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30th Annivesary of 1994!

DS9 - Crossover
OK, I still adore Julian, but Kira's going to kill him.

I think even when I wasn't watching DS9 on the regular that I heard that they were doing Mirror Universe stories. So I can only imagine what this must have been like coming out of nowhere.

Terak Nor (in both universes) always looks like a laser tag establishment. Or maybe Babylon 5.

Isn't there a meme or whatever they were called back then? "I'm much hotter in the Mirror Universe". Except O'Brian. Poor Miles.

Mirror Odo. So... What WERE the Dominion doing in the MU? Do we find out in later episodes?

Excuse me, Nana. You have some scenery stuck between your teeth. Rather a lot of it.

KIRK!!! SPOCK!!!! I mean, I know. I know now. But wow, what that must have been like then?!?

Wait... Spock rises to power, presumably using the Tantalus device (good grief I didn't have to look that up) to eliminate any and all who stand in his way (I mean, it's not exactly something you can bluff with) and he TELLS people about Mirror (from their point of view) Kirk? Really?

It's an interesting conceit that there is an entire reality where everything MUST be terrible. Spock "fixes" the Terran Empire (where they say "Ter-ran" like Vulcan children apparently) and it leads to their nearly immediate downfall and subsequent oppression. "Captain Kirk, I shall consider it." And DS9 tells us "Man, you are so screwed."

Annnd the MU is part of Academy Training. That's... Interesting. And it's common knowledge to the lowliest workers in the MU a century later that there was a mirror swap transporter accident? (Did our side do anything to the transporters as well?)

"I don't stick my neck out for anyone!" As I was thinking about Casablanca he actually SAID it.

Colm Meaney and Armin Shimerman are really great here.

OK, the Terran Earth badge from freaking WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE is NICE.

"Five year old daughter"? This was 1994. That would have Molly being born in 1989. But the episode where she was born was in 1991. Why does TV hate babies so much? YES. They're babies for a LONG TIME.

Avery is nuts. We all know this, right?

Oh! Kira is Princess Ardala! Anyone else notice that both Kira's have this conciliatory smile they have right when they're going to kill you? (Go watch her face off with Dukat in the pilot.)

"I do admire a well tailored gown." OK, that was really good.

Squishy Odo! Splat! Ewwwwww.

"Starfleet would probably have a big problem with that." So, does Starfleet EVER side with the poor and oppressed?

Didn't they just show the MU where the wormhole is?

I find the MU exhausting. Glad this was a one and done. Wait, what?
 
DS9 The Collaborator

The shade thrown by Bareil, Winn, and Kira could cover a small country.

Bareil and Winn are up for election as Kai. A collaborator is captured on the station and he tells Winn that Bareil turned in the location of a rebel base during the occupation, leading to a massacre. Winn voluntolds Kira to investigate. Kira finds enough to confront Bareil and he drops out of the race, leaving Winn to be Kai. But he was just covering for the previous Kai, who sacrificed the cell, including her son, to save the rest of the area's people.

I never bought into the Kira/Bareil romance for some reason. I just never saw any chemistry there. So, I didn't mind it getting torpedoed here. I will say that Philip Anglim did a nice job here, especially during the sequences where he's getting visions from the Orb.

Winn goes to see Sisko at one point and their dislike of one another is palpable. I loved Sisko refusing to play politics with his role as The Emissary.

The scene where Odo and Kira go see Quark to get him to help them break into some files is wonderful. The 3 of them played off each other really well.

But the VIP of this ep is Louise Fletcher. She is so very very good at being a scheming manipulator.

The ending scene between Kira and Bareil is excellent. He thinks they can influence Winn positively. Kira... is far less sure. This sets up (IIRC) quite a lot of stories down the road.
 
TNG - Preemptive Strike

From The Naked Now to here. The last regular length episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Cardassians: "We will have to take matters into our own hands." Does Starfleet ever say it will have to take the incursions from Cardassian dissidents into ITS own hands? (The Cardassians don't have a name as cool as The Maquis.)

