Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (oh god no)

[daf]

Hm . . Interesting to see we agreed on the scores more times than I thought!

Fave episodes so far : 1. The Big Goodbye | 2. Haven
Worsties : Too Short A Season

So that's the first season done then - Lets see what else is out there . . .

Engage!

[the hum]

c) Riker has a parasite tail in his neck, which I'm not 100% sure they ever explain on-screen - I suppose we're meant to assume it's a prosthetic/inert one placed there by Bev

It's explicitly said at the end of the episode isn't it? "It was Dr Crusher's idea to simulate the blue gill", after they'd examined Quinn's body.

Riker though is very much American Idiot in this season, to a level I hadn't picked up on before (deliberate by Roddenberry?) - cheers Lemming for highlighting it.

[Lemming]

It's explicitly said at the end of the episode isn't it? "It was Dr Crusher's idea to simulate the blue gill", after they'd examined Quinn's body.

Riker though is very much American Idiot in this season, to a level I hadn't picked up on before (deliberate by Roddenberry?) - cheers Lemming for highlighting it.

Ah, you're right about the gill line.

It's fascinating to try and figure out if the writers hate Riker and write him as an idiot, or if several totally different writers somehow all managed to do it by accident. It's surely too consistent to be a coincidence.

I always wondered if Frakes hated the character, too. The way he delivers otherwise innocuous lines in the most confrontational way possible. I've just watched "The Child" and, during the scene where Riker grills Troi on how she got pregnant, Frakes seems to go for depicting Riker in the worst possible light, raising his voice and scowling at Troi. If he is playing the character that way intentionally, it's an absolutely exquisite performance.

[Mr Trumpet]

Frakes is famously a nice, easy-going guy IRL, and the cast got along like a house on fire. So it's got to be an actorly choice right?

[mothman]

It could be they were still figuring out the dynamics. They were trying to recreate that TOS lightning in a bottle, but that was based on a three-person cast with an interchangeable second tier of about four to six others. And the main three had specific parts to contribute to that whole: one logical, one emotional, and the central persona integrating both. Instead now you have an ensemble cast of NINE characters, of less clearly set out archetypes. Data as the obvious Spock analogue was the only clear equivalent. Picard wasn't Kirk, but then they weren't trying to make him be. Trying to have someone - Riker - be the passionate dynamic one (the action man XO who gets to go on all the away missions) makes a kind of sense, but if he becomes TOO Kirky, then Picard risks becoming an irrelevance.

I'm probably trying to spin an explanation out of nothing there. Or just doing it really badly. Certainly over time the Picard-Riker dynamic evolves. Riker's passion and ambition is tempered with wisdom and patience, I guess; Picard learns to relax and take risks, effectively rediscovering the driven younger self that got him where he is. We only ever really saw Riker in command in the context of Picard (temporarily) not being around; it'll be interesting to see how he really leads in

Spoiler alert

LDS s2

[close]

.

[greenman]

It could be they were still figuring out the dynamics. They were trying to recreate that TOS lightning in a bottle, but that was based on a three-person cast with an interchangeable second tier of about four to six others. And the main three had specific parts to contribute to that whole: one logical, one emotional, and the central persona integrating both. Instead now you have an ensemble cast of NINE characters, of less clearly set out archetypes. Data as the obvious Spock analogue was the only clear equivalent. Picard wasn't Kirk, but then they weren't trying to make him be. Trying to have someone - Riker - be the passionate dynamic one (the action man XO who gets to go on all the away missions) makes a kind of sense, but if he becomes TOO Kirky, then Picard risks becoming an irrelevance.

I'm probably trying to spin an explanation out of nothing there. Or just doing it really badly. Certainly over time the Picard-Riker dynamic evolves. Riker's passion and ambition is tempered with wisdom and patience, I guess; Picard learns to relax and take risks, effectively rediscovering the driven younger self that got him where he is. We only ever really saw Riker in command in the context of Picard (temporarily) not being around; it'll be interesting to see how he really leads in

Spoiler alert

LDS s2

[close]

.

