Television | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Best of Both Worlds, Part I (Review)

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Darren

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

So we’re here. It’s the end of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the season where the show really kicked into gear. After a decidedly uneven first and second seasons, where moments of brilliance blended with hours of tedium, the show had really pulled its act together. Even the weakest hours of the season where still competently produced, the average quality increased significantly and the stronger episodes just hit it out of the park.

The Best of Both Worlds is really just the cherry on top. But it’s one hell of a cherry.

He’s looking right at us…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: best of both worlds, borg, borg collective, cliffhangers, colonialism, fans, jean-luc picard, locutus, Michael Piller, patrick stewart, picard, Q Who, star trek, star trek: the next generation, Television, the best of both worlds | 8 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1989) #47-50 – The Worst of Both Worlds (Review)

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Darren

This November and December, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

The Worst of Both Worlds, as the name implies, is an excuse to revisit one of the pivotal moments of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Go on, guess which one!) Unfortunately, it’s not quite up to the task – a failing down to both to the scripts from Michael Jan Friedman and the artwork from Peter Krause. It winds up feeling like an interesting idea, given a rather lackluster execution, working best as a study of the impact that the show’s third season cliffhanger had on the franchise.

A time warp…

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Filed under: Comics, The Next Generation | Tagged: best of both worlds, Beverly Crusher, borg, Data, Deanna Troi, Geordi La Forge, Klingon, Michael Jan Friedman, Peter Krause, picard, Sarek, spock, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek Original Series, star trek: the next generation, Starfleet, StarTrek | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Transfigurations (Review)

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Darren

In way, what is so interesting about Transfigurations is how incredibly generic the story is. It’s a cookie-cutter Star Trek story, a collection of the narrative elements one associates with the franchise – mysterious aliens, energy beings, metaphors about tolerance and fear of the unknown – all loosely sorted into something resembling a linear story.

There’s none of the cheeky subversive charm from early in the third season. This isn’t a deconstruction of “energy being” stories in the way that The Bonding was a deconstruction of “red shirt” deaths. This is just a straight-up story about an alien species learning an important lesson about tolerance, dressed up in a science-fiction mystery, with a romantic subplot thrown in for Beverly because the show hasn’t really done much with Gates McFadden since she returned.

The result is as bland as you might expect, with a sense that everybody involved was just exhausted by the production difficulties that had haunted the third season, and desperately trying to make it to the hiatus. Transfigurations is nowhere near as bad as The Price or Ménage à Troi. It’s just forgettable and average.

Mellow yellow…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly Crusher, Crusher, energy beings, evolution, john doe, Mutants, mutations, René Echevarria, star trek, star trek: the next generation, third season, transfigurations, x-men | Leave a comment »

Star Trek/X-Men: Star TreX (Review)

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Being honest, I’m surprised that it took this long for one of the comic book publishers working with a Star Trek license to come up with the idea of crossing over Star Trek with one of their comic book properties. After all, Barbara Hambly’s Ishmael crossed the franchise over with Here Come the Brides, another piece of cult sixties television. Crossing Star Trek over with a decidedly pulpy comic book franchise was really the next logical step.

Indeed, while DC Comics would eventually get involved in the publication of a crossover with The Legion of Superheroes, I remain surprised that they never tried to cross the franchise over with Green Lantern while they were publishing monthly Star Trek comic books. Both franchises are products of a sixties outlook on space travel and on America’s post-war role in the wider world (and, well, universe), and they’d be tailor-made to fit together.

However, it wasn’t until Marvel managed to secure the Star Trek license in 1996 that our heroes had their first encounter with a proper superhero franchise.

X-over…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: star trek, star trex, x-men | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Ménage à Troi (Review)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Darren

So, here we are again. We almost made it. Two episodes away from the series finalé and… boom! Lwaxana Troi episode. Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.

Still, this is the point where we reflect on how far the show has come in a season. Ménage à Troi is hardly the best episode of the season, but then Lwaxana episodes rarely are. We need to compare like with like, to get a sense of how far the show has come along. It’s not enough to say that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a better show when it made Ménage à Troi than it was when it made Manhunt or Haven, but it’s close.

