Star Trek Next Generation | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1988) (Review)

Posted on January 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.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry. This is actually supplementary to the first season of the Next Generation, specifically the episode Encounter at Farpoint.

When Malibu comics launched their Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comic in 1993, the first season of the show had concluded. Due to licensing issues, Marvel Comics published the first Star Trek: Voyager tie-in comic in late 1996, after the show’s second season had concluded. The notoriously dodgy Gold Key Star Trek comics did run alongside the classic television show, but at least waited until 1967 to begin getting the details horribly wrong.

So publishing a tie-in to Star Trek: The Next Generation in early 1988 was an ambitious move by DC comics. By that point, the show’s first season was an ambitious prospect. The six issue miniseries was launched as part of a big publicity push at the start of The Next Generation, with editor Robert Greenberger explaining in the afterword to the first issue that Paramount had approached them “sometime early this year” to write the series.

This means that the comic was being written before Encounter at Farpoint was even finished. In the letters section in the second issue, Greenberger concedes, “As I write this, it’s mid-September and Star Trek: The Next Generation has yet to debut anywhere in America.” It’s no wonder that Michael Carlin’s series wound up so inconsistent and so decidedly strange. While it’s an interesting demonstration of just how firmly Paramount were pushing their new show, it’s hardly a triumph of tie-ins.

These are the voyages…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics, The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly Crusher, Crusher, Geordi La Forge, jean-luc picard, picard, Star Trek Next Generation, William Riker, Worf | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Unnatural Selection (Review)

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Darren

It’s really strange that this is our first Pulaski-centred episode. It’s even stranger that it’s the shows only Pulaski-centred episode, given she’s a new character being inserted into an established ensemble. It’s even stranger-er that the episode doesn’t really seem to have much to say about Pulaski apart from the fact that she is the show’s new doctor – and she’s a bit of an idiot. Which is not necessarily what you want when you’re trying to endear a new character to the audience.

Then again, Unnatural Selection is a pretty good indicator of where Star Trek: The Next Generation is right now. The show hasn’t quite figured out that it’s a good idea to anchor character-centric stories in the character upon which that intended to centre. It’s one of the most successful aspects of Michael Piller’s approach, and part of what really revitalised the writing in the show’s third season. As it stands, Unnatural Selection seems to be a story about medical stuff, so it gets to focus on Pulaski. Who is really just sort of there.

I can see this getting old fast…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Deanna Troi, deep space nine, Google, Icarus Factor, jean-luc picard, Marina Sirtis, Michael Piller, Next Generation, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Troi, Unnatural Selection, Where Silence Has Lease | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Marvel Comics) #3-4 – The Cancer Within (Review)

Posted on January 2, 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.

Poor Doctor Pulaski. She seems to have just disappeared from the canon. First season casualty Tasha Yar seemed to haunt to the show, returning for Yesterday’s Enterprise while her daughter become a recurring foe from The Mind’s Eye onwards. Even Wesley popped back every once in a while following his departure from the series. Pulaski, on the other hand, remains something of a phantom.

Barring an audible reference to her made in the background during the Star Trek: Voyager finalé Endgame, she disappears from the franchise without so much as a peep at the end of Shades of Grey. She isn’t even referenced by name in the first episode of the third season to air (Evolution) or the first produced (The Ensigns of Command). While Beverly Crusher’s return is used as a plot point for Wesley, we only get the most fleeting of references to Pulaski in Who Watches the Watchers?

While this can easily be explained by the complex relationship that Diana Muldaur seems to have with Star Trek: The Next Generation. She has suggested the atmosphere on set was decidedly unfriendly, so the fact that Pulaski doesn’t return should not be that much of a surprise. What is interesting is the general apathy that the expanded universe seems to have for Pulaski. While even guest characters seem to get their own back stories and development in novels and comics, Pulaski is treated as a decidedly minor character in the Star Trek canon, reduced to guest spots and small appearances.