7:41 -- Wow. One of the original Farpoint shots of the Enterprise and the Excels- er, the Hood. Goodbye, TNG.

9:21 -- Ahhhh, Andy Probert's painting of the 1701-D. Picard will have it at his house so either it's recovered from the D or he has a copy made.

"We both want peace in the demilitarized zone." What did James Kirk say once? "Don't believe them! Don't trust them!"

"That's to validate your faith in me." -- Ohhhhh. There's a lot of TNG episodes I don't even remember exist. This one will never stop punching me in the gut. Who let the DS9 people in here?

How does Star Trek get seedy? Why, it looks like Star Wars, of course.

They could have made the Maquis and the settlers less sympathetic if there had been equivalent stories of Cardassians in Fed space being beaten and driven from their homes. Even in fiction they couldn't bring themselves to make that happen.

"Palm beacons"? Whoa. They call those flashlight things palm beacons? I'm just learning this NOW?

"Now we know what they mean by advanced tactical training." Awww. Will is impressed.

Picard about the Cardassians being up to no good: "Frankly I find that hard to believe." WHY? Why does he find that hard to believe?

Remember when Beverly decided that Jean Luc Picard was so well known and such a risk that she decided to have a kid with him and never tell him? Well now here he is sitting in a bar where Maquis (you know, the rogue Starfleet folks?) hang out thinking nobody will recognize him and then goes and chats with his undercover operative who a) has already been recognized and b) is already associated with the U.S.S. Enterprise. Between this and being rather easily duped by Cardassians and Romulans on a galactically significant basis, is.... is Jean Luc Picard an idiot?

Watching the rest of the scene? Yep. He's an idiot. (It IS heartbreaking when he calls her Laren. Nobody in the opening scenes on the Enterprise even calls her that.) If he was even half as distrustful of the Cardassians as he is of Ro this would be different episode. I almost think this episode needed a Picard Troi scene where she tells him he is handling this all wrong. Not that you need to be a ship's councilor OR a Betazed to know that!

Wow. I did NOT remember how well Frakes played that last scene with Ro.

So, Good Will Riker seems very conflicted at the end of this. He obviously has great respect for Ro (something I'd forgotten - this was at least as much of an arc as Ro and Picard!) and at least has doubts about her decision. A year from now he will get word that his brother has joined the Maquis and has gone to a Cardassian prison for his troubles. (Mr. Paris got off easy. Oh, you haven't heard of him? Wait a few months.) What's he got to be thinking at this point? Too bad they weren't able to pursue this.

I'm hating Ro's scene in Picard even more. "Hey let's bring back Ro so she can apologize and then die." Apologize for WHAT? Screw you, Picard writers.

I really think Picard is the villain of this episode! Amazing to think that last shot of Picard sulking at his desk would be the last regular episode shot of TNG. Ahhh well, all good things...
 
Well. Here we are. 30 years ago All Good Things aired. May 23rd, 1994 was apparently a Monday. I don't know how that worked with syndication. I know I watched it live with friends, but I don't know if I saw it on the 23rd.

Anyway, one more episode before I get to the end of TNG.

DS9 - The Collaborator

I actually always liked Vedek Barell. Maybe because he wasn't as operatic as many of the Bajoran "good guys". Certainly because he wasn't Vedek Winn. Er, Kai Winn.

The reason why the relationship worked for me is that Visitor sells the hell out of it. It's like Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder: Whatever you might think of Margot's Lois, Chris' Superman CLEARLY adored her.

Of all of the gobbledy-gook lore societies in Star Trek, Bajor was the only that even pretended to make any sense to me. Or at least the only one that actually engaged me.

I don't think I know the show history as well as I should. This is when Piller is still running the show, yes? Behr will start next season.

OMG WINN! A lazier show would have just had Winn and not Barell. Or Kai Opaka. Or Kira for that matter. Winn never manages to discredit the Bajoran faith. She just discredits Winn.

"I'm sure Major Kira meant no disrespect." Kira's look says "OH YES I DID!"

