Then the crew gets rescued, the shuttle gets destroyed, and The ship leaves.

    The crew have a memorial for Tasha. Data has a learning moment.

    [Rating]
    4 - Good episode: A few parts of the episode are above average - good plot points, clever use of effects and so on.
    But goes to
    2 - Poor episode: Not too bad but has one or two week areas (Poor plot, weak character use, bad effects)

    {Episode Commentary}
    This episode kills off Tasha. It happens as Gene wanted, a senseless thing. That is, well, all things considering, it doesn't work because we have not been doing the bonding with the different characters enough at this point to make her death have meaning. I mean, if we had gotten a whole season then another one with her death, with some characterization happening, then her death would have had an impact. It just doesn't.

    Armus looks terrible in terms of effects but works pretty well as a character. In fact, just interacting with Armus alone would have worked as an episode. Including a cast death, which is the only one that happens in the entire series mind, is a bit much. Armus just works, the main times that Armus is busy being the oil slick, not when Armus has taken the humanoid shape, which just looks like somebody took a bodysuit similar to Darth Vader's costume and poured a bunch of black goop/goo all over it. It just looks staggeringly bad.

    It is important to point out here, that we have lost our first and only member of the main cast. The series will have a few episodes that will tease the idea of deaths happening, but that never occurs. Even worse, the death of Tasha apparently wasn't a good send off, so we end up getting Tasha appearing in Yesterday's Enterprise and her being captured by Romulans, to produce Sela. We can thank Gene for that little bit of stuff. Not exactly one of Gene's shining moments. (The Sela bit, and Yesterday's Enterprise bit is different attempt at closure, but I think that is falls under one's own judgement if Tasha becoming the consort/concubine of a Romulan General and dying trying to escape is a really form of closure)

    At this point in the series, we are almost done with the first season. We have slightly way too many cast members, and so naturally Tasha gets the axe. The writers couldn't give everyone enough character moments, and so the actress playing Tasha made the decision to walk. It ends up being a problem for the later seasons, but not to the degree of Voyager with Chuckles (Indian Guy), and the others in that series.

    To be honest, they (the writers) could have done a better job with the characters, but they just didn't. We have gotten a few moments of character for the different characters, but there is not much to get. The ones that have gotten that are of course, Worf and Data. Because both of them are not Gene's boring future human people. It is really hard to make drama and character moments happen with Gene's boring future human people. Who because of how Gene made them, come across as really preachy and racist. That was not Gene's intent, but it shows up heavily in episodes.

    Two episodes to go to one of the worst episodes of the Star Trek franchise

    So? Do fellow playgrounders agree? Disagree? Comments of your own? Get some discussing going on

    Trackers)
    Hidden Gems: 2
    Funny Guest Star Appearances: 1
    Rank of Miles: Ensign
    Prime Directives: 2
    Patrick Stewart Speech: 3 (Did I miss an earlier one? I don't think so)
    Riker "Patrick Stewart Speech": 1
    Riker Romances Something/Someone: 1
    Pithy Aesops: 1
    Klingon Proverbs/Beliefs/Sentiments: 1) Drink not with thine enemy; A) Several in the Episode, "Heart of Glory";
    Worfed (Worf loses to establish danger): 2
    Holodeck Mishaps/Breakings/Issues: 1
    Actually Alien Aliens: 1
    Lore's Appearances: 1
    *Data's Emotions: 1 (He has one at the memorial for Tasha)
    *Troi Troubles: 1 (Troi heavily uses her empathy here on Armus)
    *Money Matters: 1 (The crew have a betting pool, and Worf is betting on Tasha)
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  5. - Top - End - #155
    Titan in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    To be fair, a lot of 80s/90s sci-fi shows took a couple seasons to figure themselves out, and Star Trek TNG in particular got a lot more focused after Gene Roddenberry stopped being in charge of things. But yeah, there are some egregious episodes of TNG, especially in the first season.

    And while no other main cast member was killed off the way Tasha was, it was still fairly groundbreaking for a main character to die at all on a TV series like this back in those days. The fact that it happened at all inherently puts TNG on a higher level of potential character drama than other shows that don't kill off any of their main characters (even if it didn't end up paying off in the long run).
    "Nothing you can't spell will ever work." - Will Rogers

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  6. - Top - End - #156
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    The fact that it happened at all inherently puts TNG on a higher level of potential character drama than other shows that don't kill off any of their main characters (even if it didn't end up paying off in the long run).
    I would put this under "Things the series never followed up on". TNG teases us with moments looking like other cast members could die, but it never happens, and it gets only moderate close to look like happening.

