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

[daf]

Yes, DS9 sounds like fun (will need a new scoring system!)

(Are we going to cover the TNG movies aswell?)

[Lemming]

We should definitely do the TNG films! I seem to have virtually no memory of Nemesis or Insurrection, other than Patrick Stewart getting to ride a dune buggy in one of them, which is reason enough to give the whole film a rewatch.

[elliszeroed]

We should definitely do the TNG films! I seem to have virtually no memory of Nemesis or Insurrection, other than Patrick Stewart getting to ride a dune buggy in one of them, which is reason enough to give the whole film a rewatch.

I was at university when I watched Insurrection on the TV, while I was high for one of the first times in my life. I think I wrote ten pages of utter nonsense as to why this was the most important film of all time.

[Zero Gravitas]

I think I wrote ten pages of utter nonsense as to why this was the most important film of all time.

[Lemming]

S07E22 - Bloodlines

Daimon Bok returns, threatening to kill a man he claims is Picard's son.

- Some random probe rocks up asking for Picard by name. It shoots a HOLOBEAM at the Enterprise which projects a holographic recording of Damon Bok onto the bridge!!! Was anyone excited for the return of Bok?

- He says Picard has a son, Jason Vigo, who will now be assassinated as revenge for Picard's killing of Bok's own son. This is the first Picard's heard of it, so he asks Data to look up Jason Vigo. The search reveals that he does indeed exist, and a picture of him. His last known location was Camor V, so off we go.

- Picard explains to Riker that he met a woman called Miranda Vigo a while ago while he was on shore leave. A whirlwind romance ensued. You'd think contraception would be a lot better in the 24th century. Whether Jason is Picard's son or not, Picard reckons that Bok's threat is legit, so we'll have to go save him anyway.

- In orbit of Camor V, Data runs a scan for all human life signs on the planet and finds eight. He narrows it down to females, of whom there are three, but they're all too young to be Miranda. How fucking detailed is this scan? This is mega! Why don't we have this level of capability normally?

- From orbit, we detect Jason two kilometers underground, and can learn in seconds that he is male and between 20 and 30 years old. This scanner is incredible!

- They beam him up from the cave he's dicking about in and Picard tells him about Bok's assassination threat. He also reveals that he may be his father. Jason tells him that Miranda died a while ago, so they'll have to do a Jeremy Kyle DNA test. This test soon reveals that he is indeed Picard's son.

- Picard tries some father-son bonding with his ultra-estranged adult child by showing him his most boring archaeological artifacts. Jason's not into it, nor is he into Earl Grey. That's pretty much fucked Picard's two biggest topics. Picard meekly tries to explain his total lack of involvement in Jason's life, but it's no use, and Jason's just getting more and more pissed off. Excruciating to watch.

- The hunt for Bok is on, mainly to get Jason off the ship because his presence is agonising. Some guy Ferengi called Birta tips them off about where to look, and while they're en route, Picard comes to Bev to weep over his utter failure to connect with his son. Picard resolves to just leave well enough alone, but Bev encourages him to continue reaching out, to go press his face up to Jason's door and yell "WHY ARE YOU PUTTING UP BARRIERS?? WHEN WILL YOU LET ME INNNN?"

- Troi goes to see Jason to figure out what his problem is. He flirts with her until she's forced to leave because he's absolutely unbearable.

- While Picard sleeps, he sees a vision of Bok at the edge of his bed taunting him. Sadly we don't get the incredible zoom on Picard's eye like we did back in "The Battle". The next day, nobody can figure out what the fuck that was all about, and how Bok could have got on board, somehow slipping past Worf's famously airtight security.

- Data checks out Jason's criminal record and finds out that he's a ruffian. A security detail is assigned to him, and he's a dick to them as he swans about in Ten Forward getting in everyone's way. Suddenly, his arm shakes weirdly, and scary music lets you know that's not a good thing!

- Heartbreaking scenes as Picard tries to encourage Jason to go holo-rock-climbing with him. He tells Picard to fuck off, leaving him sat glumly at the bar. ;(

- Suddenly another probe appears on sensors, previously cloaked. It explodes and showers the Enterprise with golden glitter. Data sees some weird code in the explosion which reads "MY REVENGE IS AT HAND". Where the fuck's Bok getting the resources for all this?!

- Later, while Picard gets his Earl Grey fix, Bok teleports directly into his chair! They have it out over Picard's killing of Bok's son once again. Bok can't be talked down, and has gone peculiar. After he leaves, Jason has a weird seizure.

- Bev diganoses him with a degenerative brain disease. It's hereditary, which is weird because netiher Picard nor Miranda have it. Anyway, Bev hits him with the BEVSPRAY which contains a potential treatment. After he leaves, Bev takes the opportunity to flex her parenting wisdom on Picard, which is rich stuff since she brought her child onto this deathtrap of a ship, sent him off to Starfleet Academy which he hated, and has now lost him forever as he's become a SPACE NONCE.

- Data and Geordi conduct an extreme atomic-level scan of the area where Bok's ass was sat on the chair and discover evidence of THE OMNI-TRANSPORTER, a special transporter that's better than anything else in the world, turning Bok into quantum data and letting him beam through reality, or some shit like that. Everyone quakes in fear at Bok's unstoppable power, for he may now beam directly to Jason and kill him, or beam Jason away.

- Picard finds Jason rock climbing on the holodeck. Jason softens after seeing Picard's shit-hot rock climbing skills. He reveals that Miranda moved to Camor V to help the war orphans from the Cardassian War, by creating a big house for them to live in. This was a total living hell which required incesstant back-breaking labour from her, and they had to eat shitty homegrown vegetables (WHERE ARE REPLICATORS??). Anyway, her vegetables were so ace that two thugs killed her for them one day.

- Just as things are looking up, Bev shits on everything by calling Picard to sickbay to give him SHOCKING NEWS. We don't know what it is yet though because this is avant-garde storytelling, and it cuts away to Riker's face instead. Bok beams Jason away. Geordi tries to beam him back but the BOK OMNI-TRANSPORTER is too strong for the fucking flagship, and Jason is stolen away.

- Is this a feature of ships in the Star Trek universe? The viewscreen can detect when you're losing your mind and frame you in fisheye lens as a result? Remember Maxwell from "The Wounded"?


- Damn, Bok's about to kill Jason, but he's 300 billion kilometers away! That's twenty minutes at warp nine, but don't worry - we can use SUBSPACE TRANSPORT to clear that distance instantly (wtf?). Picard will beam over personally. He's turned into quantum spaghetti and spins around the phase coils or something, I haven't got a clue. This shoots him through space to the bridge of Bok's ship, where he holds Bok at gunpoint and reveals the BOMBSHELL REVELATION Bev told him earlier - Jason is not his son! He's some guy who Bok medically altered. His crew were under the false impression that this was all to get a ransom. Picard persuades them to assist him in exchange for lenience, and Bok is taken captive.

- With that settled, Jason goes back to Camor V, healed of his Bok-induced neurological damage. Picard gifts him an archaeological dildo as a parting gift.

Wow, that was languid. I don't know if he was badly directed or what, but Patrick Stewart plays it as if Picard doesn't really care about anything that's happening.

