#st tng

Back when I joined the Baker Street discord, they told me Data’s nips had names. I was impressed to say the least.

I drew the last image because evidently I got the nips switched in the first.

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 “Brothers” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 3) and after one episode about the family, they decided to make another one right away, but make it creepier. (Spoilers!) Behold: three Brents Spiner in the same scene (not in the same shot, though). Yes, this episode is about Doctor Soong, Data and Lore. Doctor Soong is dying and so he “summons” Data (makes him come to him so that he loses any free will) in a very inconvenient time for Enterprise, because he made him a chip of emotions (oh, this bad boy is going to play its role later). Unfortunately, Lore was also summoned (to his luck, he was reassembled) and now wants revenge. He secretly turns Data off and takes his uniform, so h gets the chip (which he doesn’t need and which can hurt him) and kills doctor Soong. Data says goodbyes to his father and thinks if he can ever forgive his brother.

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 “Transfigurations” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 3, episode 25). This episode somehow feels like TOS, I don’t know why – it’s about a race of aliens evolving and a less evolved part is discriminating and repressing the other part. (I guess it was a spoiler already…) One of the more evolved aliens is injured and picked up by Enterprise and healed by Doctor Crusher, but doesn’t remember anything and just live on the ship for some time. It turned out he can heal just by touch. Well, while he was being slowly healed Geordi and Data decoded a capsule with the information they had found with him and so they were able to find his home planet and get him there, even though he was protesting and then they found out about the discrimination and evolution, but everything ended up well, the alien was accepted into the evolved part of the race and has transformed into pure light.

I’ve watched (actually some days ago) “Star Trek: Nemesis”. It was very good! The end was especially interesting and unexpected.

(Spoilers!) Engage!

I’ve watched “Star Trek: Insurrection” and liked it. Data singing or “playing” in a rick of hay was vety cute. 

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.

I’ve rewatched “Legacy” (Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 4, episode 6). The episode is pretty interesting and dramatic. The plot – a rescue mission for a crewman, who was taken hostage on the planet Tasha was from. Seems simple, doesn’t it. Well, it would be, if the planet wasn’t being torn apart by some kind partisan civil war and if one of the fractions, which promised to help Federation (Enterprise) rescue the crewman didn’t have Tasha’s sister among them. (Spoilers!) She came on Enterprise to help, she got injured on a mission, grew close to Data, whom she reminded of Tasha, and even started thinking about joining Starfleet and made Worf think that Starfleet will be lucky to have her because she’s brave and selfless. She led them to the final rescue mission and then… betrayed them – it turned out that she led them inside the base of the other fraction not only to get the crewman back but to disable their defence systems and let her comrades attack this base. She was even ready to kill Data to do so. He and Riker didn’t let her, took her on the Enterprise and then returned. Data has experienced his first-ever friend betrayal and doubts if the trust is worth “feeling” this.

Another fake book cover using character sprites from Star Trek Timelines. I’ve wanted to do one with a historical figure and decided to use Amelia Earhart