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March 28, 2024, 04:12:50 PM

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

Started by Lemming, May 11, 2021, 02:05:41 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Wonderful Butternut

Ya, Mark Twain in it has a bit of a fan fiction vibe alright.

mothman

Whatsisface - played Deep Throat in The X-Files - Jerry Hardin! ... playing Twain was his schtick, did a one-man show in character as him.

mothman

OK, now first off don't panic. I'm not doing this. But I have become intrigued by the Eaglemoss Build Your Own USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D offer:

https://en-gb.eaglemoss.com/hero-collector/star-trek/uss-enterprise-build

I learned of this by accident via YouTube - one Trek vlogger was considering subscribing and intended to film it as he built it. But then he seems to have got embroiled in one of these Internet Trek spats - bigoted not-actually-Trek-fans using Discovery's crispness to advance their anti-women, anti-non-white, anti-LGBTQ+ etc. agenda, and whatever his one views he seems to have been lumped in with them whether justified or not. I mean, it IS possible to not like DSC very much, it doesn't mean you're a bigoted cunt, but it's a minefield.

Anyway. But then YouTube's algorithm threw me a proper model builder who's doing this build. And what I've seen so far, the quality is excellent. Like Data, I was tempted... for 0.68 seconds.

Because the COST. £10.99 + £1.49 shipping per "kit."

There are 120 "kits" ... and you get four a month. That's north of £1400 in total. OK a tenner (ish) a week, people pay more for that for coffees. Or beers. But still.

And the truth is, I just don't like the big D all that much as a design. The OG 1701, or the E, or the Defiant, or - this one is too obscure to ever be a likely proposition - my favourite, the Steamrunner... that'd be a whole other kettle of fish!

Blumf

70x50cm, where would you even put it?

I'd like an Excelsior or a Miranda class.

mothman

Excelsior is problematic, it's very long. It means that the "normal" Eaglemoss miniature is a far smaller scale than a ship that size would otherwise be. A Miranda would be nice, thinking about it.

I guess you could build the model into a glass coffee table? Anyway for now I'm just going to vicariously enjoy the build via World of Wayne's build playlist.

Lemming

Looks amazing but so complicated to build, even putting aside the financial unviability.

Watching that guy's playlist and there's so many intricate small parts! Full-on Le Grille situation guaranteed if I ever tried it.

mothman

He makes it look easy but I would be freaking out over which screws to use where. No wonder they give you a free screw box/organiser for it...

Wonderful Butternut

Quote from: mothman on January 22, 2022, 05:14:51 PMExcelsior is problematic, it's very long. It means that the "normal" Eaglemoss miniature is a far smaller scale than a ship that size would otherwise be. A Miranda would be nice, thinking about it.

I guess you could build the model into a glass coffee table? Anyway for now I'm just going to vicariously enjoy the build via World of Wayne's build playlist.

The physical Excelsior model they made for ST III and carried through the movies and into TNG/DS9 is bigger than both the Ent-D models afaik, even though in universe the ship is nearly 200m shorter. Had to play with perspective to get the shots where the Enterprise meets the Crazy Horse or the Hood.

Best looking Starfleet ship is the Akira, imo. Too bad they ripped it off to make NX-01.

the hum

#1628
Not sure if this has been covered here, but the reason the Excelsior class Enterprise-B seen in Generations is seen with flared protrusions on its secondary hull was simply a budget saving exercise, since the plot required the ship being physically damaged in its encounter with the Nexus. Those bits were then removed, keeping an intact model for future use in DS9.

EDIT: ah, on further reading apparently the glue used to add the bits on damaged the model anyway, so it ended up being reused as was, specifically as the USS Lakota in DS9.

mothman

Yeah, it's as murky what went on there as the reasons behind why we never saw Ambassador-class ships apart from a couple of post "Yesterday's Enterprise" appearances.  It "helps" that the mid-nineties saw an increasing use of CGI, though why they'd only ever use unrefitted Excelsiors (whether physical or computer models) and never develop a refit version of the CGI remains a mystery. Money, probably.

the hum

Apparently on the blu-ray release of Paradise Lost you can see a glob of Copydex just to the right of the deflector dish.

mothman

We can retcon that to it being a member of Murf's species.

mothman

We won't be getting to this episode until much later in season 6, but I'll have forgotten this by then. Anyway, I LOLed.

https://twitter.com/c0nc0rdance/status/1484895108688498692

Das Reboot

While we're doing inter-season sexy model chat...