Not much to get into here. Picard's on sedatives and Jason's just a prat. The only other thing in the episode is Bok. I actually feel really bad for him. There was probably a story here about the terrible and long-lasting consequences of violence, and such a story may have suited season seven's sedate tone. There is something interesting in digging up an event that happened in Picard's past like this. He rarely, if ever, mentions or thinks about the Stargazer and the destruction of the Ferengi ship (he seemed almost proud of it back in "The Battle", especially because he got a maneuver named after himself) but the resulting pain and heartbreak has consumed Bok's every thought for every day of his life since. That's tragic and there could be some kind of emotionally cathartic resolution to that plot, but instead he's just a wild-eyed fisheye-lens lunatic who's gonna stab some guy we've never met before. Not a great use of the character.

It's hard to figure out what the point of the episode really is, then - it's not interested in Bok, so it must be interested in Picard and Jason, and yet it barely seems to care about that. Not much else to say.

2/10



Only other thing in the episode is BOK™ OMEGA-TRANSPORTER, and I absolutely could not tell you what the fuck that was all about.

[daf]

173 | "Bloodlines"



Who's The Daddy?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Shore-leave Shagging Suspicion
• Troi Terminating Cheeky Chat-up Chancer
• Papa Picard's Petulant Progeny Problem
• The Hairline Joke!!
• Sherlock Bev investigates : "The Shaky Juice Mysteries"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• . . . and introducing Security Sandra!
• Bok's Bedroom Beam-in
• Shaky Son Seizure
• Tea Earl Grey Hot #5 : D.B. Taunts
• Damon's DNA Deception Divulged
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[elliszeroed]

Was it ever explained how the Ferengi went from trolls to business obsessed? I wonder why they didnt make Quark a new species.

Explanation here, if anyone is interested:

[Zero Gravitas]

By all accounts it's because Armin Shimerman is a damn fine actor and trekkie.

Gene Roddenberry was mental, he was more obsessed with the Ferengi having giant codpeices and voracious sexual appetites than tying down what the race was like, one can see a core there, but them being capitalistic in TNG is expressed more as fractured bandit bands competing with one another at all costs, rather than the structured society of greed we see later.

Shimerman being one of the first to glue on the ears in TNG thought they'd gone too broad with the original version and so, by some accounts with Grodénchik, by some the writers had a vision to make the race live up to it's original purpose (to be the new Klingons) not by being more warlike or barbarous but with cunning and their inhuman ethical system.

There's quite a good section on their memory alpha page https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi#Future_developments an intersting point seems to be that unlike Quark and Rom, Nog's portrayal was seemingly taken by Eisenberg directly from TNG, which I can kind of see, he does seem like more of a little comedy gremlin, particularly in the early series, and his mode of speech.

[Lemming]

S07E23 - Emergence

Strange glitches on the holodeck begin to indicate that the Enterprise is developing a mind of its own.

- Oh Jesus, Shakespeare on the holodeck. It doesn't get much worse than this. Data says he doesn't get what's going on in The Tempest, and Picard goes off on one about the genius of The Bard (read biggy's deep dive into "The Fraud of Avon" for the TRUTH about Shakespeare). Thankfully, he's cut off by a steam train barrelling towards him at a million miles an hour. Yes!! This episode rocks!

- Our shipboard videogame system is trying to fucking kill us again, must be Tuesday. Data checks the report and finds that the train was the Orient Express, from Bev's really cool mystery game. Because the holodecks are insane deathtraps, Picard orders them shut down until they can figure out why the games are mysteriously modding themselves.

- While Picard gets his torn-up face treated, Bev tells him about how cool the Orient Express is as a setting (she's right, play The Last Express). We can take all the time in the world to chat about our favourite videogame settings because, as usual, the Enterprise is not doing anything. Ostensibly, we're looking for viable colony sites, which translates to doing nothing.

- The ship suddenly goes to warp. Shit! Shit! After a while, this mysteriously stops. Nobody can figure out what's up, but Geordi's investigation reveals that we almost got ripped apart by a BETA FLUX DISTORTION before the ship mysteriously moved itself.

- Just a side note, I fucking love how insanely lucky they were here again. "Genesis" already had them survive due to absolutely absurd circumstances (pregnant cat on board that gives birth at the exact right time, pregnant human woman on board who's in the right stage of pregnancy to be able to produce the cure, Picard and Data off the ship for a silly reason when the disease strikes, one-of-a-kind android crewmember to synthesise and administer the cure) but this is even more insane. The Enterprise would have been destroyed with all hands lost if the ship hadn't come to fucking life, something that's never happened before or since and has never been indicated to ever even be a possibility on any ship in Starfleet's history. Picard's luck stat must be maxed out.

- In a Jeffries Tube, Geordi and Data find crazy straws stuck in the wall. Attempts to shove a metal thing into them fail because there's a mysterious forcefield around them. They go on a crazy straw hunt and find more on key systems around the ship, and that they're connecting unrelated systems - the sensors are connected to the warp core, which is why the ship knew to go to warp to save itself.

- The crazy straws lead to holodeck three, which is running lots of different games at once. Worf, Data and Riker enter to find themselves on the Orient Express, which is filled with characters from different holodeck games. Some flapper-looking women are working on a jigsaw depicting the crazy straws when a Lee Van Cleef-y cowboy walks in and adds a piece. A conductor arrives asking for tickets, and a medieval knight shows him a chain of paper dolls. Nobody reacts to the presence of the crew until they try to fuck around with one of the crazy straw nodes, which gets them yelled at by the conductor until an engineer comes in and tries to help them, but is shot by some 20s mobster. While Riker stares gormlessly, a console blows up in Geordi's face in Engineering. STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION!

- The Orient Express suddenly brakes hard and changes track, which cauases the Enterprise to shake. The characters rejoice that the train is heading in the right direction, and the mobster recovers his prized brick from the corpse of the Engineer. You can insert the mandatory joke about how this is no more baffling or convoluted than the average Sierra adventure game here.

- The safety protcols are off, of course, so the team bail out to look at screens elsewhere. Data, a genius, has realised that what happens on the holodeck relates to reality - the train changed direction right as the Enterprise itself changed direction. A closer look at the map of the crazy straw locations reveals it to look similar to Data's positronic brain - the Enterprise is spontaneously creating a neural net inside itself.

- This is all explained to Picard using exciting colourful diagrams. Basically the bottom line is that the ship is coming to life. Troi realises that the weird shit on the holodeck is essentially the ship's imagination, so she wants to go scope it out to find out what the ship is thinking. Picard absolutely leaps at the chance to remind everyone that the ship must be treated with respect.

- I love this sequence - Worf and Troi go up to the jigsaw people and there's a long, lingering shot of it. "Do you recognise it?" Worf asks Troi, and then the background music kicks in, a sort of tense, mysterious theme, as if Troi's about to reveal something incredibly important. The camera pans up to her. "No." No idea why it made me laugh so much, something about the timing, but I went as far as to record it.

- Troi goes to check out a game of cards going on between the mobster and Lee Van Cleef, who's tied to a chair. She asks him about his PRIZE BRICK and he says he's got to take it to Keystone City, "WHERE EVERYTHING BEGINS". All his cards have crazy straw designs on them. He gets off at the next stop and Troi gathers the team to follow him.

