star trek: the original series | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Skin of Evil (Review)

Posted on December 22, 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.

Skin of Evil is a mess of an episode. It’s a whole bunch of concepts thrown together, and executed in the most ridiculous and banal manner possible. There’s a lot of the disparate elements of Skin of Evil that could easily work if handled properly. Most notably, the idea of a character dying in the line of duty rather than as a hero is a fascinating one, and the eponymous monster could be an interesting twist on the “god-like beings” we seem to stumble across once every couple of weeks in the Star Trek universe. However, Skin of Evil winds up feeling the one thing it should be impossible for an episode like this to be. Despite all the different stuff happening involving all the different characters: it’s boring.

A slick operator…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly, Beverly Crusher, Data, Denise Crosby, Encounter at Farpoint, Gates McFadden, Geordi La Forge, Health, J Abrams, Jadzia Dax, james t. kirk, Marina Sirtis, picard, Riker, Ro Laren, Shopping, Skin of Evil, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the original series, William Riker, Yar | 7 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Symbiosis (Review)

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Darren

After Arsenal of Freedom, I was wary of Symbiosis. Star Trek has always liked exploring socially and morally relevant ideas through the vehicle of science-fiction. I can understand the appeal of it – science-fiction allows us to divorce basic arguments for all manner of clouding context and to address them in the purest or terms. I think Star Trek is at its most powerful exploring these themes (as The Next Generation would do in episodes like The Outcast), but there’s a risk involved. Nobody wants to be lectured about a simplistic moral principle for forty-minutes, and nobody wants to see a complex issue boiled down past all recognition.

So it’s pretty nice that Symbiosis works quite well. The show is a bit bumpy in places, but it does a lot of things well enough that it’s an entertaining watch. Indeed, it feels like the kind of episode we should have seen a lot earlier in the year.

Star gazing…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Arsenal of Freedom, arts, Beverly Crusher, Data, Denise Crosby, Earth, Federation, Orbit, patrick stewart, Photosphere, picard, Prime Directive, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Sun, Symbiosis, Television, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, Will Wheaton | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Arsenal of Freedom (Review)

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Darren

I suppose that Arsenal of Freedom could be worse. At its heart, it’s the sort of issue-driven story that the classic Star Trek did so very well. The original Star Trek was fond of constructing clever (and not so clever) explorations of the issues of the day, giving the audience a relatively simplistic morality play about the dangers of certain vices and the risks that they might pose to a civilised society. Later on its run, Star Trek: The Next Generation would handle its own morality plays with just a bit more nuance and sophistication, favouring deliberate and considerate probing rather than its predecessor’s endearing brashness. Like so much of the first season, Arsenal of Freedom feels like it is an attempt to capture the flavour of those sixties episodes.

At least, though, the show concedes that time has passed, and that social mores have shifted. The social issues of the day are no longer hippies (The Way to Eden) or simplistic racism (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield), and Arsenal of Freedom is a “message show” for the eighties. It is a morality tale about the dangers of unchecked capitalism and the risks of weapons development. It’s clumsy, awkward and a little forced, with The Next Generation not quite suited to this particular form of heavy-handed moralising, but it could be a lot worse. Which, I suppose, is something.

Looks like we’ve got a Minos problem here…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Arsenal of Freedom, Deanna Troi, Denise Crosby, jean-luc picard, Klingon, Last Outpost, Minos, Neutral Zone, Next Generation, Riker, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Troi, William Riker | 14 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Heart of Glory (Review)

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Darren

I think Heart of Glory is, ironically, one of the first times that Star Trek: The Next Generation is consciously trying to force its way out of the shadows of its illustrious predecessor. Episodes like The Naked Now and Justice felt like hold-overs from the classic sixties Star Trek, with little acknowledgement that the world (both inside and outside the show) had dramatically changed in the two decades since Star Trek appeared. I used the adjective “ironically”, because Heart of Glory actually sees the return of one of the most classic Star Trek aliens, and one of the most recognisable pop culture extraterrestrials.

