Take a seat, Commander. It’s time for the Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Omnibus Vol 3!
Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 3 brings us within sight of the finish line of season one of Star Trek The Next Generation, allowing us to marvel at the fact it ever got a second.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E17: Home Soil
Ugly bags of mostly water get stuck in the mud until the mud gets stuck into them. It’s crystal clear what needs to be done but will the crystals let Picard do it? Yes, once he apologises for attacking them by torturing them.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E18: Coming Of Age
If nothing else, this is the episode which originates the ‘Riker Manoeuvre’ chair technique. Wesley’s ‘homeschooling’ gets tested because apparently Starfleet only accepts one applicant per year? Funny way to run the service, especially given how quickly they go through ‘redshirts’. Meanwhile, Head Office audit the Enterprise (dull but sort of pays off later in the season).
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E19: Heart Of Glory
Wesley and Troi are AWOL for this backstory dumping Worf episode where he expounds his character bio to a group of dissident Klingon terrorists. Before you can say ‘here’s gun we made earlier’, the Klingons Blue Peter themselves a disruptor pistol and try to take over the Enterprise and revenge themselves upon the ‘traitors of Kling’ (later renamed Qo’noS)! We also discover how fragile those glass walkways in engineering are but it’s nice to see the reuse of TMP footage and hear Goldsmith’s Klingon theme.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E20: The Arsenal Of Freedom
Unlike its football team namesake, this episode isn’t a late-season disappointment, it’s quite the opposite. A fun if hokey and ham-fisted allegory of unrestrained military build-up, it features a great guest appearance from Vincent Schiavelli as a kind of outer space pre-‘Iron Man’ Tony Stark. You have to wonder why the crew didn’t just lure the Borg back to this planet and let the adaptive algorithms fight it out? Anyway it’s no surprise this episode’s engineer-of-the-week didn’t get the permanent gig though. What an asshole!
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E21: Symbiosis
It’s the wrath of cameos as not one but two Star Trek II alums guest star. Dr Crusher and Picard wrestle with a big pharma allegory while Wesley and Lieutenant Yar find themselves trapped in a twee after-school special about the dangers of drugs. Picard’s imperious Judgement Of Solomon coup de grâce makes the episode, though.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E22: Skin Of Evil
Lieutenant Yar escapes formal court-martial for repeated, egregious incompetence by dying. Much of the episode is spent hastily creating last minute ‘meaningful’ connections with the rest of the crew to make what happens next matter but the event itself is so abrupt, it almost doesn’t. And what’s with the Nickelodeon splat on her cheek? Even the make-up artist certified this episode ‘rotten’. And adding insult to (fatal) injury, Yar’s funeral turns into a hagiography for the surviving characters instead of focussing on the dearly departed.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E23: We’ll Always Have Paris
It’s particularly cruel to have an episode about time distortions and time loops after killing off a main cast member. I remember being convinced Yar would somehow be resurrected because of the Manheim Effect and can’t forgive this episode for that! Or indeed for a title which feels like it was decided separately and then this episode was retrofitted to accommodate it.
Star Trek The Next Generation S1E24: Conspiracy
The first phaser shaves you close, the second closer still. The best season one episode a fan can get even if the cliffhanger is ignored for the rest of the franchise. Hardly the first time Starfleet Command will be shown to be corrupt or compromised but definitely the most intriguing. It almost sets the template of huge, cataclysmic events never being spoken of again that Star Trek Discovery would come to rely on so heavily. This episode also opens with Geordi telling a dirty joke on the bridge which has to be the weirdest cold open to date and thus far hasn’t been copied by any other show, although it does foreshadow his development into Starfleet HR’s biggest nightmare.