- Keystone city is one of those Paramount sets they film on, I think, like the one from "A Piece of the Action". Troi and Worf tail the mobster while Data tries to fuck about with the power grid and almost gets run over by a taxi. The mobster takes the PRIZE BRICK to a wall which is missing one brick. Troi approaches him and he tells her that the PRIZE BRICK will "lay the foundation". In reality, a cargo bay depressurises and loads of transporter signs go off in it. Geordi's professional verdict is that "something weird is going on in there."

- He leads a team to investigate and finds glowing crazy straws. Data's attempts to depolarise the power grid to disable the crazy straws cause the ship and the holodeck game to both start quaking, which causes the collapse of the wall with the PRIZE BRICK in it. Rather than check out the door that is revealed behind it, everyone bails out and goes to sickbay because Troi fell over.

- Troi reports to Picard that she thinks the holodeck imagery was symbolic in nature, and that the different characters represent different systems of the ship. While she doesn't think they can be reasoned with, because they're dreams, she thinks she can potentially influence the course of the dream, and returns to the holodeck. This time they get tickets before entering the Orient Express to now discover that it's en route to "Vertiform City". The plan is to cooperate with the wishes of the dream people and see what the ship does, so Worf goes to the train's engine room to shovel coal into the furnace. This causes the Enterprise to speed up in real life, and it heads towards a star which it begins to collect Vertion particles from, which it shoves into the cargo bay. The crazy straws start growing in response. This is really cool for a minute but then the ship runs out of Vertion particles to collect, and the straws become weak again. In the holodeck game, the conductor realises they're not at Vertiform City and hits the brakes, derailing the train. The Enterprise is MORIBUND.

- Geordi's scans of the crazy straws reveal that they almost came to life when they received the Vertion particles, but that the crazy straw entity will die if it doesn't receive more soon. The train re-rails to head to New Vertiform City and the Enterprise sets off at warp 9.

- This is a cause for celebration for exactly one second before they realise that the Enterprise has diverted life support into the engines for MEGA SPEED, and we're all going to die. Troi's party set off to try and disable the train while Geordi comes up with some madcap way to generate Vertion particles. We're gonna shoot torpedoes into a nebula, which will probably work, but we need to persuade the ship to go there. Troi explains to the characters on the train that she can help them get to New Vertiform City, and gets them to let Data into the engine room. Picard and Data desperately collaborate over commbadge to try to figure out how the fuck the train's controls are meant to relate to the ship. Pretty easily, it turns out, and Data stops the ship in front of the nebula. They launch the torpedo and a shitton of Vertion particles are created, which the Enterprise starts sucking up.

- The crazy straw nodes begin to disintegrate as everything gets pumped into the BIG CRAZY STRAW in the cargo bay. Infused with Vertions, it begins to glow and levitate, and then departs the ship to fly through space. The Enterprise returns to normal.

- I cannot even begin to explain how fucking annoyed I am that, when the Orient Express program deactivates, Troi and the others are still holding the champagne glasses in their hands. Surely the glasses are part of the game. They should have disappeared. Absolutely fucking livid.

- Later, Data asks Picard if he thinks the lifeform produced by the Enterprise might be dangerous. Picard reassures him that the entity was born based on our mission logs, our holodeck programs, etc. Because we're good people who do nice things and develop great holodeck games, the entity will carry our values forward with it. I like the idea, but at the same time, if we're constantly playing murder mysteries like Dixon Hill on the holodeck, the entity's entire reference for reality is going to be a bunch of angry men in rooms shooting at each other. Then again, that was 90% of what I was exposed to in the media while growing up, and there's NOTHING wrong with me.

I basically like this, but it's a victim of the usual "arsed mate" malaise that permeates season seven, the fact that there's been a few similar surreal episodes fairly recently, and that, as is typically the case, it doesn't really go as far into the concept as it should. I'd love to have seen TOS tackle this same plot because I'm sure they would have gone absolutely apeshit with it. Voyager would have probably played it as a comedy, which could have worked quite well. But here it's just kind of nothing - the crew walk around saying "oh, that's a bit weird" as the fucking ship starts coming to life.

The Enterprise's holodeck game is fun in the same way that Data's dreams were fun, and the concept of the train in the game controlling the actual Enterprise is very good, but I don't know - something about it just sort of falls flat. Maybe it just doesn't feel like there's enough risk to the crew, or maybe it's because the solution is to basically just walk to the engine room and pull one lever which causes the ship to do exactly what we need it to do. The surreal imagery is cool but it doesn't get as batshit as it ought to have done.

It's not bad at all, it just doesn't really come off in the execution, same as a lot of episodes this season. 4/10

[MojoJojo]

I dunno, I agree with your criticism but would give it a couple more points, because the hologram stuff is intriguing.

[daf]

174 | "Emergence"



All Are Bored! All Are Bored!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Shakespeare in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!
• Data's Fully-Functional Bard Beard
• Tempest Talk Terminating Train Tumble
• Bev's Super Sigmund/Stein Supper Speculation
• Sherlock Droid Investigates : "The Warp The Flux?! Mysteries"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Sherlock Troi Investigates : "The Jumbled Jigsaw Mysteries"
• All Aboard for Vertiform City!
• The Keystone City Brick Tease
• All Abort from Vertiform City!
• Polychrome Squiggle-Pipe Float-off
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Mr Trumpet]

Surreal stuff like this is what makes Trek worth watching IMO. You can keep your space wars and your ethical dilemmas.

[MojoJojo]

I'm assuming the conductor is someone famous. I'll check memory alpha.

Spoiler alert

Oh fucking hell, of course it's him

[close]

Also pretty clear this is being referenced by the that Rick and Morty episode. Although their wiki doesn't seem to recognise that https://rickandmorty.fandom.com/wiki/Never_Ricking_Morty#References maybe it's too generic to point to a specific influence.

Looking at memory alpha again, it's very noticeable that season 7 doesn't have many quotes from producers talking about concepts or inspirations or anything. Definite feeling that no one is putting all their passion into it. Lucky the finale was good. Or was good, from my memory of it.

[Zero Gravitas]

Alonso's other train.


Can't even roll for himself.


Windows 95 "Pipes", this really is the future.


Can't even even get crushed by masonry for herself.


Why do they use the bridge? Much more fun.


Goodbye spacepipes 😢.

[Lemming]

S07E24 - Preemptive Strike

Ro Laren returns from tactical training and is immediately sent on a mission to infiltrate the Maquis.

- Ro's back, though I don't remember when she left. She's been away at ADVANCED TACTICAL TRAINING, which seems potentially a bit redundant in a world where you can just wide-beam stun entire neighbourhoods and anyone can teleport anywhere at any time.

- Picard and Ro have a Moment in the corridor. Turns out Picard personally recommended Ro for this Rainbow Six SAS Black Ops SEALs course. They head to the bridge where Ensign Gates is addressed by name (is this the first time? can't remember). There's a brouhaha underway - Cardassian ships being attacked by Federation vessels! Has Mad Maxwell gotten back into action?

