Remember Me

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Have you ever lost your keys? Well, that's what happens to Dr. Crusher today, only instead of keys it's her recently widower-ed kindly retiree mentor Dr. Dalen Quaice.

Then all her staff vanish.

Even Dr. Selar?! Old Doctor Dude missing: fine, o.k., that's very sad. Missing Vulcan hottie? TRAGEDY!

Then suddenly, nobody's heard of Mr. Worf. "Big guy? Never smiles? THE KLINGON?!"

With every person who vanishes, their computer records also vanish, and everyone's memories except Dr. Crusher's. It begins to look like Dr. Crusher is the faulty one. To everyone else, a ship built for 1000 people with a crew of 200 (and falling) is quite normal.

A vortex of wind and light twice appears when Beverly is alone and almost swallows her. Is she out of her frickin' mind?

Finally, it's just Picard and Crusher, on a bridge with a lot of empty seats, exploring the galaxy together. And then Picard is no more.

Of course, Wesley WAS tampering with the Kosinski Equations. His warp bubble has trapped his mother in a collapsing continuum based on her idle thoughts of loneliness and mortality.

Back in the real continuum, The Traveller reappears and helps Wesley zen motorcycle his way to a solution. Use the forks, Wes!

Inside the bubble, Bev learns the sobering facts: the stars are going missing.

"If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe."

She calls up a graphic of the universe, which is a dwindling squashed sphere now consuming the front end of the ship. Bafflingly, although the graphic shows the bridge is perilously near that collapsing edge, it takes FOUR SOLID MINUTES before Beverly reaches the conclusion I reached instantly. Get off the bridge, woman! Head for the centre of that bubble- engineering! But it wouldn't have been as dramatic if it hadn't been a race against The Nothing.

The Traveller and Wesley go all phase-y see-through during the exciting recovery sequence.

"Remember Me" is still effectively spooky. 'Honey, You Shrunk Your Mom' proves Wesley is probably never going to stop with the mad science projects. But he's also the guy to save you after he endangers you. Because science is ALL about closing your eyes and FEELING the right answers on keyboards. Trust me on this.

Watch, I'll just type a Kosinski equation: 139r{5oa^*%#*sss0= rbg^2348-097...

Drat. Now I'm in an alternate continuum.

Fortunately, I was thinking about Dr. Selar!

The Mark of Gideon

* (1 star out of 5)

"The Mark of Gideon" is the first episode I've seen on this endeavour that made me alter the star rating of the previous one. I had to raise 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield' by one star because NOW it doesn't seem so dull.

Kirk goes missing while beaming down to the zealously isolated planet Gideon.

From Kirk's perspective, everybody disappears from the Enterprise, and a cheerful blonde girl appears who moves at super speed... no, wait, that was 'Wink of An Eye". This blonde's called Odona instead of Deela.

Spock spars with the evasive leadership of Gideon. Oh, does it drag! How many times can you read out transporter co-ordinates, then verify and re-confirm them, guys? Verbally? The answer is seven, it only FEELS like a hundred.

As Kirk says of his mysterious bruise: "It is causing me some irritation."

The big reveal here is that Gideon is so hideously overpopulated that its habitable zones are covered in desperate, miserable people who live long, regenerative lives. Odona says any one of them would kill or die just to get some privacy. But her father Hedin says life is so sacred to them they cannot even allow the use of contraception- but they would rather instigate a plague!

O.K., like last episode's "racism sucks" I appreciate the moral of the story "don't overbreed". I truly do. But... but... as today's Guest Admiral said: "I am waiting for your explanation of why."

Why build a replica of the Enterprise? How did the Gideonites possibly find room for it? It's more than twenty stories high!

They bruised Kirk to steal his blood and infect themselves with his dormant strain of deadly Vegan choriomeningitis. They regret even bruising a stranger, but they want to have their kids volunteer to die? And THIS will make their world a paradise again?

What do they eat? If there's a mass of flesh from sea to people-covered sea, then I hope they like soylent green.

How do they hide so many billions of life-signs from orbital scan- under a really big tarp?

They dress in full body condoms already, but they won't stop having unprotected sex while apparently standing upright in crowds?!?

I swear, I usually like metaphors. I just want them to make some effort at believability.