jean-luc picard | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Big Goodbye (Review)

Posted on December 11, 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 actually enjoyed The Big Goodbye on a lot of levels. It’s not a great Star Trek episode, but I don’t think that the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation produced a great episode. Even those episodes I do not actively hate are still significantly flawed. The Big Goodbye has more than its fair share of problems, but it does several things right. It never pretends to be more than it is, and it allows Patrick Stewart to do a lot of the heavy-lifting. Stewart is effectively charged with selling the episode to the audience, and he does a tremendous job. The result is something quite similar to the eponymous holonovel – something diverting and entertaining, but hardly profound or essential. Given the quality of the surrounding episodes, “diverting and entertaining” seems like just what the doctor ordered.

Over the Hill?

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Big Goodbye, Brent Spiner, Data, Dixon Hill, Holodeck, jean-luc picard, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Our Man Bashir, patrick stewart, picard, Recreation, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, Starfleet ranks and insignia, United States, Wil Wheaton | 9 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Haven (Review)

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Darren

Haven is… not as terrible as I thought it would be. There have been select episodes I’ve been dreading on my re-watch of this awkward first season. I was right to fear Code of Honour. I had perhaps been a tiny bit too harsh on The Naked Now. I am quaking at the prospect of watching Angel One and Too Short a Season again. However, Haven wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared that it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s filled with plot holes and it is as dull as anything, but it’s not actively that bad. If it sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, then I probably am.

Safe Haven?

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: best of both worlds, Betazoid, Beverly Crusher, Big Goodbye, Conventions, Deanna Troi, Earth, entertainment, gene roddenberry, jean-luc picard, List of minor recurring characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lwaxana Troi, Miller, Next Generation, patrick stewart, picard, Riker, Shopping, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, Trekkie, Troi, William Riker | 5 Comments »

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

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Darren

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 – Lonely Among Us (Review)

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Darren

Lonely Among Us actually embodies quite a few of the problems with these early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. While it’s hardly the worst episode of a season, it is certainly not among the stronger episodes. It’s a story that doesn’t really have a centrally defined conflict, and plays into the worst of the smug “humans are special” subtext that pervades episodes like The Last Outpost. At one point, possessed!Picard observes, “The search for knowledge is always our primary mission.” Based on episodes like this and The Last Outpost, it seems more likely the ship’s primary mission is lording it over alien cultures they deem inferior.

However, more than that, Lonely Among Us simply lacks a compelling narrative drive to make it entirely worthwhile. The ideas here aren’t half-bad, but the execution is downright dull.

Has Picard’s judgement been clouded?

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Cold War, Economic system, Federation, Geordi La Forge, jean-luc picard, Last Outpost, Lieutenant, Next Generation, Picar, picard, Riker, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek's Next Generation, star trek: the next generation, Starfleet ranks and insignia, William Riker, Worf | 6 Comments »

The Top 30 Under-Reported News Stories of 2012…

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Darren

Today is a very special day. We’re officially a third of the way through 2012. It’s been a pretty solid year for movies, and it’s been an interesting year for movie news. However, some news stories haven’t had quite the traction that I would have expected, and might have passed readers by. So, to celebrate getting through the first third of 2012, here’s the 30 most underreported movie-related news stories of 2012.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: April Fools Day, black and white, george clooney, jean-luc picard, liam neeson, michael bay, Michael Fassbender, Navy, patrick stewart, Practical joke, quentin tarantino, robert downey, roland emmerich, Sex & The City, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, Terrence Malick, William Shatner, Wrath of the Titans | 4 Comments »

Joe the Barbarian: The Deluxe Edition (Review)

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium.

Ultimus Alpha tells it how it is, Kid. This fairtale’s on a one-way trip to Hell.

Joe the Barbarian isn’t Grant Morrison at his creative peak. It isn’t going to redefine the medium, or become an enduring classic for the ages. If it features on college reading lists, I suspect it will be sorted with the “optional” texts somewhere below the “key” Morrisonian works. That doesn’t mean that Joe the Barbarian is bad or anything nearly as drastic. It’s a nice little fairytale fantasy story, one that feels like Morrison paying homage to a bizarre mix of Cabaret and The Lord of the Rings. There’s a lot here to enjoy, but there’s nothing that’ll really knock anybody’s socks off.

Swordplay...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arts, death, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, jean-luc picard, Joe, Joe the Barbarian, Joe the Barbarian: The Deluxe Edition, morrison, new x-men, patrick stewart, Quitely, Sean Murphy, seven soldiers, superman | Leave a comment »

The Best of Both Worlds: A Retrospective

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Darren

I am Locutus – of Borg. Resistance – is futile. Your life, as it has been – is over. From this time forward, you will service – us.

– Locutus introduces himself

I only found out last week that The Best of Both Worlds is twenty years old this June. For those unfamiliar with the title, it’s the two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which represented both the franchise’s first real cliffhanger (there was a two-part episode of the original series, but that was simply to incorporate a framing device around the original unaired pilot, The Cage – which featured an (almost) completely different cast) and the first real showcase of perhaps the franchise’s most iconic antagonists, the Borg. It’s also a damn good two hours of television.

Picard could always spot a square...

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: best of both worlds, borg, jean-luc picard, patrick stewart, picard, retrospective, star trek, star trek: the next generation, sttng, Television, the best of both worlds, the borg, the next generation, tng | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Star Trek – First Contact

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Darren

I love it when the movie channels have an unexpected treat for me. Like coming home from work on Saturday and finding Star Trek: First Contact playing in high definition on Sky movies. Also known as “the only good Next Generation movie”, the film stands the test of time well and is – thus far – the only movie in the franchise that all my family can agree on. It is awesome.