- Nah, it's the Maquis, everyone's favourite Star Trek faction. Picard goes on super-intercom and tells them all to cut it out. No response, so Picard comes up with the wizard plan of using photon torpedoes to non-lethally blast the Maquis ships out of the area (I absolutely could not tell you how or why this worked), and then the Cardassian wounded are invited to the Enterprise for treatment.

- Picard goes to apologise to the Gul, but the Gul is wound up that the Maquis have Federation military equipment and that many of their number are former Starfleet officers. Picard's brain breaks so he recites something he read in a pamphlet about how We Do Not Condone This.

- Necheyev's coming over, but it's all good because she's Picard's BEST FRIEND now after the selection of sweets laid out for her on her last visit. She tells Picard that the Maquis are moving beyond self-defence and into militarism that could spark a MEGA-WAR. Picard and Necheyev agree that Ro, since she's now a special agent, should go and do some insane Tom Clancy shit against the Maquis.

- Just out of interest - am I dumb or have the Maquis not actually been mentioned by name in TNG before now? Were the writers relying on you having seen DS9 in order to have the full background on this? That's kind of cool, if so.

- Ro says she doesn't like helping the hated Cardies, but will take the mission just to prove Picard's faith in her was not misplaced. :) Like all secret missions in TNG, the first step of the operation is to walk into a Seedy Space Bar wearing stupid clothes. Ro plays the role of a fugitive while Worf and Data play the role of Starfleet investigators to convince the patrons that Ro is legit. Sublime scene. I wonder if they could have made their plan any more blatant. I love the extremely obvious Maquis recruiter guy as well.

- The Maquis recruiter idiot takes the bait and walks up to Ro to initiate her. This involves stunning her and transporting her to a weird house, where she awakens surrounded by three absolute prats. They work her over and she claims to have killed a Cardassian soldier, which impresses the Council of Try-Hards. Her interrogation went so well that one of them, a creepy old guy, invites her for a walk around the Maquis base.

- Creepy old guy tells Ro about how he got owned by Cardassian thugs one night. They bond over the Bajoran dish hasperat, which is like, a fajita wrap or something. The power of hasperat is so strong that Ro immediately begins to go native.

- A bit later, Ro's invited to a big briefing where she's told that the Cardassians are moving biogenic weapons around. We can't fight them without medkits, apparently, so Ro volunteers to raid the Enterprise and take them. Funniest line of the series: "the Enterprise is a fortress!" It literally gets hijacked every other week! It got taken over by five Ferengi once!

- In a very weird-looking shuttle, like something out of Blake's 7, Ro and a Maquis head to the Enterprise. Credit to Michelle Forbes for pronouncing "buoy" in the obviously correct way, rather than "boo-ie" as most American actors seem to.

- Meanwhile on the Enterprise, they've sat still for a week doing nothing. They've now got an SOS from a science ship, so they go wooshing to the rescue. But the SOS was actually sent by Ro to lure them here. While Data arses about with his scanner, Ro flies the shuttle up into the Enterprise's shields, which have a magic weak spot near the back. While she's doing this, she also sends a secret message to Worf. Data finally picks up the Romobile when it's like one meter away from the Enterprise, and Picard puts two and two together and orders that nobody do anything. Ro steals the supplies and leaves, and Picard orders Worf to fire phasers around the place like a dork to make it look like they're trying to stop her.

- Back at the Maquis place, everyone's buzzing about Ro's EPIC medkit heist. The creepy old guy comes back up to her again and tells her that he's sure in his heart that she's ONE OF THEM. Since Ro is now the most popular Maquis ever, they let her fly off on her own, and she returns to the Enterprise to report.

- Picard tells her he's got a great phase two to OPERATION MAQUIS FUCKER - Ro will feed the Maquis false intel about biogenic weapons, and lure them into a trap where a bunch of Federation ships will go "aha" and surround them. Ro returns to the Council of Wankers and tells them that the components for a biogenic cock-wrecker are being moved around Cardie space.

- That night, the creepy old guy comes back and enthuses about the big hasperat-themed celebration that'll ensue when the Cardies are vanquished. Jesus he's fucking obsessed with this hasperat shit. There'll also become Bajoran instrument there, he says, which sends Ro off on one about her DEAD DAD. Creepy old guy wipes her tears away and tells her that hasperat day has been moved up to now.

- Three hooded figures enter. I have never seen anything this funny in my entire life, what the fuck are they wearing? Anyway, they're Cardies who start firing at people. Mercifully, they kill creepy old guy by shooting him in the shoulder with a phaser. How the fuck do phasers work? Remember in TOS when you'd get hit with one on stun and fall over a bit, or get hit with one on kill which would make you glow red and vanish from existence? What's up with these lame variants where you get shot in the shoulder and somehow die with no apparent injury?

- Picard's worn his stupidest shirt to enter the Seedy Space Bar for a meetup with Ro. Utter cringe as Ro pretends to be a lady of the night and Picard pretends to be some kind of hideous bald sex tourist. They start necking in a corner booth and Ro tries to get Picard to cancel the mission. He's like "wtf" and she admits that she can't go through with the mission anymore because she sympathises with the Maquis. Picard, Dunce of the Year, encourages her to go ahead with the mission anyway and threatens to put her before a Board of Inquiry. He lets her go back to the mission even though she's clearly 100% compromised, but don't worry - Will fucking Riker will be sent with her.

- Riker and Ro are in the Blake's 7 shuttle as the Maquis head into the big ambush. Ro shuts down the shuttle and holds Riker at gunpoint. While Riker sits completely still with his trademark look of panic, Ro fires at the nebula and calls the other ships telling them to abort the mission because there's a Starfleet attack squad waiting for them. The Maquis all fuck off and Picard watches in despair as a hilarious animation plays on an LCARS screen of all the little Maquis ships rushing away from his perfectly-planned ambush. Wow, thank god Riker was here, otherwise this could have all gone wrong!

- Ro tells Riker that she's leaving to join the wanker brigade, and transports out. Riker debriefs Picard by passing on Ro's final message to Picard - "sorry mate". Picard sits there glowering with rage.

The outline of Ro defecting to the Maquis is cool, but this just feels really awkwardly written to me. None of the Maquis are likeable - I think you're meant to like the old guy, but honestly, he comes across like he's trying to groom Ro by constantly bringing up random Bajoran shit to her and telling her about his friend who died during the occupation. Not to mention his YOU ARE ONE OF US :) shit. He just seems manipulative to me, to the point where when he mentions a random Bajoran instrument and it triggers a memory of her dead dad, he looks like he's thinking "aha, jackpot". I don't think this is the intent of the script at all - which is a shame, because it's potentially interesting - but it's how it came across to me. Wonder if the actor was trying to play it that way.

The Maquis are represented by three people, and one of them is that guy. The other two are just comically hostile and edgy before inevitably being won over by Ro, at which point they almost disappear from the episode.