Oh wow, they brought back Opaka. She was so great.

17:31 "Why wait, Emissary?" Ohhhh, the look Ben gives her.

I can never decide if Louise Fletcher is cheese with a side of ham or is giving a performance of unparalleled subtlety and complexity. Probably both.

"Poor Winn." - Barell. Ha!

I just figured out why the Bajoran stories engage me more than, say, Klingon or Ferengi stories. Because you never know who Bajorans are going to be. All the other Star Trek races played as pretty much one note. The Bajorans were more varied.

Awwwww. Odo. They actually managed to stretch Kira / Odo out for six or seven seasons with a pretty high degree of success.

I don't know if DS9 just flat out had the most talented cast or if the show was just better at giving them things to do.

I hate dream sequences.

The perfect DS9 ending. Sad but not hopeless. Damn this show rocks.
 
She can make a word like "child" seem like pure evil.
I wince every time she says it.

The scene where she says to Kira something like "Do not EVER talk to me like that again" is one of the only times in the whole series when she drops any hint of an act. (I mean, maybe some of the last scenes with Dukat.)
 
Star Trek: The Next Generation - All Good Things (May 23rd, 1994)

Here we are. Thirty years (and a few days) since the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seven years after everyone thought they were crazy for trying to make a new Star Trek, with a new crew that had so little to do with the TOS crew or even with the successful movie series that they were making.

Can you believe that in just under 10 years we went from The Search For Spock to having three more TOS films, two new Star Trek TV shows, with a TNG movie and a third show on the way?!? Yikes!

Let's go. Come watch All Good Things with me. tl;dr: It's pretty damn good.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

They're trying SO hard to make Worf and Deanna happen. And in terms of motivating this story, it's not bad. (Poor Worf.)

Picard: "What's today, my fine fellow?" What the Dickens is going on?

I'll spoil the game, but this is not only the best finale, this is one of the best Star Treks. Certainly one of the best TNGs.

I love seeing Deanna doing her job. I wish they had figured out how to do this earlier. And of course her main job is actually taking care of the Captain.

5:31. And this is where we get the series Picard. Dammit.

I'm sure everyone has heard Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige say that this story structure in part inspired Endgame. Ending the story by visiting its beginnings.

25 years. So we're actually father from 1994 as The Future is from The Present.

"How is Leah?" and all the fans SWOON.

The two actors reportedly hadn't really met yet at this time, hadn't become besties at this point. But Patrick figured the best way to sound old would be to do his best Ian McKellen impersonation!

Before I saw this episode all of the ads and interviews and the whole circus told us we would be seeing the past, and Tasha, and Q, and the Farpoint court. So I wonder what I would have thought seeing the Post Atomic Horror rabble in these early scenes, unspoiled?

Ohhh, you know they wanted at least another minute (or three) of that "first" shot of the Enterprise.

"I was just with Tasha in the shuttle." And that is the sound of a million Trekkies' hearts going "Snap!"

"Something tells me that you're going to have to put up with me for a long time to come." Nope. In less than 10 years I'm going to take our baby and disappear for decades.

The transitions between times are really terrific. And very effective.

O'Brian! Yaaaay! Wow. Did anyone ever dream that the poor fellow at ops in Farpoint would become... This?

And they got Marina into that terrible Farpoint costume and hair! They don't have any dudes in the skants do they? (Nope.)

To this day I don't understand why they ever got rid of the Wall of Enterprises in the briefing room. That wall was pretty much the last line of defense in convincing Berman to keep the Enterprise B an Excelsior class for Generations.

"I'm only aware of the crew and the families on board the ship." Ohhh, that's right. families. That was going to be a big deal seven years ago.

Worf's first season sash! No idea if it's the same one as first season, but supposedly that sash was worn by John Colicos himself!

OK, Brent does a WONDERFUL job of doing first season Data.

I don't know if it's just the first season costumes or the hair or what, but they really do look a little a bit younger.

Ahhh, Will, when he sees Deanna and Worf. The face of a man who has really screwed up.

