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.
Star Trek fam, please stop recommending newbies skip episodes! Especially the “bad” ones.
Who says what’s bad, anyway? The charm of Trek is its mix of philosophical, cheese, science, fluff, battle, love, adventure, and ham. We all have our preferences, but too—we all need different things, at different times.
The fun of Trek is seeing what happens next. Which category will this episode fit into? And is this an episode where I’ll finally learn this reference, that joke?
comfort drawing for myself of the science boys in the unisex skant, they are looking at unusual readings or something
Image description under the cut
[ID start: full body digital drawing in a simple lineless style of Data and Geordi from Star Trek Next Generation, they are wearing the unisex mini dress uniform, it’s a mostly fitted black t-shirt dress with a yellow rectangle running down the front, they are standing next to each other looking at a data pad. Geordi is a dark skinned young man, wearing a futuristic looking visor, Data is pale skinned young looking man. ID end ]
[Image description Blackbeard from Our Flag Means Death shaved and in Stede’s robe with text “Star Trek TNG season 1” second panel is Blackbeard with his beard, wearing black leather with text “Star Trek TNG season 2”]
