And how did they treat Barclay? Ugh! He's fine for a comical one-off appearance, but then he reappears and we find out that he also suffers from Transporter phobia?
There's some big issue with psychological evaluations in Starfleet.
Moments on TNG that make you cringe.
- Thread starter ED-209
- Start date
There's some big issue with psychological evaluations in Starfleet.
Yeah, Picard's whole attitude is terrible and it drives me crazy.
I can understand why Picard has issues with Tam Elbrun.
The first thing he does when he beams aboard is toss the isolinear chip with the mission parameters to Picard. And he tells him when Picard wants to hold a briefing instead of having the captain of the ship come up with a briefing time. That bit shows two things wrong off the bat... Tam doesn't really have any respect for those in authority and no respect for people period by announcing to everyone what Picard was thinking when it came to the briefing time. (This is clear when Picard comes up with a time other than the one Tam said.)
Secondly, in the briefing, he didn't bother to give a complete briefing because he 'forgot' about the Romulans... which was a very key point to consider in this mission. It's precisely why Picard assigned Data to work with him. (He said this to Tam.)
Psychological issues or not, Tam Elbrun does not come off well for much of the episode, which is why it's so hard to root for him or have sympathy for him.
The first thing he does when he beams aboard is toss the isolinear chip with the mission parameters to Picard. And he tells him when Picard wants to hold a briefing instead of having the captain of the ship come up with a briefing time. That bit shows two things wrong off the bat... Tam doesn't really have any respect for those in authority and no respect for people period by announcing to everyone what Picard was thinking when it came to the briefing time. (This is clear when Picard comes up with a time other than the one Tam said.)
Secondly, in the briefing, he didn't bother to give a complete briefing because he 'forgot' about the Romulans... which was a very key point to consider in this mission. It's precisely why Picard assigned Data to work with him. (He said this to Tam.)
Psychological issues or not, Tam Elbrun does not come off well for much of the episode, which is why it's so hard to root for him or have sympathy for him.
A great deal of TNG makes me cringe after season three. Riker is essentially dead as a character, Picard becomes increasingly self-righteous, both Crushers are intolerable, Troi has very little to do until season six, and Geordi never gets any real character development outside of failed romances and a dead parent. Worf is the only character to get true character growth that lasts, but most of that happens in DS9.
I kind of liked the grumpy Picard of the first two seasons; he had a certain level of humanity that I found much more refreshing than the self-righteous bore of the rest of the series. It seemed the writers were playing with the idea of Picard as an older guy instead of allowing Patrick Stewart to influence the writing with his "more f***ing and killing" demands.
Yeah, I think Hollow Pursuits is a decent episode, but they just refused to let him have any character development and would undo whatever progress he made in his last appearance.
One thing to note about the holoaddiction thing is that holodecks were relatively new in TNG, no one appeared to have ever seen one before in the pilot for instance. So Barclay could have only ran into them when he got on the Enterprise which would explain his reaction to them and also why no one had ever "picked up" on his issues with the holodeck earlier in his career.
IMHO, season 5 starts the increasingly steep slope of suckage:
Riker often is a stick figure, with rare examples of "The Pegasus" showing more (and kudos for the story making his background fit in really well with what was shown in seven years!).
Picard definitely became increasingly pompous - he was Flandersized except he's still, what's the phrase... "po-faced"... as opposed to being overtly and/or 4th-wall jokey, so it could be much worse.
Troi rarely had anything expansive until "Face of the Enemy", which feels like whiplash as to how quickly she compensates from six years of what amounts to "He's saying the obvious", though I will readily bring up Farpoint, Ensigns of Command, Picard season 3's stories, and others where she is given something genuinely useful and cool to say or do that only Troi could do - heck, without Troi, Q would have won the Farpoint test. It didn't help that Guinan was pretty much Troi's trope, but Guinan also had a more interesting origin - left untouched until GEN and PIC fumbled with it, IMHO. But uneven scripting over the years aside, Troi was a significant character - the series could have shown more of it and without repetitive dialogue as often as they had.
Dr Crusher was hard to write for - combining a sense of authority mixed with compassion. I recall she was good in "Symbiosis" (fair dialogue, terrific acting of it), but in other episodes the dialogue she got was dire. "I, Borg" and "Ethics" come to mind as far as showing a caricature, reminding me too quickly how much better Pulaski was (IMHO). However, Picard 3's stories utilizing Dr Crusher are as thoughtful and commendable in scripting and I'll justify the pew-pew weapons scene at the start of that season since Starfleet training includes knowing how to use 'em and she's done so in TBOBW and other stories too.
So having spoken of teh Flanders, it gets better: Wesley is the anti-Flanders, for the most part. He stopped being a magic wand stick figure caricature as early as season 2, if not "Coming of Age" being the earliest example of him being an actual character. He left the show before it slalomed, but - despite season 5 making him a hero before making him an egoist - his season 7 entry is still pretty dire. If Wesley wasn't the ship saver all the time, his actions with the diamond slot formation to show how great he was would have been more interesting as then he'd not be being a showoff but trying to show he's just as good as the seasoned adults (which I think was the idea behind season 1, but was written as Wonderboy sans cape flowing.)
