Author: robert

So, this ambassador who is really a psychic vampire turns up, seduces Troi, but then they work out what’s happening and stop him. Yuck. Bad episode, bad premise, and (after some fairly good recent performances) some bad acting from the main participants. Not ‘cover your eyes’ awful, but not a fun hour of television. 237…

The basis of this episode feels very real – Transporter phobia would undoubtedly be a very real thing in the world of Star Trek. The episode starts out a bit poorly – it seems to be setting things up to be an hour long counselling session for everyone’s favourite whipping boy, Reg Barclay. The actual…

Not a great start to the new season – not bad, just missed the mark with me. We spend an awful lot of time with Sam Clemens – which is a bit anticlimactic, because the dramatic conventions of this type of story mean we know he’ll be on the side of the good guys by…

The season was chronologically split by the final movie of the original crew, making this a real season of two halves. Prior to *The Undiscovered Country* the episodes veered between poor (*The Game*) and great (*Darmok*). In the second half, the standard deviation increases: from absolutely awful (*Cost of Living*) through to truly superb (*The…

Silly Data. You’re meant to leave your *heart* in San Francisco, not your *head*. Much like *Unification* this episode suffers a bit from the prologue problem – not as badly as Unification, as at least this doesn’t feel too much like padding. But it’s hard to judge, as it feels like only half a story…

Simple. Affecting. Beautiful. Perfect. 233 down, 504 to go.

G-g-g-g-g-ghost Bajoran! Telling a good Star Trek story is about balancing the philosophical with the plot action. We want to see a good SF idea explored, but also want to have a bit of action to move things on. Here, the action overwhelms the idea. It could have been an interesting clash between Ro’s idea…

Poor old Picard. The war crimes become a lot harder when the kids give your prisoner a name. This is a nice story, and it’s very interesting to see Picard and Guinan be the ones who are resistant to logic, rather than the other way around. I did feel that everyone was won over by…

There has been a strange fascination with children in the episodes of this season. Previous seasons have talked about the Enterprise being a family ship, but only this season has really done much with it. I suppose it’s part of the design of the show, but it’s very rarely something I enjoy much. A big…

Ah, here are the Ferengi, just one week late. They don’t get much time to mess things up, at least. There’s a germ of a nice little unrequited love story here, with Picard trying hard to not fall in love with the perfect (and perfectly unavailable) woman. But it just doesn’t land, perhaps because we’re…