But the Enterprise crew aren't any better - Picard is really stupid here, even by his usual standards. Now, in this case, that clearly is the actual intent of the script - his arrogance ("Ro will never betray Starfleet, because I recommended her for this") blows up in his face. Like the Maquis stuff, that's a good idea for a plot, but the way it comes across on-screen is just vaguely annoying somehow. Maybe because Ro makes it so clear that she's no longer capable of doing the mission, and Picard just threatens her into going back, with the all-time winning move of assigning fucking Riker to watch over her. Speaking of which, he's the only other Starfleet character who really has a role in the episode, which is to sit there gormless as ever as he watches Ro scuttle the entire mission and then beam out.

If you want to take an interesting view of the episode, you might argue that Creepy Old Guy and Picard are basically mirror images of each other - both are using a mixture of threats and emotional manipulation to try and secure Ro's loyalty, and both are deliberately, even cynically, filling a sort of "fatherly" role since they both know her dad was killed when she was young. The difference being that Picard is insanely bad at this while Creepy Old Guy is, apparently, a bit better at it. But again, I don't think they intended you to read Creepy Old Guy that way.

On another note I've always found the Maquis really boring as a plot device. They come across as laughably unreasonable at first ("we'll never move to a slightly different bit of our post-scarcity communist utopia!") to being more or less objectively in the right because the writers have the Cardassians do stupid shit like walk into the middle of the town and shoot people indiscriminately - seriously, what the fuck were those three trying to do? Was their ship in orbit? But it only sent three guys down and then backed off when they were all taken out? What the fuck was going on? The Maquis don't grab me to start with but it also doesn't help that every Maquis member we meet up until Voyager is either boring, ridiculous, or a bastard (barring Kasidy Yates, I guess). And even Voyager brushed the whole thing under the rug very quickly in order to keep the characters from being unbearable.

Michelle Forbes' skill as an actor shines through as it always does, and saves the episode from being crap, but it's still a really predictable story filled with one-dimensional characters. Maybe there's something interesting in that Creepy Old Guy + Picard similarity, but I dunno. 5/10

[daf]

Just out of interest - am I dumb or have the Maquis not actually been mentioned by name in TNG before now? Were the writers relying on you having seen DS9 in order to have the full background on this? That's kind of cool, if so.

Yes, this is the first time they're named in TNG - though the seeds of the idea were planted in 'Journey's End' (with the Cardassian border dispute).

Were the writers relying on you having seen DS9 in order to have the full background on this? That's kind of cool, if so.

I think they were pretty confident the fans would watch both shows - and of course, they were only introduced in the first place so they could use them in Voyager without bogging the start of that series down with a load of tedious Maquis backstory spadework.

Original US airdates :
28 March 1994 : TNG 'Journey's End' [s7. e20]
25 April 1994 : DS9 'The Maquis - part 1' [s2. e20]
2 May 1994 : DS9 'The Maquis - part 2' [s2. e21]
16 May 1994 : TNG 'Preemptive Strike' [s7. e24]
21 November 1994 : DS9 'Defiant' [s3. e9]
16 January 1995 : VOY 'Caretaker' [s1. e1&2]

- - - - - - - - - - -
Interesting to note that Voyager's first season started later than all the others - and only contained 16 episodes. Wonder if there was some trouble behind the scenes?

[MojoJojo]

Feels very clearly like the producers wanted to keep Forbes on board with a paycheck and an opening into guest appearing on ds9. The script manages that, so job done.

[daf]

175 | "Preemptive Strike"



Oh Maquis, you're so fine
You're so fine, you blow my mind
Hey Maquis! Hey Maquis!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Bajoran Buffet Rebuff
• Admiral Ballbreaker's Canapé Callback
• Agent Double-Ro Laren
• Stranger Snog Strategy
• The Briney Hasperat Sketch
• Picard's Pretend Prossie Purchasing Canoodle Conference
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Hop it Ensign Gates - Ro's Back!
• Little Red Hiding Hoods
• Shield Swerving Supplies Stealing Scheme
• Enterprise Ambush Nebula Nobbled
• Rikers's Relaxed Ro Release
• Furious Fossil-Faced Picard
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Blumf]

S07E24 - Preemptive Strike

...

- Ro's back, though I don't remember when she left. She's been away at ADVANCED TACTICAL TRAINING, which seems potentially a bit redundant in a world where you can just wide-beam stun entire neighbourhoods and anyone can teleport anywhere at any time.

Advanced tactical training probably involves being told to change the default password on the shield controls.

Picard's brain breaks so he recites something he read in a pamphlet about how We Do Not Condone This.

These are not the values of the Combadge Warehouse

- Picard's worn his stupidest shirt to enter the Seedy Space Bar for a meetup with Ro. Utter cringe as Ro pretends to be a lady of the night and Picard pretends to be some kind of hideous bald sex tourist. They start necking in a corner booth and Ro tries to get Picard to cancel the mission.

Yet more evidence to my theory that Stewart was pushing a romantic plot line with Forbes. The guy needs a me-too'ing, frankly.

If you want to take an interesting view of the episode, you might argue that Creepy Old Guy and Picard are basically mirror images of each other - both are using a mixture of threats and emotional manipulation to try and secure Ro's loyalty, and both are deliberately, even cynically, filling a sort of "fatherly" role since they both know her dad was killed when she was young. The difference being that Picard is insanely bad at this while Creepy Old Guy is, apparently, a bit better at it. But again, I don't think they intended you to read Creepy Old Guy that way.

This is exactly what they should have done, but couldn't because that'd compromise Picard's moral integrity. Every one of the actors involved in that triangle could have given a great performance with that too, something they could have gotten their teeth into. Oh well.

Just noticed, the woman playing one of those Maquis leaders was called Shannon Cochran, so close!

[Blumf]

Surreal stuff like this is what makes Trek worth watching IMO. You can keep your space wars and your ethical dilemmas.

A surreal Picard Speech would be nice.

[Lemming]

I think they were pretty confident the fans would watch both shows - and of course, they were only introduced in the first place so they could use them in Voyager without bogging the start of that series down with a load of tedious Maquis backstory spadework.

Original US airdates :
28 March 1994 : TNG 'Journey's End' [s7. e20]
25 April 1994 : DS9 'The Maquis - part 1' [s2. e20]
2 May 1994 : DS9 'The Maquis - part 2' [s2. e21]
16 May 1994 : TNG 'Preemptive Strike' [s7. e24]
21 November 1994 : DS9 'Defiant' [s3. e9]
16 January 1995 : VOY 'Caretaker' [s1. e1&2]

The concept of a single plot playing out across three different series like that is fantastic. It's a shame that the plot itself isn't the best, and that Voyager more or less instantly dropped it, but still a very cool concept.

Yet more evidence to my theory that Stewart was pushing a romantic plot line with Forbes. The guy needs a me-too'ing, frankly.

I've heard that Stewart tried to play it as though Picard was attracted to Ro, which is probably why it comes across so oddly on screen - the writers try to write them as a father-daughter mentor relationship, while Stewart tries to play it as a romantic thing, and the result just feels a bit... weird, to say the least.

[Lemming]

Since we've only got the big finale to go before we're done with the TV series, it seems like a good time for some end-of-rewatch thoughts, changes of opinion about certain characters or episodes, episodes that were nice surprises, things like that. Anyone got any? Here's mine, spoilered for length (phwoar):

Spoiler alert

- Troi is a much better character than I remember and Sirtis' performance is frequently praiseworthy, especially since the material she's given to work with often isn't the best. The writers seemed to suddenly take a bit of an interest in her towards the end. I think if they'd taken that interest earlier, the character and actor could really have been a major asset to the show.