Geordi -- I easily appreciated his technical prowess but being unable to get hitched. It'd be very boring as well if the show just showed successful domestics. TNG's range of characters made it easier for most of the audience to get to relate to some personality tropes.
Worf - am happy that the best of it happened in DS9, the one show that could actually explore him and Klingon lore in far more engaging ways. "Sons of Mogh", quick ending aside, is something TNG could never have begun to do. True, Worf's transition into DS9 starts with a partial copy/paste of what transpired in season 4 with wanting to resign from Starfleet in "Redemption", but DS9 quickly and successfully made it more substantial and gave him a life of his own.
Whether he felt he couldn't be a father figure, or had some childhood trauma, or any other reason(s) -- it was "the present" that had Picard shining the most as commander of the Flagship. Episodes like "Disaster" took good advantage of this, even if other elelemts of the same story sucked (IMHO).
Seasons 1 and 2 do feel more exploratory of a strange universe, with character drama moments that didn't overwhelm (again, season 5 onward is when the soap opera with soap box really begin to come about, but 5 was still often watchable. Have yet to get to a rewatch...)
I need to see this one again, followed by "Hollow Pursuits". Been a long while for both... liked both, but not always for the same reason and that'll bound to be different come next rewatch.
Grumpy Picard could have been ok, if it didn't come across as arrogant and condescending in his frustration.
Truth. I love him when he's grumpy. It's the cutest thing to have him harrumph and make snarky comments and everyone around him just smirks because they know he's got his "five seconds of frustration". But yeah I do have to agree that later on things get irritating when he gets on his high "humanity has evolved beyond this" horse. It's why I always used to say he should have someone like Lily Sloane at his side who calls out his nonsense without hesitation and without the baggage of being an officer under his command.
This is why I always say Sir Patrick and I would be at each other's throats regarding his opinions on Jean-Luc... the bigger his impact on Jean-Luc became, the less I agreed with him. What is wrong with a pacifist who keeps to himself and doesn't want to get laid every other week? It doesn't make him any less human, contrary to what Sir Patrick seemed to think. Just because HE was happy to fall into an affair with Jennifer Hetrick doesn't mean Jean-Luc would do the same with Vash. (Don't get me started on Vash.) And so on and so on. I do agree that they had to do something with his character after season 2, but why not let him remain grumpy, only with more scenes where he shows he's a good egg after all? That would have been the natural progression. (He could still have liked his tea and his Shakespeare, which are good things Sir Patrick gave him. It's not all bad.) Why go down this weird road of "a man is only a man if he gets laid once in a while and gets to be an action hero"? Ughhhhhhh. This attitude is what ultimately led to movies like Insurrection and Nemesis, so... meh.
I didn't really care for "Rascals". Seeing Picard reduced to a whiny child was just annoying. I don't know if it was the episode's writing, or the kid they hired to play the young future Captain...but I just couldn't associate him with Patrick Stewart at all.
Anything involving wiz kid Wesley. 
If I listed everything bad about "Rascals" without stopping to take a drink, I would expire from dehydration before completing the list.
Following my original post, I learned that David Tristan Birkin (young Picard) had previously appeared as the Captain's nephew René in "Family". Why that episode was passable yet "Rascals" was horrible, I don't know, but even Ronald D. Moore was not happy with the result. He kept trying to reject it, but the producers kept handing it back...and in the end, all he could do was try and inject some humor into it, mainly through the younger versions of Guinan and Ro Laren. Interestingly enough though, is the fact that it was directed by Leonard Nimoy's son Adam. He would later spearhead the 2016 documentary, For the Love of Spock.
I had no issue with the child actor tasked with the difficult task of imitating Sir Patrick Stewart, and it's been too long since I saw it for me to criticize the director. It was the content that stank like a pasture full of cow pies. To put it like another topic of mine...
Q. Which of the following scenarios is an acceptable rationale for hauling Picard out of the captain's chair?
A. He is dealing with the emotional trauma of having been recently kidnapped by the Borg, assimilated, mutilated, and made to kill 11,000 of his own people.
B. He had just been zapped by a probe and spent 40 subjective years on another planet, and is now dealing with the emotional fallout from returning to reality.
C. He was kidnapped, stripped, dehumanized, and systematically tortured by a sadistic Cardassian who came within a whisker of actually breaking him. And would have done so, if given a few more seconds.
D. He's shorter and has hair.
Q. Which of the following scenarios is an acceptable rationale for hauling Picard out of the captain's chair?
A. He is dealing with the emotional trauma of having been recently kidnapped by the Borg, assimilated, mutilated, and made to kill 11,000 of his own people.
B. He had just been zapped by a probe and spent 40 subjective years on another planet, and is now dealing with the emotional fallout from returning to reality.
C. He was kidnapped, stripped, dehumanized, and systematically tortured by a sadistic Cardassian who came within a whisker of actually breaking him. And would have done so, if given a few more seconds.
D. He's shorter and has hair.
Data and Joe Piscopo on the holodeck. Easily the worst few minutes ever broadcast with "Star Trek" in the title.
"Rascals" had a LOT of problems (not the least of which was making the crew look like complete buffoons), but the casting of the children was actually the one thing the episode did right. I thought each of the kids were pretty spot on for their respective characters... one of the very few times child casting worked for TNG.
