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Wacky Reviews: Star Trek

O'Brien probably phoned it in because filming was starting on DS9's first season.

I laughed at the "theater troupe rehearsal" when they pulled in the landlady.
 
Realm of Fear - The Enterprise finds a missing ship. The whole crew are missing or dead. Geordi wants Barclay to come with him to investigate but Barclay is reluctant. It's a difficult transport due to weird energy or something and the big goose runs out before O'Brien can beam him over. He adits to Troi that he's always been scared of transporters and has never used one. And he really is right to be scared since the transporter actually kills everyone it transports and creates and identical copy on the other side, but let's not go into that. Troi tells him about "plexing" which is tapping his neck to relieve anxiety. Wow, Troi is truly hopeless. But somehow this cures Barclay and he lets O'Brien beam him over. He seems to see something (a puppet with a mouth) in the transporter beam when being beamed back to the Enterprise. How can you see anything when your eyes have been broken down to molecules? I don't know! The transporter makes no sense! Sorry. O'Brien and Geordi investigate it anyway. O'Brien is offended by the idea of the transporter not being safe. Something weird happens with Barclay's arm.

Barclay looks up his symptoms with Google (well, the ship's computer) and becomes convinced he has transporter psychosis. The way he acts out everything the computer says is funny. Geordi and Data start doing technobabble stuff after something happens (I drifted for a moment.) Data notices Barclay is a big paranoid wreck. So Troi tells to help him again. That never helps! She relieves him of duty. Barclay tries to cope with his anxiety. It goes on a bit. He goes back to the transporter room in the middle of the night and reviews the logs. He has O'Brien beam him over and back again and he says the creature in the beam again. He tells everyone now. They probably think he's crazy but they investiage anyway. Crusher finally detects some plasma or something on him. He does some more science stuff with Data and Geordi, then passes out. Man TNG has a lot of technobabble. I think I was more tolerant of it as a teenager when I was first watching because I assumed it was all intelligent and mean something, but watching now I just want thtme to get on with it. They end up beaming Barclay over again and hold him in the beam this time. Barclay sees the mouth monster again and this time he grabs it. Turns out it's a crewmember from the other ship and they've all been trapped in the transporter beam. They were trying to use the beam to cure them from the plasma thing (I don't know) and they got stuck. O'Brien shows Barclay Christina, his pet spider.

What's good about the episode is how closely Barclay's fear of transporters mirrors or own fear of, well, everything, especially in the scene where he starts looking up his symptoms with the computer. The acting from Dwight Schultz is strong, as usual. I like his scenes with O'Brien. The resolution with him saving the crewmembers from the transporter beam is nice. The problem is there's just too many scenes of paranoid Barclay trying to cope with his symptoms. They're all watchable but it just goes on too long. It's a pretty good episode, it just drags a bit in the middle and has a lot of technobabble.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
Man of the People - The Enterprise rescues an ambassador and his mother from a ship. The mother instantly warns Troi not to go after her son. He isn't exactly a looker (as far as I can tell?) so I don't think she should be worried. He has a weird forehead. The mother basically calls Troi a slut and Troi is upset from the emotions she senses from the old lady. The mother dies shortly after (Worf calls Riker and Troi to her quarters to watch her die, for some reason!) The ambassador wants to do a "funeral meditation" with Troi, but he touches his weird stone to hers and something weird happens. Crusher can find no cause of death for the old lady but can't do an autopsy due to stupid alien beliefs. Troi starts looking at her own cleavage in the mirror when doing yoga. She's goes to the ambassador's quarters and comes onto him but he won't sleep with her. What a dick. She has sex with a random Ensign instead and wears a revealing dress when Riker goes to see her (were her nipples so obvious before this was HD?) Meanwhile the ambassador's still trying to do his ambassador stuff with other weird forehead people. Troi tells one of her patients she's tired of all her whining, which is kind of hilarious.

Troi shows up in Ten Forehead with a vampy new look (Troi's breasts are basically a supporting character in this episode) and grey hair. She tells the ambassador she wants to be with him and shouts at other people. She kisses Riker but then scratches him and even Riker's not into that and runs away. Then she starts to age super fast and begs the ambassador to take her with him. She shows up in the transporter room as an old lady and tries to stab the ambassador. She gets Picard instead. It's unintentionally hilarious. And still no one suspects the ambassador might have something to do with what's happening. Crusher makes the connection with the ambassador's mother and Picard finally lets her do an autopsy. She finds the old lady was actually thirty years old and not his mother. Picard confronts the ambassador and he admits the old lady wasn't his mother. He has the power to channel his dark thoughts into sexy ladies, leaving him free to become the best damn ambassador in the galaxy. He wants Picard to let him get away with it because he's bringing peace to two planets. The forehead aliens won't let him be arrested. The ambassador goes back to the Enterprise after the peace treaty is signed. They fake Troi's death to fool him. The ambassador prepares to suck another young woman's soulbut Crusher revives Troi and that turns him into an old man (for some reason.) Troi's age then instantly returns to normal, which is really lucky. The ambassador dies.