I like my family reunions generic and bland…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics, Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Beverly Crusher, Dean Wesley Smith, deep space nine, Diana Muldaur, endgame, february, Next Generation, Pulaski, Ro Laren, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: voyager, StarTrek, Tasha Yar, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, Worf, Yesterday's Enterprise | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Schizoid Man (Review)

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Darren

I should probably hate The Schizoid Man. It is certainly a very, very flawed piece of television. It would be a lot more forgivable had it aired during the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when the show was still trying to find its feet – including it early in the second season feels like the show is pushing it a little. In many respects, The Schizoid Man embodies a lot of the (legitimate) complaints about the weaknesses of The Next Generation as a television show: the performances from the peripheral members of the main cast are a bit ropey, there’s an incredibly false sense of urgency generated by techno-babble and the dialogue is just terrible.

And yet, despite that, there’s quite a lot here to like. Stripping away the terrible dialogue and the unnecessary convolutions, The Schizoid Man is a very basic morality play, one touching on themes the show will handle a lot better a few episodes down the line. Brent Spiner is surprisingly creepy as Graves-as-Data, and W. Morgan Sheppard is pretty great in an admittedly thankless part as the misogynistic and creepy Ira Graves.

23rd century Schizoid Man…

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, Data, Datalore, Deanna Troi, deep space nine, Graves, jean-luc picard, Julian Bashir, Schizoid Man, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), W. Morgan Sheppard | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: The Lost Era – The Buried Age by Christopher L. Bennett (Review)

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Darren

“I’m offering the chance to find something entirely new,” Picard teases at one point in The Buried Age. “To begin filling in a tremendous gap in our understanding of galactic history.” In a way, Picard might as well be addressing the reader, explaining one of the many joys of Christopher L. Bennett’s The Buried Age. It is a chance to delve into the world of Star Trek, exploring the lacuna that exists leading directly into Encounter at Farpoint.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Christopher L. Bennett, Federation, gene roddenberry, jean-luc picard, kirk, Next Generation, picard, science fiction, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: enterprise, StarTrek, Timeline of Star Trek | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 2 (Review)

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Well, that’s more like it. The second season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine might not rank with the very best of the franchise, but it doesn’t have to. Deep Space Nine is still a young show, and Star Trek spin-offs have a long history of taking their time to find their feet. The second season of Deep Space Nine contains its fair share of classic or memorable episodes, but it’s defined by a sense that the producers are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

While the first season occasionally felt like the series was stumbling back towards safety, trying to become a lighter version of Star Trek: The Next Generation as faith in its premise wavered, the second season is a lot more confident in itself. It’s willing to play around a bit to figure out how to be the show that it wants to be. And there’s a sense, as the season winds to a close, that we’re almost there.

By the time we hit the second half of the season, it seems the show has learned to churn out inoffensive episodes that feel unique and distinctively Deep Space Nine – episodes like Playing God or Shadowplay. However, it’s in the final third that the show seems to figure out how make truly great episodes of Deep Space Nine.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Brannon Braga, Bryan Fuller, deep space nine, games, In the Hands of the Prophets, Space Combat, Star Trek Games, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek Original Series, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, StarTrek, video games, voyager | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Jem’Hadar (Review)

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

In terms of sheer quality of execution, The Jem’Hadar is probably the weakest of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s season finalés. It lacks the gut punch of A Call to Arms, the shock twist of Broken Link, the atmosphere of The Adversary or even the timeliness of In the Hands of the Prophets. It is, at its most basic level, a story about a disastrous first contact that occurs during a father-son bonding trip that goes horribly wrong, ending with precious little actually advanced.

However, in terms of conceptual ideas, The Jem’Hadar is a game-changer. It is the cornerstone upon which Deep Space Nine would construct its most iconic narrative arc. It caps off two years of trying to develop the Ferengi as more than one-note jokes. It’s a bold statement about the freedom that Deep Space Nine would enjoy with Star Trek: The Next Generation retiring from the airwaves. It cemented the notion that Deep Space Nine never really dealt in two-part episodes to bridge seasons.