I'm guessing a lot of the issue was different people probably viewed it different fashions, I can imagine the execs were sold the idea Riker would be the sexy dymatic Kirk character just this time as first officer who might end up being the main focus were as there was actually more of a sense he'd be the McCoy and show up the more gunho aspect of Kirk as something that had been moved beyond.

Really I'd say as the series advanced Worf ends up taking a lot of the McCoy role, at least in terms of potential confrontations.

[mothman]

Yeah. The first couple of seasons were all over the shop, TNG has become almost the classic example of the rocky start to a show. There's even a movie about it, after all. Documentary, granted, but I could easily see the whole saga becoming a film or a streaming service limited series. None of the cast have done autobiogs yet (Wheaton aside) so there'll be still more to come out about those times, I'll wager.

Though I do wonder if you're overegging the pudding a bit? Worf wasn't the dissenting voice all the time. Troi was the one who'd be more likely to go to Picard and say, here is what you really need to be doing.

[Ambient Sheep]

Talking of TOS, and more to the point, since we don't have a TOS thread, this is where I'm going to dump this piece of hilarity:

https://twitter.com/mrs__peel/status/1403549358855966722

STAR TREK: WIG THEFT

(Click to enlarge)

[Lemming]

Apparently Marina Sirtis stole the Troi wig used in Star Trek Nemesis, too!

Can't blame Shatner for snapping up the Kirk hairpieces, the ones he wears in the first two seasons look fantastic on him. Never understood his decision to DOWNGRADE to the weird curly ones he wore in the 80s.

[Lemming]

S02E01 - The Child

An encounter with an alien creature causes Troi to become pregnant, with the baby growing at a startling rate. Meanwhile, Geordi's cool new plague containment system turns out to be a total flop.

- The episode is very eager to show off all the big changes - shuttle bay, Worf and Geordi in gold uniform, Riker with beard, Wes with a Starfleet badge. Plus, Pulaski! Also, miniskirt uniform sighted in the backgorund! It's still going!

- A weird light thing flies into the ship and absorbs itself into Troi... who's gone to bed with her hair styled up, and has eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick on. Uhhh, maybe 24th century makeup is really good and stays on for ages, and doesn't irritate the shit out of your eyes if you sleep with it on.

- Pulaski! I think she's a far better character than Bev and it's a shame Muldaur wanted to fuck off after just one season. She's introduced by going to hang out at the bar, rather than introduce herself to Picard, which right off the bat establishes her as being extremely cool, and not just another generic Starfleet yes-man. Picard goes to give her what-for, but is diverted by an agonisingly awkward turbolift ride with Wesley.

- Guinan's first appearance too! I really like the character for the most part, even though there'll be a lot to say later about how her presence starts detracting from Troi's role.

- Troi is pregnant. Picard tries to announce this in a respectful way to the senior staff, but Riker immediately puts on his angry face and starts interrogating her. "Who's the father?", he sneers, as if it's any of his FUCKING business.

- The baby is growing super-fast, and will be fully grown and ready to be born in 36 hours. There's a really good scene (unusually directed, too) where everyone else in the room starts debating what should be done with the fetus, and then Troi finally speaks up and says that she's decided to have the baby. Picard: "Then it seems that the discussion is over."

- To add to the alien weirdness, Troi doesn't experience any pain during the pregnancy, and the baby just flops out. Riker shows up to glare at her while she's in labour.

- Picard goes to visit the baby, but it's already physically 4 years old, and has learned English. It tells him not to worry, and that everything is ok. Picard begins to worry that everything is not ok.

- People tend to shit on Pulaski for being mean to Data. There might be stuff I'm forgetting later on, but here, she's fine - she doesn't treat him particularly badly, she's just bemused by the idea of an android (ie the Data-Dah-ta scene). It's nothing compared to McCoy, who was straight-up racist towards Spock every 5 minutes. With McCoy, every other interaction devolved into "YOU GREEN-BLOODED POINTY-EARED CUNT". With Pulaski and Data, it's just Pulaski fucking with him a little bit. She even corrects herself to use "Day-ta" after the first time he asks her to. And as long as we're on the topic, I think people tend to overstate the similarities between Pulaski and McCoy a little bit, though the inspiration is obviously there.