It's a pretty bad episode! I'm sick of ambassadors being transported by the Enterprise, for one thing. I have no idea why they guy loading his negative emotions into women would make them act all sexy and turn old. It's really stupid. The saving grace, surprisingly, is Marina Sirtis. She's hilarious (on purpose, I think) in the scenes with Riker and when she's being mean to her patient. But then she turns into an old woman and tries to stab Picard and it stops being fun. This is dumb.

SCORE: 4/10
 
How many episodes are there where Troi basically gets punished for being attracted to a single male visitor on the ship? She gets super old or driven mad or has rapey dreams. It seems to be the plot of every Troi story.
 
Fuddlemiff said:
How many episodes are there where Troi basically gets punished for being attracted to a single male visitor on the ship? She gets super old or driven mad or has rapey dreams. It seems to be the plot of every Troi story.
Click to expand...
It's true. Either she's being violated in her sleep, or she's apologizing profusely to Picard for kissing an alien "on the surface".
 
Relics - The Enterprise finds a Dyson Sphere, a freaking huge sphere built around a star to harness all its energy. They also find a 75 year old missing Federation ship crashed on the surface of the sphere. There's a pattern in the transporter buffer, suspended for 75 years. It's Scotty! When he hears the name Enterprise he thinks Captain Kirk himself has come to save him. But he saw Kirk die on the Enterprise-B! Scotty was heading to a space retirement colony when he crashed on the Dyson Sphere. Geordi is nice to Scotty at first. Picard and Geordi are busy investigating the Sphere though and don't have much time for Scotty. He doesn't want to just sit around in his quarters so he goes to Engineering to help Geordi. But his knowledge of Engineering is 75 years out of date, so he soon annoys Geordi by saying out-dated things and talking about original series episodes. He also tells Geordi to lie when telling Picard how long things will take to get done and Geordi is shocked and tells Scotty to fuck off. Scotty goes to Ten Forward and doesn't like the taste of Scotch synthehol. Data gives him a drink of something green instead (it's a TOS reference!) Scotty gets drunk and goes to the Holodeck, asking to see the Bridge of the Enterprise (no bloody A, B, C or D.) You can see the recreation of the Bridge isn't quite up to today's standards, where it would look flawless, but for a 1992 episode of TNG it looks good. Picard joins him for a drink and they bond a bit, talking about old starships. Scotty concludes that he doesn't belong on the Enterprise-D, he belongs here on the old Enterprise, but that isn't even real. This scene is great.

Picard requests that Geordi make Scotty feel more useful. The Enterprise finds the door to the Dyson Sphere and tries to go inside. A tractor beam pulls them in. It leaves the Enterprise hurtling towards the star inside the Sphere. Meanwhile Geordi and Scotty are trying to activate Scotty's old ship. Geordi is nicer to Scotty now and encourages him to help. The Enterprise manages to orbit the sun but also the sun's going to kill them soon. Scotty and Geordi get the old ship online. They do engineering stuff together and smile at each other. Scotty comes up with a plan to hold the door to the sphere open with his ship. Geordi thinks it's crazy but does it anyway. The Enterprise has to destroy the old ship to get out, beaming Scotty and Geordi to safety just in time (THROUGH SHIELDS?) The Enterprise gives Scotty a shuttle and he goes off to have adventures in it.

So, did Scotty end up having a better TNG episode than Spock? Yes, he did. It's not without problems though. The biggest being that Geordi seems like too much of a dick in the first half of the episode. You'd think he'd be a big fan of Scotty, he geeked out over a hologram of Leah Brahms after all (but then she was a hot girl.) It seems out of character watching him be rude to Scotty. It doesn't help that Doohan's acting is a bit too cartoony in these scenes. There's one too many "Laddie, I was blanking the blank when your grandfather was blank!" lines. But the scene with him on the Holodeck is excellent and the episode improves a lot from there. It's nice seeing Geordi and Scotty working together. The Dyson Sphere is a really interesting setting for the episode, though they could have done more with it. They could have done a whole episode just about the Sphere, really. Anyway, despite the faults this is a very good episode that does treat Scotty respectfully in the end and has one super memorable scene on the original Enterprise Bridge.

