TNG Rewatch: 5x08 - Unification Part 2

[Timo]

Those were also special circumstances: the ships had stained themselves with the radiation that collapsed the Starfleet blockade net.

There isn't any single consistent way to defeat a cloaking device in Star Trek: techniques mentioned once may get a second and a third appearance, but they won't perform similarly on the repeat runs (see e.g. this tachyon detection net between "Unification" and "Face of the Enemy", or the antiproton scanning beam in DS9). Just about the only thing that does work twice is the detection of Romulan artificial quantum singularities inside cloaked ships in both "Visionary" and "Improbable Cause", and in the first the technology gets an unfair advantage from time travel, while in the second the Romulans may be deliberately showing off and revealing their presence. Or at least they are clearly just about to decloak anyway, so the AQS leakage may be associated with that operational status only.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gaith]

I rewatched these a few months ago, and my main takeaway was they they were just kinda dull. The legendary Spock meets the legendary Picard, over a matter of interstellar importance... that takes place in a glorified cave set... with a few underground (literally) meetings... and then the gang gets locked in an office and has to fight/trick their way out? Mix that with the aforementioned implausibility issues and the result is meh.

Maybe Spock should have been paired on an adventure with Riker instead. He and Picard are both so stoic and wise that their interaction, while cool, just doesn't pop.

 

[Trekker4747]

I dunno, the scenes between Data and Spock stand out quite well.

 

[Gaith]

^ Yeah, those were good, as were Picard and Data: Wacky Roommates. There were definitely a few good dialogue/character scenes, but none of them really had much to do with the actual plot.

 

[MikeS]

This aired in 1991 when East and West Germany were undergoing their own reunification. Was this a parallel? Are the writers telling us that the Commie East was really plotting an invasion?...