- The nursery. What a stupid thing to have aboard a starship. Wonder what was happening in this place during The Naked Now when everyone got polywater'd, or in Home Soil when the brain started messing with all the ship's systems, or in The Arsenal of Freedom when they did the saucer-sep. Just children screaming, pissing and shitting everywhere, I assume.

- Troi's child - Ian - is like 12 or something now, so Picard finally gets round to trying to figure out what the fuck's going on. He asks Ian who he is and why he's here, but Ian tells him to go fuck himself. Troi reckons if they just leave it a while, he'll eventually tell them, which everyone agrees will probably be fine.

- Wesley goes to Ten-Forward to mope at the window, because he misses Mom. Guinan senses an opportunity to stick her FUCKING nose in as usual and goes to batter him over the head with her standard self-help speech stuff.

- There's a sideplot where some plague specimens are going to leak out and kill everyone on the whole ship, and Geordi's patented Plague Containarium 3000 immediately fails. Ian tells Troi that his presence is what's causing the plague to go crazy apeshit, and induces his own death to save the ship, after which he turns back into light and flies off. Luckily, Troi's figured it out - the alien was a "life force entity" who wanted to learn about the people of the Enterprise, and decided the best way would be to freakily turn into an embryo, forcefully inhabit someone's body while they slept, and live on board for a few days. This is portrayed as wonderous, rather than totally unacceptable.

- Wesley wants to stay on the Enterprise. Picard assigns Riker to supervise him. I can only imagine that this is a cunning ploy by Picard to do the exact inverse of what he claims, and actually pair them up so that Wesley will hopefully impart some skill and wisdom onto Riker.

The show already feels a lot more confident in itself, and the addition of Guinan and Pulaski provides a seriously-needed dose of personality to proceedings. Like Lwaxana (and Worf when he really gets going later on), their presence forces the writers to try and give a bit more characterisation to everyone else they interact with, which is a massive boost to the show. The plot itself isn't great - the child story is basically a damp squib that ends with Troi just quickly summarising what happened, though it does at least include the great scene where she shuts up everyone in the briefing room by voicing her own decision. The plague plot is similarly thin, and exists as a transparent excuse to force the alien to leave, since its presence is inexplicably the cause of the plague samples becoming unstable.

But the show's new features and pacier style help to keep it from being boring, even though the material on the face of it is pretty weak. 5/10

[Chairman Yang]

Special congratulations to This Guy for his role as Hester Death. He nails the performance of a Q-like alien trickster god who somehow convinces the crew to not tow the box of very-deadly plague behind the ship. His stilted, barely credible line delivery really highlights the character's inhuman nature.

- Pulaski! I think she's a far better character than Bev and it's a shame Muldaur wanted to fuck off after just one season. She's introduced by going to hang out at the bar, rather than introduce herself to Picard, which right off the bat establishes her as being extremely cool, and not just another generic Starfleet yes-man.

I love Pulaski so much and the episode is quick to show off her twin passions for 'getting shit done' and 'being off her lid on peach schnapps'.

All in all it's not as bad as I remember, although creepy, possessive Riker can fuck right off; as can Ghost Baby who I can only assume feeds on grief.

[mothman]

DEALT: Aw jeez, I'm like a hundred years old and I'm just a lieutenant commander in the Science division. I'm a complete failure.
Q: Hmm, this gives me an idea how I can fuck with Picard's head, will have to wait for the right opportunity though...

[daf]

026 | " The Child"



Ian in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Worf : Kill it!!
• Pulaski : Daah-Tah vs. Day-Tah
• Beard-o Riker
• O'Brien!!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Riker's Leg-over Chair-vault #2 + Reverse Leg-over #1
• Gold jumpers for Worf & Geordi
• Whoopi's Space Boozer
• Mystery Blue-shirt moustache codger
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Fun fact : On the season 2 promo trailer, the "Next time on Staaaaaaaaar Trek" voice-over guy pronounces Data as 'Daaah-Taaah' - Useless plum!!

