I’ve rewatched “Suddenly Human” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 4) and no, it’s not another episode about Data, as you could have thought, judging by the title. It’s an episode about a human boy raised by an alien race, humanoid, of course, but still quite different from Earth inhabitants. (Spoilers!) Enterprise stumbles upon a destroyed alien ship and saves the survivals. Among them, doctor Crusher finds a human teenager, who claims that he’s Talarian and therefore is to be returned to his captain. Enterprise crew finds out that he’s a son of two officers, who were killed by Talarians many years ago. They are afraid that he was abused by his “comrades” and captain and want to return him to his grandmother. The Talarian captain arrives, speaks to captain Picard (who finds out, that he wasn’t brutalizing the boy) and meets the boy. Picard still tries to create some kind of bond and understand the boy better, talk to him, plays Racquetball, takes him to “Ten Forward” to meet Wesley. It all ends up with the boy attacking captain at night, not killing him, but supposing that he’s now to be executed. Picard finds out that the boy still wants to return to his father (the Talarian captain) and finally returns him. An interesting episode about found family.
I’ve rewatched “Family” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 2). You don’t expect your Star Trek right after two creepy Borg episodes to be so sweet, but it is because it corresponds with the title directly: it’s about Worf’s parents, Picard’s brother and Wesley’s father. Enterprise is being repaired on Earth, so Worf’s parents came on the ship to visit. They are… unusual – they are called Sergey and Elena Rozhenko, they come from Earth Station Bobruisk (just so that you know, Bobruisk is a real city in Belarus) and they have a strong Russian accent (Chekov-nostalgia). They are also very sweet and tell Worf that they are going to love and support him during his Klingon problems they don’t understand. Wesley receives a holo-message from his father which was recorded when Wesley was only a few weeks old. Captain’s story is the most interesting – he came to Earth to his home-village where his brother with his wife and son live now and holds the family business – winery. Jean-Luc and his brother don’t get along well, Picard’s old friend offers him a good place at some big and interesting marine project and Picard catches himself thinking of it. Then he fights his brother (literally fights in the mud), they get drunk together and he feels better. A very good episode.
I’ve rewatched “The Best of Both Worlds” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 3, episode 26 – season 4 episode 1). It’s one the most important episodes of those series – it’s a very Borg episode. (Spoilers!) It’s the one in which Captain Picard was kidnapped by Borg and transformed into a Borg himself – Locutus of Borg. It’s very creepy, especially considering that he had all his memories during the experience and that he remembered everything about being a part of Borg afterwards. How Riker has to become a Captain for some time and to make a young recently transferred commander, who reminds him of himself when he only began serving on the Enterprise and who thought that Riker’s going to become a captain on another ship and she’s going to become the first officer on the Enterprise, his first officer was also very tense and interesting to observe. The moment when Data has to connect to Locutus to connect to the Borg cube and take control over it was very cool too, especially when Locutus woke up and tried to attack people around him and Data just disconnected his hand. Wow. It was a great episode and a great way to keep people watching the series (splitting it in two and end the season on the first part).
I’ve rewatched “Final Mission” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 9). It’s one of the episodes in which we see Jean-Luc and Wesley bonding. Ensign Crusher sees a father figure in his captain and they both are afraid to cross boundaries but slowly and steadily grow closer to each other. (Spoilers!) Here they crush on a deserted planet with an impulsive “captain” of a mining shuttle, try finding water and shelter. Because of the “captain”, our captain (oh god, I’ve just called Jean-Luc Picard “our captain”…) gets injured, so Welsey has to manage the situation himself. Well, he manages to some point – the “captain” dies, but ensign gets to the water and saves Picard. By the way, the episode is called “Final Mission”, because Wesley is leaving to the academy and Jena-Luc says that he envies him and that he has to meet his friend – Boothby – a groundkeeper.