- I think I like the first couple seasons more than ever before now. I always quite liked them, but they really have a great sense of mood and eeriness that's quite striking. I definitely wouldn't try to argue that a lot of those episodes are particularly good pieces of television, but there's some strange appealing quality to them that the later seasons don't have. I also forgot just how weird the crew come across in the earliest episodes, it really does feel like they're from the far future with totally different cultural norms and values, for better or worse.

- Still not really sure about Picard as a character. I think he's not written wholly consistently (a problem shared by all Star Trek captains IMO) but for me he works best when he's cast in an antagonistic, or at least obstructive, role. I enjoyed "Pen Pals" and "Who Watches The Watchers?" which both essentially use his dogmatism and single-mindedness as the core problem to overcome in the plot, and I think he works well in episodes where his self-assuredness works against him (a great one would have been the original draft of "The First Duty" which had Wesley defying Picard who was encouraging him to throw his friends under the bus for his career - sadly not the version we got on screen).

Also, while he rarely got portrayed as such, I think he also worked well as a sort of mild mannered, perpetually beleaguered comedy character (think "Manhunt", "Phantasms", "Rascals").

- Bev and Geordi get, like, no development at all! Geordi sort of works as just a background guy who shows up once an episode to remind the captain that the ship's about to blow up, but it's kind of amazing that we don't really have a handle on our Chief Medical Officer and Chief Engineer, even after seven years.

- Still think Riker's a useless idiot but, despite how much I rag on him, I actually thought he came across as almost being a really interesting and potentially very relatable character this time around. The best uses of Riker are when the scripts acknowledge that he's a bit shit - "The Best of Both Worlds" had Shelby as a credible threat to his position since she actually got off her arse and did stuff, and "Second Chances" painted a fantastic image of Riker as someone who sort of fucked his life up in a haze of confusion and misdirection, went on to coast his way into something fairly cushy, and was content to just stay there indefinitely at the cost of basically all his passion and vitality.

- Like most people, never going to be a big fan of Wesley, but he does have a sort of traceable character arc - he realises early on that Starfleet isn't really for him, he challenges Picard when nobody else will ("shut up Wesley"), then he has pretty much nothing but trouble at the academy and eventually realises he doesn't have to be in Starfleet and can become a space-nonce instead. No part of this arc is particularly exciting but I am glad they concluded by letting him reject Starfleet and go off on his own.

- The Riker and Troi relationship is really odd and never comes to anything. That scene in Farpoint where she projects the word "Imzadi" or whatever into his head is really evocative and haunting, but then they basically spend seven years sitting next to each other in big chairs and doing nothing much. I wish it had gotten a bit more focus - the bit of backstory we're finally given on it in "Second Chances" is fantastic.

- Always loved Lwaxana, still love Lwaxana. People who are down on Lwaxana are FOOLS. While I think she works best as a comedy character, Majel Barrett really brings her A-game at all times and manages to make just about any material she's given shine, to the point where the more tragic direction they decided to take the character in in later episodes doesn't feel jarring at all.

- Guinan just vanished without a trace! The writers never seemed entirely sure what they were meant to be doing with her anyway. Regardless, I really like Whoopi Goldberg and I thought she was consistently great at selling lines of dialogue that would have been unbearably cringeworthy if delivered by an actor with less gravitas and charisma.

- "Rascals" is absolutely mint. People who don't like "Rascals" must rewatch it until they do like it. Picard gets thwarted by a child's screensaver showing a CGI talking fish, and yet there are actually people out there who don't consider it the best Star Trek episode of all time.

[close]

[Zero Gravitas]

Feels very clearly like the producers wanted to keep Forbes on board with a paycheck and an opening into guest appearing on ds9. The script manages that, so job done.

Guest? I thought the first officer was supposed to have been Ro?

Yeah:

During the production of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was intended that Ro Laren be the first officer of Deep Space 9 under Benjamin Sisko's command. Michelle Forbes turned down the offer and the character was modified and became the basis for Kira Nerys. (The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

[Zero Gravitas]

The old Riker Manoeuvre on a bed.


The old Riker Manoeuvre on a bed.


Space Wraps!


Up the ship's arse.


Bloody rum hoing


The betrayal!


The betrayal 😢

[MojoJojo]

Guest? I thought the first officer was supposed to have been Ro?

Yeah:

DS9 is in its second series now. An episode of DS9 where Ro turns up and fights Kira to be Sisko's number one would have got Roddenberry's approval, but his successors were cowards.

[Zero Gravitas]

DS9 is in its second series now.

Oh yeah, time has a sequence, I'm one episode ahead already.

[Lemming]

S07E25 - All Good Things... Part 1

Netflix just has both parts as one episode, so I guess we're going in...

- Troi and Worf are playing videogames. Troi's verdict: "romantic". Worf's verdict: "very stimulating". They finish the videogame session with a near-kiss, which is ruined by Picard running at them in his dressing gown and demanding to know the date. He's moving back and forth through time! Rather than check him into a care home, they take him at his word.

- He describes his exciting experience of being in the past (can't remember anything that he did there), and then being in the future (can't remember anything that he did there). Troi broaches the conversational landmine of asking him if he's sure he wasn't just, you know, dreaming.

- Mid-conversation, he's suddenly old and on the Picard family vineyard. His old mate Geordi shows up, VISOR-less, and makes a joke about the incredibly low engineering standards he famously employed for seven long years aboard the Enterprise. It's been 25 years since they were all together on the Enterprise. In that time, in addition to having his eyes repaired, Geordi has grown a mustache in an attempt to become the lead singer from Cameo.

- Geordi rattles off a story about his wife Leah (BRAHMS?!?!?!), who works at the Daystrom Institute, and his children who are of course invariably bound to Shitfleet Academy. More to the point, though, Picard's got Irumodic Syndrome, a degenerative brain disease, and is WELL FUCKED now.

- Before he can really dig into a boring conversation about Geordi's latest novel (protagonist is TOO FLAMBOYANT), he starts glitching out and suddenly finds himself in the past, with Tasha Yar. It's his first day on the Enterprise! He makes an awful first impression by glaring at Tasha. This is actually because he dimly recognises her despite the time-jumps wiping his memory each time, but from her perspective, it just looks like her new captain is a terrifying weird sex man and so she regards him like this:


- We're heading onto the Enterprise for "Encounter at Farpoint"! I hope we get to watch the full saucer-sep sequence again! Oh no, nevermind, we're back in Troi's quarters where we started. Picard tells Troi that he's had more mad timeskips, and remembers that he saw Tasha this time.

- It's off to sickbay for this loon. Bev and Ogawa perform the OMEGA-SCAN on him, after which Troi is sent to sit outside like an unwanted puppy while Bev tells him that she's found a brain-fuck which suggests he has a predisposition to Irumodic Syndrome.

- Picard still refuses to change out of his dressing gown. He goes to his laptop where Admiral Nakamura tells him Romulans are arsing around in the Neutral Zone, where they seem to have found a cool spatial anomaly. The Enterprise is ordered to hustle over there.