OK, why isn't Future Picard saying "Hey, they did this scan thing on me in my present and figured out that I was building up days worth of memories in a few minutes and then everyone believed me. Why don't we do that?"

40 minutes to introduce Q. I have to admit that even having seen this who knows how many times I got a chills when I saw the courtroom.

"Time to put an end to your Trek through the Stars." Berman apparently had quite the yen to get someone to say Star Trek on the show. He finally managed it in First Contact.

The Bozeman. Hi Brandon! Gotta shout out the Home Town!

Didn't they JUST say that there is no Neutral Zone?

Warp 13! Awwww, you're just MESSING with us now. What's next? A starship with THREE engines?

Andreas! Nice of you to stop off from Babylon 5.

Look at all of the sweet sweet ILM footage they're using in this episode. Sorry, but the 6 foot Enterprise-D beats the pants off of the 4.

Beverly gets more to do in this episode than in the next four movies!

The Enterprise slices though a Klingon like butter. "The Enterprise is drawing their fire!" Is THAT what we call that?

Primordial Earth. Look, there's Scaroth's space ship about to blow up, right over there!

Life begins in France? Well, I'm sure the French probably think that's true. ;)

Majel!

Deanna Troi - The Lois Lane of the Star Trek Elseworlds. Want a vaguely or not so vaguely dystopian future? Kill off Deanna / Lois.

Old Will looks like Charles Foster Kane.

I wonder if they were just using what they had, business as usual? Or did they make choices like shooting Picard not knowing his way around the ship by using the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture hallways, just like when Kirk didn't know where turboshaft eight was?

Worf in the future is always the coolest. Even in Picard.

The pacing of this is amazing. Switching from timeline to timeline has such momentum. As bland as Berman tried to keep the music I have to say that McCarthy is doing a goodly amount of work here.

"I know you have your doubts about me. About each other. About this ship." Awww. Jean-Luc is reading 1987 Starlog!

"Equidistant. So grown up!"

"I suppose you're worried about your fish!" Well, about Livingston, six months from now...

de Lancie managed to take Q from Encounter at Farpoint to being a fan favorite. Well done. We love you.

Gotta say, Q's last speech sounded remarkably Roddenberrian. In the best way. That last scene with Q, in the courtroom of all places, is astounding. What a great way to end the show. And the actual emotion that de Lancie plays? Yay!

Hey, Will and Worf are heartfelt that they will never let anything come between them. But we're less concerned that Deanna will be DEAD, Oh well, Peter David will get a good book out of it.

"The sky's the limit." McCarthy called this last music cue "I Have a Gun." i.e. "Don't mess with this, Berman!"

An ending so perfect they would do it again 29 years later.

Well. This episode totally stands the test of time. Star Trek has had a few good finales. This is the best by a goodly margin. Including Star Trek VI.

Two more episodes of DS9. I'll finish those up here.
June 5th: DS9 Tribunal
 
OK, I finally sat down and watched "All Good Things." If real life hadn't been so weird the last few weeks, I'd almost think I was avoiding The End. :D

To sum up, not only top notch TNG, but top notch Star Trek and top notch TV, period. Ridiculously good. Almost perfect. The pacing, the acting, the writing, the little (not overwhelming) Easter Eggs... all A+.

Before I saw this episode all of the ads and interviews and the whole circus told us we would be seeing the past, and Tasha, and Q, and the Farpoint court. So I wonder what I would have thought seeing the Post Atomic Horror rabble in these early scenes, unspoiled?
I don't think I was spoiled, so I remember it really confusing me at first and then the light dawned when I realized he was traveling to just before Encounter at Farpoint.