SCORE: 8.5/10
 
Not to mention that the Dyson Sphere is literally the size of an entire solar system and yet no one noticed it till now -- even though people were traveling in that area of space in Scotty's time since he ended up crashing into it. Also, IIRC none of them seem to care enough to wonder who built the thing. (Of course I'm going to have to watch it now)

Still a classic kickass episode anyway.
 
CaptainWacky said:
Man of the People - (were her nipples so obvious before this was HD?)
SCORE: 4/10
Click to expand...

Troi's nipples were always obious.

Eggs Mayonnaise said:
Not to mention that the Dyson Sphere is literally the size of an entire solar system and yet no one noticed it till now -- even though people were traveling in that area of space in Scotty's time since he ended up crashing into it. Also, IIRC none of them seem to care enough to wonder who built the thing. (Of course I'm going to have to watch it now)

Still a classic kickass episode anyway.
Click to expand...

To be fair since the sun was on the inside, there would be nothing to illuminate the dyson sphere, and it would just look like an area of space where there wasn't a star, and wasn't it made of something you couldn't scan?
 
Data made some comment about "gravity distortions" when they first found it and Riker asked why nobody had seen it before.
 
Yeah they whipped up a few sentences back and forth trying to explain it all in under a minute just to get it out of the way, but it was pretty flimsy.

Whenever there's something in space that the writers want to be found, there are 'massive energy readings' or long-range sensors picking up a large object composed of (list of metals/alloys) -- but conveniently there was none of that this time until they were practically rubbing up against it.
 
Schisms - Riker is having trouble sleeping, while the Enterprise investigates a "globular cluster." And Data has a poetry reading which Riker must attend! He hilariously wakes up and applauds too early during Data's Ode To Spot, an actual great poem and one of the best things Braga has ever written. Crusher can't find anything wrong with him and just tells him to drink hot milk. Geordi tells Data his poems were too clever. Weird things start to happen on the ship, as they often do. Riker goes to bed but finds it's immediately time to get up. Worf goes to Mot the Barber (who's only actually in two episodes, fact fans!) for a haircut but freaks out at the scissors. Geordi's VISOR starts acting weird (another thing that happens a lot.) Data experiences lost time. A weird spacey thing appears in a cargo bay. Riker, Worf, Geordi and some random woman who had weird experiences come together to talk about it with Troi. They remember a table. They go to the Holodeck to recreate it. This is a pretty good scene but it cheats a bit by having the computer instantly create a torture table when all Troi says is "computer, make the table metallic."

The eventually come to the conclusion and they've all beed abducted, Data too, and strapped to this table. Picard asks the Computer if any crewmembers are missing the and computer tells him two are. You'd thinkk there would be an alarm set up for if anyone ever went missing! Crusher finds that Riker's arm as been servered and reattached. One of the missing crewmembers is returned to his quarters but his blood turns to a liquid polymer. That doesn't sound good! The rupture in the cargo bay is gettinb bigger too and is going to kill everyone I guess. Someone has to find out what's going on and Riker volunteers to wear a homing device when he's taken tonight. Crusher comes up with a way to keep him awake when he's taken. Riker is taken by the weird clicking aliens. There's more drama with the rupture and I'm not sure why his is needed when we have the story with Riker going on. It sems to be there so we have a ship in peril aspect to the episode, as if alien abduction isn't enough. Riker manages to grab the missing crewmember and jump through the portal into the cargo bay, as Geordi does whatever technobabble thing he's doing (yes I've lost track of the technobabble part again.) We don't really know who the aliens are or what they wanted but Data things they couldn't live in our universe and were trying to create a poket of their universe in the cargo bay.

It's the triumphant return of the Riker episode! If your'e going to have any crewmember struggling to sleep and going a bit nuts, Riker is the right pick. I liked how it does an old school alien abduction story within the framework of TNG. Yes I got a bit bored when Geordi started talking about tachyons and stuf but that always happens. It's a good solid episode with a great poem at the start.

SCORE: 8/10
 
True Q - A young lady named Amanda who won an internship on the Enterprise is shown to her quarters by Riker. She obviously has the hots for Riker and really who can blame her. She also has the power to make dogs appear from nowhere. Amanda uses her powers to stop Riker from being crushed by a falling cargo container. She also stops a warp core breach from happening, right in front of Geordi and Data. Q appears and admits he's responsible for nearly killing Riker and blowing up the ship. He was testing Amanda as she's actually a Q. Her parents (who died when she was young) were Q who had a child and she doesn't know what she is. Q wants to take Amanda away to be with the other Q, but Crusher wants her to be able to decide for herself. Picard has to introduce Amanda to Q and Patrick Stewart is funny here playing Picard trying to be nice about Q. Amanda refuses to go with Q and throws him across the room when he tries to take her. Q tells a spooky shadow that they might not have to terminate Amanda. He tries to expain the Q to her. He instructs her on how to use her powers so that she can see a vision of her parents. Amanda continues to do her work experience with Crusher. Q shows up and teaches her how to cheat at the work Crusher left her with.

