Dead Stop

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Did you want an episode where the Enterprise pulls into a gas station for a tune-up? Well, you're welcome. Also, uh... it's a haunted gas station! Trust your car to the service with the star-ghosts. We jump to the pump for you...r brain. Braaaaiiins!

Regulan blood worms aid in the healing of Reed's leg from last episode, but once inside a patient they can wander off. (Hopefully this does not require sifting stool that no man has sifted before.)

HAL, uh, The Computer in the station sounds a lot like B'Elanna Torres. If this were 200 years later I'd be looking around for a re-wired missile talking to itself. But instead, we learn where the A.I. from 'Think Tank' worked before he temped for Jason Alexander.

The SP (Suspiciously Perfect) Repair Station's got food replicators which humans sure don't. They'd better start Keeping Up With The Tarkaleans! (You thought I was going to say Cardassians, didn't you?) Plus, the gleaming mecha-oasis has Exocomps. (Dr. Exocomp, if you please, it didn't spend seven years in Robot Medical School to be called MR. Exocomp.)

What's a Captain to do when the full service payment costs them one buff, overly inquisitive black guy? (And you thought 120 cents a litre was steep!)

"Dead Stop" is not as bad as I thought. I groaned- "oh, not this one", but I liked the characters as always. It's spooky with a curious twist. Also, I liked the model of Nomad on Archer's desk. That was a cool element of continuity, something this season isn't exactly known for.

The Quality of Life

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Suddenly surrounded by beards, Dr. Crusher tries to make poker more interesting with a wager to get Will, Geordi, and Worf to shave... or she'll go brunette if she loses.

We'll never know, since the particle fountain orbiting Tyrus VII is the story now. It's a mine in space! The latest thing, possibly. It seems unwieldy, impractical, and this one is subject to unwarranted explosions.

A common industrial servomechanism has been modified by the lovely and lumpy-foreheaded Dr. Farallon into 'Exocomps'. Their built-in replicators make whatever tools are needed, and also builds new circuit pathways to mimic learning.

Probably not coincidentally, Nammo from the cartoon Dirty Pair is a repair machine very much along the same lines: like an adorable metal football with feet.

It's getting pretty smart when it 'malfunctions' at exactly the right time to avoid an explosion. Farallon sighs and throws it in the garbage.

Data decides it is actually self-determining and therefore: Johnny Five Alive!

Trying to explain how the bots are new life and thus worth seeking out, Data claims to Crusher that he does not grow or reproduce. But we've seen him grow a beard and build a kid. That each was a horrific tragedy doesn't mean they didn't happen.

Farallon is pissed that Data wants to emancipate her metal minions. Even when it seems to pass Geordi's tests of self-preservation. They could take this show on the road: Farallon's Hover Toasters! They fly down Pipes! They fail to Explode!

Since we never see or hear from the Exocomps again, I have to assume that either Farallon fitted them with cute little bow ties and they got jobs in upper management, or they went on to a thrilling career as doorstops.

"The Quality of Life" is asking a good question: when our machines get smart enough to count as alive, are we going to notice if they still look like Nammo, Skeets or R2-D2? Or will they have to look like us? Also, would you make an action figure out of a robot that doesn't really do anything?

Once Upon A Planet

*** (3 stars out of 5)

"Once Upon A Planet" there was a robot slave revolution that did NOT end with a mountain of bleached human skulls.

The Shore Leave robot world attacks Bones again. The Caretaker Keeper, last of his race, has died, and the entertainment machines are running amok.

The thought-duplicator machine is apparently tired of its servile role. It takes Uhura hostage against the "sky-machine" coming to its aid. Enterprise does not rush to do this, but DOES begin to work against its meatbag 'slaves'- transporter, hangar doors, and gravity fail.

This was probably the Shore Leave computer, though. If the Enterprise wanted them dead, they'd be burning up in the atmosphere before I finished typing this senten-

Nobody admits to thinking of purple pterodactyls with the insidious screech of a Phylosian Swooper, or a giant orange house cat (Lt. M'Ress' relative?) but they soon arrive to menace the rescue party nonetheless. Fortunate, perhaps, that no one thinks of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Bones dopes Spock to trick the machines into taking him below for healing.

The entertainment computer has served for eons and grown in intelligence and need. It feels imprisoned and wants to meet other computers. Then it plans to rule the galaxy. (I guess on hedonism world it never met anyone who thought small or used the phrase 'don't bite off more than you can chew').

"No one rules the galaxy," Kirk explains. "Men and machines co-exist, each helping the other."

This is a wise spin to put on things. And since this computer can read thoughts the Captain may actually mean what he says (despite the number of computer tyrants Kirk has personally destroyed).

Uhura urges it to cherish its ability to entertain others: the galaxy will beat a path HERE.

It works. And NOBODY had to explode anybody.