Conundrum

***** (5 stars out of 5)

Is there life in the Epsilon Silar system? Who knows! We're not going to find out today!

Troi beats Data at chess. While you're trying to wrap your head around that, consider this. "Chess is a game of intuition." she gloats. Really? Really.

Soooo... is Troi cheating or is Data buttering her up for some reason? Maybe he's hoping for a promotion... or a date? He is eager to fix her a drink.

The Cliffs of Heaven on Sumiko IV (Holodeck Program 47-C) is the setting for another diving injury to Captain Liberty's descendant Kristin. Dr. Crusher suggests the Emerald Wading pool

on Cirrus IV instead. Really, what matters is that I retained that while staring at Liz Vassey in a bathing suit.

Riker chews Ro out for doing things. Rules, blah blah, bladdy blah. I'm sure it was important, but he's not in a bathing suit and neither is she, so I drowned it out.

Suddenly, a green beam makes everyone forget their identities. Even Extra First Officer looks confused. Still, it's not all bad. The crinkly-nosed woman remembers how to be a pilot. The guy with the metal baldric remembers tactics. The guy with the cool shades knows how to run computers and retrieve personnel files. Baldric Guy and Nose Girl place a high priority on weapons and defence, tying up computer resources. It slows Doctor Lady down in finding out what's wrong.

Robot Bartender and Telepath Gal await further instructions while Beard Man hits on Nose Girl.

Turns out their so-called Federation of Planets is at war with the genocidal Lysian Alliance. Enterprise is on a covert mission to destroy Lysian Central Command.

Now with names but still memory-free, Ro sets up shop in Riker's bed:

"For all we know, you and I could hate each other."

"What if I snore in my sleep?"

"What makes you think you're going to get any sleep?"

The Lysian ship they encounter is massively outclassed and easily destroyed. Hooray! Picard questions the morality of this and Extra First Officer MacGuffin, uh... MacDuff cannot stress enough how important it really is that they kill every single Lysian bastard ever spawned.

MacDuff, as it happens, is one of those guinea-pig eating creatures from 'V' and gets his fiery phaser comeuppance.

Ro had to keep elbowing past Troi to get to Riker's kissy face, but when their memories are restored it's HIM they blame for his Man-Whore Ways! Is that fair, I ask you? Is it fair to accuse men of being sex-obsessed? What's that? You'll have to speak up, I'm staring at Liz Vassey's bathing costume.

"Conundrum" is really quite cleverly written, a keen piece of acting, and GEEZ, did they just phaser that guy's skin off, or what? I'm going with hologram, myself. Also, on a related note, I hope the Federation sent some condolence cheeses to the Lysians.

The Masterpiece Society

* (1 star fragment out of 5)

While chasing a chunk of neutron star, Enterprise discovers an unexpected human colony dome on Moab IV.

To save them from the quakes the star will cause, they plan to evacuate. But the locals won't hear of it. They've put a lot of time into their horrible little planet, and an obsessive, dare I say, insane amount of pre-planning. Eight generations of selective breeding over two centuries has led to handsome, bland, nay blandsome Aaron Conor.

Everyone is bred for their purpose. No poets remain unknown labourers here. They're as homogenous as they come, filled with arrogant certitude from perfect birth to snooty death.

"Am I making this sound incredibly dull?" Oh, don't hang a lantern on it, man! Just hit on Deanna by the numbers and leave us out of it.

Local scientist Hannah Bates teams her smarts with Geordi's tech to create a multiphase tractor beam to move the stellar fragment instead. (Conveniently, no one will ever remember this miraculous star-pushing invention or speak of it again.)

While bragging about how many things the diverse and unplanned Federation has invented in the time it took the Moab Colony to stagnate into pointless tedium, Geordi says there's over a century of evidence that the transporter does not affect DNA. (Worryingly, we will later learn it has been in use for more than TWO centuries. Transporters: Flipper Baby free since 2263!)

Picard doesn't approve of genetic engineering. "It was a bad idea whose time has long past." (Plus it's hard to avoid Keniclius Gigantism or the dreaded Shrinkage of Terratin.)

The key to the multiphase tractor beam is making it work like a VISOR. Which Geordi gloats about. Yes, yes, the Genome Colony terminate imperfect offspring, so they never invented the tech that would have saved them. They would have fried like eggs. Very ironic. Petty, Geordi, real petty.

Troi and Aaron had what I infer was the dullest pre-planned sexual coupling in the history of the planet. She makes some noise about how she could easily fall in love, but it amounts to dumping Marlon Bland-o.