  • Still trying to make Worf & Deanna work. It's essential to the character beats here, but I never really bought it. Like Riker, I always thought he and Deanna would end up together.
  • Picard is distressed. Moving through time will do that to ya.
  • Q was here at the beginning and end. Nice bookend.
  • Ron Moore & Brannon Braga wrote this at the same time they were writing Generations. No pressure!
  • Old Picard in a vineyard and it's 25 years later. The makeup is quite good and surprisingly close to how Stewart actually looks. Picard has been an Ambassador.
  • Geordi has no visor and is a novelist, married to Leah, and has 3 kids, one of whom is named Sydney, which is an egg I didn't realize PIC did.
  • Irimodic syndrome! I hadn't seen this ep in so long, I didn't realize how much PIC played with things from it.
  • Angry peasants in a vineyard? Some kind of time bleed over?
  • Tasha!
  • Shuttlecrafts are always Galileo. :D
  • The transitions between the time periods are done very well.
  • No medical cause, no signs of temporal energy, and no Irimodic Syndrome, but Bev finds a defect that could be a precursor.
  • Yeah, JL & Bev were together here.
  • Romulan warbirds headed for TNZ. 15 starships + Enterprise to go there but no incursions.
  • Picard isn't holding on to a lot of memories when slips between time periods, but that changes later.
  • Data at Cambridge is cool and it's a really nice matte. I adored all the cats everywhere!
  • Arriving at the Enterprise. Name checked Rear Admiral Nora Satie.
  • So weird to see Worf in red!
  • Deanna’s mini looks like a uniform. I wonder if I thought that in 1987?
  • Picard is trying not to mess up the future, but he can’t help making mistakes, like referring to O'Brien as Chief.
  • Ding! Spatial anomaly same as in the present. Starfleet tells them to cancel Farpoint, but Jean-Luc says no.
  • I forgot how fricking literal Data was back then.
  • Love Picard’s face!
  • "Ignite the midnight petroleum." :lol:
  • Scans indicate 2 days of memories in minutes.
  • Picard checks Deanna’s memories of his arrival and there are no changes. Curious.
  • After Worf stressed about telling Riker about them, Deanna just says, "We have plans." Riker looks like he's been hit by a baseball bat.
  • Bev and Jean-Luc being very intimate and they kiss!
  • Seriously Geordie? Just because it’s in 2 timelines doesn't mean it's in the third?
  • No NZ in the future because the Klingons took over the Romulans. Interesting.
  • Frakes looks better IRL now. This is the only makeup job I felt was lacking.
  • Awkward! Beverly married him and divorced him but “kept the name.”
  • Good makeup on Gates.
  • Looking for Q but he ain’t there... Oh, there he is!
  • The trial never ended. Of course not.
  • “Trek thru the stars” :lol:
  • So Jean-Luc will cause/has caused/is causing the destruction of humanity.
  • “A master and his beloved pet.” :guffaw:
  • Future Worf is a governor and no longer on the high council. His fortunes appear diminished.
  • There's beef between Worf & Riker.
  • "Because it always works Worf!"
  • Warp 13! Tease those Trekkies!
  • Agh! Beardless Riker! :ack:
  • Tomalak! Loved Andreas here.
  • The McGuffin is larger in the past and not there in the future.
  • Bev chews Picard out!
  • Possibly all a hallucination.
  • Q gives a clue that the time shifting is of use and Picard uses info from the future.
  • Geordi has a headache and his eyes are regenerating. Old scars are healing all over the ship.
  • "Anti-Time" - like Anti-Matter but chewier!
  • Saved by the Enterprise and Riker!
  • Oh! I bet the warp core breach in the Pasteur causes the anomaly. [I was wrong.]
  • Alyssa lost her baby. :weep:
  • Q takes Picard to the beginning of life on earth and the anomaly is there and bigger than ever.
  • Humanity stopped before it begins - nice paradox there.
  • I love how John says "goo."
  • Past speculation to present usage.
  • Wait, don't I remember the Enterprise blowing up? Maybe that caused the McGuffin. [Nope.]
  • Over 20 years since Troi died. Ouch! Riker always thought they’d get back together & Worf blames Will for blocking them. How Cyclops and Wolverine of them.
  • 3 tachyon beams at the same target in 3 time periods.
  • Everyone thinks Jean-Luc's lost it. Only Data speculates then everyone on board.
  • Take ship into the anomaly in all 3 times & create a static warp shell/barrier.
  • Tasha questions the orders.
  • Good tension!
  • Tasha’s hair moved!
  • 3 Enterprises go boom! I remember being really surprised and shocked.
  • A directive from the Continuum & a helping hand from Q.
  • “Charting the unknown possibilities of existence.” Very Gene!
  • Circles back around to the beginning of the episode.
  • Deanna's & Worf's faces are priceless!
  • Poker! Picard joins and says he should've done this long ago. I love his face as he looks around at his family.
  • The future has already been changed. (Setting up for PIC.)
  • PIC used the same overhead shot. Very nice.
OK, why isn't Future Picard saying "Hey, they did this scan thing on me in my present and figured out that I was building up days worth of memories in a few minutes and then everyone believed me. Why don't we do that?"
One of my few nitpicks with this episode. It kept it from being perfect.