I’ve rewatched “Future Imperfect” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 8). It’s a very interesting episode, as any episode about some kind of parallel universe/unreal future. Riker, Worf and Geordi beam down on some weird empty planet, experience some transporter malfunction (of course, what else?) and… (Spoilers!) Riker wakes up in the sickbay and Beverly says that this weird planet happened sixteen years ago, when he was infected with some virus, which manifested only now and erased all his memories of those sixteen years. So, now he’s the captain of Enterprise, he has a son, whose mother died two years ago. Federation is in the middle of the process of negotiations with the Romulan Empire – they are going to sign the peace treaty (peace treaty. With Romulans. Surprise!). Picard (who’s an admiral now) and Troi (who’s serving with the admiral in command) are persuading the Romulans are sincere and that Riker is a clue person in negotiations. Well, the moment I saw the Romulan ambassador, I remembered the main plot twist, but then it turned out that it was not the last twist. Riker sees Tomalak and doesn’t believe him, but it’s not all. He spends time with his son and decides to see his late wife and she turns out to be Minuet. Riker rushes to the bridge, shouts at Geordi that his diagnostic is taking too long, he asks Data to do some calculations and he’s also doing it too slow. William asks Tomalak directly if it’s enough? Tomalak agrees and Riker finds himself on the Romulan base, he is held hostage and Romulans were using some mind-reading device to find some strategic information. Then it appears that the boy is real and was used to produce those illusions for Riker. The boy helps commander run, but then some more inconsistencies appear, the Romulan base also disappears and Riker stays alone with the boy, who’s member of some extinct race, who was left of the planet with the mind reding devices to provide him with pleasant illusions, but he feels lonely and that’s why he kidnapped Riker. Commander, of course, isn’t offended and takes the boy with him on Enterprise. (I’ve noticed, that more emotions I had while watching/reading something, the longer the post about it is. As you could have noticed I liked that episode very much.)
I’ve rewatched “Reunion” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 7). It’s another very Klingon episode, including K'ehleyr and a lot of politics. (Spoilers!) The emperor is dying – he found out that somebody was slowly poisoning him through the wine. Now he wants Picard to take to rule after him for some time to find who was the murderer – unworthy of being called a Klingon. K’ehleyr as an ambassador is involved in all this mess and Worf has problems dealing with Klingons (because he’s dishonoured – his father was claimed to be a traitor), but these are not the only problems – K’ehleyr has somebody very special with her – Alexander her and Worf’s son. On the one hand, Worf doesn’t want his dishonour to fall on his son, in case the boy would want to live in the Klingon Empire, on the other hand, it’s still his son. The big political problem is that there are two competitors, who want to rule the Empire next and one of them killed the previous Emperor. During one of the meetings an explosion occurs and it appears to be of Romulan origin, so captain Picard has to play for time to investigate, but K’ehleyr investigates faster – she finds out that Duras’ father was the traitor, she tries to threaten him, but he kills her, so Worf goes to the Klingon ship for vengeance and kills Duras. Now he has no living witnesses for his father’s innocence and a strain on his Starfleet record and he has to send his son to his human parents. If I do recall this correctly, this story will have its continuation.
When you grow up watching a show… you honestly never imagine that you’d make something that’s officially licensed by it. I am not myself a fangirl type of person. I like the things that I like, but I don’t squeal, you know. I keep it cool. ;)
Making products with Star Trek has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. The Picard Sweater is our latest Star Trek creation, just in time for the launch of Star Trek: Picard.
You have made it possible by believing in our small brand! What’s the next frontier folks?
[Image description Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death saying “Oh, well, a vacation is a period of leisure. Your time is yours to do with as you please.” Second panel is his crew replaced by Kirk, Rom, and Picard from Star Trek with Ron saying “What the hell’s a vacation?” and Picard asking “What is the punishment if we don’t?”]
This isn’t a review, this is a love letter to the fantastic work that resulted in this awesome 1/6 scale Captain Jean Luc PicardbyEXO-6, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Star Trek First Contact. I spent an entire week on social media singing its praises and I’m doing it again here!
