Comment Stream

Re: TNG S5: The Inner Light

Poor Picard! First he gets assimilated by the Borg and now is forced to live someone else's lifetime! By all rights, Startfleet should remove this captain whose mind must be hopelessly confused!

The question is: what good does it do the extinct race to be remembered at all? They're all gone. Whatever anyone remembers about them will not matter one bit to them. Their desperate, pitiful plan could only have been dreamed up by a society with no belief in God.

Re: TNG S5: Imaginary Friend

This episode is a good place to call into question the givens of children aboard the Enterprise...which has never made any sense. For instance, who babysits children like Clara and Alexander when their single parents are on duty? There is no sugestion of any day care going on aboard ship but plenty of examples of very young children expected to take care of themselves in their quarters. Also, what are children as young as Clara allowed to roam the ship at will? And as we've seen this episode (and countless times in the past), the ship is in imminent threat of destruction every week. How can a people who claim, as Picard states to the alien entity this episode, that humans care for the safety of their children while taking them along on military/exploratory vessels that encounter obviously dangerous situations as occurs here? The whole notion of children/families aboard ships like the Enterprise is absurd.

Re: TNG S5: The Perfect Mate

What I want to know is where are the rest of the negotiating teams representing both parties? You'd think with something of this importance, more than single ambassadors would be sent so that an outsider like Picard wouldn't have to be relied upon to fill in for one of them.

Re: TNG S5: Cost of Living

And was anyone seriously disturbed by the final scenes where 1) Luxhwana shows up naked at her wedding with children in attendance? and 2) the final group mud bath scene? Ich!

Re: TNG S5: The First Duty

If Starfleet isn't a military outfit why were Wesley and his friends flying fighters and doing military style maneuvers?

I did not find Brand intimidating at all.

Re: TNG S5: Cause and Effect

One of this season's better episodes except for the Bozeman showing up and not knowing anything was wrong. The geniuses on the Enterprise solve the riddle in 17 days so the Bozeman must have been crewed by a bunch of dummies (no offense ladies, but judging from the bridge personnel, the captain was the only male aboard) not to have even suspected something was wrong after decades at least if not 200 years as I thought I heard someone say!

Re: TNG S5: The Outcast

This episode failed on any number of fronts including:

Makeup on the Genai: not androgynous enough. It was too easy to tell male actors from female making Riker's attraction to Soren too understandable.

The story didn't work as a homosexual allegory because the desire of Soren was to become normal...as nature intended not abnormal (the male/female division of the genders is apparently the norm throughout the Federation if not the galaxy so far as we've seen of the Trek universe which begs the question as to how the Genai can hold on to their ideas of physical superiority in the face of so much overwhelming evidence)She/he was already abnormal. So her/his struggle to be free was a sympathetic one and her/his subsequent reconditioning tragic.

The story makes far more sense when any consideration of homosexuality is removed from it.

Riker's totally unbelievable actions at the end of the episode was ridiculous! Not only is it impossible to believe that he could fall so head over heels in love in so short a time, but that he could do so with such an unattractive lump as Soren after making love to some of the most beautiful women in the galaxy! On top of that, he breaks the prime directive in the most blatant fashion, even to crashing a legal proceeding! Compounding that, Picard says nothing of his trangression! Anybody else doing such a thing would be brought up on charges but would forever lose any possibility of commanding a ship of his own. How could Starfleet ever trust an officer like that for such an important responsibility?

So far as hipocracy or tap dancing by the writers is concerned, Trek is primarily a family show so who needs it to be cluttered up with such sordid subjects as homosexuality? Ugh.

Re: TNG S5: Ethics

Pet peeve #356: Why is it that despite the ship being rocked and attacked every other episode, nothing is ever secured? I can't imagine a more dangerous situation than those stacked barrels in the storage compartment all unsecured! Okay, I'll buy no seatbelts, but absolutely nothing aboard is secured against sudden movement of the ship. In the instance of Worf's accident which was entirely preventable by the simple expedient of securing the barrels, Picard should have been investigated and court martialed or at the very least, Worf would have had an air tight case if he decided to sue Starfleet.
Amd speaking of Worf and Starfleet, if he takes being a Klingon so seriously (more seriously than any "real" Klingons on the show)why did he ever bother joining Starfleet at all?

Re: TNG S5: Power Play

This episode brought up one of my pet peeves about the show: ie the lack of other officers heading specialized sections of the ship. Why is it only the regulars we ever see in conference? Why is that Ro, a lowly ensign is in on the big meetings and not say, officers in charge of xenobiology, planetary geology, ship's structure/integrity, stellar physics, etc? Why is Georgi, ostensibly ship's engines engineer called on to conduct research in everything from rototics to planetary geology? In this episode we see him and Ro in a jeffreies tube with the spy gizmo. There weren't any experts in such a device available in the ship? No structural engineers familiar with the ship's layout? Aside from the half dozen officers we see every week and a handful of security officers and waiters in ten forward, who is it that comprise the 1,000+ other people aboard?

Re: TNG S5: Conundrum

Although this episode was amusing overall, I was disgusted with Riker's treatment of Troi in particular. Okay, he can't resist Ro's charms (such as they are) but right after he finds out that he and Troi likely have a serious relationship (engaged, wedded? in love at least), no sooner does Troi leave the room than he once again succumbs to Ro! Pretty disgusting, I say, not funny!

Re: TNG S5: Violations

Thanks Jammer again for pointing out one of the conceits of Trek I could never get past, the idea that humans are so wonderfully perfect in the future. I found it ironic in the final scene that Picard is lecturing the aliens on how humans have left violence behind when he himself was stabbed in the chest in a bar brawl if memory serves (no pun intended)...although I will admit that the bar brawl may not have been thought of at the time of this episode.

Re: TNG S5: Hero Worship

At last! Someone finally points out the obvious ridiculosity of having women and children aboard a starship that week after week is either fighting interstellar battles of in danger of being destroyed by some stellar catastrophe! Thanks Jammer for saving my sanity!

As for Troi's competence as counselor, wouldn't it have made more sense to assign timothy to a human family aboard ship? The normal surroundings of human home life you would think would be a far preferable environment than palming the kid over to a walking toaster/computer.

Re: TNG S5: The Game

It's bad enough when Wesley's makes a visit to the show but he just happens to save the Enterprise yet again at the very same time, it's too much!

And how likely is it that when confronted by what appears to be a simple game, a kid is going to take it apart to see how it works before even trying to play it first?

And is it my imagination or is Wesley equally adept in physics, engineering, and now apparently, advanced robotics too?!

Re: TNG S5: Disaster

A couple things about this episode:
There were women in Ten Forward when Keiko was giving birth (including one wiping her forehead) so why did Worf need to be the one to deliver the baby? Guess writers thought the contrast would provide more humor.

And it's too bad Riker didn't think of detaching Data's head at the hearing that decided he was a human being etc. It would really have been difficult to convince anyone that Data was nothing more than a computer in the shape of a man!