Tom Salinsky

TNG S06E02 Realm of Fear (). Poor Barclay should have kept his mouth shut. He figures out how to get the transporter to work through a technobabble interference cloud but then finds himself on the team having to take this “bumpy” ride over to a stricken ship and he scurries off the transporter pad. Before long, he’s confessing his transporterphobia to Troi and he seems almost eager to face his fears. And for the first time, we see transportation from the point of view of the transporter, with a nifty parallax effect on the sparkles. As usual, it’s gratifying to see that Barclay is largely believed when he babbles about creatures in the transport stream (no Michigan J Frog shenanigans here) and the final twist is very cool. Titles are back to normal, but Roddenberry no longer gets a mention in the closing credits (actually this was true of S06E01 as well).

TNG S06E03 Man of the People (). A remix of fairly familiar elements, from Oscar Wilde and from TNG episodes past. Ambassador Smoothie is the only person in the galaxy who can negotiate peace between the Zagbars and the Zoobles. A cranky older lady is on board, snarling at Troi over her marital future. Poor Marina Sirtis struggles to find any chemistry at all with Chip Lucia who presumably got his first name from being carved out of wood. Before long, Old Mother Cranky is dead and Chip Board is performing a hugely suspicious ritual with Troi who promptly turns into Counsellor Cougar. So as well as Troi-falls-in-love-with-the-wrong-dude we’re also going to get the oh-no-I’m-aging-to-death storyline, with a spoonful of the Sarek-needs-a-vessel-for-his-unwanted-emotions-plot, only this time more rapey. Marina Sirtis gets to show a bit more range than usual, but it’s not exactly progress to see her screaming for affection like an unruly child. Once again, sex proves to be the biggest blindspot for this creative team. Even Jeri Taylor, now a permanent fixture in the writers room, can’t stop this from feeling as if it was written by a gang of adolescent boys who haven’t had their first kiss yet. In a particularly absurd version of the Precise Countdown To Certain Doom, Troi can stay dead for exactly 30 minutes with zero ill-effects, but at one second past that time, she will be definitely deceased with no hope of recovery. Once the link with her is severed, her physical condition snaps back into place like a bungee cord too (which is the equivalent of putting out the fire burning your house down and seeing all of your possessions un-incinerate themselves). I’m also concerned for the young science officer that Evil Troi doled out that gleeful tough love to. Although, who knows – maybe it worked!

TNG S06E04 Relics (). Being largely familiar with the original crew only from the movies, watching all of TOS for the first time was an eye-opening experience, not least because both McCoy and Scotty get such short-shrift on the big screen. McCoy gets plenty of screen time, but he’s usually just someone for Kirk to talk to, rather than a person in his own right, and he never gets anything remotely resembling character development. And Scotty gets lumped in with all the others, generally getting four lines of purely functional dialogue and one moment of comic relief per movie. But in the original series, he’s possibly the most able and vital member of Kirk’s crew after Spock – perceptive, shrewd, level-headed, warm and of course an engineering genius. Here, something like that character is back and it’s a pleasure to see him, albeit now as somewhat of a gasbag. The gag of having him survive for decades in the transporter pattern buffer is very clever and it’s a complete delight to luxuriate in the nostalgia of this episode. Eventually of course, it turns out that he has something to learn from the 24th century and the 24th century has something to learn from him, but this never feels cloying or saccharine. I note that this episode edits out the movies too – the transporter effect and the Holodeck recreation of the bridge of the Enterprise are both 60s versions, not later.

TNG S06E05 Schisms (). The crew of the Enterprise is tackling a globular cluster, but there’s an ointment you can get which will clear that right up. Riker is having trouble sleeping, but Data has a cure: his poetry which is enough to put anyone out for the night. Meanwhile the sensors are on the fritz and other officers are starting to complain of similar symptoms. This one doesn’t cut very deep into any of our characters but it’s an engaging mystery, with a satisfyingly detailed solution and Jonathan Frakes is as watchable as ever. This is a high 3.5 but the spooky camerawork in the climax persuades me to round up rather than down. It’s also cool that we don’t get a complete solution to the mystery. It’s fun to think that there are still some strange new worlds out there…

TNG S06E06 True Q (). The Enterprise is saddled with an intern, but she’s of surprising interest to Q, who we haven’t seen in some time (not since the incredibly uninteresting Qpid in Season 4). Q is implacably opposed to the Protestant work-ethic which Crusher, Picard and co. are intent on instilling in young Amanda. Like a divorcing parent, Picard insists that he and Q display a united front in front of their charge. Immature characters with god-like powers is scarcely a new Star Trek concept but there’s an intriguing glimpse here into what it would actually be like to be suddenly granted them. On the other hand, Amanda’s mooning after Riker is exactly the same kind of adolescent view of sex and relationships which dogs all four Berman series.