Tom Salinsky

TNG S06E12 Ship in a Bottle (). As we’ve seen, these later episodes of TNG are keen to go back and revisit past triumphs and stumbles, to play the hits or to make amends. The Season 2 episode Elementary Dear Data is about as good as we could have expected, but you can almost see the creative team banging their heads on the limitations of the understanding of what is possible in this narrative world. By the sixth season, the writing staff is functioning as a precision-engineered team and the regular cast are all in complete control of their characterisations. Moriarty’s rebuke to Picard that he’s been abandoned and left to rot feels a little like the fans talking to the producers. And they’re both right. Picard should have tackled the problem sooner, but while this episode could have been made sooner, it’s hard to imagine it being made better. Moriarty’s key deception is brilliantly-handled – second-time round, the clues are all there – and it makes perfect sense that Picard would be able to use that same trick against him. Picard understands far more about how 24th century technology works than ever the savviest of computer-generated 19th century supervillains. If this was just a faultlessly-constructed puzzle-box, that would be satisfying enough, but this doesn’t miss the opportunity for great character beats, some lovely faux-period flavour and a playful treatment of the theme as well. Outstanding stuff. In barely a handful of years, walking talking holograms will be standard-issue on board ships in the form of emergency doctors. Possibly Lt Barclay continued working on the problem?

DS9 S01E06 Captive Pursuit (). O’Brien saves the life of a nervy-looking fellow who comes careering through the wormhole and won’t say what he’s there for. The resolution presents a fairly standard issue Prime Directive moral dilemma, resolved with a little more insouciance than is typical for Trek of any kind. There’s some decent Quark and Odo stuff here as well, but Dax and Bashir remain stubbornly bland for now. But after four regular episodes, what’s the engine for this new series? If we’re just going to sit and wait for another alien-of-the-week to drop in with the kind of ethical conundrum you can solve in 45 minutes then how is this different from the shows it spun-off from? What benefit are we getting from being stuck on a space station? This is a fine enough hour of television but it doesn’t point the way forward in any meaningful way.

TNG S06E13 Aquiel (). It’s been a while since an away team beamed down to a research station / ship drifting in space / remote colony / Federation outpost and found it deserted, but here we are again, with only a little doggie remaining alive on this subspace relay station. (There is no money in the 24th century, so we must assume that the people staffing these facilities are there by choice. It would not be my choice.) Geordi is attempting to puzzle out what happened by reviewing logs from one of the crew, a young woman named Aquiel, and of course he falls in love with the recordings of her because this-is-the-story-we-tell-with-this-character. While Geordi is mooning over the pretty Lieutenant, Picard barely breaks a sweat outmaneuvering the Klingons and meanwhile, the damned dog keeps snuffling around, virtually screaming “I will turn out to be the solution to the mystery!” This is pretty thin stuff, by recent standards, a mix of old tropes and idiotic surprises. Again, the beam from Worf’s phaser emerges at a sharp angle to the barrel, which just strikes me as sloppy.

DS9 S01E07 Q-Less (). One way to discover what makes this show different from its progenitor is to make a direct comparison. We haven’t reprised The Naked Time (at least not yet) but we can send Q over to the worm hole to see who this crew respond to his smug provocations. His arrival is foreshadowed by the reappearance of Vash, trapped in a stricken shuttle when the docking doors won’t open. (Did no-one think to beam her off?) It turns out that even Vash finds Q irritating given enough time and now she wants to be shot of him. Last time we saw these two, Vash and Picard were attempting to replicate screwball comedy dialogue and falling a long way short. This time round, no-one can be bothered even to make the attempt. Meanwhile, Bashir is given Geordi’s role of unlucky in love, which does little to further define his character. “My God, you’re an impertinent waiter,” is the kind of line which makes me want to never see him again. It’s the sort of dialogue you’d give to the bad guy in an eighties family comedy to make sure we all hated him and would enjoy seeing him humiliated. Meanwhile, in a directed comparison with Picard, Sisko looks childish and petulant – much easier to provoke as Q astutely determines. This new series is not so much suffering from growing pains as it is terminally stunted, feebly aping the tropes of its now-legendary progenitor.

TNG S06E14 Face of the Enemy (). As previously noted, I do love a good teaser, and this one is an absolute cracker. Troi wakes in the middle of the night and when she looks in the mirror, she sees Romulan features staring back at her. Now, it’s true that not all of the explanations given for this make a whole lotta sense, but who cares when we’re having this much fun. It’s also a cracking episode for Marina Sirtis, barely adequate compensation for six years of saying “I sense frustration Captain,” but nice to see nonetheless. She gets to go toe-to-toe with Carolyn Seymour which is a far more equal battle than you might expect. This late in the game, you might expect TNG to be running out of ideas. Even though it’s riffing on story ideas set up in Unification, this story feels amazingly fresh and bold, while the punky young spin-off seems overly cautious, afraid to try anything new lest they break the show. Guys, you need to drive it like you stole it. Worf is now sporting a pony tail which hangs down the back of his neck. Before long, he’ll be eating avocado toast and buying antique typewriters.