{"id":3031,"date":"2022-06-21T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3031"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:10:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:10:48","slug":"trekaday-031","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/21\/trekaday-031\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 031: A Matter of Perspective, Yesterday’s Enterprise, The Offspring, Sins of the Father, Allegiance, Captain’s Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

TNG S03E14 A Matter of Perspective <\/strong>(\"3). Renaissance man Picard is failing art class (according to Data) but succeeding once again as an advocate. Guest stars include Mark Margolis, better known these days from Breaking Bad<\/em> and Better Call Saul<\/em>. Riker\u2019s skin-of-his-teeth transporting off an exploding space station is reason enough to accuse him of murdering its only occupant. So this is basically Poirot<\/em> on the Holodeck, or maybe more accurately Rashomon<\/em> since different witnesses remember the same events in different ways. Not quite the show that we generally get, and rather too in love with its gimmick, whether or not it makes sense (it never makes sense), but Frakes and Stewart are as good as ever and who doesn\u2019t like a murder mystery? Remember how Geordi can tell when people are lying? Not to mention Troi, who sits there mute for the most part. The killer\u2019s motive is purely financial, in this post-money society.<\/p>\n

TNG S03E15 Yesterday\u2019s Enterprise <\/strong>(\"5). In one of the best teasers in the whole of Star Trek<\/em>, a big glowy thing is near the ship when suddenly \u2013 alakazam! \u2013<\/em> there\u2019s a dramatic lighting effect and Tasha fucking Yar is back on the bridge. But, wait, that\u2019s not all. They\u2019re also nose-to-nose with the previous version of the Enterprise<\/em>, NCC1701-C, from decades past. Only Guinan can tell that something is wrong, and you kinda have to give all the time travel technobabble an all-day travel pass, but if you do that, the rewards are tremendous, because, did I mention, Tasha fucking Yar is back on the bridge, and with a better haircut to boot. What\u2019s gutting about this, of course, is they could have brought Denise Crosby back permanently, but here, for basically the first time since Farpoint<\/em>, she\u2019s actually called upon to act, play a character, affect the plot and so on. Rather like the Mirror Universe (oddly never mentioned) this is a glimpse of our regular characters in a very different situation than we\u2019re used to. It all plays brilliantly, and everyone brings their A-game, not just Crosby who gets the meaningful death denied her in Season 1, but also Christopher McDonald, Tricia O\u2019Neill and director David Carson. Worf\u2019s big dick energy is a literal danger to fellow crew members.<\/p>\n

TNG S03E16 The Offspring <\/strong>(\"2.5) Pinocchio recasts himself as Geppetto when Data builds himself a child. The episodic nature of the show means that we can be certain that \u201cLal\u201d won\u2019t become a regular member of the crew, or even the cast, but from the teaser it\u2019s hard to tell whether this will be a rogue-technology-threatens-the-ship story or a let\u2019s-take-a-moment-and-ponder-the-implications-of-our-actions story \u2013 but my money\u2019s on the latter. What this also does is drag us back to the tiresome Picard-hates-kids plot line from Season 1, and uncharacteristically-secretive-Data from Pen Pals<\/em> also makes an unwelcome return. We can\u2019t really blame 1990\u2019s Ren\u00e9 Echevarria for a rigidly binary view of gender, but the conversation clangs on the ear. Data says he was able to provide Lal with more realistic skin and eye colour, but I always thought this was a choice on the part of Soong to remind others that he wasn\u2019t fully human. The contrived tug-of-love battle between Star Fleet and Data ends in the only way it can, but unlike The Measure of a Man,<\/em> this story doesn\u2019t tap into any deeper personal dilemma, so this feels dry and theoretical and ultimately all a bit of a muddle, reaching for a more philosophical and engaging story than it can grasp, and arriving at a conclusion driven by the nature of episodic television rather than its own internal dramatic logic. What I do appreciate is that Picard chews out Data because of his reckless stupidity but then he totally has his back when talking to Star Fleet top brass. That’s some good leadership, right there. Jonathan Frakes\u2019s first time in the director\u2019s chair. He gets better, and gets better material to work with.<\/p>\n