- I know it's pretty late in the game to be saying this, but what actually is the Neutral Zone? It seems that you're not allowed to enter it, but surely a neutral zone would be a place where both Federation and Romulan ships could move freely. This is, like, a buffer zone.

- Picard suddenly hops back into the future, on the vineyard with Geordi. He insists he was just on the Enterprise. Geordi's like "oop, senile grandpa's going off on one," and regards him with a Look of Pity. Picard insists on going to see Data and yells this request at Geordi at eardrum-shredding volume, so that he now needs new bionic ears too.

- Data's at Cambridge, so let's go! Of course, this future is non-canon, as we all know Data died in a dream with Picard or something after a race of androids were trying to open a portal in space to allow some cyber-monster to come through and destroy all organic life, after which Picard was placed into an android body (see the seminal blockbuster sensation "Star Trek: Picard" for more info). But here, he's alive and in Cambridge, so off we go. But about three steps into this journey, Picard hallucinates various weird-looking people yelling at him - it's the people from the post-atomic horror court in Encounter at Farpoint!

- I couldn't stop laughing at this. Cambridge!

- Data's got a study with a fireplace and shit, and an old woman who comes in and goes "'ow'd ya like yer tea?".  He's also put some grey in his hair which makes him look like a tosser and, from a side view, makes it look like he's got an undercut. Picard and Geordi ask Data what's up with Picard, and he says we can go to CAMBRIDGE BIOMETRIC LAB to run LEVEL FOUR NEUROLOGICAL SCANS on Picard's bald head. But suddenly he's back in Encounter at Farpoint again!

- Fair play to the makeup artists and costumers for trying to make the cast look like their season one selves, but it's not quite working. Anyway, Picard sees the post-atomic-horror people again and freaks out during his introduction speech, spooking his new crew. Later, he records a log where he decides he can't tell anyone about this because it could fuck up the future. With that out of the way, he desperately starts a series of scans (that reveal jack shit) and asks Troi if she picks anything weird up (no). He gets a message from O'Brien (Colm ready and able to walk three meters over from the set of DS9), who says that Starfleet has cancelled the Encounter at Farpoint to instead order the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone, where Romulans are gathering. Picard disregards the communique and instead orders that they continue on to Farpoint.

- Not content just to squick Tasha out, Picard also gets too chummy with O'Brien and reveals his knowledge of O'Brien's sad, friendless childhood. Data, the best android in the world who can do billions of calculations per second, stalls everything for about half a minute after hearing O'Brien use the phrase "burning the midnight oil". "But igniting a flammable liquid would set off the ship's fire suppression systems!!!" Triple-digit IQ.

- Picard leaps back into the present, and his nightie. Bev finds that his hippocampus is going bananas, more or less proving the truthfulness of his "i'm being time-fucked!" claim. He calls an EMERGENCY BRIEFING and asks Troi if she remembers him making a dick of himself when he first came aboard. She doesn't, so thankfully he's not completely fucked the entire timeline up. Picard decides the whole time stuff is a side-issue and that they should focus on the Romulans instead. He orders BATTLE-READINESS REPORTS and then Troi turns Riker down to go on a date with Worf instead. Lol!!!

- Actually howled with laughter at this next bit. Picard orders Riker to take over immediatley if he should become disoriented. Riker dumbly stares into the middle-distance for a second (Troi-related woes), and Picard has to snap him out of it. The ship is being left in this man's hands during a crisis.

- Bev's new replicator catchphrase - MILK, WARM, DASH OF NUTMEG - really sucks. She makes Picard drink this fucked up concoction to send him to sleep, and expresses sadness that he's a medically demented basket case in the future. He reassures her that the future isn't set in stone and that a lot of things can happen in the intervening 25 years, such as being sent back to the year 2024 to be captured and beaten by ICE agents while running away from Evil Soong and his Borg mercenary army (again, for more information, see the acclaimed science fiction epic Star Trek: Picard Season Two).

- Oops, back in Data's future study! Picard remembers the talk of the Romulans finding a spatial penis in the Devron system, and insists that they must go there to scope it out. It's a consistency in the other two time periods he's visited, so it must be here too. But this is problematic because there's no neutral zone anymore, as the Klingons have taken over the Romulan Empire (fucking how???), and the Klingons and the Feds aren't too happy with each other. We need a ship to get in there, so we call Admiral Riker (moved to a desk job where he can't do any more damage), who tells Picard to fuck off and that there's nothing up in the Devron system. Data suggests going aboard a medical ship instead, since they're allowed to go flying around there. Luckily CAPTAIN BEV of the USS PASTEUR is knocking about the place so we can just ask her for a lift.

- Data, Geordi and Picard head to Bev's ship. Now that we're all here, everyone stands there stumped on what to do next. I love that they came all the way out here (and presumably called Bev off-course) with no fucking clue what they were actually going to do when they got here. Thankfully, Geordi remembers that Worf exists and is on the High Council, so we can just call him and ask for help. It also turns out the Bev-Picard situation is fucking mental, they're married and divorced and her name is Beverly Picard (Ronin won't like that).

- Picard tries to take an elevator ride but oop he's back in Farpoint. But shit's different, because Q hasn't showed up. Picard demands that Q show himself, and makes himself look like a mad bastard in front of the whole bridge crew. Soon he finds himself back in the post-atomic-horror court where Q arrives at last. Q's a pain in the arse who won't tell him what's going on, but says he will answer ten yes/no questions. After repeating WinRAR's tagline - "the trial never ends" - he tells Picard that the continuum have found humanity guilty of sucking serious shit.

Q: Seven years ago I said we'd be watching you, and we have been, hoping that your ape-like race would demonstrate some growth, give some indication that your minds have room for expansion. But what have we seen instead? You worrying about Commander Riker's career, listening to Counsellor Troi's pedantic psychobabble, indulging Data in his witless exploration of humanity.
PICARD: We've journeyed to countless new worlds, we've contacted new species, we have expanded our understanding of the universe.
Q: In your own paltry, limited way. You have no idea how far you still have to go. But instead of using the last seven years to change and to grow, you have squandered them.

Haha, is this just Ron D Moore and Brannon Braga griping about how TNG ultimately panned out?

- Q says it's time to put an end to humanity's Star Trek™ and that the time has come for them to face their destruction. Humanity's destruction is, apparently, Picard's fault. He must mistake Earth for a pre-warp world when a meteor is en route or something.

Since Netflix has it all as one thing, I'm watching the second part now and will post the review later tonight but it feels logical to split the posts up since they're technically two episodes.

Only comment I have to make about it at the halfway point is that Voyager would go on to do this kind of thing a lot, sometimes really well (that episode where Kes starts jumping through her life backwards and has to try and find a way to stop it before she becomes a fetus) and sometimes rather badly (that episode where Chakotay enters like six previous episodes when he gormlessly wanders through time-rifts). 7/10

[daf]

Think it's always been one long episode hasn't it? It's presented like that on my blu ray set & seems just to have one airdate (May 23, 1994).

[Blumf]

- I couldn't stop laughing at this. Cambridge!