I received this as birthday present back in the early 90s:



It was an absolute beast compared with the 1/72 Airfix Hurricanes and Harriers that I was building at the time. The saucer section was a right hefty lump of plastic once put together. I just couldn't settle on what colour to paint it - I did the saucer in white but it just looked wrong. Further experiments with my dad's assorted collection of Humbrol greys and blues didn't work either. Also, I was painting with an incredibly inferior hobby brush. I should have Halfords rattle canned the mother.

Yes, I have been looking on ebay.

Lemming

S06E01 - Time's Arrow Part 2

Picard and his party follow Data to the 19th century to foil the plot of the Bastard Aliens.

- Mark Twain just will not stop rabbiting on about shit. He's really worked up about the whole time travel fiasco.

- Picard's team have arrived, and everyone's changed into period costumes. Bev's looking at corpses and finding that they've been NEURALLY DEPLETED. She and Riker conclude that the aliens have come to this point in the past due to the prevalence of epidemics, which will allow them to cover their tracks since nobody will care about the corpses piling up.

- A trademark TNG briefing, except we're all in a room in the past. Everyone has stupid hair now, and Riker's gone for some absurd Brylcreem parting. They're pretending to be a group of travelling actors. Mercifully, the briefing is broken up when the landlord arrives and gives Picard a ton of shit over rent.

- Twain is let into Data's room by Hotel Staff Man and starts rifling through his shit. Turns out Hotel Staff Man is Jack London!!! Wow!!!

- Data's special TIMEDRIVE, which he was building through the first half of the two parter, gets fucked about with by Twain, who hides in the wardrobe when Data and Guinan return. Guinan says that the cavern Data needs to reach is underneath the city and guarded by the military. Data reckons Guinan can fast-talk her way in, and then they catch Twain and recover the TIMEDRIVE COMPONENT. Twain demands to know why Data has come here from the future, and storms out insisting that he'll fuck their plans RIGHT up.

- I genuinely can't stop laughing at Bev dressed as a 19th century nurse. Made all the more hilarious when she just carries the tricorder around in front of patients.

- The aliens arrive (in human form) to steal neural energy from the patients, but vanish when the team try to apprehend them. Riker manages to fuck up everything and get them caught by the cops, so he pucnhes the cop in the face and rushes out into the street. Here they finally encounter Data, who helps them escape the police on a horse-drawn carriage.

- Back in Picard's rented room that he's about to get kicked out of, everyone plays with the snake cane they got from the aliens, which starts doing weird things. After passing a speech check to get the landlord to back off, they go over to Data's hotel room where Guinan is waiting. Here she meets Picard for (chronologically) the first time. More of Twain getting on their case, then it's off to the cavern (which Guinan's gotten us all into) so Geordi can run scans.

- The team resolve to travel back to the 24th century and destroy the cavern, preventing further temporal incursions by the aliens. Just then, Twain walks in (he's also gotten past the army base guarding the cavern, I suppose) and says it's time to perform a CITIZEN'S ARREST on the entire group. Held at Colt .45-point, the team are distracted long enough for the aliens to transport in and attempt to recover the cane. There's a resulting explosion which kills Data and blows his head off, and ragdolls Guinan. It also stuns one of the aliens. The other alien flees through a portal and everyone pursues, bar Picard who remains to help Guinan.

- Everyone awakens in the future, with their period-appropriate hats intact. Twain has come too.

- Since everything's already completely gone to absolute bollocks, Riker just tells Twain he's in the 24th century and beams him up to the Enterprise. It's fine though because Troi will be escorting him at all times.

- Back in the 19th century, Guinan recovers from being hit in the face with an explosion (hat remained on). As Picard cradles her, she asks why he didn't join the rest of his crew. Picard says he couldn't leave her, as she's too important to him, and their relationship in his time period goes "far beyond friendship". What's up with these two, really? I actually really like whatever it is they have going on but it's almost never, ever touched on, ever.

- In the 24th century, Riker goes to Ten Forward to ask present-day Guinan what to do in a panicky voice. Riker also says Jean-Luc Picard in a weird quasi-French voice. zhon-luhc-PEE-caaahd.