[Spoon of Ploff]

*edit glitch*

[mothman]

Fun fact : On the season 2 promo trailer, the "Next time on Staaaaaaaaar Trek" voice-over guy pronounces Data as 'Daaah-Taaah' - Useless plum!!

Good to see - er, hear - Freddy Quimby in gainful employment. And to think they say failing upwards is a recent thing.

[petril]

DEALT: Aw jeez, I'm like a hundred years old and I'm just a lieutenant commander in the Science division. I'm a complete failure.
Q: Hmm, this gives me an idea how I can fuck with Picard's head, will have to wait for the right opportunity though...

he looks like he was meant to play a red-tunic Starfleet guy from the films

[Ron Maels Moustache]

026 | " The Child"



Ian in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Worf : Kill it!!
• Pulaski : Daah-Tah vs. Day-Tah
• Beard-o Riker
• O'Brien!!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Riker's Leg-over Chair-vault #2 + Reverse Leg-over #1
• Gold jumpers for Worf & Geordi
• Whoopi's Space Boozer
• Mystery Blue-shirt moustache codger
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Fun fact : On the season 2 promo trailer, the "Next time on Staaaaaaaaar Trek" voice-over guy pronounces Data as 'Daaah-Taaah' - Useless plum!!

That VO was the late, great Ernie Anderson, father of Paul Thomas Anderson, fact fans!

[Mr Trumpet]

I liked how you'd sometimes see older junior officers shuffling around in TNG. Didn't happen so much in the later shows.

[Lemming]

S02E02 - Where Silence Has Lease

The Enterprise is seized by a powerful sentient lifeform, who plans to use the crew for experiments.

- Worf invites Riker to play a holodeck game of his own design, the WORF CALISTHETICS SIMULATOR, where you run around beating up skeletons and bug-people. Worf enters some kind of unstoppable frenzy and tries to kill Riker (understandable). Everything else aside, it's nice to get these little character-based scenes at the start of episodes which have nothing to do with the main plot - I know they'll introduce the poker games soon for this purpose.

- There's a couple of brilliant Riker moments here which are hard to get across in text. Data has found a weird space thing, an area of blackness which disappears and reappears. Picard calls it up on the viewscreen. "There it is," says Riker, pointing indiscriminately. Picard says that he can't see anything - because there's nothing there - and there's an awkward silence where Riker doesn't say anything at all, just looks around. Eventually, Picard, without any guidance from Riker, magnifies an area of the screen and locates the anomaly. Was Riker just pretending to see it earlier or something? The whole scene is really strangely done. He tries to win back credibility by questioning Data's sensor readings a couple times.

- Picard: "Mr Worf, this starship operates best when my officers share with me what is on their minds." Must have had a re-think of his command style after the "shut up Wesley" fiasco.

- The Enterprise gets enveloped by the blackness. Picard asks Data to alert all decks, but NOBODY IS RESPONDING!! Dramatic music, ad break. Immediately after the ad break, Picard's captain's log says that all communications are now back online and all decks are reporting in. Well, that was about eight seconds of excitement.

- Weird shit starts to happen - first a Romulan warbird appears (and the crew rejoice in blowing it up, which is a bit unnerving), then a Galaxy-class starship (called the Yamato, one of about a billion anime references that pop up in the second season of TNG). Riker and Worf go aboard and it's all scary with no lights and weird noises and shit. I think the writer of this episode hates Worf, because he quickly shits his pants and enters a frantic blind panic, to the point where Riker, of all people, has to calm him down. Brutally embarrassing.

- By the way, despite the fact that all the other bridge staff are still on duty, Wesley has inexplicably gone away and been replaced by a guy we've never seen before. Wonder what that's all about.