Is that the robot from Rocky IV on the right?

[Lemming]

S07E26 - All Good Things... Part 2

Watching this full 90-minute epic during the worst heatwave on record! I can barely keep my eyes open so apologies if the entire post is just heatstroke-and-dehydration induced gibberish. This is one of the worst episodes to try and explain in text form while in a daze, too, because it's constantly shifting between three time periods.

- In the present, Picard orders a briefing and asks everyone what to do. They theorise that Q may be trying to help by giving Picard a chance to avert humanity's incoming doom. They head to the bridge and see Romulans at the border of the neutral zone. Picard hails them, but suddenly ends up in the future, where he's hailing Worf from Bev's ship instead.

- Worf says he can't help, but Picard says the word "honour" and Worf, the most easily manipulated person in the galaxy, agrees to escort them to Devron.

- Bev orders us to go ahead at Warp 13 (WHAT THE FUCK). Suddenly Picard's back in Farpoint, where he orders the Enterprise to Devron. Troi takes him aside to figure out what the hell is wrong with him, but he's saved by a call from Riker. I absolutely cannot believe the shit they're trying to pull here. To save Frakes from having to shave his beard (which wouldn't work anyway, given that he's ballooned over the last seven years), they reuse some old footage from season one, I think from "The Arsenal of Freedom" maybe, given the background. But the footage is awkward here because it's of Riker turning around. It makes it look like he tried to start the call while facing away from the screen and was then stunned by Picard's voice. Totally in character and really works.

- Back in the present, Tomolak responds to Picard's hail. Picard offers a collaboration to check out the spatial anomaly - one Romulan and one Federation starship will go into the neutral zone together. Tomolak agrees and they head to the spatial fuckup.

- In both the past and present timelines, the Enterprise arrives at the Devron anomaly. It's not there in the future though, and everyone on the ship agrees that Picard is a real dumbshit who's dragged us all out here for nothing. Just as they're about to fly Picard back to the nursing home, Data comes up with a TACHYON PULSE method of detecting anomalies. Like many old men, Picard's become utterly insufferable and is screaming at people, so Bev takes him aside to tell him that he's absolutely beyond a joke. He apologises and then yells at her again 1 second later.

- What is going on with McFadden's performance here by the way? She's speaking with some like, entirely new accent that Bev never normally has.

- Q pops up to give Picard cryptic clues, then sends him back to the present. Remembering future-Data's cool tachyon thing, Picard asks Data to do the same thing in the present. Firing the DATABEAM into the anomaly fucks Geordi up by making his VISOR go apeshit. In sickbay, Bev finds that Geordi's eyes are healing. Other crewmembers are having injuries suddenly fix themselves too. Data can explain this - the anomaly is AN ERUPTION OF ANTI-TIME. Picard brings this knowledge back to the past, where he tells Data to do the DATABEAM again. Now the DATABEAM is ready in all time periods except the future, which Picard finds himself back in. The USS Bev is being attacked by two Klingon attack cruisers, and inexplicably not immediately blowing up.

- The hilarious dishonour of signalling our surrender falls to Worf. The Klingons ignore it and keep wailing on us, but luckily, the Enterprise (with third nacelle!) shows up commanded by ADMIRAL RIKER. Using the new GIGA-PHASERS, he opens fire on the attack cruisers and just straight up fucking kills one of them. The USS Bev is destroyed, so everyone beams to the Enterprise. Riker and Worf get into a dick-measuring contest, during which Riker forgets that the Enterprise is in immiment danger from the USS Bev's core breach.

- Picard implores Riker to stay here and fire the DATABEAM. Because he's gone well apeshit, Bev sedates him, and he finds himself back in the present.

- In sickbay, he finds out that Ogawa's baby died because it grew younger thanks to the anomaly until it YOUTHED ITSELF OUT OF EXISTENCE. The same thing is happening to everyone, and soon we will all be sperm.

- Picard orders Data to find a way to close the anomaly. Q takes him to prehistoric France, where he sees the anomaly floating above the volcanic hellfields of old Earth. There's a pile of goop containing the first amino acids, which are about to join together to form the first protein, which will result in life! Yay! But the acids reach each other and NOTHING HAPPENS. Picard's fault.

- Ummmmm these acids are pre-warp. We shouldn't be messing with them.

- In the past (the Farpoint past, not the pre-life-on-earth past), Picard gets Data and O'Brien to have a FULL GANDER at the anomaly. He moves to the present and orders Data to do the same thing. He sees that the DATABEAM is hitting two other DATABEAMS at the centre of the anomaly, the DATABEAMS fired from the other time periods.

- In the future, Riker explains to everyone that he and Worf have been at each other's throats for 20 years, since Troi DIED. He admits he always thought he and Troi would get together again one day. Did he? "Second Chances" was more or less about him explicitly realising that wasn't going to happen.

- Picard rushes in and tells Riker he knows what's going on with the anomaly.

PICARD: Will! Will, I know why it's happening. I know what's causing the anomaly. We have to go back.
RIKER: The only place we're going back to, sir, is bed.

Nearly pissed myself.

- Picard's hapless blabbering impresses nobody. Luckily, Data's sat there, and is able to decode Picard's gibberish. He's trying to say that firing the DATABEAM in all three locations is what causes the anomaly. Riker agrees to go back to Devron.

- They see the anti-time eruption in its birth. Picard now needs to go to the other two time periods to disengage the DATABEAMs. He does that over the course of like the next 20 seconds. Nothing happens, so we'll have to take the ship inside and create a STATIC WARP SHELL which will separate time and anti-time. Again, this has to be done in all three time periods. In the past, Tasha finally calls him out and tells him he's out to lunch when he orders the ship into the anomaly. Picard gives a Disney speech about love and friendship and everyone agrees to let the ship and its nursery get cracked like a fucking egg by the anomaly.

- In the present, Data's already come up with the static warp shell thing. They head in and Picard finds himself back in the future, where Riker orders the Enterprise in. All the Enterprises get jolted around a bit, and then see each other at the centre of the anomaly. Together, their warp shells begin to undo the anomaly, but the past-Enterprise explodes from a warp breach, followed by the present Enterprise. The final Enterprise explodes and Picard is back in the post-atomic-horror court.

- Q congratulates him on averting the anomaly and saving humanity. Picard thanks Q for helping him save the day, and they both share the Look of Friendship. Q tells him that space travel isn't what it's really all about, but rather more incredible things, like... FRIENDSHIP.

- In the repaired present, the insular bridge crew clique are playing poker and discussing the incredible gossip Picard's given them about the future. Worf and Riker agree to be FRIENDS FOREVER. The door chimes and in walks Picard, looking hopeless, looming around. He's invited to sit down and play poker, and says that he should have done this long ago. Poker night is pretty much ruined from this moment on as this guy's here dragging down the mood with his endless six-hour lectures about archaeology and shit.

It works well as a finale, it's self-indulgent in a way that's fun rather than annoying and the plot is suitably cinematic. Both parts do seem to be filled with a few fourth-wall-leaning jokes about the tropes the show frequently fell back on over its run, which is nice. Not a huge amount to really say about it, 7/10 seems like the right score. Enjoyable close to the series.