- Troi takes Twain on a big walk around the ship where he just sees absolutely fucking everything. No problem. Troi explains how the future is ambiguously communist.

- Geordi tries to use Data's recovered head to reactivate him. Meanwhile, back in the 19th century, Picard tries to talk to the other alien, who was injured in the blast. She insists that the aliens harvest human neural energy in order to survive, and that no alternative source exists. Then she goes all blue and fades out of existence.

- Riker's getting stressed and yelling at people in the briefing room. He wants to go back IMMEDIATELY to save Picard, before Bev's had a chance to check if it's safe to do so. I don't understand the rush - is time meant to be advancing in the 19th century at the same rate it's advancing here? I guess maybe, given that Data was apparently in the past alone for the time it took the crew to follow him. But can't the alien machine just allow them to travel back to any point they want?

- Riker lays down the law and insists he's going down. Worf says that it's a dumb idea and that they should destroy the cave instead ot prevent the aliens from killing any other humans in the past. Riker displays his usual approach of agreeing with the last thing anyone said to him, and orders the photon torpedoes to be readied.

- In the past, Picard starts jabbing Data's brain with an iron file. In the future, Geordi discovers the file left by Picard. Data awakens, and says that Picard left a message in his brain, and that it says they must not fire upon the cavern.

- Apparently they need to fuck about with the photons for a bit. Riker prepares to return, but for plot reasons, the portal will only allow one person through, meaning if Riker saved Picard, he would then be trapped. Twain (who's walking around unattended on the bridge) overhears and offers to go back and save Picard at his own expense, since he was wanting to go back to his own time anyway.

- In the past, Twain returns and approaches Picard. Guinan's health is deteriorating because of the slowly-developing symptoms of being hit in the face with an explosion. Twain assures Picard that the message he left in Data's brain was received in the future, and gives him the phaser frequency necessary to activate the snake cane. He also says he'll take Guinan to safety. Picard and Guinan get one last loving look at each other before Picard hauls ass to the portal before the cave gets nuked.

- The aliens are in the cave, so Riker gives the order to fire. Picard arrives and teleports out seconds before the aliens get nuked.

- With our genocide of the aliens complete, everyone's in a great mood. Picard goes to Ten Forward, where he and Guinan silently gaze into each other's eyes.

This is a bit of a mess - Twain's mostly just annoying (I don't knock the actor's performance here, there's just too much of the character and his dialogue is too frantic). The actual plot, which already wasn't exactly edge-of-your-seat stuff in part one, fizzles out into shitness. The aliens indicate they attack humans for they have no choice, Picard wonders at the prospect of a peaceful solution and a way to offer them nourishment without the cost of human lives, and then everyone agrees to just blast them to hell anyway. All feels pretty pointless. The episode also doesn't really have the fun character stuff that the first part had.

I haven't seen this in ages because I skipped it on my past couple rewatches, so - as you can probably tell from the mentions above - I was quite baffled by the Picard and Guinan scenes. We've been told (if not really shown) before that their relationship is special and "more than friends, more than family", as I think Guinan once says, but rarely get a sense of it. Here, they almost played it as if they were in love. Which I thought was sweet, but also came out of nowhere.

The pacing is all over the goddamn shop and we teleport from location to location and scene to scene, often with characters stopping to try and catch the audience up on where the fuck we are and what the fuck we're doing here, to little avail because the plot is batshit. I'm also not sure what the point of Guinan being in the plot at all actually was - you'd think she'd have some major role to play, some crucial connection to the plot and its resolution, but she just gets exploded into unconsciousness after getting everyone into the mines.

The crew also come across as laughably incompetent in a way that I'm not sure they're meant to - absolute rubbishing of any kind of temporal Prime Directive aside, they just fuck everything up. Caught by everyone, chased by cops, using advanced tech in front of patients in the hospital (who also witness the aliens vanishing), getting held at gunpoint by Mark fucking Twain...

3/10. Might seem like a harsh rating because the episode isn't hateful or actively offensive or anything, but it is boring and rather confusing.


Blumf

The Guinan/Picard thing is weird. It's never bothered me, as I'm not a Guinan fan, but there is a big hole they set up that was never really filled in.

Were they hanging out together on the Stargazer? (I know expanded universe stories cover it, buuuut canon)

The best that we get, on screen, is that they've both been in the Nexus. But that doesn't really feel good enough.