- Weird face shows up on the viewscreen. The weird space void is alive, and is called Nagilum. Nagilum notes several things about the crew - their names, and the fact that Data is constructed differently from the others. Then he refers to Pulaski - "what are you? Your construction also differs." Turns out he's referring to her being female. Troi's sat right there, but Nagilum only noticed Pulaski! Weird Betazoid atonomy? Troi protected by psychic cloaking? Troi actually male (with all kinds of implications for the birthing scene in the previous episode)? Pulaski drawing all Nagilum's attention with her raw alpha female energy? Who knows.

- Nagilum wants to know about death, so he kills one of the crew at random. Oh, look, it's the guy (Haskell) who was sat in Wesley's seat. This guy's acting is absolutely next level by the way, I've never seen a more viscerally upsetting depiction of an aneurysm depicted on a TV screen. It's pretty horrific actually, made all the worse by the fact that he seemed pretty interesting for the 30 seconds we knew him before this happened. Definitely more interesting than Wesley.

- Nagilum offers to let half the crew go if the other half is left behind to be tortured and killed. Picard suggests self-destructing the Enterprise instead. Yet another opportunity to regret having a nursery on board.

- The Enterprise escapes and cancels the self-destruct. Nagilum shows up on Picard's laptop and calls him a cunt. Picard calls Nagilum a cunt in response. Roll credits.

- Little joke and joyous upbeat music to end on. Rest in peace, Haskell, violently killed by space cloud thing.

I remember liking this one more than I actually do. It's got quite an effective mood and there's some good little bits of dialogue, but the pacing is agonisingly slow in parts, taking ten minutes at a time to establish things that anyone who's ever seen an episode of Star Trek - or anything else at all, ever - will already know. Yes, the blackness has trapped the ship, we don't need to try increasingly high warp settings and then gawk at how we're not moving.

There's a few effective moments but it's so padded out, and Nagilum is the latest in a long line of Star Trek antagonists who show up, torture and kill the crew without any reason, and then just tell them to fuck off at the end without much of a proper climax. 4/10



RUNNING TOTAL:
Crew Deaths: 3 (Haskell killed by Nagilum)

[Blumf]

S02E02 - Where Silence Has Lease

...

then a Galaxy-class starship (called the Yamato, one of about a billion anime references that pop up in the second season of TNG).

Pretty sure that's just a direct ref to the actual Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, as opposed to via the anime, seeing as a load of Federation (human) starships are named after old navy vessel (not least of which being the Enterprise herself)

Then he refers to Pulaski - "what are you? Your construction also differs." Turns out he's referring to her being female. Troi's sat right there, but Nagilum only noticed Pulaski! Weird Betazoid atonomy? Troi protected by psychic cloaking?

Several inches of makeup. Troi's probably a full fledged psychic if she'd just scrap off the slap. Maybe it helps keep the 'noise' down, with a thousand other minds yammering on around her.

[Lemming]

Pretty sure that's just a direct ref to the actual Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, as opposed to via the anime, seeing as a load of Federation (human) starships are named after old navy vessel (not least of which being the Enterprise herself)

Looked it up and you're right - Rick Sternbach, anime reference extraordinaire, confirmed it himself:

According to technical illustrator and modeler Rick Sternbach, the name was not a reference to the Japanese anime series Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers in North America), even though he and several other members of the production staff are fans of Japanese animation. Sternbach stated at AnimeCon 1991 that the TNG writers had independently coined the ship's name without his input and he doubts that the writers were aware of the anime connection.

Jumped the gun on calling the anime references since I'm so excited for the ludicrous amount of Dirty Pair allusions scattered through this season.

[petril]

Pretty sure that's just a direct ref to the actual Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, as opposed to via the anime, seeing as a load of Federation (human) starships are named after old navy vessel (not least of which being the Enterprise herself)

Several inches of makeup. Troi's probably a full fledged psychic if she'd just scrap off the slap. Maybe it helps keep the 'noise' down, with a thousand other minds yammering on around her.

either that or just the years of experience of telepathy give you practice at deflecting stuff. like going to defensive, short and safe answers in unwanted conversations until they move on.

can see that being a thing on the 'Zed. teenagers just bullying each other by invading each others' privacy. just harmless banter, Martin. Betazoid Grange Hill had different silent credits episodes

[Blumf]

Betazoid Grange Hill

The concept of a sausage forcefully flies across your mind.