TNG S03E17 Sins of the Father<\/strong> (\"3.5). Extraordinarily, the show remembers what happened in a previous episode and so this is the reciprocal exchange following Riker\u2019s tour of duty on board the Klingon ship in A Matter of Honor<\/em>. Playing Commander Kurn is Tony Todd which is a bit of a treat and, despite my anti-Klingon stance, it\u2019s great fun to see him clomping about the bridge of the Enterprise<\/em>, snarling at Wesley Crusher and shaking up the crew\u2019s complacency. But soap opera shenanigans aren\u2019t too far away as Kurn is actually \u2013 du-du-dum \u2013 <\/em>Worf\u2019s brother and this episode is really about a load of Klingon family history and backstory that I really, really struggle to care about. Kurn disrespecting Worf with ostentatious kindness and politeness is delightful but I\u2019m more interested in the culture clash than the details of the Khitomer massacre which falls squarely into the category of people I don\u2019t know talking about things I\u2019ve never seen. And the officer-exchange programme and all the consequences of that just get shelved as soon as the Khitomer business takes over. The respect that Worf has for Picard and vice-versa is rather touching and Worf\u2019s sacrifice at the end is well-played. As usual, a mystery which has persisted for decades is solved by the Enterprise<\/em> in 40 minutes, even if they end up keeping the secret.<\/p>\n

TNG S03E18 Allegiance<\/strong> (\"3.5) The poker game is back, in the middle of the episode this time. And Picard decides to join them \u2013 or does he? As noted, science fiction in general and Star Trek<\/strong> in particular loves a doppelg\u00e4nger, whether it\u2019s a transporter clone, a mirror universe counterpart, an android, an alien shapeshifter, a time-traveller or some other species of sciencey-sounding magic. Here, what looks like an extra-terrestrial photocopy abducts Picard and leaves a copy in his place. There\u2019s no mystery as far as we are concerned \u2013 we immediately follow the real Captain and his fellow captives \u2013 so the fun lies in seeing how well the imposter will convince the rest of the crew as well as how escape can be accomplished. Rather niftily, the fake Captain explains to Riker that he is going to be acting out of character and craves his indulgence. Clever. Meanwhile, like something out of Sartre, the real Picard is trapped in a small room with three very different characters and trying to get them all to work together. The solution, when it arrives, doesn\u2019t bring the episode to a climax, rather the drama just evaporates \u2013 a common failing of early TNG<\/strong>, possibly a hallmark of outgoing producers Manning and Beimler who get the screenplay credit for this episode.<\/p>\n

TNG S03E19 Captain\u2019s Holiday<\/strong> (\"4) Following a story in which Captain Picard acts erratically and the crew discover that he has been replaced by an alien duplicate, we get a story in which Captain Picard acts erratically but Troi and Crusher\u2019s solution is simply to pack him off to The Eye of Orion<\/span> pleasure planet Risa where he can cos-play as James T Shirtless. Once we arrive on Risa, it\u2019s pretty much the Patrick Stewart show, paired with the lithe form of Jennifer Hetrick as (checks notes) \u201cVash\u201d. There\u2019s not much of substance to this episode, but it is very, very charming. I\u2019m not sure which I like more, Deanna Troi manipulating Picard by inventing a story about her mother visiting the ship or Picard seeing straight through her deception but bowing to pressure anyway. Max Grod\u00e9nchik, who we will be seeing much more of in DS9<\/strong>, makes his first Ferengi appearance. Gotta give \u2019em credit, as bad ideas go, the Ferengi do benefit from a refusal on the producers\u2019 part to quit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TNG S03E14 A Matter of Perspective (). Renaissance man Picard is failing art class (according to Data) but succeeding once again as an advocate. Guest stars include Mark Margolis, better known these days from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Riker\u2019s skin-of-his-teeth transporting off an exploding space station is reason enough to accuse him of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,79,535,528],"class_list":["post-3031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tng","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-MT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3031"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3060,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions\/3060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}