Lemming

Quote from: Blumf on January 26, 2022, 02:45:04 AMWere they hanging out together on the Stargazer? (I know expanded universe stories cover it, buuuut canon)

Everything I can figure out about Picard and Guinan's shared past, from the show so far (I've largely forgotten the TNG films, so not sure what extra info they might hold):

- In "The Child", there are apparently rumours of Guinan being on the Stargazer, but she denies them:
QuoteWESLEY: People say you're very old.
GUINAN: Oh?
WESLEY: And that you knew Captain Picard when he was on the Stargazer.
GUINAN: No, I never knew the Captain till I came onboard.
WESLEY: Everyone's very curious about you.
GUINAN: Yes, I'll bet they are.
She pretty much has to be lying though, surely, given everything else we learn.

- In "Ensign Ro", Guinan says that Picard helped her out of an extremely difficult situation when they first met, which required her to place her trust in him. She could be referring to being exploded in Time's Arrow, I suppose, especially if she's telling the truth about otherwise having never met him before "The Child", but it doesn't really fit.

- In "Yesterday's Enterprise", Picard says that he learned "long ago" to trust Guinan on pretty much anything, and he considers her to have "special wisdom".

- Both Guinan (forget when) and Picard (in this episode) describe their relationship as being deeper than friendship or family.

It definitely feels like there's a lot of mileage in the idea of the show's protagonist being friends (lovers? something else?) with a centuries-old alien with strange telepathic skills, with her possibly having a greater telepathic connection to him than to anyone else. Sort of like what they implied would be the case in "Encounter at Farpoint", where it's seemingly established that Troi was able to teach Riker some form of love-fueled telepathy, which never comes up ever again as far as I know.

Every mention of Picard and Guinan's relationship really does stick out, especially on a rewatch where you know that none of it is ever elaborated on or builds to anything, it's just awkwardly hanging there.

mothman

Don't worry I'm sure PIC s2 will explain it all in mind-numbing detail.

MojoJojo

I can only really understand Guinean as Hollywood star Whoopi Goldberg. She just gets attributes to make her important in what ever story she chooses to appear in. Q's afraid of her ffs.

Wonderful Butternut

As I said earlier in the thread, this episode puts a new spin on Guinan in Best of Both Worlds. She knows Picard is supposed to meet her in the 19th century, but he hasn't gone back in time to do that yet by BoBW. So therefore she knows that not only that they must retrieve Picard from the Borg, but they must actually defeat the Borg since they will subsequently be able to do time travel shenanigans (remember she can sense when the universe is fuckways, so the timeline she knows hasn't been screwed with) without being drones.

"You must let him go, Riker. Besides, I know you get him back - oops. Wasn't meant to tell you that."

As for Guinan generally, it seems that the only attribute that really matters to the writers is that she's mysterious. At least it's better than Roddenberry's original plan for Ten Forward's bar tender, the "most beautiful girl in all creation", which absolutely wouldn't have been cheesy shit that would've aged really badly. No way.

Mark Twain can fuck off.

Also Data's now walking around with a head that's 500 years older than the rest of his body. I know he's made of exotic future materials and is presumably very durable, but surely there'd have been some deterioration in the condition of his head in that time.

daf

126 | "Time's Arrow Part 2"



Never The Twain

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights :
• Troi Corset Wriggle
• The Landlady Titania Sketch
• P.C. Riker Palm-Face
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• The Lying Wit In The Wardrobe
• Calling it now : Bellboy = O. Henry!!!
• Guinan Picard : First Contact
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

Blumf

Quote from: Wonderful Butternut on January 26, 2022, 10:59:31 AMAlso Data's now walking around with a head that's 500 years older than the rest of his body. I know he's made of exotic future materials and is presumably very durable, but surely there'd have been some deterioration in the condition of his head in that time.

Makes you wonder how often he replaces parts. Presumably, bits and pieces get damaged (unquestionably so in First Contact), so he won't be 100% original by the time get gets blown up in Nemesis.

Maybe it's just the positronic brain that's 100% original, as that seems to be the tricky bit that can't be replicated.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

#1642
Yeah my biggest problem with this episode apart from it feeling like an excuse for everyone except Michael Dorn to fuck around in 19th century clothing is DID THEY JUST GENOCIDE A RACE OF ALIENS?!