    Shame about all that possible drama
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  7. - Top - End - #157
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    I actually thought Skin of Evil was a really poor episode. It feels hastily thrown together as a way to write out Tasha. I didn't find Armus at all compelling as a character or a concept, and he has aged extremely poorly in terms of special effects. Both the oil slick version and the goopy-person version look really bad to me. To me this is one of the worst episodes of the first season.
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  8. - Top - End - #158
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    And while no other main cast member was killed off the way Tasha was, it was still fairly groundbreaking for a main character to die at all on a TV series like this back in those days. The fact that it happened at all inherently puts TNG on a higher level of potential character drama than other shows that don't kill off any of their main characters (even if it didn't end up paying off in the long run).

    That's because the writers got a kick up the ass when one of the regular cast quit.

    That's why Tasha was killed off, because Denise Crosby thought the show was going nowhere and bailed. That was the "oh ****" moment for the writers that made them reassess how they were approaching writing for the series.

  9. - Top - End - #159
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
    I didn't find Armus at all compelling as a character or a concept, and he has aged extremely poorly in terms of special effects. Both the oil slick version and the goopy-person version look really bad to me. To me this is one of the worst episodes of the first season.
    Well, Armus does work as a character in idea, but in execution is pretty terrible. The effects were terrible when the episode was filmed and it has not changed.

    Then there is the fact that this episode is one of the few times that Troi uses her empathy and being a betazoid before the writers completely just forget about that. A few later episodes have her use her empathy.

    I would challenge on it being the worst episode as we have two episodes to go for the worst episode of the first season
    Blog Read and Comment! I use green for joking and Blue for sarcasm.
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  10. - Top - End - #160
    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    The Tracker Tracker is up to 16 trackers - at this rate of growth we'll have more trackers than we do watched episodes.

  11. - Top - End - #161
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by russdm View Post
    Well, Armus does work as a character in idea, but in execution is pretty terrible. The effects were terrible when the episode was filmed and it has not changed.

    Then there is the fact that this episode is one of the few times that Troi uses her empathy and being a betazoid before the writers completely just forget about that. A few later episodes have her use her empathy.

    I would challenge on it being the worst episode as we have two episodes to go for the worst episode of the first season
    Armus is just a Mr. Hyde in space without Dr. Jekyll. Since we never see the "good" aliens that cast him off, he's kinda meaningless. I guess he does give Troi a chance to get her Betazoid on, but he's still not at all compelling to me.

    I did say "one of" the worst, not the worst. I would place it in the bottom 5 for this season easily though.
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  12. - Top - End - #162
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Season 1 Episode 23
    We'll always have Paris
    Stardate: 41697.9

    [Plot]
    the crew are traveling twhen they experience a time moment. they go to investigate and discover that picard has an old flame who is married to a guy that is experimenting with time. Managed to end linking to another dimension and caused trouble. so the crew work on fixing the problem which is solved by Data using some antimatter. the guy and picard's old flame return to their place

    [Rating]
    3 - Average episode: OK to watch, but nothing amazing. This should be the default score.

    {Episode Commentary}
    basically a nice star trek episode. we learn some about picard and we see some of what Data can do. the time related things are interesting but nothing special. everything works out fine in the end.

    So? Do fellow playgrounders agree? Disagree? Comments of your own? Get some discussing going on

    Trackers)
    Hidden Gems: 2
    Funny Guest Star Appearances: 1
    Rank of Miles: Ensign
    Prime Directives: 2
    Patrick Stewart Speech: 3 (Did I miss an earlier one? I don't think so)
    Riker "Patrick Stewart Speech": 1
    Riker Romances Something/Someone: 1
    Pithy Aesops: 1
    Klingon Proverbs/Beliefs/Sentiments: 1) Drink not with thine enemy; A) Several in the Episode, "Heart of Glory";
    Worfed (Worf loses to establish danger): 2
    Holodeck Mishaps/Breakings/Issues: 1
    Actually Alien Aliens: 1
    Lore's Appearances: 1
    *Data's Emotions: 1
    *Troi Troubles: 1
    *Money Matters: 1
    Polarize the Phase Inverters: 1 (Data uses antimatter to fix what went wrong)
    Last edited by russdm; 2021-07-15 at 10:51 PM.
    Blog Read and Comment! I use green for joking and Blue for sarcasm.
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  13. - Top - End - #163
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Season 1 Episode 24
    Conspiracy
    Stardate: 41775.5

    [Plot]
    the crew head to Pacifica, when Picard hears from a friend about weirdness. and that there is something going on. Starfleet Command has taken over by Neural Parasites. the crew fix the problem.

