Wesley Crusher | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Invasive Procedures (Review)

Posted on September 23, 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.

Invasive Procedures is an interesting episode. It has a great high concept, some nice character beats, and offers an inside glimpse at an astonishingly interesting alien culture. Verad is a compelling guest character and Sisko gets to be pretty badass, continuing the presentation of the character as some weird composite of James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.

There are however, a number of very sizeable flaws. The most obvious being that – despite this is nominally a “Dax” story – Dax winds up feeling more like a plot point than a character in her own right.

Slugging it out…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Betazoid, Dax, deep space nine, Ferengi, games, gene roddenberry, Jadzia Dax, Klingon, Next Generation, Quark, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Tim Russ, Video game, Wesley Crusher | 6 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Outrageous Okona (Review)

Posted on December 29, 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 (and a tiny bit of the second), episode-by-episode. Check back daily for the latest review.

Well, I’m not sure if you can call two solid episodes in succession a “streak” or a “roll”, but Where Silence Has Lease and Elementary, Dear Data were two hours of television that demonstrated how far the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation had come since its rocky first season. However, it appears that the two very good episodes in a row did not represent a sudden change in direction and did not assure consistency. The Outrageous Okona is a bad episode, by just about any measure. It’s not necessarily as offensive as Angel One or Code of Honour, but it is quite painful to watch.

Unlike a lot of the bungled “message” shows in the first season that contained misjudged ideas or offensive elements, The Outrageous Okona is merely a terribly written and unfunny mess of an episode that simply gnaws at the viewer.

He works best Solo…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Angel One, Burton Armus, Data, Deanna Troi, Debin, Encounter at Farpoint, Han Solo, jean-luc picard, Last Outpost, Naked Now, Outrageous Okona, patrick stewart, picard, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, Starfleet ranks and insignia, StarTrek, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, Where Silence Has Lease, William Riker | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Neutral Zone (Review)

Posted on December 25, 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.

Watching The Neutral Zone, it’s hard not to feel that the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation should have wrapped up with Conspiracy. At least that would have represented a bold step forwards, even if it wasn’t the direction that the show would ultimately take. In contrast, a lot of The Neutral Zone falls back into the trite, patronising arrogance that we’ve seen our crew demonstrate repeatedly over this first year, treating three refugees from twenty-first century Earth as an excuse to lord their superiority over the viewers at home. It’s a rather strange direction to take, and it certainly doesn’t make for good television. Which feels like a bit of a waste, given that the B-plot is actually quite workable.

“We’re back.”

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Balance of Terror, Benedict Cumberbatch, Beverly Crusher, Data, Deanna Troi, Federation, Geneva, jean-luc picard, Klingon, Neutral Zone, picard, Romulan, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Starfleet, Television and Movies, Wall Street Journal, Wesley Crusher, William Riker, Worf, Yuppie | 8 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Symbiosis (Review)

Posted on December 21, 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.

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 – Coming of Age (Review)

Posted on December 18, 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.

Coming of Age is interesting, if only because it is one of those rare instances where an episode’s B-story is far more compelling and interesting than the primary drama unfolding. Coming of Age is apparently about Wesley’s entrance examination to Starfleet Academy, which seems to have quite high standards for an organisation that let Riker and Yar into its ranks, but that teenage academic story feels a little trite and cliché.

Far more interesting, however, is the strange investigation conducted into the crew of the Enterprise at the behest of Admiral Gregory Quinn, who makes a dramatic impression by suggesting to Picard, “I have reason to believe there may be something very wrong on this ship.”

Evidently he has been watching the first season as well.

Picard off-guard…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: arts, Battle, Deanna Troi, Denise Crosby, Ferengi, Gates McFadden, Geordi La Forge, jean-luc picard, Next Generation, Oliana, picard, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Starfleet, Starfleet Academy, Starfleet ranks and insignia, Television, Tracy Tormé, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, Wil Wheaton, William Riker, Worf | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Datalore (Review)

Posted on December 12, 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.

If you absolutely, positively, positronically have to do an evil twin story, then I guess that Data is the best character to use. Datalore is hardly the finest or strongest episode of the first season. It’s riddled with plot holes, it feels overly contrived, it punishes the viewer for actually paying attention to the set-ups and plot devices, and it is awkwardly paced and sluggishly delivered. That said, it does offer some real stakes and an opportunity for Brent Spiner to ham it up a notch. So, while we’re not in “classic” (or even “good”) territory here, it’s certainly more watchable than a lot of the episodes around it.

That is not saying much.

The threat is crystal clear…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Brent Spiner, Chief engineer, Data, Datalore, Denise Crosby, Geordi, Geordi La Forge, james t. kirk, jean-luc picard, Lore, Mimoco, picard, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Starfleet, StarTrek, Tasha Yar, Trekkie, Wesley, Wesley Crusher, William Riker | 8 Comments »

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

Posted on December 8, 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.

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

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’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

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 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.