At no point is there any suggestion that aliens feeding on humans is changing Earth history. Are they perhaps targeting people who are already sick? Certainly seems that way with the homeless '49er who tells Data it's too late for a doctor anyway. This is wildly out of character for the version of Picard who wanted to try and communicate with the Crystalline Entity to get it to stop killing inhabited planets.

Also cholera is a shitting disease not a coughing one.

Lemming

Yeah, I couldn't figure out the plot with the aliens at all - the only one who gets to actually speak and tell us what's going on is the one who dies in the cavern, and she seems to indicate that this is being done for their immediate survival and that other options were investigated and exhausted before resorting to the murder of humans. And definitely, it seems to indicate that they target people who are already doomed and who imminently died in the original timeline anyway - the homeless guy being one and the people in the cholera ward being others. They come across as potentially sympathetic if this really is their only choice, especially since getting your "neural energy" sucked out is probably quicker and nicer than dying slowly of cholera.

I wonder if the script went through some fast rewrites and got rushed to completion, and that's why they end up just nuking the cave and presumably making the entire alien race starve to death. It all feels like it's a very artificial, forced dramatic conclusion to a two-parter, which is also why Riker gives the order to fire immediately rather than waiting five seconds for Picard to come safely back through the portal.

mothman

Quote from: Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse on January 27, 2022, 10:58:07 AMYeah my biggest problem with this episode apart from it feeling like an excuse for everyone except Michael Dorn to fuck around in 19th century clothing is DID THEY JUST GENOCIDE A RACE OF ALIENS?!

At no point is there any suggestion that aliens feeding on humans is changing Earth history. Are they perhaps targeting people who are already sick? Certainly seems that way with the homeless '49er who tells Data it's too late for a doctor anyway. This is wildly out of character for the version of Picard who wanted to try and communicate with the Crystalline Entity to get it to stop killing inhabited planets.

Also cholera is a shitting disease not a coughing one.

OK I'll spoiler this part as it comes up in a recent Trek novel:
Spoiler alert
No, seriously, fuck 'em. In the Coda novel trilogy, they screw up the entire universe all so they can keep leeching off other life forms.
[close]

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Quote from: mothman on January 27, 2022, 07:27:48 PMOK I'll spoiler this part as it comes up in a recent Trek novel:
Spoiler alert
No, seriously, fuck 'em. In the Coda novel trilogy, they screw up the entire universe all so they can keep leeching off other life forms.
[close]
Well it's nice that it was addressed in a novel, but that doesn't change the fact that the two-parter ends in alien genocide.

Wonderful Butternut

iirc it's vague enough that we don't even know if that was all the Devidians or just one colony or group of them.

It's obviously something they rushed.

Malcy

Genocide is fine in the Trek verse if and IF "The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few" or indeed "one".

Lemming

S06E02 - Realm of Fear

Barclay tries to overcome his fear of the transporter, but notices a strange glowing on his arm after he rematerialises.

- Lost Federation ship, trapped in some weird space ray. Barclay develops a TRANSPORTER BRIDGE which will let a rescue crew beam over. But when Geordi asks Barclay to join the rescue squad, he freaks out.

- The transporter can only send one person at a time due to "bandwith limitations". Worf, Riker and Bev beam through, then it's Barclay's turn. He panics and walks out of the transporter room.

- It's time for an EMERGENCY THERAPY SESH in Troi's office. Troi tells him that it's alright that he freaked out, and he admits that he's got a phobia of the transporter in general. He's scared that he'll never rematerialise, or he'll rematerialise all weird. Troi says this is a common fear and that jabbing himself in the back of the head like an idiot, a tried and true Betazoid technique, might calm him down enough to chill out about being torn apart at the atomic level by the transporter.

- Rejuvinated, Barclay strides off to the transporter room, as there's still time to join the away team. Aboard the stranded ship, the team find no evidence of anyone on board. There's one corpse, the chief engineer, so they decide to take him back to the Enterprise for an autopsy.

- O'Brien cheers Barclay up by admitting he was once shit-scared of spiders. Years ago, he got called to Zayta IV, PLANET OF THE SPIDERS. Having weird alien spiders crawl all over him diminished his phobia, so maybe getting transported could do the same for Barclay.