    Thanks to Tvtropes and Memory Alpha))

    The crew head to Pacifica, when picards hears from a friend about weirdness and that he needs picard to go to a place and have a chat.

    Once arriving at the place, Picard meets some other captains and has to prove that he is himself. Apparently according to Picard's old friend, people involved in the thing that he is worried about can't remember anything long term (one of the captains is a member of that group that Picard's friend is worried about)

    Picard leaves with his ship and then his friend's ship gets blown up. Picard goes to earth to investigate.

    Thanks TVTropes:

    The Enterprise is on its way to Pacifica, a water world for that much-needed R&R they mentioned last episode.

    However, a priority call to Picard interrupts the mission, as it's Picard's old friend, Captain Walker Keel, on the line. He demands for the ship to detour to an abandoned mining planet for a secret meeting. Picard is confused but curious, and humors him. Upon arriving at the planet and beaming down, Picard is confronted by not just Keel, but two other captains, who try to Bluff the Impostor to make sure Picard is really Picard before telling them of their concerns of a subversion in the Federation. The evidence is both vague and disturbing: mysterious disappearances and deaths in the ranks, bizarre orders and personnel shuffles, among other things. Picard doesn't buy it, but agrees to keep his eyes open for anything unusual that would corroborate their stories, assigning Data to look over Starfleet's recent activities upon returning to the ship as a precaution before heading back on course to Pacifica.

    Unfortunately, the conspiracy decided to make its presence known shortly thereafter; the Enterprise comes across the destroyed wreckage of Keel's ship, and through his research, Data is able to confirm many of the odd occurrences Picard was told of, leading everyone to assume the worst: secret invasion. Picard decides to head to Starfleet Headquarters to figure out just what the hell is going on. Once there, Picard and Riker meet with a trio of admirals, all of whom seem to be acting very strangely. Things get weirder when we learn that one of them is Admiral Quinn, who, in a previous episode ("Coming of Age"), started the rumors of the conspiracy, but now insists he was only speaking metaphorically about acquiring new members of the Federation. While Riker is still not convinced, Picard is, and orders him to keep an eye on this admiral while he goes on a tour of the Enterprise.

    Once on board, Quinn introduces Riker to a brain slug (no, not those ones), batting him around like a rag doll when he refuses to become one with the thing. When Worf and Geordi fail to stop him, Quinn is eventually subdued by Dr. Crusher, and an investigation reveals a similar brain slug within him. Apparently, these are the things that are trying to subvert the Federation, and as Picard soon learns, they've made their way into the highest levels of Starfleet. Fortunately, Riker recovers enough from his beating to pull off a successful fake-out to rescue Picard from assimilation, and together, they face off against the mother alien, possessing Quinn's second-in-command, Commander Dexter Remmick, who defiantly insists they only wanted "peaceful coexistence". The episode ends on a Red Herring Twist, with a homing signal being sent out to the Delta Quadrant. The End... Or Is It?

    [Rating]
    Barely even makes it up to
    1 - Bad episode: Multiple weaknesses (bad acting, bad story, disasterous effects, poor connection to lore)

    {Episode Commentary}
    This G**-D*** Episode

    Good Lord, this is trash. No other episode has gone further to portray Starfleet as a bunch of utter idiots before and since. Nobody figures out anything about the Parasites thing until this point, and, yet, there are staggering bits of evidence suggesting that someone should have figured it out. Like the whole eating maggots thing, and with relish, by a smiling Vulcan. Or how a commander like Remmick is busy apparently giving instructions to Admirals, or so.

    But then, Starfleet is mildly military, and never before has the suggestion that Starfleet is staffed by trained morons and run by morons and led by idiots come up. It does here, so very very much.

    The entire premise reminds one of those movies, invasion of the body snatchers or such, those idiotic things that came before any of the zombie movies, which zombie movies run on the principle of having to give every single human being an idiot ball to even work. Those kind of movies. The ones that makes you think if Hollywood is completely stupid. or if Hollywood thinks everyone is stupid

    This episode features one of those secret invasions type of things, people being controlled by something. If either the things doing the controlling had looked actually interesting or the story not been overdone with crappy B Scifi movies before this point in time. Then this episode might have been barely mediocre.