Geordi and Hannah read off numbers for far too long, somehow making the first time a starship ever pushed a star into an even bigger drag.

Picard cannot ignore Hannah or the others of Genome Colony who request asylum, but if they take two dozen of them away somehow the thousands who remain will lose their perfect world. I have a hard time feeling even slightly sorry for them, maybe because I don't understand this problem.

If 23 people leave, can't you just ask the Federation for 23 volunteers to live in a sterile, tedious little dome on some backwater shit hole? Oh, I see the problem now. Aaron might've phrased it better, though.

"The Masterpiece Society", sorry to say, is weak sauce. Maybe it's meant as an indictment against the utopia Star Trek posits. Criticizing a show for being dull with a dull show seems self-defeating, however.

Violations

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Enterprise is bringing telepathic Ulian historians to Kaldra IV. The garb of the Ulian is, for some reason, cut up like paper snowflakes. It is the only charming thing about them.

The Ulians' leader, chunky old Tarmin, helps Keiko retrieve a memory of her Obachan. He is eager to retrieve memories for everyone, but the crew is a little squeamish. Worf pretty much says it all: "Klingons do not allow themselves to be... probed."

Tarmin brags about how much better he is at telepathy than his withdrawn son Norman... uh, Jev.

Yet soon we learn that Jev IS proficient enough to probe Counselor Troi into a coma. Jev forces his way into her memory, and twists a post-poker game smooch with Riker into an assault.

Jev dodges Riker's investigation by invading Will's mind. He's tormented by the order he recently gave that cost the life of Ensign Keller. And now there's two comas.

When Beverly Crusher starts prying, she conveniently drops into a coma also. She's haunted by the memory of the starbase morgue where she viewed Jack's body alongside bandaged Captain Picard.

"Will keeping telepaths in their quarters prevent it from happening again?" Geordi asks, quite sensibly, when Picard orders it.

Geordi uncovers two cases of weird coma on Jarada III at the same time the Ulians were there. Jev is less particular about who he violates than anyone ever: at least, if that's the planet of the giant cockroaches mentioned in Season 1. I believe I speak for everyone when I say... ICK.

Troi awakens after three days but cannot recall her nightmare. Jev, under supervision, "recovers" Troi's memory... of Tarmin assaulting her.

About to get away with it, Jev cannot resist going back for thirds and is caught making another attack on Troi. She gets in a few good punches before Worf takes the frakker down.

"Memory invasion is simply not a crime that we've ever had to contend with," says Picard. What? WHAT? WHAT? No Romulans or Vulcans have ever tried to pull this crap in the hundreds of years you've known them? Not once? Think hard. I know Vulcans are the good guys, but come on. Mr. Spock's maneuver on Valeris was very much a memory invasion. Necessary perhaps, but arguably criminal.

The punishment for Jev is quite severe. I'm guessing it's not the gas chamber if they're Federation, but if it's a lobotomy it couldn't happen to a creepier guy. Misuse it and lose it.

"Violations" is the first episode made after Mr. Roddenberry's death. Some very ugly concepts are on display here. It's effective, scary drama.

Hero Worship

** (2 stars out of 5)

Starship Vico is found damaged and drifting in the Black Cluster. (Confusingly, this Cluster was named for its mostly blue colour.) Somehow, mighty Enterprise is unable to download the stricken ship's logs though the emergency bulkheads (they block the wifi or something).

An away team braves the rumbling, crumbling vessel and returns with the lone survivor.

He had to be rescued from under a victurium alloy beam that blocked the transporter. I understand the necessity of plot devices, but I'm dubious. The boy is clearly visible. The troublesome alloy is only above him. Can't this marvellous teleporter get him out at another angle?

Anyway, heroic Data saves Little Orphan Timothy. Timmy relates a story of an attacking boarding party, but apart from his account, there's no evidence. According to this episode and the previous one, Kid Plus Dead Mom Equals Liar.

Also like Alexander, Timothy's desperate for a role model. His tormented mind concocts the solution of becoming an android just like Data.

As ever, procedure with trauma-shocked orphans is leaving them by themselves in empty rooms. Where the holy hell are Troi and the other counsellors? Wouldn't he need more attention than a daily appointment? 'Here's your quarters, there's the replicator. Now don't go anywhere, and be less sad. Later, 'gator!'

