Wakey! Wakey! It’s Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 18
Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 18 sees season six deliver an uneven batch of episodes ranging from great to groan-inducing.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E12: Ship in a Bottle
Andrew Scott can take a seat, because the real Moriarty’s back in town, a long overdue and very welcome return for our favourite holographic mastermind, who’s accidentally revived by – who else – Reg Barclay and swiftly takes over the ship. It’s a fascinating exploration of holographic rights long before Voyager would run the subject into the ground and yet another of season six’s episodes which deal with transporters and their permutations and possibilities. Daniel Davis is always a delight and this time he’s joined by Stephanie Beecham who seems tickled pink to be having such period-costume fun on a sci-fi show. Although it may take a couple of watches just to double-check if all the matryoshka holodecks make sense (they do), you won’t object to repeatedly watching such a joyful episode.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E13: Aquiel
It’s been a long time since we’ve been troubled by sex pest Geordi but he’s back on his old bullshit in this half-baked murder mystery mash-up with John Carpenter’s The Thing. Investigating a murder at a remote relay post, Geordi starts to form a post-mortem attachment to Lieutenant Aquiel Uhnari as he trawls through her personal logs which is understandable but then he goes the full LaForge when she turns up alive and he starts using everything he’s learned from reading her personal diary to worm his way into her affections. Apart from the uncomfortable boundary issues, the rest of the murder mystery is something of a damp squib, so forgettable that you could be forgiven for it slipping your mind while you’re watching it. It meanders confusingly around a Klingon red herring and some biomimetic nonsense and even Aquiel herself before it turns out the killer has been the one nuzzling at Geordi’s crotch all along.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E14: Face Of The Enemy
If at first, you haven’t abused one of the show’s only female characters enough, Troi, Troi again. At least this time, Deanna’s not subject to a doomed romance with her would-be abuser as the show has been fond of doing but she’s still been abducted and surgically altered against her will in order to facilitate a Romulan defection plot. The mechanics of how and why they came to select Deanna, never mind obtain her without alerting her crewmates to her absence, is never explained and while the defection plot itself is slightly too convoluted for its own good, it’s refreshing to see the Counsellor get in on the action for once, going toe to toe with Carolyn Seymour’s fearsome Commander Toreth (sadly not the same Romulan commander she played in season 2’s Contagion). It’s the only episode to openly reference Spock’s reunification efforts apart from the self-titled two-part episode but this is a much more action and intrigue orientated homage to The Hunt For Red October with a little dash of inspiration for Crimson Tide in the shouty bits. It’s an unfairly underrated episode and certainly one of the finest Troi-focussed episodes the show has to offer. Of course, Deanna’s not the only one to have had a make-over. Worf’s luxurious locks are now styled in a manly ponytail, a look he would retain for the rest of his Trek appearances – because he’s worth it.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E15: Tapestry
Picard was dead to begin with. As dead as a door nail. That one thing you must remember or nothing that follows will seem wondrous. The episode begins in media res as Doctor Crusher prepares for an incoming medical emergency and, to our shock, the critical patient is a fatally wounded Picard, who promptly dies on the operating table and finds himself visited by the guest star of episodes past. Q offers Picard the chance to go back to the point where he lost his heart to a starship trooper and change his destiny. But, like Merida, he finds that changing his fate comes with some unforeseen consequences and it’s not too long before Picard decides its a wonderful life after all and asks Q to make it ‘best of three’ in the heart-stabbing stakes. With much of the regular cast absent for the episode, this is the Picard and Q show as our redoubtable captain tries to correct the excesses and arrogance of his youth. It’s interesting to see everyone in the movie uniforms, suggesting that Starfleet was able to resist changing its uniforms for over fifty years and at least this time they’ve got the proper undershirts unlike Yesterday’s Enterprise. Perhaps the best thing about this episode though is that it leaves the ending ambiguous. Having delivered a tale of the value of hard-won experience versus forewarned caution it then refuses to state definitely whether the adventure really happened or whether Q and the visit to his own past was only ever in his mind.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E16: Birthright Part I
Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 18 brings us the start of one of TNG‘s most tedious and ramshackle two-parters. It’s the kind of two-parter we’d have got back in season two if they did them then. In fact, it’s not really a two-parter, it’s one and a half episodes’ worth of turgid Klingon POW drama with a bonus half episode cross-over with DS9 that wastes Doctor Bashir and sees Data putting in an early audition to be the three-eyed raven. We’re back to raking through the ashes of the Khitomer massacre from which all of Worf’s backstory seems to be sourced as rumours surface of survivors of the original massacre, possibly even Mogh, Worf’s father. Meanwhile, Data encounters Doctor Bashir tinkering with some alien doodah without authorisation (almost as if the chief of security was otherwise occupied). Worf goes off on another of his wild goose chases and Data gets zapped by said alien doodah, triggering a dormant dream program put there by Doctor Soong. As the Klingon POW drama fills the whole of the next episode, I’ll focus on the Data subplot for this episode (which isn’t mentioned at all in part 2). The dreams are suitably surreal and veteran Trek director Winrich Kolbe gives the episode much needed interest by finding new and innovative ways to shoot the standing sets but there’s no getting away from the fact the HD upscaling is mercilessly unforgiving and so while Data gets all misty eyed over visions of his doppelgängdad all the audience get is an answer to the question: ‘Do androids dream of unconvincing stunt doubles?’