    Then, we fall into the trap of what makes TNG so horrible: No {Scrubbed} setup. I didn't care about the kidnapped kids in that one episode, I didn't care much about Bablyon 5's Shadow War, and I struggled to care about the Narn-Centauri War. The only reason that I did care about the Narn and Centauri was thanks to those actors playing G'Kar and Londo. The only reason.

    TNG suffers heavily from lack of setup and from its own medium. Given how "monster/Crisis" of of the week, the show is, I already know it will get solved out by the end credits. Then, I also know that it also features Roddenberry's super humans of the future, who are rather bland and uninteresting. And incredible preachy.

    Apparently, according in this episode, having Starfleet Command under the control of something is bad. To be honest, I feel more like this episode is depicting what happens on Monday, and who knows if it will just as zany and nuts on Tuesday. Maybe Roddenberry should have shelved the "mildly" (Read as thoroughly dedicated incompetency) military Starfleet. Pretty much the whole series has been leading up to how thoroughly dedicated to incompetent behavior Starfleet is. In "The Naked Now", no mention is made of having anyone wear hazmat suits because something happened and that other crew died. In fact, the only time quaratine actually comes up, Geordi has managed to affect the entire crew already.

    I would be horrified to imagine how Starfleet would handled the Coronavirus. Whelp, there goes the whole fleet.

    Starfleet has apparently in the time since the TOS Films fallen in terms of general ability. In dealing with problems using Diplomacy and any of the Pew-Pew-Pew parts. For a bunch supposed to be representing Starfleet's best, well, I am going to quote somebody here...

    "Then, I weep for the Species." (Kudos to Preed from Titan AE, after being told by Cole/Cale, about how Cale/Cole is Humanity's Last Hope) (I hope it is close to right)

    If the Enterprise D is the Flagship of Starfleet and represents the best, then clearly the general level of ability has fallen. Data is able to figure out that a pattern exists, which is surprising because of my understanding that Starfleet's general competency bar is such that a pattern represents a major above board level of general competency that Starfleet doesn't have.

    Apparently at some point it was decided that "Mildly" Military is actual translation for barely competent to (Thanks to my civil war military types -- not able to pour piss out of a boot with written instructions on boot) horrendous. Seriously, really people? Only Data even notices a pattern? Don't you morons have computers?

    Oh, that's right, we are operating in a future where the computer is barely functional above the level of something like an Apple 2 or the Macintosh or the PC equilvant. Something that could let you play "Oregon Trail" and die of dysentery or drown while fording a river. That sort of thing. Computers that die if you ask it to much.

    Then, we have the wonderfulness, of how easily able and effectively, no one even notices for a while that something has happened. I guess, that general levels of whatever was happening by Starfleet Command is actually normal. That stupidity in some form, is the normal part? So, basic incompetence or rank incompetence is the standard? Okay.

    Then, there is how one idea was originally there was going to be a "militant"/"Militarist" faction in charge of the events. Given later events in the series, I feel that dropping that idea was a serious blunder. The original idea would have given serious area for exploring that would have benefited the series later on.

    instead we learned that becoming Roddenberry's supaWOKE humans makes you not able to handle things without the help of an English speaking French dude and the funny way to sit guy. what happens when those two leave? probably Tuesday and just the same amount of zany events. it's a wonder that they haven't blow up the universe already. in the last episode, picard's old flame had a husband who was able to open a hole/portal to another dimension.

    those Vulcans must think that we are a species of laughing mad insane mad scientists. "that Doc Brown guy and his time traveling car is a real story" -- some poor Vulcan says before tearing out their hair and going crazy

    and the science with the adrenal lands is totally bogus b.s. science. so Worf didn't get Worfed

    But, good lord, this is a bad episode. Personal Canon: this episode never happened

    again, good lord, this is a bad episode, equal to how bad Code of Honor was

    So? Do fellow playgrounders agree? Disagree? Comments of your own? Get some discussing going on

