TNG: Still powerful, powerful stuff!

[Trekker4747]

I'm watching through TNG on DVD right now and I'm still amazed at how poweful this series can be and, honestly, it's something I don't think the later series managed to grasp. DS9 was deep but I honestly think it bogged itself down in the war arc and failed to grasp the whole "how far humanity has come" thing. Voyager and Enterprise? .... Yeah.

Anyway, I just finished "The Enemy" from Season 3 and it inspired this thread because there's just something great about the way this episode treats its subject manner, how we treat "the enemy."

In the episode we have pretty much three different things going on with the enemy. In this case the Romulans.

The Enterprise is checking out a crashed Romulan shuttle on a Federation planet. Long story short three situations are set-up. Geordi is trapped on the planet (with scatter-shot beaming possiblities) with a surviving Romulan from the ship, on the Enterprise Picard struggles with the diplomacy with the Romulan Commander Tomalak who wants to violate TNZ to recover any survivors from the craft which includes an ailing Romulan in sickbay who needs blood cells from Worf (as a Klingon a sworn enemy against the Romulans) to survive. (Ummm... all of the Vulcans on the ship were on leave... on Risa.)

Worf stands on his principles and doesn't donate his blood, resulting in the death of the Romulan officer, Picard struggles the whole episode in trying to maintain The Neutral Zone enforcement and reaches a fine, diplomatic, "stalemate" of sorts at the end and most incredibly Geordi and the Romulan on the planet surface work together to reach a solution to their problem.

Geordi's VISOR is kaput due to the planet's whatevergreebles and the Romulan's synapsis are getting scrambled due to same greebles. Geordi and the Romulan butt heads for a bit but eventualy managed to work together to modify a tricorder and the VISOR to reach a beacon that'll facillitate a beam-up.

It's really such a good episode, showing how a shared struggle can make two opposing forces work together, how bigotry and hatred can be unreasonable and lead to disaster (for the Romulan it leads to his death, for Worf it'd clash the ideals and principles he's likely taught to believe in as result of not only being raised by humans but by going through SFA) and for Picard it's a diplomatic struggle as he's required to enforce and protect the Federation side of TNZ. Great, great episode. One of many in TNG's fabulous third season and something I honestly don't think the later series were really able to capture. (Though, DS9 did to some degree.)

Season 3 of TNG is just awesome in many ways and, honestly, I thin S2 has many, many great moments as well in these same areas. That I can still be engaged by this series 20 years after its release says a lot about it.

 

[Mojochi]

A very under appreciated episode. One of Geordi's best. He's like freaking Batman in that episode. Falls into a crevasse. Uses his super-tech visor to scope out ore in the soil bed. Uses his super-tech weapon to melt the ore & create spikes to climb out of the crevasse. When his own health begins to effect his ability to interact with his visor, he talks someone else through connecting his visor with his tricorder to create a neutrino detector, in order to save himself & escape

With a visor, a phaser, a communicator & a tricorder, that blind dude can do anything. Throw in the fact that he was able to reason with a Romulan, & you just gotta love that guy

Geordi's da Man. On top of everything else, he is a master of light speed engineering, & his best friend is a technologically created life form

Those guys should be comic book heroes

 

[Holdfast]

Anyway, I just finished "The Enemy" from Season 3

Good ep, this one. The planetside stuff was a little too (or maybe too little?) Poitier/Curtis to really stick with me, but I loved Worf standing his ground when the audience (or at least me) was expecting him to do "the Trekkie thing" and donate.

 

[jwb]

Season 3 of TNG reminds me of springtime. Things are just coming into bloom, and the best is yet to come. It was a great time for the series.

 

[JRS]

Yep, the stuff is still powerful
There was lots of good thematic episodes on TNG season 3, about such topics like: Death, terrorism, war, treason, old age, treatment of prisoners, family, fitting in..and so on.

 

[tomalak301]

The Enemy and The Defector are two reasons I choose this user name. Tomalak wasn't just a great character, but Katsulas and Stewart on screen together in those two climatic scenes were some of the best TNG, and Star Trek had to offer. They're somewhat insignificant in the long run, but when you watch them, there's just something magical about them. As for the episode itself (The Enemy), I agree it was great about how to put aside petty differences, in contrast, how Worf couldn't. I'm not sure if it was "powerful" in the sense of how the word is used here, but it's still really really well written.