Deanna Troi - The Lois Lane of the Star Trek Elseworlds. Want a vaguely or not so vaguely dystopian future? Kill off Deanna / Lois.
The other nitpick. I understand the narrative reason, but I still didn't like it.

Overall though, a beautiful send off for the show.
 
No idea why it popped into my head today that we just passed the 30th anniversary of "All Good Things..." and the end of TNG.

Wow, literally a lifetime ago. I remember my girlfriend and I had just arrived to our destination city after a week-long road trip. We were heading out for dinner when I flipped on the motel TV and saw a scene of Worf and Troi about to kiss outside the holodeck.

OMG! The TNG finale is on! I forgot!! Well, we should head out to dinner anyway, as I'm clearly in the middle of it and don't want to miss anything. I'll catch it in a day or two on a repeat.

Which I did. But, of course, I had turned it on in the very first scene and would have missed nothing.

And what did we do for dinner? Don't remember exactly, but it was a new city to us. We drove around aimlessly and settled on a crappy spot. Were we ever so young?

Anyway, that's what I remember from the day TNG ended. Great show, terrific sendoff. I miss it.
 
DS9 "Tribunal"

It's time to beat on Miles again! FYI, this episode was directed by Avery Brooks.

Miles is going on vacation (he gets vacation?) and is driving everyone nuts before he goes, trying to make sure it doesn't all fall apart without him. Sisko's "Is he gone?" is just perfect.

Miles runs into Boone, who he served with in the Cardassian conflict. Boone lives in Cardassian space and secretly records Miles' voice.

It's Miles' and Keiko's first vacation in 5 years - so since Molly was born I think. That's a long time!

Cardassians stop their ship, search it, and arrest Miles. No one will tell him what the charges against him are. It's not even relevant - all Cardassian crimes are solved, all trials are decided beforehand, and everyone is to perceive that "justice" has been done - and that they shouldn't do anything against Order. Miles' advocate, Kovat (the marvelous Fritz Weaver), is there to get him to confess and be remorseful. Kovat has never "won" a case.

Odo manages to convince the court that he's still an Officer of the Court and he and Keiko leave for Cardassia.

On DS9, warheads have been stolen and the voice authorization was Miles'. The weapons are assumed to be for the Maquis. They were found on Miles' ship. Dax finds the voice authorization to be a fake. When Odo tries to produce this evidence, the judge, Makbar, refuses to accept it. It wouldn't make "good viewing." Caroline Lagerfelt is excellent as the judge btw. She shows a wonderful commitment to Cardassian "law".

The DS9 officers manage to identify Boone as having spoken to Miles before he left and hold him in custody. However, a Maquis agent tells Bashir that Boone is not Maquis and that the Maquis had nothing to do with the weapons. They find evidence that Boone changed his whole life about 8 years earlier, right after a particular battle. It turns out Boone died in Cardassian custody and this is a Cardassian made to look like Boone. His job was to frame O'Brien as a Maquis collaborator in order to 1) make it look like the Federation supports the Maquis, and 2) force the Federation to remove the colonies causing so much trouble for the Cardassians. Sisko takes "Boone" to the courtroom, where the judge gives a beautiful bullshit speech about mercy and rehabilitation and lets Miles go. Kovat "won" and says they'll kill him for it.

