Relax, sit back and enjoy Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 19
Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 19 sees season six end with a strong run and season seven begin with the return of a wrong ‘un.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E20: The Chase
When Picard’s old archaeology teacher drops in for a visit, he brings a special present for Picard: a near mint (not in box) Kurlan Naiskos playset with all the action figures but it’s a bribe. Professor Galen wants Picard to take a leave of absence and accompany him on an archaeological expedition of galactic import. Although tempted, Picard declines the offer and Professor Galen departs in his shuttle, only to be fatally attacked by a Yridian vessel. Investigating the attack, the Enterprise crew discover that Galen was indeed onto something – something the Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians are also keen to get their hands on. It’s a bit of a thrill-ride episode with a dash of Indiana Jones swashbuckle (albeit in a very stuffy Starfleet archaeological way) as the crew follow a treasure map of clues to arrive at the answer to one of the universe’s most burning questions: why do all aliens in Star Trek look like humans with stuff glued to their faces? It turns out the answer is a bit like Prometheus, but without the killer bugs, mad android and profoundly stupid space explorers. This is the first episode ever to feature all four headline Trek races on screen at the same time (Humans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians) and while the mysterious and unnamed alien progenitor is played by Salome Jens who would go on to play the Founder in Deep Space Nine how wild would it have been for them to have been the same character?
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E21: Frame Of Mind
Pity poor Riker. All he’s wanted to do this season is get a bit of kip but as he’s busy rehearsing for Dr Crusher’s latest and, apparently, most disturbing play he finds himself suffering from some kind of psychotic break and his concept of reality literally starts to fracture around him. A bravura script from Brannon Braga, this one really puts Riker through the wringer and cleverly flips the premise of last season’s First Contact on its head by creating a situation where Riker may or may not be undercover on an alien planet and may or may not be insane and delusional (although because we’ve watched the previous 145 episodes we can be reasonably confident he is a starship commander and not a crazy person). Frakes really ups his game in this episode and it’s becoming more apparent that Riker’s a character who’s at his best when he’s pushed to the ragged edge.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E22: Suspicions
Merry Christmas! And what could be more Christmassy than a bit of Agatha Christie on the telly? Well, hold on to your medical tricorders because Dr Crusher fancies herself something of a Miss Marple in this technobabble tale of murder most foul! Attempting to help Dr Reygar, a Ferengi scientist who is developing revolutionary metaphasic shielding, Dr Crusher invites a group of other scientists to the Enterprise to peer review the work. But when the test pilot, a Takaran scientist named Jobril is killed during a failed experiment, it seems the technology may be a dead end. The plot thickens, however, as Dr Reyga is found murdered and Dr Crusher discovers evidence suggesting the test flight had been sabotaged. Determined to find the culprit, Crusher begins an investigation which threatens to end her Starfleet career. It’s a cute murder mystery and Gates McFadden clearly relishes the opportunity to do more than press a hypo spray to other people’s necks and while it’s no Knives Out, the solution to the whole mystery is still satisfyingly twisty.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E23: Rightful Heir
Having become jaded in his duties, Worf takes some leave to visit the Klingon monastery on Boreth and while there he experiences a vision of mythical Klingon warrior Kahless. Only it’s not a vision, it’s literally the second coming of Kahless. The reappearance of, effectively, the Klingon Jesus causes something of a constitutional crisis for Gowron, leader of the Klingons as the Empire threatens once again to fall to factionalism. As Gowron challenges the validity of the newcomer, it’s eventually revealed that Kahless is actually a clone created by swabbing the Klingon equivalent of the Shroud of Turin or some such and in the end, it ends unusually for matters of a Klingon nature, not with bloodshed but with a detente of sorts as Kahless ascends to the figurehead position of Emperor, to guide the spirit of the people while Gowron retains the role and real power of Chancellor. A pretty good episode all around which manages to avoid getting suffocated by its heavy Klingon content and even weightier religious themes.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E24: Second Chances