Data tells Picard that Amanda's parents were killed by a tornado (in Kansas!) and it's a bit suspcious. Q finds out that Amanda has the hots for Riker and is disgusted. Crusher explains that Amanda has ruined the experiment by cheating. Q turns her into a barking dog. Q and Amanda play space hide and seek. Amanda is jealous as she watches Riker on a date (and Riker does his stepping over the chair thing!) She whisks Riker away for a romantic date, putting him in a top hat for some reason. Riker isn't into it so she uses her powers to make him love her, but quickly realises it's wrong. Picard gets Q to admit that the Continuum killed Amanda's parents. Q says Amanda must either return to the Continuum or be put to death. They can't have someone with Q powers running around uncheck. Err, why can't they just take her powers away, like the Continuum did to Q himself in season 3? Picard tells Amanda the truth. Picard gets to make a speech to Q about the superiority of human morality. Q says it was pointless because the Continuum has decided not to kill her. Amanda can either come to the Continuum or stay human and refrain from using her powers. If she can't resist the temptation, she has to go off with Q. Amanda says she will stay with the humans and resist. RIGHT AWAY there's an emergency message from Riker about a crsis with some aliens (yes there was a subplot with aliens that I didn't mention until now.) Q says he isn't responsible this time. Amanda uses her powers to save Riker and heal the alien planet. She managed to refrain from using her powers for about seventeen seconds. Amanda says she can't deny what she is anymore so she's going to leave with Q.

It's good to have Q back after a seaon without him, but this is probably the most forgettable Q episode? It's certainly not the worst (it's way better than the Robin Hood one) it just ends up a bit dull. The idea of a teenage girl discovering she's omnipotent is something they could have done a lot with, but Amanda doesn't really do much intersting with her powers? There's one scene where she considers bringing her parents back to life and one where she thinks about raping Riker, but otherwise it's all a bit dull. But this is TNG, they were never going to have her go full Charlie X and do fucked up shit. The result is that Amanda as a character isn't that intersting, which hurts the episode when it's all about her. It's still pretty good though, Q has some funny lines like always, Amanda's actress isn't bad and Picard gets to make a speech. It's just all a bit of a missed opportunity.

SCORE: 7.5/10
 
Rascals - Picard, Ro, Keiko(!) and Guinan(!!) have been off on some planet together. It's a weird team. They're flying back to the Enterprise on a shuttle when a weird energy field hits them. O'Brien has to beam them back to the Enterprise and...they all appear on the transporter pad as children. Yeah. That really happened. Their clothes, even Guinan's hat, all changed size to fit them too. How does that work? So we get a squeaky voiced kid playing Picard and giving orders and everyone feels weird about it. Picard wants to stay in command as there's some crisis on some planet, but Crusher advises him to step down. Guinan tells Ro that they should do kid stuff but Ro doesn't want to. O'Brien is pretty weirded out over his wife being a little girl now. She holds his arm and he walks away. Keiko wants to know if their marriage is over and what it would mean for theif family if it can't be reversed. Little Molly doesn't recognise her mum. Troi and Picard talk about what he should do while he's waiting to grow up again. Crusher thinks she can possibly use the transporter (of course!) to restore the four to normal. Why hasn't the transporter been used to cure all knowing diseases and even aging yet? Ro keeps moaning, Guinan tells her to jump on the bed. They jump on the bed together. Why is this happening.

Well it's halfway through the episode so it's time to introduce the ship in crisis part. The Enterprise arrives at the planet that sent a distress call and two Birds of Prey decloak and fire on them. The Enterprise is defeated by just a couple of shots! It's ridiculous. They're boarded by Ferengi. TWO FERENGI manage to take the Bridge alone, easily handling Worf, Riker and Data. It's silly. It looks like the ship has been taken by five Ferengi. They start beaming the adults to the surface and keep the kids, including Picard and friends, locked up. Guinan says they should act like children to take the ship back. Picard tries to access the computer but it's a child's computer so it won't let him do anything important and offers him pictures of plants and animals. Hey, it's a funny moment at last! Picard uses Alexander's remote controlled robot car to confuse a Ferengi. Alexander helps too as they easily outsmart the same Ferengi who just captured the ship. Picard throws a fit wanting to see his father...Riker. He runs up and hugs Riker and it's funny. He accidentally calls Riker "Number One" then says "he's my number one dad!" Riker confuses a Ferengi with fake technobabble. The kids and Alexander easily defeat most of the Ferengi. And of course since the episode is nearly over anyway, Crusher is now able to return Picard and the others to their correct age, though Ro is still a kid at the end so MIchelle Forbes was only in the pred credits scene and won't appear again until near the end of season seven. Guinan talks to her as if she's really a child and she drows pictures.