 

[Trekker4747]

They're even better on screen together when you consider the two likely never met face-to-face.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Anyway, I just finished "The Enemy" from Season 3

Good ep, this one. The planetside stuff was a little too (or maybe too little?) Poitier/Curtis to really stick with me, but I loved Worf standing his ground when the audience (or at least me) was expecting him to do "the Trekkie thing" and donate.

That's one of my favorite moments as well. I'm a sucker for subverting the audiences' expectations like that, especially when it's so true to the character. And it's not just the Trekkie thing, it's what we humans expect people to do. But Worf is a KLINGON. It seems like a lot of the time, we somewhat de-Klingonize him, for lack of a better term. We tend to see him as a human with a lumpy forehead, not a Klingon, a member of an alien race. The human right thing and the Klingon right thing are not the same, and it's things like Worf refusing to give blood to that Romulan that remind us of that difference.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Those guys should be comic book heroes

It's funny - a friend of mine who saw a copy of the casting sheet for TNG before any of it had been made public (or leaked) said "the characters are a telepath, an android, a blind guy who has super-vision with a visor, a genius kid - this is a lot more like 'The X-Men' than 'Star Trek'."

 

[DevilEyes]

Anyway, I just finished "The Enemy" from Season 3

Good ep, this one. The planetside stuff was a little too (or maybe too little?) Poitier/Curtis to really stick with me, but I loved Worf standing his ground when the audience (or at least me) was expecting him to do "the Trekkie thing" and donate.

That's one of my favorite moments as well. I'm a sucker for subverting the audiences' expectations like that, especially when it's so true to the character. And it's not just the Trekkie thing, it's what we humans expect people to do. But Worf is a KLINGON. It seems like a lot of the time, we somewhat de-Klingonize him, for lack of a better term. We tend to see him as a human with a lumpy forehead, not a Klingon, a member of an alien race. The human right thing and the Klingon right thing are not the same, and it's things like Worf refusing to give blood to that Romulan that remind us of that difference.

That would be the difference between a Klingon and a 24th century Human as seen on TNG. I'm sure that plenty of real-life humans would refuse to give blood in those circumstances as well.

Speaking of which, how can Worf even be an example of what a Klingon would do, when he was raised by Humans?

If this was intended to make Worf more alien, then it didn't work. If it was intended to show a difference between Klingons and humans, it really didn't work, for both above reasons.

But when it comes to thwarting the audience's expectations, it totally worked. We've seen too many movies and shows where a character ends up doing 'the right thing' and being nice and PC. It was great to break out of that cliche.

 

[RAMA]

As was "The Defector" another episode from that season dealing with Romulans.

 

[Trek Survivor]

Good post. I agree, TNG Seasons 2 and 3 have many great moments, as does the series as a whole. I think it got a bit bland and formulaic later (season 5 onward) but you can't fault season 3.

Also agree on DS9 - I love the series, but the war arc and stupid "Sisko's part wormhole alien" crappola really ruined the last couple of years.

 

[CaptainStoner]

If this was intended to make Worf more alien, then it didn't work. If it was intended to show a difference between Klingons and humans, it really didn't work, for both above reasons.

I agree, it's a powerful Worf moment when the Doctor's explaining that the Romulan will die, and Worf says, "Then he will die." and walks out of sickbay.
But, I'm not sure the intention with most aliens in Trek is to be something truly alien (to humanity) ~ it seems more consistent that the bipedal humanoids, though being "aliens" in their own universe, represent different aspects of humanity as you say. How can the TNG Klingons(or the TOS ones) be anything else, when their revamped culture is based on human ones?
This is a strength or a weakness, depending on what your expectations are. For me the TNG Klingons worked well for the most part, from the death scream in S1 onward, because they evoke warrior spirits of many different real earth cultures.
Depending on the episode, it is either genius or folly, or both, or neither, of putting together this notion of what's "far out in space", with things that are at the same time very internal, human, or universal.

 

[indolover]

Season three is IMO when the show started to kick off.

The Enemy, The Defector, The High Ground, The Most Toys, Sins of the Father, Booby Trap and Sarek are all high quality, a lot better than the crap in Season 1 lol.