Miles and Keiko leave on vacation in the end.

A nice look inside the Cardassian Empire and how they weaponized law to control the populace, turning trials and executions into spectacle. It reminded me of Soviet Russia (and was I think meant to).
 
Oh dear. I forgot to finish DS9. We did, OTOH watch the beginning of Caretaker after we finished Prodigy the other night. (Jumping the gun by six months.)

OK, I'll get to it this week.
 
Welcome to the 30th anniversary of 1994! (And get OFF my LAWN!)

It occurred to me that we're in the run up to the 30th anniversary of All Good Things and Generations. So then I started thinking "Hey, I had kind of fallen out of Star Trek watching back then. Why not do it again (for the first time) now?" (I've seen all the episodes. Just not week to week.)

I meant to start this a week or two ago, so I've missed the DS9 episodes Rivals and The Alternate. And The Pegasus aired on January 10th.

If I remember right TNG and DS9 were syndicated so depending on your market these episodes all aired sometime during that week, right?

Anyway, 30ish years ago people who were watching Star Trek watched Homeward.

Next up, for those that feel like joining in on this shindig:
30 January: DS9 Armageddon Game
31 January: TNG (shudder) Sub Rosa

Wow. I'm not a 24th century guy. Not my favorite era, not my favorite characters, not my favorite ships or design. But this was where the bulk of Star Trek has taken place. And my goodness by this time TNG was looking GOOD. Watching that teaser and the opening credits feels a bit like coming home.

I'll go look up all the details on Memory Alpha later. But how the heck did they get Paul freaking Sorvino to be on this show? (Edit: MA is unrevealing on this point.)

Like I said, I wasn't watching TNG much when this was on. Was this the season where everyone got a family member? (Oh no! I didn't wait until after Sub Rosa to start this!)

Hey! Penny Johnson! How long before she shows up on DS9?

Oh, this was when I finally figured out that the Prime Directive (as implemented in TNG) was totally evil! And then Into Darkness doubled down on it! I suppose Pen Pals (was that the one?) had done this kind of dance before as well.

Because the Culture of the Week doesn't have warp drive they are beyond saving? But if they only had that level of tech then the Federation would do something? Yikes. And if I recall it's not even once a civilization explores and finds the Federation on its own. It's the moment they invent FTL. Bam! Welcome to our club!

I get that this isn't really about if the Prime Directive is good or bad. It's the TNG writers finding an impossible morale conundrum for our heroes.

Picard's reaction to Nikolai is that it's like Nikolai used the wrong fork. And Picard is really mad about it. And then Picard is all "What do you expect us to do now?" Um... Airlock? "That would be so... Icky!" (Didn't Picard have pretty much the same reaction to the 20th century space popsicles back in The Neutral Zone in season 1?)

I don't understand the stakes. Worst case scenario in Nikolai's plan: They find out that they were moved by aliens. Gods. Whatever. It becomes part of their culture. Not the first civ to have alien benefactors in its past. Including (according to Star Trek) ours.

But the worst case scenario in Picard's plan: They all die and are never heard from again. How is this a debate?

I can't even see Our Heroes as people in this episode. The only person I actually believed was the guy from the planet that killed himself. And then Picard (the writers) has the audacity to say "I wished I had known him better."

Hey, Deana's not wearing the space suit?
in
 
In my opinion All good Things would have worked really well as. TNG movie, They could have done the series finale as a theatre release and with a bigger budget that story line would have worked and looked great!! and just leave it as a good send off for TNG right there.
As Generations was a really weak entry to the TNG movie series.
 
30th Anniversary of 1994? :eek:

30 years ago = The 1970s
20 years ago = The 1980s
10 years ago = The 1990s
Kind of a blur = The 2000s
A few years ago = The 2010s
Today = Not the Roaring '20s!

:p
 
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