This episode is objectively bad in many ways. The whole premise is just stupid and means we spend most of the episode watching kids. The idea that the Enterprise can be taken so easily be Ferengi is hugely insulting to the crew, given how easily those same Ferengi are out-smarted later. It briefly goes to a more mature place when O'Brien and Keiko are talking about what this will mean for their marriage, but there's now follow-up to that scene. AND YET there is some funny stuff in the last ten minutes. Riker having to pretend to be kid Picard's dad, mainly. So I don't completely hate it but it was still hard to watch.

SCORE: 4/10
 
(Obligatory boilerplate Comic Book Guy internet comment)

"Oh yeah, Miles was SOOOOOOOOOOOO upset that Keilo was a little girly..."

(Obligatory hack into hard drives by FBI)
 
A Fistful of Datas - Everyone has time off, so Picard is practicing on his flute for 'The Inner Light' but keeps getting comically interrupted. He orders Worf to use his leisure time, so Worf has no excuse not to go to "the Ancient West" on the Holodeck with Alexander. Geordi is using his time off to grow a beard and mess with Data's head. Alexander says Barclay help him create the programme and we see there's hookers in it. That's right, Barclay put hookers in a Holodeck programme aimed at children. There's loads of stereotypical Western characters and Worf ruins the fun by easily beating up the bad guy (played by character actor John Pyper-Ferguson who's been in lots of things I've watched.) He increases the difficulty and Worf has more fun. Troi shows up as a mysterious stranger. She does an accent. Data's brain is interfaced with the ship to see if he can control the systems, but something goes wrong. Worf and Troi keep playing their game. Not much is happening. Picard's Mozart playback goes wrong. Drama! Crusher is teaching Riker how to act but the script for the play is somehow 'Data's Ode to Spot' (yes!) Alexander is captured by the bad guy's men and finds that the bad guy's father is...Data!? With a moustache!? And the Holodeck won't freeze the programme.

The real Data starts talking in Western speak outside of the Holodeck. Worf assumes that cowboy Data is just playing the game too, until Data hurts him and the Holodeck won't freeze. He's shot because of course the Holodeck safeties are off. Other charactesr turn into Data too. So Worf and Troi have to rescue Alexander from evil Data without being killed. We get some good stuff with Brent Spiner playing two different characters talking to each other. Worf agrees to give up the bad guy's son in favour of Alexander but Troi points out it's an obvious trap and the evil Data will try to kill him. Worf rigs a forcefield for himself and the shoutout with tbe Data gang goes down. Troi helps him too. He turns down the chance to shoot the lead Data because Alexander is watching. Then we get Data in a dress. The Enterprise flies off into the sunset while Western music plays.

Two comedy episodes in a row!? That's poor planning. This one is better because instead of kids playing the characters we get Brent Spiner playing several characters. Worf and Troi are a pleasant enough team and Alexander's acting seems to have improved a bit because I didn't find him annoying like I usually do. But the episode is really slow. There's lots of scenes of the crew doing leisure activities which aren't as much fun as the similar scenes way back in '11001001'. It's mildly good fun. I don't hate it. It's not bad. I think this is only actually the third Holodeck malfunction episode TNG has done, but Voyager will do about fifty of them so they'll end being a horrible cliche.

SCORE: 6/10
 
CaptainWacky said:
Why hasn't the transporter been used to cure all knowing diseases and even aging yet?
Click to expand...

Or full-on death, for that matter. I mean, the transporter logs are basically "backups" of everybody who goes through the thing. Did yer Spock die? No problem, just use the transporter to restore from backup!

Well, maybe you'd have to drag the corpse up onto the pad so the system has raw material to rebuild, but still. It "knows" what the proper state of the person is supposed to be.
 
And since DNA resequencing is such a snap, does the raw material even have to be the original person? They could use a spare redshirt. or even manufacture a generic human "pink slime" like McDonald's does with beef, and they can pump the backup into that.

Fistful of Datas was directed by Patrick Stewart -- he and Spiner were a good combination here, before they both became the Terrible Two who were largely responsible for Insurrection and Nemesis.
 
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