Remember back at the start of the season where everyone mocked Barclay for being afraid of transporters because they virtually never go wrong and yet here we are, the fifth episode of the season to deal with a transporter-gone-wrong storyline. This time, in keeping with accidental seasonal alignment, it’s Riker who’s visited by the ghost of missions past as he learns he’s got a ‘brother’, created during a transporter accident some eight years previously. It’s a clever conceit to allow a sci-fi exploration of the age-old idea of what your past self would make of the person you’ve become and, in many ways, Riker is a great character to do it with. Apparently the production team briefly considered ‘killing’ off Will Riker and having ‘Thomas’ join the permanent cast but it would have been a change too far for a series this long in the tooth and starting to eye up big-screen aspirations. Of course, alt-Riker is disappointed his counterpart never managed to seal the deal with Counsellor Troi and sets out to make up for lost time but the episode never gets bogged down in romantic melodrama. It’s a confident directorial debut from LeVar Burton, who manages to the complex visual effects the story requires well and it’s a nice touch that the episode also features a cameo from real-life space pioneer Dr Mae Jemison.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E25: Timescape
Returning to the Enterprise from a conference, a runabout containing Picard, Troi, LaForge and Data encounters some odd temporal anomalies and when they reach the ship they find it completely frozen in time, mid-battle with a Romulan Warbird. Superficially, the set-up (the Enterprise coming to the aid of a Romulan vessel) bears striking similarities to The Next Phase but while that was a sci-fi contemplation of mortality and life after death, this is a much more down-the-line adventure yarn as Picard and co try to solve the mystery of what caused the temporal anomaly and how to rescue their friends. There are fun and hijinks along the way, including Picard’s brush with temporal psychosis and the emergence of a second threat, an alien race who mistook the Romulan’s artificial singularity drive for a place to raise their young. Brannon Braga delivers another fine script and director Adam Nimoy handles the extremely technical demands of the high concept show work. It’s a wonderfully constructed puzzle as the crew find their frozen shipmates in various tableaux, adding to the mystery of just what was going on when time broke down. It’s another high concept triumph for the series and one of my personal favourites.
Star Trek The Next Generation S6E26: Descent
The Borg are back, and they’ve got a new target in their sights: Data. But these aren’t quite the Borg we’re expecting. They’ve got names, they’ve got individual personalities and they have a leader. I guess it turns out that the idea the Borg could no more disconnect a drone than a person could an arm or a leg turned out to be pretty wide of the mark given the Borg swiftly cut loose any drones which were infected by Hugh’s individualism. They have a funky new ship and a fierce new attitude but there’s no denying the Borg feel diminished in this episode. They’re not so much about conquering and assimilating as they are being anonymous henchmen to Brent Spiner’s hammiest turn as Lore yet. In an attempt to spin up some kind of momentum for a season finale, we get action, adventure, drama, intrigue and improbable command decision, such as emptying the Enterprise of all but a skeleton crew to conduct a manual search of a planet, leaving Doctor Crusher in command. We’re left with Picard, Troi and LaForge captured by Lore and Data having apparently turned to the dark side, joining his brother in his out-of-nowhere plan to destroy the Federation.
Star Trek The Next Generation S7E01: Descent Part II
With Picard, Troi and Geordi captured by Lore, it’s up to Riker, Worf and some unexpected allies to rescue them. Meanwhile, Doctor Crusher is in command of the Enterprise and determined to rescue the crew stuck on the planet’s surface. With a script which can’t make its mind up whether emotions can or can’t be positive or negative, there’s a lot going on in this second part of the story but it never feels like it matters and there’s never a sense of any real peril. Hugh’s return is a welcome one but it only serves to underline how much this story treats the Borg as toothless cannon fodder, without malice or menace while Brent Spiner struts about hamming it up and chewing the scenery with his trademark ‘evil’ enunciation. There were apparently plans to return to this group of Borg later in the season or on DS9 but they came to nothing. Crusher’s command of the Enterprise is actually pretty good and Gates McFadden shows she would make a pretty kick-ass Captain but her sequences are saddled with a needless side-plot about a new ensign who needs a confidence boost. But the very worst thing about this damp squib of a season opener is in its final moments when Geordi convinces Data not to destroy the emotion chip, thereby ensuring that #StarTrekGenerations would be rubbish.
