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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Melora (Review)

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Darren

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

It’s hard to believe, based on what we’ve witnessed so far, but one day viewers will be able to think “oh, a Bashir episode!” without an involuntary shudder. There will come a time when the writing staff figure out how to write a Bashir-centric episode. In fact, they’ll even revisit this central premise in the show’s final season, in a way that is much less creepy because at least it acknowledges the creepiness. However, we’re a long way from that.

It’s not that Bashir is a bad character. In fact, I’m very fond of him. I think that this version of the character works very well as part of an ensemble, or even teamed up with another major character to carry a story. However, I don’t think that the show has quite figured out how to tell a Bashir-centric story yet. Most notably because – like The Passenger before it – Melora isn’t really about Bashir. At least not in a way that isn’t creepy and disturbing and unnerving.

Instead, Bashir is mostly a vehicle for the guest character of the week, who lends the episode her name and serves as the focal point of some incredibly condescending and patronising writing which doesn’t make the optimistic future of Star Trek look particularly bright.

Floating in a most peculiar way…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Daphne Ashbrook, Dax, deep space nine, ethics, Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir, Melora, Next Generation, Quark, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Starfleet, StarTrek, Television program, Worf | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Storyteller (Review)

Posted on September 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 season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

The Storyteller should not work half as well as it does. While some episodes this season (notably The Passenger and Battle Lines) feel like they were simply lifted directly from the “reject” pile within the writers’ room on Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Storyteller is actually a rejected pitch from that show’s first season. Written by Kurt Michael Bensmiller, the writer responsible for Time Squared, one of the stronger installments of the show’s first two years, it was also written late in 1992, about a month before Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would actually air.

And yet, despite that, The Storyteller really feels like a show that wouldn’t work on any of the other Star Trek spin-offs. A lot of that seems to be down to the work by Ira Steven Behr to polish up Bensmillers’ draft and to add a lot of character work and development to what is a decidedly high concept. As producer Michael Piller confessed in Captains’ Logs Supplemental – The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, “Ira did a lot of work on that script.”

O’Brien’s mind is a bit clouded right now…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Colm, deep space nine, england, Gina Philips, Ira Steven Behr, Julian Bashir, Michael Okuda, Michael Piller, Miles O'Brien (Star Trek), O'BRIEN, Rick Berman, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Storyteller, vulcan, Worf | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Loud as a Whisper (Review)

Posted on December 30, 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.

At the very least, Loud as a Whisper has its heart in the right place. At least of most of its run time. Essentially an issue-driven (and guest-star-driven) show that is determined to prove to the audience that a disability need not define a person, it’s a little undermined by a subplot where Pulaski and Geordi discuss the possibility of making the Chief Engineer “normal” again. However, once you get past the earnestness of it all, Loud of a Whisper seems a little clunky as television drama, with all manner of potentially interesting ideas that are never really explored. The result is a massively disappointing story that feels a bit like a clumsy after-school special.

What goes around…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Data, Federation, Heart of Glory, Howie Seago, jean-luc picard, Klingon, Outrageous Okona, Sign language, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Troi, William Riker, Worf | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Elementary, Dear Data (Review)

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Darren

If you needed more evidence of the improvement of Star Trek: The Next Generation between the first and second seasons of the show, Elementary, Dear Data certainly provides it. Like Where Silence Has Lease directly before it, Elementary, Dear Data works so well because it takes a couple of ideas hinted at and teased in the first season and then develops them just a little bit further.

There’s a sense that the universe of The Next Generation is slowly expanding. While the first season treated our main characters as masters of all they surveyed, Elementary, Dear Data hints that the universe still has more to teach them and that they have a lot to learn.

Unfortunately, the trend would not continue into the next episode, but Elementary, Dear Data proves that the writing team (and the cast) are learning to play to the show’s strengths and that the pieces are all positioned to allow for a solidly entertaining hour of television.

Things take a turn for the better…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Arthur Conan Doyle, Data, Geordi La Forge, Holmes, J Abrams, jean-luc picard, Jeri Taylor, List of Star Trek characters, moriarty, Next Generation, picard, Queen Victoria, sherlock holmes, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Valley of Fear, William Riker, Worf, Young Sherlock Holmes | 1 Comment »

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Where Silence Has Lease (Review)

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Darren

If we ignore The Child as an aberration, a recycled script necessitated by the Writers’ Guild of America Strike of 1988, Where Silence Has Lease actually makes for a much stronger starting point for the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We’re not quite at the point where we’re getting consistently good episodes on a weekly basis, but episodes like Where Silence Has Lease and the following Elementary, Dear Data demonstrating that the show was at least learning what worked and what didn’t in the bets of the first season episodes.

In particular, Where Silence Has Lease allows the show to tell a straight-up science-fiction exploration story that provides commentary on the human condition, but in a manner that isn’t as clumsy as first-season efforts like Lonely Among Us. It’s not a classic episode, but it’s a solid one. However, a solid episode of the second season can stand alongside the best episodes of the first season, demonstrating that the show is making significant progress towards the consistent quality it would eventually maintain.

Into the void…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: jean-luc picard, Klingon, Michael Westmore, Next Generation, picard, Riker, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Starfleet Academy, StarTrek, Where Silence Has Lease, William Riker, Worf | 6 Comments »

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

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Darren

Let’s play make believe for a second here. Let’s imagine you are producing a television show that had a very rocky first season, but seemed to be making steps in the right direction. This was a show already respected for its depiction of social issues like racism or drug use…

However, despite that, the first year of the show had some major gender issues. Your writers and actors had been pointing out that some of the episodes in that first year could be considered sexist. Of the three actresses in you regular cast, two left. One became the first regular on a Star Trek show to die in the middle of the season, and you had to write the first episode of the second season to write out the other actress who had been having some trouble with a male producer.

Now, keeping all that in mind, let’s carefully consider what to do with the remaining female lead character. If you are producing the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you choose to have an alien impregnate that character without consent, use her body as incubation chamber, exploit her maternal instincts and then make her watch what she believes to be her own child die. More than that, you make sure that the female character is completely superfluous to the script itself, and that nobody seems to care particularly about her.

Don’t worry, Troi. Face of the Enemy is less than half a decade away…

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Filed under: The Next Generation | Tagged: Beverly Crusher, Data, Deanna Troi, gene roddenberry, jean-luc picard, Leonard Nimoy, Neutral Zone, Next Generation, picard, spock, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, StarTrek, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E), Vulcans, William Riker, Worf | 5 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 – Heart of Glory (Review)

Posted on December 19, 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 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 – 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 – Angel One (Review)

Posted on December 13, 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.

Any time I worry that I might have been too kind on Datalore, watching Angel One tends to set me straight relatively quickly. Watching Angel One feels like somebody in the writers’ room said, “I really liked the racism in Code of Honour! Can we do that again, but with sexism?” It’s very difficult to imagine to imagine how the script got into production without somebody raising red flags about it. While a lot of the racism of Code of Honour arose from the decision to cast the Ligonian characters as black, sexism in hardwired into the DNA of Angel One, making it one of the most unfortunate scripts in a long line of unfortunate scripts.