Beverly Crusher | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Hide & Q (Review)

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and also next year’s release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, I’m taking a look at the recent blu ray release of the first season, episode-by-episode. Check back daily for the latest review.

I have a confession to make. I quite like the first half of Hide & Q. Don’t get me wrong, the ending of the episode ruins any goodwill that sequence built up, and the opening section of the story isn’t exactly amazing – it’s just crafted more competently than any episode since Where No One Has Gone Before. I think part of the reason I enjoyed that first half of Hide & Q so much more than most of the recent episodes is because it accomplishes something that Star Trek: The Next Generation has been trying to do since The Naked Now, and with much more success. It manages to channel the original Star Trek.

Okay, the first half wouldn’t make an exceptional episode of the original Star Trek. It wouldn’t even make a great episode of the original Star Trek. It would, however, make a somewhat passable episode of the original Star Trek. Which is, sadly, more than enough to put it quite ahead of most of the other episodes in this first season so far.

Caught in the net…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi, Encounter at Farpoint, Farpoint, Geordi La Forge, hamlet, Jadzia Dax, jean-luc picard, kirk, Klingon, List of Star Trek characters, Naked Now, Next Generation, patrick stewart, picard, Q Continuum, Science fiction convention, Squire of Gothos, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Tasha Yar, Troi, Where No One Has Gone Before, William Riker, Worf | 8 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Battle (Review)

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Darren

The Battle represents a curious midpoint in the evolution of the Ferengi. When they first appeared in The Last Outpost (after being mentioned in Encounter at Farpoint), the aliens had been considered as viable replacements for the Klingons and Romulans as the primary antagonists of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Despite the presence of Worf on the Bridge, the bible for The Next Generation expressly forbade plots involving the Klingons or Romulans, with the creators afraid of returning to that particular well. (It would be towards the end of the season that both races would make a comeback, in big ways.) With neither of those races available, there was a void, and the Ferengi had been created to fill that void.

However, their introduction in The Last Outpost had been an unmitigated disaster, reducing the species to failed comic relief in their very first episode. The Battle is the second story to feature the aliens, and it never seems quite sure how to handle them. Does it present them as a credible threat, or merely as an awkward annoyance not to be taken seriously? The Battle can’t decide, and that’s just the most obvious of the episode’s fundamental problems.

They have yet to figure out an angle that works for the Ferengi…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Battle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Beverly Crusher, Common cold, Conditions and Diseases, Data, Deanna Troi, Ferengi, Headache, Health, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, jean-luc picard, Klingon, Last Outpost, picard, Romulan, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, Starfleet, Tractor beam, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, William Riker | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Justice (Review)

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Darren

I’ve been harping on quite a bit about how too much of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is trying to hard to be classic Star Trek, without acknowledging that the original series was the product of a very different society and outlook. You can’t literally map familiar beats and metaphors on a one-for-one basis and expect them to work perfectly inside a storytelling engine that is radically different. It’s easy enough to imagine Justice working as a classic Star Trek episode.

Indeed, it seems quite similar to The Apple, among others. However, it’s the differences that are telling, and it’s the differences that serve to take what might have been an entertaining piece of fluff from the sixties and turn it into a near-catastrophic misfire in the eighties.

“This show is about Riker trying to what an alien?”

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: AIDS, arts, Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi, james t. kirk, jean-luc picard, Jonathan Frakes, kirk, literature, Michael Dorn, picard, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek's Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, William Riker | 15 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Naked Now (Review)

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Darren

I stand by my original observation that it was a smart idea to set Star Trek: The Next Generation a century after Star Trek. After all, Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek was over two decades old by the time that Encounter at Farpoint aired. Twenty years is a long time in entertainment – it can feel like a century. The world had changed since Star Trek appeared, and setting the story in a brand new world with strong (yet not strangling) ties to the beloved original series allowed the best of both worlds.

However, the problem with the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation is that it doesn’t quite realise this yet. It’s busy trying to do “Star Trek”, even though times have changed. The Naked Now, the second episode of the series, is the perfect embodiment of this problem. Star Trek: The Next Generation should have been establishing its own identity, rather than trying to simply emulate its predecessor.