[daf]

027 | "Where Silence Has Lease"



Lab Rats in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Worf's Holo-Fight Club
• Stop probing the bugger, you dummies!! . . . oh, too late!
• Worf's two-bridge mind-fudge
• Pulaski Shag demo request
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Damn ugly nothing Space-Face
• Picard's "What is Death?" Waffle
• Hi, Ensign Haskell! > ZAPP! < Bye, Ensign Haskell!
• Riker's Auto-destruct Bum-trembler
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Wonderful Butternut]

• Riker's Auto-destruct Bum-trembler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ubHuWbPEJw

[daf]

Haha - proper belly laugh from that! :D

[Chairman Yang]

I remember liking this one more than I actually do. It's got quite an effective mood and there's some good little bits of dialogue, but the pacing is agonisingly slow in parts, taking ten minutes at a time to establish things that anyone who's ever seen an episode of Star Trek - or anything else at all, ever - will already know. Yes, the blackness has trapped the ship, we don't need to try increasingly high warp settings and then gawk at how we're not moving.

That's about the size of it. I wish they'd laid out the story differently, seems a bit odd to open with the Romulan attack then do the haunted house stuff. It'd be nice to get a sense of the crew being deliberately exposed to specific tests before they work out they're rats in a maze. In a rare, incredible, example I think Voyager's The Void does the whole 'creepy hole zone' idea better.

[MojoJojo]

I've been inspired to actually watch one!

S02E02 - Where Silence Has Lease
...
- By the way, despite the fact that all the other bridge staff are still on duty, Wesley has inexplicably gone away and been replaced by a guy we've never seen before. Wonder what that's all about.
...
- Nagilum wants to know about death, so he kills one of the crew at random. Oh, look, it's the guy (Haskell) who was sat in Wesley's seat. This guy's acting is absolutely next level by the way, I've never seen a more viscerally upsetting depiction of an aneurysm depicted on a TV screen. It's pretty horrific actually, made all the worse by the fact that he seemed pretty interesting for the 30 seconds we knew him before this happened. Definitely more interesting than Wesley.

What you don't mention here is the guy is black and it definitely feels dodgy. I checked and it actually gets mentioned on the tvtropes page for Black dude dies first - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst . While TNG was obviously progressive in some ways a black guy sitting at the front sticks out a bit at this stage and the fact he then dies isn't great. Definite Roddenberry "progressive for the 1960s" vibe.

I remember liking this one more than I actually do. It's got quite an effective mood and there's some good little bits of dialogue, but the pacing is agonisingly slow in parts, taking ten minutes at a time to establish things that anyone who's ever seen an episode of Star Trek - or anything else at all, ever - will already know. Yes, the blackness has trapped the ship, we don't need to try increasingly high warp settings and then gawk at how we're not moving.

There's a few effective moments but it's so padded out, and Nagilum is the latest in a long line of Star Trek antagonists who show up, torture and kill the crew without any reason, and then just tell them to fuck off at the end without much of a proper climax. 4/10

Yeah, it's weirdly directed and paced. I suspect this was a bottle episode in disguise, written around minimising the budget. I assume the bird of prey fight is  reused footage from a different episode, dropped in to pad out the run time - it doesn't actually make any sense in terms of the "science lab" setup. Also the Yamato being the "sister ship" means they don't need any more model shots.

Even with that there are weird bits - Geordi wanders onto the bridge and transfers engineering to a console. He then says a few lines of dialogue before asking permission to leave the bridge and go to engineering. I can't work out if the writers had some weird idea about trying to make it feel a bit more military or if they were contractually obliged to give Burton some amount of screen time but couldn't come up with anything for him to do.

[Lemming]

S02E03 - Elementary, Dear Data

A game on the holodeck goes horribly wrong yet again when the Enterprise computer generates an apparently sentient hologram.