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E17: Birthright Part II
Although Mogh is not amongst them, Worf still finds much to quarrel with the survivors of the Khitomer Massacre until he’s distracted by the half Klingon/ half Romulan Ba’el, daughter of his jailer Tokath. To its credit, the episode devotes a significant amount of time and effort to fleshing out these refugees and their lives of voluntary captivity. The trouble is, their very reasonableness makes Worf look like a racist asshole. Thus he spends much of the episode trying to ‘Make Klingons Great Again’ while the Romulan camp leadership react with increasingly strained tolerance until the threat he presents is so severe they feel they have no alternative but to sentence him to death. Their decision to do it by dramatic firing squad gives Worf just the platform he needs to incite the young Klingons he’s been radicalising to rally around him and reject their friends and family. Ultimately, we have a Star Trek story where one of our heroes finds an idyllic, diverse settlement of Romulans and Klingons living together in peace and systematically destroys it because it offends his sense of racial purity. What an IDIC.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E18: Starship Mine
It’s Die Hard on the Enterprise although as the Captain, Picard can hardly claim to the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, this is definitely not a Christmas movie. Of course, to the gang planning to raid the Enterprise of precious trilithium, Picard is very much in the wrong place at the wrong time but they don’t know who they’re dealing with initially thanks to Picard’s claim to be Mr Mot the barber. The episode moves along at (an occasionally literal) breakneck speed, all the better to prevent you from dwelling on the fact this is yet another episode which illustrates just how absurdly easy it is to take over the Federation flagship. It’s a fun, action-orientated episode giving Picard the lion’s share of the action while the rest of the crew are relegated to attending awkwardly dull drinks reception. It’s just a pity that while Picard takes on the John McLane role, he’s not given a Hans Gruber of his own to yippee-ki-yay against. It does, however, feature a pre-Voyager Tim Russ making the first of several pre-Tuvok appearances in the franchise.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E19: Lessons
If music be the food of love, Picard’s about to go on a crash diet. When a feisty new head of stellar cartography is assigned to the Enterprise, Picard finds himself smitten with her forthright attitude. He’s further enamoured when he discovers she has a penchant for music and invites her to his quarters to show her his Ressikan flute and enjoy his fingering. Unfortunately, the course of true love never did run smooth and it’s not long before Picard finds himself favouring her departmental requests and reluctant to assign her to any missions which may be dangerous. Lessons is a bittersweet love story which benefits from a warm – if not sizzling – chemistry between its two leads and while it gives Stewart an opportunity to play a very different side of Picard, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s a little *too* different. It seems so unlike the Picard we’ve come to know and admire to have his head turned so easily and his heart to overrule his head (especially when he just recently ensured he was stabbed through it so he could live a life of risk) when it comes to his duty as Captain. Wendy Hughes delivers a wonderful performance, though, as Lt Cmdr Nella Daren and although her relationship with Picard was doomed by their mutual devotion to duty, it’s still a shame we never get to see her again.