    Trackers)
    Gene Roddenberry ruins Star Trek: 1 (Starfleet is depicted as Super Incompetent)
    Hidden Gems: 2
    Funny Guest Star Appearances: 1
    Rank of Miles: Ensign
    Prime Directives: 2
    Patrick Stewart Speech: 3 (Did I miss an earlier one? I don't think so)
    Riker "Patrick Stewart Speech": 1
    Riker Romances Something/Someone: 1
    Pithy Aesops: 1
    Klingon Proverbs/Beliefs/Sentiments: 1) Drink not with thine enemy; A) Several in the Episode, "Heart of Glory";
    Worfed (Worf loses to establish danger): 2
    Holodeck Mishaps/Breakings/Issues: 1
    Actually Alien Aliens: 1
    Lore's Appearances: 1
    *Data's Emotions: 1
    *Troi Troubles: 1
    *Money Matters: 1
    Polarize the Phase Inverters: 1 (Data uses antimatter to fix what went wrong)
    Last edited by russdm; 2021-07-23 at 09:20 PM.
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  14. - Top - End - #164
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    With this episode it's painfully obvious that they originally had something else in mind, and then abandoned it to do... this, instead. The previous episode where we saw Admiral Quinn and Commander Remmick had them as obviously not taken over by alien parasites, which is possibly believable in the admiral's case but not for Remmick who plays host to the mother creature. Admittedly, when Remmick said he hoped to one day serve on the Enterprise in that previous episode I laughed out loud, but it was clear he was being a jerk because he was following Quinn's orders and maybe took them a little too seriously.

    If I remember right, they had a deeper plot in mind but it was the victim of the episodic nature of TV at the time not really allowing for longer-term plots. I put it down to TNG being a product of its time and not really the show's own fault that they weren't allowed to tell longer stories much.

    Anyway, I don't particularly care for this episode but have nowhere near the vitriol you apparently do for it.
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  15. - Top - End - #165
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
    Anyway, I don't particularly care for this episode but have nowhere near the vitriol you apparently do for it.
    I really didn't care for simply how much it goes to basically make Starfleet's leadership and everyone else appear so stupid, in how easily the deal is spotted. Eating Maggots? People can't remember anything in long term memory? Having a Vulcan smiling with relish while eating maggots? Seriously, no other Vulcan who saw that Vulcan didn't think that something was wrong? That Vulcan admiral was smiling and being un-Vulcan like. Nobody noticed?

    Nobody on Earth noticed, and only those three that showed up (with a spy/plant) on that Dyt B place having noticed that something was going on.

    That sheer amount of Idiot Ball holding to make some of these be ignored, like the maggots or Smiling Vulcan, just seriously boggle the mind. I have no problem with making the crew look ineffectual or in over their heads at times, but the entire G**-D*** Starfleet and every single Federation Official who interacted with those admirals, all of them are ineffectual or stupid? I...I Can't Buy that kind of crap.

    As for getting some Arc for this episode to follow up on...

    Oh, HELL, NO. Not with this Snidely Whiplash from Dudley Do Right Kind of Villains.

    I expected more secretive sinister manipulation, less overt manipulation. Less clearly on display something was wrong, and more something that would have taken time to figure out.

    I seriously wish the writing team and the other crew had been to have the balls or spine to tell Gene off, and had gone with a Militant/Militarist Starfleet Faction. This episode would have been so much better.
    Last edited by russdm; 2021-07-20 at 01:32 AM.
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  16. - Top - End - #166
    Eldritch Horror in the Playground Moderator
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    I'll be entirely honest - I have never seen this episode, and after reading your review I still have no idea what it is about or what happens. You spent your entire wordcount on how much you hate the episode, and almost nothing on the events that inspire such boiling rage.

  17. - Top - End - #167
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by russdm View Post
    I really didn't care for simply how much it goes to basically make Starfleet's leadership and everyone else appear so stupid, in how easily the deal is spotted. Eating Maggots? People can't remember anything in long term memory? Having a Vulcan smiling with relish while eating maggots? Seriously, no other Vulcan who saw that Vulcan didn't think that something was wrong? That Vulcan admiral was smiling and being un-Vulcan like. Nobody noticed?
    Because the only people who saw that were infested or about to be infested. Still it was the dumb kinda bond villain movie of explaining your whole plan before you actually pull it off.

    Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
    With this episode it's painfully obvious that they originally had something else in mind, and then abandoned it to do... this, instead. The previous episode where we saw Admiral Quinn and Commander Remmick had them as obviously not taken over by alien parasites, which is possibly believable in the admiral's case but not for Remmick who plays host to the mother creature. Admittedly, when Remmick said he hoped to one day serve on the Enterprise in that previous episode I laughed out loud, but it was clear he was being a jerk because he was following Quinn's orders and maybe took them a little too seriously..
    Because they weren't infected by that point. They'd caught on to the 'conspiracy' hence the Investigations in the episode 'Coming of Age' but at some point they uncovered the truth and were then infected or got infected when they got to close, then the mother creature migrated to Remmick.
    Nale is no more, he has ceased to be, his hit points have dropped to negative ten, all he was is now dust in the wind, he is not Daniel Jackson dead, he is not Kenny dead, he is final dead, he will not pass through death's revolving door, his fate will not be undone because the executives renewed his show for another season. His time had run out, his string of fate has been cut, the blood on the knife has been wiped. He is an Ex-Nale! Now can we please resume watching the Order save the world.

  18. - Top - End - #168
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    So, this episode was meant to be a precursor to introducing what eventually became the Borg, which were originally conceived as an insect hive species. Of course, those plans were aborted when they changed their minds about what the Borg would be and made them into cyborg zombies instead. The episode even ends with a mysterious signal sent into deep space that's never mentioned again.
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  19. - Top - End - #169
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    I'll be entirely honest - I have never seen this episode, and after reading your review I still have no idea what it is about or what happens. You spent your entire wordcount on how much you hate the episode, and almost nothing on the events that inspire such boiling rage.
    put a plot summery in, from tvtropes
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  20. - Top - End - #170
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Got any new ones coming up? My own TNG rewatch is up to the beginning of season 3 now, and I've got a lot of thoughts to share about the season 2 episodes when we get there.
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  21. - Top - End - #171
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Sorry, I was busy in between the times.

    Getting back to this

    Season 1 Episode 25
    The Neutral Zone
    Stardate: 41986 (2364)

    [Plot]
    the crew are waiting on picard to get back from a conference. they discovered a space module from earth apparently. given how far away from earth it is, Data decides to pay a visit. the space module has several people on board and they were frozen (in carbonite) after death using cryogenics. picard gets back and data has the people who are living (not the two corpses) brought on board the enterprise.

    the carbonite people get revived while picard sends the ship to the neutral zone. several outposts have been destroyed and it ought to be those romulans. picard wants useful information and he has to deal with the frozen people.

    the freezee-ies are clare raymond, a homemaker; l.q. "sonny" clemonds, a musician; ralph offenhouse, money guy

    none of the three know how to handle their situation though doesn't have a hard time adjusting than the others. both ralph and clare have concerns.

    the crew heads to the neutral zone while the crew interact with the frozen ones and be all smugly superior, and treating them with a considerable amount of bigotry. apparently, alll humans in the 20th century are scumbags.

    they arrive at the neutral zone and explore a little then encounter romulans. the encounter ends peacefully and the crew head off for further explorations.

    [Rating]
    4 - Good episode: A few parts of the episode are above average - good plot points, clever use of effects and so on.
    Hidden Gem

    {Episode Commentary}
    i consider this to be a hidden gem episode. it brings back the romulans. it also reveals that gene's future-humans are not as great or a perfect as they are supposed to be. the feddies are or act like bigots here the most clearly. then we interact with the romulans. seeing the different alien powers can be interesting.

    then there was the writers strike that happened.

    a pretty good episode to finish the season on

    So? Do fellow playgrounders agree? Disagree? Comments of your own? Get some discussing going on

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  22. - Top - End - #172
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    This is an episode I really didn't care much for.

    It had good ideas, but tried to do too much at once, so instead of having a lighter episode based around trying to integrate into a future society OR a tense episode of border conflict being caused by an unknown enemy we had a mess of the two crunched together, and neither really got the treatment it deserved.

    I don't remember the crew being particularly "smugly superior", except when dealing with Ralph. Since he spent a considerable amount of time being a complete, self-important **** I can't really blame them for that. He was also possibly a representation of a very 80's trope: The Yuppie.
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  23. - Top - End - #173
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    I loved how indignant Ralph was about all his precious wealth being meaningless in 24th century society. Even when told that people on Earth want for nothing, he was mad because he was so used to his money granting him power and influence. I'm not generally fond of that kind of person so I enjoyed seeing him taken down a peg. The other two I had less of a reaction to.