Ménage à Troi is a problematic episode, much like Manhunt and Haven are both problematic episodes. There’s a weird awkward dated quality to the show’s attempts to do relationship humour – a vaguely unsettling sexist undertone about how confident older women are inherently hilarious and its great fun to see them involved in embarrassing relationships. Unfortunately, Ménage à Troi continues that trend.

Two Ferengi walk into a bar…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: betazed, Betazoid, Deanna Troi, Ferengi, gene roddenberry, lwaxana, Lwaxana Troi, Majel Barrett, majel barrett roddenberry, sex, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, tog, Troi | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Imzadi by Peter David (Review)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

As far as tie-in novels for Star Trek: The Next Generation go, Imzadi is the big one. It’s Peter David’s magnum opus for The Next Generation – a wonderfully clever character study that allows David to bask in the character dynamics of the show, while playing with big ideas and grand themes. It’s very easily the strongest Next Generation novel published while the show was on television, and remains a strong contender for the best Next Generation novel ever published.

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Betazoid, Imzadi, love, pad, peter david, Riker, romance, star trek, star trek: the next generation, the next generation, Troi | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Sarek (Review)

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Darren

Sarek is a rather wonderful episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s a celebration of the franchise’s history, but without being overwhelmed by the weight of continuity. It’s also a heart-breaking story about an old man coming to terms with his mortality, assessing the legacy that he leaves behind and the future he had hoped to shape. The beauty of Sarek, then, is the way that the episode ties these two threads together – offering a rather touching metaphorical exploration of Gene Roddenberry’s own influence on the franchise and his own deteriorating health.

Back to the future…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Emotion, gene roddenberry, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Piller, patrick stewart, picard, Sarek, spock, star trek, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Television, the next generation, tng, tos, Vulcans | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Sarek by A.C. Crispin (Review)

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Darren

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

One of the more interesting things about the expanded Star Trek universe is the diversity. It is possible for supporting characters and guest stars to carry their own narratives and stories within the grand sweeping tapestry of the Star Trek universe. Despite his importance to the mythos, Mark Lenard’s Sarek only made a handful of appearances across the history of the franchise. He only appeared once in the entire classic Star Trek television show, in Journey to Babel.

It is a testament to Mark Lenard’s dramatic abilities and D.C. Fontana’s writing that Sarek would recur across Star Trek: The Animated Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and even the original Star Trek movies. The character – despite only appearing in a supporting role across four televised episodes and four feature films – remains one of the most intriguing supporting characters across the franchise.

A.C. Crispin’s Sarek offers a fascinating glimpse at one of the show’s most compelling guest stars, even if the novel does suffer a bit trying to “fix” some of the problems that the author seems to see in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: ac crispin, Amanda, crispin, logic, novel, reomulans, Sarek, spock, star trek, Vulcans, vulvan | 5 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Most Toys (Review)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Darren

In a way, The Most Toys feels like the other side of the coin to Hollow Pursuits. One of the more interesting aspects of Hollow Pursuits is the way that it casts guest character Reginald Barclay as something of a Star Trek fan. He escapes from his mundane existence into a fantasy world where he tells his own stories about the crew, succumbing to various fan fiction clichés. The Most Toys is also built around a guest character who seems to have been written as a Star Trek fan, albeit a lot less pleasant sort of type than Barclay.

Fajo is a collector, you see.

An honest trader? Fajo chance!

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, collectibles, Data, david rappaport, fajo, kivas fajo, saul rubinek, star trek, star trek fandom, star trek fans, star trek: the next generation, Television, the most toys, the next generation, Theft, trekkers, trekkies, tv | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Hollow Pursuits (Review)

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Darren

Hollow Pursuits is another demonstration of just how far Star Trek: The Next Generation has come in its third season. It’s a show comfortable enough with its cast and setting that it’s willing to look at the Enterprise from a completely fresh angle – to examine what it must be like to work on the Enterprise in the shadow of Geordi and Riker and Picard, getting none of the glory and making none of the decisions.

Hollow Pursuits is the first time we’ve really seen a dysfunctional member of the Enterprise crew, with Dwight Schultze showing up as Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Reginald Barclay. Barclay is a character unlike any the franchise had produced to date, and Schultze is incredibly charming in the role. It’s no wonder that he went on to become one of the franchise’s most loved guest stars, recurring several times over the course of The Next Generation, popping up in Star Trek: First Contact and even visiting Star Trek: Voyager a few times.