The series bible famously stated the show had no real interest in going back to the Klingons, but Heart of Glory suggests that following up with the funky foreheaded aliens might have been the smartest thing that the first season did.

I am Klingon, hear me roar!

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Data, Datalore, Federation, Ferengi, gene roddenberry, Geordi La Forge, Heart of Glory, jean-luc picard, Klingon, picard, Romulan, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: enterprise, star trek: the original series, William Riker, Worf | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Home Soil (Review)

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Darren

I’ve been complaining pretty consistently throughout this rocky first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation that the show is trying too hard to be a carbon copy of the classic Star Trek, rather than trying to define its own distinct identity. By that logic, I concede that I should detest Home Soil. Much like the less-than-classic The Naked Now, it is pretty much an attempt to update an episode from the original show.

In this case, the story of a bunch of terraformers provoking an unconventional native lifeform recalls The Devil in the Dark, one of the best-loved episodes of Star Trek‘s pretty stellar first year. While Home Soil doesn’t quite measure up to its rather wonderful progenitor, it does manage to put its own slant on the story, to the point where Home Soil doesn’t feel like a recycled Star Trek script; rather, it feels like a story told from the perspective of The Next Generation.

Spark of life…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, Data, Devil in the Dark, family, Federation, james t. kirk, jean-luc picard, Kim, Next Generation, picard, Recreation, Savage Curtain, Siri, Squire of Gothos, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Starfleet, Trekkie, Where No Man Has Gone Before, William Riker | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – When the Bough Breaks (Review)

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Darren

When the Bough Breaks and Home Soil are an interesting two episodes of the first season of The Next Generation, if only because they seem to contrast each other so well. I’ve complained before about how the first season of The Next Generation had a great deal of trouble finding its own identity, and When The Bough Breaks feels like a conscious attempt to do a story in the style of the original Star Trek, even if most of the elements are fairly original.

In contrast, Home Soil starts with a premise that owes a considerable debt to a very specific episode of Star Trek, Devil in the Dark, but finds a way to approach it that emphasises the differences between the two shows. You can probably guess which one of the two episodes I preferred, and while When the Bough Breaks is never as bad as it could be (a story focusing on Wesley and other child actors?) it’s not necessarily good, either.

The lost world…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Alternative, Angel One, Archaeology, Atlantis, Brent Spiner, Civilization, Earth, Ferengi, jean-luc picard, kirk, Next Generation, patrick stewart, Social Sciences, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Tasha, When The Bough Breaks, Yankee Traders | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Too Short a Season (Review)

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Darren

Too Short a Season falls back on one of those classic Star Trek stand-bys, the story of a dangerously obsessed senior officer who proceeds to put the lives of the crew at risk in order to feed his own ego. I’ve always found it hilarious that Starfleet seems to have truly terrible psychological screening, or maybe they just kick the more unreliable officers upstairs. After all, while Admiral Jameson is clearly a sandwich short of a picnic, at least he’s out of the line of fire. Too Short a Season winds up seeming like quite a trite episode, despite the fact that some of the elements are arguably intriguing on their own. It feels a little too safe, a little too comfortable, and far too predictable for its own good.

A shady character…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, Clayton Rohner, Earth, Game, iran, Iran-Contra, Iran–Contra affair, james t. kirk, Middle East, Next Generation, picard, Q Who, Special effect, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Starfleet, Technology, Tracy Tormé, Where No One Has Gone Before | 3 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 – 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 – Where No One Has Gone Before (Review)

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Darren

I remember that I never really like Where No One Has Gone Before when I was younger. Even now, I have a bit of a tough time counting it among the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. However, despite that, I’ve actually warmed to it quite a bit on this rewatch. It’s not brilliantly constructed as an hour of television, and I wouldn’t even count it as the best produced in this first season of the second Star Trek series. However, it does something that a lot of other episodes in this run try to do, and fail to accomplish.

It manages to evoke the spirit of Star Trek.