For Deep Space Nine, season finalés did not exist simply as pieces of Lego designed to snugly fit those other pieces at the start of the following season, crafting some illusion of continuity flow between two different seasons of television. Instead, cliffhangers on Deep Space Nine changed the rules, shook up the status quo, and teased the changing face of things to come.

A Jem?

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, deep space nine, Dominion, Ferengi, Ira Steven Behr, Jake Sisko, Jem, Jem'Hadar, Klingon, michelle forbes, Next Generation, Odyssey, Past Tense, Quark, Rom, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, StarTrek | 13 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Tribunal (Review)

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Tribunal is probably the weakest episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in quite some time, hampered by the fact that it never seems too ambitious and the fact that the episode ends because we’re three minutes away from the closing credits rather than because it feels like the story has been told. Tribunal is hardly the deepest or most sophisticated episode of the show’s second season, spending most of its time riffing on Kafka and Orwell, but it’s still solidly entertaining – a rare example of black comedy on Star Trek that works surprisingly well.

I suspect the biggest problem with Tribunal is where it’s placed. The second season of Deep Space Nine has been hitting it out of the park since around Blood Oath, giving us the strongest run of episodes we’d see until the start of the fourth season. Indeed, had the show found its groove a little bit earlier, the second season of Deep Space Nine could have been on par with the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation as “that season the show found its groove.”

However, it remains an impressive run of episodes, a rallying of the show in the last third of the season, showing just what Deep Space Nine was capable of. Most of the episodes in that run felt very different from anything done on The Next Generation and most offered some major insight into how the world of Deep Space Nine works as distinct from the rest of the franchise.

A broad cast of characters…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Armageddon Game, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassia, Cardassian, crime, deep space nine, Kira Nerys, Miles O'Brien, O'BRIEN, Recreation, star trek iv the voyage home, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek Original Series, star trek vi: the undiscovered country, star trek: deep space nine, Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, StarTrek | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Dark Mirror by Diane Duane (Review)

Posted on October 13, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

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

Dark Mirror was released a few mere months before Crossover was broadcast – one of those moments of pop culture synergy where it turns out that two different individuals can have the same idea, but with infinitely different nuance or emphasis. Indeed, the timing syncs up so well that Crossover actually aired between the hardcover and soft cover printings of Dark Mirror, suggesting that a return to the mirror universe was something of an inevitability for Star Trek, in one form or another.

Duane’s approach to the mirror universe is markedly different to that of writers Michael Piller and Peter Allan Fields, with both Dark Mirror and Crossover taking the ending of Mirror, Mirror and running with it in opposite directions. Piller and Fields used the aftermath of Kirk’s meddling as a means to explore the consequences of interference in a culture that Kirk didn’t quite understand – a mechanism to explore the way that the original Star Trek didn’t seem to grasp moral relativity, and to explore political complexities outside Kirk’s value system.

In contrast, Dark Mirror is a more philosophical meditation on the nature of good and evil, a more metaphysical exploration of a fictional world built around the concept of selfishness and strength, and how such a universe would have to work on different physical laws than that of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: crossover, Dark Mirror, Duane, Michael Piller, mirror, picard, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Maquis: Soldier of Peace (Review)

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

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 Maquis: Soldier of Peace is a rather interesting little miniseries, produced while Malibu comics held the rights to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine spin-off comics in the early nineties. Malibu owned the rights to the earliest comics, publishing just over thirty issues of the main Deep Space Nine title between August 1993 and December 1995. Due to Paramount’s desire to exploit the license as much as possible, Malibu only had access to the Deep Space Nine rights, and not to Star Trek: The Next Generation or the original Star Trek.

Malibu would eventually be bought by Marvel, allowing the company to briefly publish Star Trek comics related to all on-going series. However, the company managed to generate an impressive amount of content in the time that it held the rights. Cynics would suggest that company was trying to cash in on the comics boom of the nineties, trying all manner of gimmicks, including one-shots and even a “celebrity” prestige series featuring stories written by Mark Lenard or Aron Eisenberg.

As such, these comics offer an interesting snapshot of where Deep Space Nine was at this point in its history.