- Not to go on about it, since it's obviously subjective and plenty of people love these episodes, but I never got the holodeck. We're in space! We can go down to a planet and have anything beyond our wildest dreams happen for real, but instead we're walking around in videogames pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.

- Geordi leaves in a strop because Data's too good at Sherlock Holmes games. After an extended whine by Geordi, Pulaski jumps in to try and explain why mystery fiction is meant to be fun, and says that Data would be shit at solving an all-new mystery because AI can only repeat material its been trained on. She bets that Data can't solve a newly-created original Sherlock Holmes mystery, and everyone rushes back to the holodeck to play their new Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. Slow day on the ship, I guess.

- Pulaski's holodeck outfit is my favourite part of the episode.

- Data wins the bet so Pulaski gets pissy and says that the mystery was shit. Her reasoning is interesting, though - the way that Data solves the mystery by just combining existing elements of things he's been trained on is more or less the way existing machine learning programs work (try AI Dungeon if you want to see this kind of clusterfuck happening before your eyes).

- The Enterprise computer glitches out because of Geordi's inferior programming technique, and creates an apparently-sentient hologram in the form of Professor Moriarty, which immediately kidnaps Pulaski.

- Geordi's awful attempt at impersonating Watson's accent is my second favourite thing in the episode.

- Geordi and Data finally realise that the holodeck has GONE WRONG, keeping up its 100% track record.

- Riker-esque stuff from Geordi: Data goes outside the holodeck and tells it to shut down. Computer responds "Access denied. Override protocol has been initiated." They walk back in. "It's still running, the program didn't shut down!" Geordi exclaims in shock while looking down a holographic 19th century London street.

- Not to be outdone, Riker has this gem. "Captain, I recommend we attempt to destroy the the holographic generations themselves." (pause, looks nervous) "...is that possible, Geordi?" Great stuff, but Geordi's repsonse is equally dumb - he comes up with an idea for a device that will destroy all the holograms, but only after being prompted by Picard does he mention that the device would also rip Pulaski to pieces, so actually no, Riker idea is not possible after all.

- They determine that Moriarty must be alive, and is now fucking about with the ship. Surely if the Enterprise computer can create consciousness - and a consciousness significantly more convincing than Data, at that - there are pretty big implications.

- Pulaski has dinner with Moriarty and starts mainlining holo-crumpets.

- Picard decides to dress like an arsehole before haeding into the holodeck. The MORTALITY FAIL-SAFE has been circumvented (again), and now if you DIE IN THE GAME, YOU DIE IN REAL LIFE.

- Moriarty has built a holo-machine that lets him control the Enterprise, so he starts making it shake violently. As Riker empties his bowels into his underwear on the bridge, Moriarty tells Picard that he's alive and wants to leave the holodeck. Picard tells Moriarty he's not alive, Moriarty responds that if Data is alive, then so is he. Picard's been snookered. Everyone decides that they might as well save the Moriarty program somewhere. He promises to fill Pulaski with crumpets again in the future, phwoaaar.

Never a fan of holodeck episodes and never a fan of is-Data-sentient episodes (including the beloved Measure of a Man, so that should be a fun review). Not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, either, so the episode is a perfect storm of things that just don't grab me. It also feels kind of anti-climactic - Picard and Moriarty argue with each other for about a minute, and then Moriarty just surrenders and everyone agrees to just have him saved somewhere so we don't have to think about the whole thing anymore for a good while.

On the other hand, it's one of those episodes that's more or less just an excuse to fuck about, and Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton and Diana Muldaur all have fun with it, which makes it inoffensive enough to watch. The guy playing Moriarty is good too. 4/10, which I think is what I also gave The Big Goodbye - they're on a similar level, though I think I enjoyed The Big Goodbye a little more as it had a stronger second half and finale, and the holodeck felt a bit more wondrous and expansive rather than just being a dodgy set of a London street.

[The Culture Bunker]

Fun Fact: the bod who plays Moriarty later got a role as the skipper of the Enterprise, albeit the aircraft carrier version, in 'The Hunt for Red October'.