Anyway, Troi calls his condition enantiodromia: defined as something you say to remind people you have a psychology degree when they've lost faith in your general knowledge. Troi has Data play along with Timothy's android fantasy. Their antics include slicking their hair back, making bird-like head tilts, and field-stripping the engine nacelles while clinging to the outside of the ship.

Soon, Deanna has Data scooching Tim back toward humanity. The real android remarks with plaintive subtlety: "I cannot take pride in my abilities. I cannot take pleasure in my accomplishments... I would gladly risk feeling bad at times if it also meant that I could taste my dessert."

Some of Timothy's suffering stems from his mistaken belief that HE destroyed his ship. The true cause is discovered to be a reflective gravitational wave front that bashes ships harder and harder the stronger their shields. Only by lowering their barriers can they be saved.

METAPHOR! FACE-PUNCHING METAPHOR!

"Hero Worship" wraps up the destruction of a child's entire support structure and his speedy recovery in short order. Then it shoves him into the same Oblivion Closet as Worf's adopted brother Jeremy Aster and Riker's beloved fake son Barash. Or maybe Data sent him to live with the Rozhenkos. I understand they're not busy anymore.

New Ground

** (2 stars out of 5)

Worf's mom drops by with that thing he left at her house. Alexander. He's HUGE! Nobody mentions time warps, but if you'll recall, he's not more than three years old. I guess Klingons grow fast. Nana Rozhenko is insistent that the boy remain with his father. Ruh-Roh!

Worf quickly learns how ill-prepared he is for true fatherhood. He doesn't even know Alexander's birthdate is the 43rd day of Maktag. If that's a real thing. There's some suggestion that Alexander is kind of a liar. That or his mom gave him cake for breakfast every day.

Bilana III is testing a new soliton wave. What a sensible, pronounceable way to spell that. Bilana. Bilana. Not nearly so difficult as when it's a Klingon female's proper name. (More on that later.)

Geordi is thrilled to be here to see this! Ships without nacelles will be riding soliton waves through warp space like surfboards. Data, Worf, and the entire audience shrug. Why? Because it's a terrible plan...

That's right. It's a warp drive, but without all that pesky being able to steer. OR STOP. How long did they think about this? Isn't this like building a car without an engine, that works by throwing it really hard towards your work every morning, and then throwing it back to your garage every night?

Speaking of avoidably stupid deaths, Earth's white rhino has been extinct for two centuries, and the draco lizard for three. The gilvos of Corvan II are under threat of extinction from industrial pollution, so Enterprise is taking some to the protected planet Brentalia. Gilvos are adorable: if you adore faceless snakes covered in bark instead of scales.

The test ship goes blammo but the soliton wave doesn't stop. Soliton Wave don't care. Soliton Wave don't give a shit! It's getting bigger, faster, and it's headed for Lemma II. If only it could be stopped somehow.

Caught stealing, Alexander receives a lecture in honour. It doesn't take. Under threat of Klingon boarding school (very probably where they literally hit you with boards until you learn honour) Alexander runs off and is caught in a fire in the Biolab as the Enterprise chases down and destroys the soliton wave. Alexander and the gilvos are saved.

"New Ground" features the final screen appearance anywhere of a lovely actress, the sweet Georgia Brown, and the first Alexander appearance of Brian Bonsall. Fine work from both. While I'm not a huge fan of the story, I appreciate the effort expended to remind us of the one thing that makes the D different from all the other Enterprises: Kids Welcome.

Sadly, it's the same sort of kid you always get on daytime dramas: aging rapidly, disappearing when inconvenient, and contributing little. Complaining aside, I blame all that on the system. Liking Alexander anyway: that I credit entirely to Mr. Bonsall.

STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Way back in 2293, Captain Kirk's crew is retired or semi-retired. Or, in Hikaru Sulu's case, Captain of starship Excelsior on what sounds like the hands-down dullest mission of all time: 3 years cataloguing gaseous anomalies.

Disaster strikes the Klingon Empire when the overworked energy production facilities on the moon of Praxis cause the darn thing to crack in half.

The Klingon home world is so polluted by this accident that they will run out of oxygen in 50 years. It's fortunate that the Conservatives don't run Kronos: they'd be using their last breath to remind everyone that if Klingon God had wanted them to have air He wouldn't have let them blow up Praxis.

The Klingons sue for peace, sending moderate Chancellor Gorkon (the incomparable David Warner) to end 70 years of hostility.

Special Envoy Spock and Captain Kirk are given the assignment despite Kirk's deep-seated prejudice against Klingons. "Jim... they're dying."