As someone who spent a fair portion of our 365 Days of Movies project covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe it truly pains me to say this but… I’m kind of over comic book movies: at least for the moment. As much as I heart Marvel and as much as I hate DC, I’m just… I’m good on the comic book front for a while. I’m a bit shell shocked from these larger than life struggles watching characters that are essentially gods use their magical powers and chemically enhanced talents to save space time forever while straining to save their personal relationships in the B line.
It’s fun, it’s been brilliantly executed (at least by Marvel), and I want more of it, just… not yet. I love the grounded realism and the honest human relationships that the MCU has built their success around but sometimes I want some subtlety, some nuance, and most of all some optimism.
The world of comic book movies has been a dark and serious place over the last decade and for the most part, that’s a great thing. Grounding such fantastical characters such as Thor, Loki, and even Superman in a realistic modern world with concrete motivations, abilities, and limitations is exactly what needed to happen for the medium to thrive in our present day. But in a world where death can rain from the sky at any time be it aliens through wormholes or planes through buildings, even the smartest, snarkiest, and bravest of SUPERHEROES can’t avoid a healthy dose of PTSD. So where does that leave US? Where can we turn when the ominous pressure of looming apocalypse gets to be too much? I believe the answer is the same now as it has been for the last 50 years.
The world needs Star Trek.
Now to be clear, I don’t mean JJ Abram’s masterful re-envisioning of the Star Trek Cinematic Universe, if you will. Although I love it and have literally received permission from my wife to name our first-born son Abram, the Star Trek television series have always dug deeper and swung harder than their big screen counterparts. While most casual viewers will remember Star Trek for it’s wild costumes and seemingly endless configurations of almost human foreheads, real Trekkies/Trekkers appreciate it for its deep geopolitical roots, it’s philosophical quandaries, and it’s glimpse into an ideal human future where the best weapons are our words, our integrity, and diplomacy. Maybe with a photon torpedo or two for flavor.
Trek has always been a home for morality, exceptionalism, innovation, and humanity. It asks questions that don’t always have cut and dry answers. As much as I love seeing city destroying robots take a hammer to the face, sometimes I want to see Captain Picard trying to explain to Data why terrorism is effective, and sometimes it’s the only choice, but that still doesn’t necessarily make it right. I know we still have seven whole seasons of TNG to get into that stuff but for one, I’ve seen them all, and secondly, we live in a very different world than we did twenty years ago.
We have new problems and new questions. We have technology (thanks largely to Trek in the first place) whose ultimate ramifications we may not fully understand. Of course there are elements of these issues in modern storytelling. Black Mirror for one does a jaw-dropping job of taking our current cultural and technological obsessions to their logical futuristic extremes. But coming from the mind of biting British satirist Charlie Booker leaves the entire series with a decidedly pessimistic tilt. Game of Thrones has a huge expanse of characters and settings but their politics are largely driven by scandal and flashy reveals. House of Cards is the closest we come to the geo-political aspects but it centers entirely around the sociopathic power grab of a literal murderer. In a world run by Frank Underwoods, we need a Captain Picard.
We need something to help us explore these issues in a way that doesn’t just pretend we can pound these problems into the ground. We need to see people ask questions, think them through, collaborate, and innovate their way to the kind of solutions that Trek always makes us believe are possible. We need a new signpost to the best possible versions of ourselves and that’s what Trek has always been. I need Star Trek. The world needs Star Trek.
In the mood for sailing; shippity ship-ship. Q/P = the best.
…and what if Jean-Luc is the horny one?:
“You’re amazing, Q, but I still need you! Next time, be so kind and snap a bit more- let’s see: Q on Nth degree would do just fine. ..or slap me few times with your magnificent, giant penis. After; you can prosecute and judge me, I promise, or before - as part of the limitless foreplay. Yeah, that would be quite enough for now, thank you, Q.”
My newest treasures. That little photoset is a perfect presentation of his versatility and - at the same time - it provides a little insight into the essence of his wonderful personality and professional awesomeness.