- Barclay beams safely over, and, when the mission concludes, he's the last to beam back. Surely he should have gone through first? What if he freaks out again now that he's alone on the ship? Anyway, he gets stuck in the transporter beam for an extra second and sees weird alien parasites approaching him before he arrives back on the Enterprise.

- Geordi and O'Brien run a full diagnostic on the transporter after hearing Barclay's story but find nothing amiss. They both assure Barclay that transporting is really cool and safe, and nobody's gotten transporter psychosis in 50 years. Um?!

- In sickbay, despite being Well Fucked Up, the corpse briefly seems to come to life. Elsewhere, Barclay's arm starts glowing weirdly. He looks up his symptoms online and diagnoses himself with transporter psychosis.

- Haha! Why are they stood this close?!


- Later, Geordi determines that the lost ship probably got fucked over when they tried to collect samples from the plasma thing they're in, but their container blew up. He decides to recreate their steps and see if it blows the Enterprise up too, but nil desperandum, a LEVEL 5 FORCEFIELD will be in place. Data notices Barclay's hypochondria and tells Geordi, who tells Barclay to take the day off and rest.

- Troi goes chasing after Barclay and asks him what's up. He's gone apeshit so she relieves him of duty. He goes to his quarters to try and calm down, but his arm starts glowing again. He goes off to review the transporter logs, then wakes O'Brien in the middle of the night to ask him to check them with him.

- There was an ionic fluctuation when Barclay saw the weird parasite things. He orders O'Brien to beam him back to the lost ship and back again, and recreate what happened the first time. He sees the parasite again, and calls an emergency meeting with the senior staff.

- At the briefing, everyone's a little disbelieving of Barclay, even though they could verify his story by just recreating his ionic-fucktuation-transport, surely. Instead, Picard orders that the transporter system be dismantled and properly checked out, and Bev takes Barclay to sickbay.

- Bev discovers that Barclay's arm is fucked up by weird plasma, as he claimed. He's given permission to join Geordi's "let's blow ourselves up" experiment anyway, which does indeed result in the plasma sample blowing up inside the containment field. Geordi glares at the resulting plasma mist and reckons there's life within it, just as Barclay collapses and starts MEGA-GLOWING.

- Barclay wakes up in sickbay and is told that they've discovered weird microbes in the plasma. Some have become somehow trapped in the transporter, and there are also some inside Barclay. Geordi and Data think it'll probably be fine to suspend Barclay in transport for a bit to purge him, which carries a risk of him permanently dematerialising.

- The plan goes ahead and Barclay enters the TRANSPORT REALM, where he sees the microbes again. O'Brien, Bev and Geordi manage to reprogram the biofilters in time to beam him back, but before he does, he grabs onto a microbe, which beams back in the form of one of the crew of the lost ship. Turns out there's loads more people trapped in microbe-form in the beam.

- I absolutely love the following few seconds. Worf walks in with a team. "There are more crew inside the beam, you have to grab them and hold on!" Barclay says. "Understood," Worf says, and steps on the transporter. The fuck? Nobody knows what's going on, nobody knows what the microbes look like, nobody knows that they're actually the lost crew, how are Worf and his team like "oh, ok, sounds good, 'grab them and hold on', we know exactly what that means and what to do".

- The remaining crew are saved from the beam. Later in Ten Forward, O'Brien introduces Barclay to Chirstine, his pet tarantula. Barclay instantly develops a new phobia.

Barclay's fun to watch in this one, and we get some good O'Brien stuff too. But the actual plot is really boring - we get Barclay's arc about overcoming his fear which results in his heroic moment where he orders that he be transported again to see if the microbes are real, but the wider plot sucks. I don't even know what happened honestly. The crew of the ship turned into transporter microbes.

I love the set-up of Barclay getting a glimpse of something really weird during transport, and there's a lot of directions that it could have gone in, from the classic "it's a weird new alien species who live in non-space and we have to find a way to talk to them" to any crazy shit you might imagine, but I think what's in the episode is probably one of the duller approaches. Also, I have no shame in admitting that I don't have a fucking clue what happened, or how the science ship crew transformed and became trapped. Barclay explains it in a technobabble line at the end but it just went right over my head.

5/10


Mr Trumpet

I'm sure we see Troi doing the neck tapping thing again herself in another episode. A nice little character detail that Sirtis presumably adopted.