    I don't remember too clearly, but weren't both the Enterprise and the Romulans finding destroyed outposts on their sides of the Neutral Zone that they thought the other party was responsible for? I think this is more Borg foreshadowing.
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  24. - Top - End - #174
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    Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
    I don't remember too clearly, but weren't both the Enterprise and the Romulans finding destroyed outposts on their sides of the Neutral Zone that they thought the other party was responsible for? I think this is more Borg foreshadowing.
    Yes, it's clearly stated in the first 'proper' Borg episode, that the devastated planet (the one, Q teleports them to) looks just like what happened near the Neutral Zone.

  25. - Top - End - #175
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seppl View Post
    Yes, it's clearly stated in the first 'proper' Borg episode, that the devastated planet (the one, Q teleports them to) looks just like what happened near the Neutral Zone.
    Which is a bit weird logistically speaking. Q sent them so far away that it would take them a couple years to travel back under their own power. So that implies that either the Borg cube they encountered traveled to the Neutral Zone and then back in the other direction, or that there's a second cube that got there before the one they encountered.
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  26. - Top - End - #176
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    SamuraiGuy

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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Actually, you are both wrong. Technically, the destroyed outposts were supposed to be related to the last episodes bad guys. And the Borg were going to be a hive mind insect race. Things ended changing to retcon the destroyed outposts having been done by the Borg. Which then throws out the timeline and makes not clear where or how the Borg are exploring/located.

    I don't think that there was any thinking about how screwed up the timeline got and with the Borg. According to the Q episode where Q teleports them away, the Borg might not have known anything. Then in Enterprise, Archer comments that the pseudo-Borg sent off a message in that episode.

    So, working out exactly what was happening just can't be done.

    I think that it is better to just assume that nobody paid any attention to continuity.
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  27. - Top - End - #177
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    It's more like the Borg continuity was changing as the first season of TNG went into the second season. The conspiracy episode (with the weird bug creatures) was meant to be about what was eventually changed into the Borg we now know.

    Honestly, the Borg are probably the most heavily retconned species in the Star Trek canon, since they were originally introduced as if Q was totally responsible for them even knowing about humanity in the Alpha Quadrant, while also having the prior disappearing outposts along the Neutral Zone attributed to their invasive probing. Then after that, in Voyager they were known to the Hansen family (Seven of Nine's parents) several years before the Enterprise encountered them. Then because of the time travel events of ST First Contact, there were some remaining Borg drones which tried to contact the collective in the past on Enterprise.

    So after all that, it's really hard to say what happened when and what the Borg really knew about the Federation and humanity. And that's not even mentioning how the Borg were originally introduced as only interested in technology, but then were changed to also want to assimilate biological entities so that creating Locutus would make sense.
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  28. - Top - End - #178
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    Quote Originally Posted by russdm View Post

    Good Lord, this is trash. No other episode has gone further to portray Starfleet as a bunch of utter idiots before and since. Nobody figures out anything about the Parasites thing until this point, and, yet, there are staggering bits of evidence suggesting that someone should have figured it out. Like the whole eating maggots thing, and with relish, by a smiling Vulcan. Or how a commander like Remmick is busy apparently giving instructions to Admirals, or so.
    I always questioned why teleporters didn't pick the parasites up. I always thought teleporters had a built in decontamination cycle. Like if you beamed up from a planet with an Alien tick on your leg, the teleport isolated the tick or at least notified the person at the panel that something was wrong.

    I remember being shocked when this came out by the bad special effect gore when they shoot into the chest cavity of Remmick. I was like 10 or 11 at the time and this was a "PG" family show. Previously, phasers on kill either disintegrated the person or knocked them down dead with no apparent wounds. Here, it cuts you up and causes you to explode. I think this shoes the effect of Predator and Alien on early TNG.
    Last edited by Trafalgar; 2021-08-15 at 03:02 PM.

  29. - Top - End - #179
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by russdm View Post
    I would put this under "Things the series never followed up on". TNG teases us with moments looking like other cast members could die, but it never happens, and it gets only moderate close to look like happening.

    Shame about all that possible drama
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  30. - Top - End - #180
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    Default Re: New kids in the class. Let's watch and discuss, Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    I always questioned why teleporters didn't pick the parasites up. I always thought teleporters had a built in decontamination cycle. Like if you beamed up from a planet with an Alien tick on your leg, the teleport isolated the tick or at least notified the person at the panel that something was wrong.
    Depends whether the transporter was set to Drama that week.

    If it was then it'd probably swap your brain with the alien tick and you'd have to try and explain it to the crew before your body sucked too many redshirts dry.

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