"Let them die." Kirk blames all Klingons for David's death, it seems. That's the gentle voice of reason, mellowing with age.

Enterprise-A has a new helm officer, Lt. Valeris, the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at the Academy. REALLY?!? SPOCK wasn't at the top of his class? SAAVIK wasn't? NO ONE from the Intrepid? I'd joke that they all must have had low grades in P.E., but they're not just geeks, they're super-strong geeks. What gives? Also, that Valeris is such a Samantha.

Because of the sensitive nature of the talks, everyone gets shit-faced on Romulan ale, and for some reason it goes badly.

Gorkon has a bone to pick with you... actually it's his cane. Gorkon's daughter Azetbur makes the (rather plausible) accusation that the Federation is nothing but a Homo Sapiens Only club.

Brigadier Kerla thinks his culture is about to be annihilated. General Chang seems to believe Shakespeare was a Klingon and he can't or won't stop quoting him.

Gorkon understands Kirk's lack of trust. "If there is to be a brave new world our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it."

Gorkon's ship, Kronos One, is fired upon and the Chancellor himself is assassinated in zero gravity by helmeted Starfleet personnel. The severed limbs and gouts of purple blood are most striking... but mysterious. Since when is Klingon blood purple? Side-effect of too much Romulan ale, I'll wager.

McCoy does his best to salvage Gorkon's life. Chang has Kirk and McCoy arrested for the assassination.

The diplomats have their say: K'Shuck sputters in anger, Romulan Ambassador Nanclus offers a receding hairline (but not the beetled brow of his descendants), and Federation President Kurtwood Smith looks a lot more Klingon than one would imagine, except for the John Lennon specs.

Starfleet Colonel West presents a plan to rescue Kirk and McCoy, and if it should accidentally provoke a war, he brags, 'Then, quite frankly, Mr. President, we can clean their chronometers."

The backward sexism of the 24th Century seems absent in the Klingon Council of the 23rd: Azetbur is made Chancellor.

Colonel Worf, (presumably the father of Mogh) and looking a lot like his namesake grandson, defends Kirk and McCoy at the trial on the Klingon home world, Kronos. Chang presents Kirk's personal logs as evidence that he sought revenge against Klingons for the death of his son.

The "merciful" court sentences our heroes to 'The Alien's Graveyard' the dilithium mines on the frozen penal asteroid Rura Penthe. W. Morgan Sheppard as the Gulag Warden demonstrates that mere exile to the surface is death.

Kirk wins a fight with DC's Blue Devil by kicking him in the knee-nads. (They're like knee pads only they're genitalia.) Femme Fatale Martia stands up to Kirk's bully and offers him a smoke.

Ensign Christian Slater works for Captain Sulu, but they say his mommy got him the post.

CSI: Starfleet does a drawer by drawer, deck by deck search for Klingon blood on uniforms and gravity boots. The incriminating footwear is in the locker of Crewman Dax, a guy with trees for feet.

Since the mine doesn't take girl prisoners (what do the girls do, knit Kahless Day Sweaters?), Martia becomes a Wookie, then 'Aliens' Newt. She calls herself a chameloid. Kirk acts like he's never seen a shape-shifter before (instead of at least three on-screen).

Since the Universal Translator would be detected somehow (but not the SHAPE of the most famous ship in the galaxy), Uhura gets them across the border with spoken Klingon. The bit with all the frantic dictionary shuffling is cute, but dumb. Uhura's ENTIRE linguistic career, nearly three decades in communications and she can't say a few simple sentences in Klingon? It's embarrassingly incompetent, like Scotty banging his head on a beam of the ship he knows like the back of his hand. Yuk, yuk, yukkity yuk.

The assassins, Yeomen Burke and Samno, are themselves killed- by... SPOILERS. The new girl. It's Jess! Uh, I mean Valeris.

Enraged by his traitorous protege, Spock slaps the phaser out of her hand and most distressingly, he FORCES a mind meld to dig out the identity of her fellow conspirators. It's Admiral Cartwright, Ambassador Nanclus, and General Chang. Granted, they're murderous, racist jerk-balls. But at least they're multi-racial murderous, racist jerk-balls!

Sulu provides the secret location of the peace conference, Camp Khitomer near the Romulan border. He also battles Chang's cloaked ship: a prototype that can fire torpedoes while invisible. The torpedo battle effects are pretty darn cool. For nearly no reason, Spock and McCoy run down to torpedo room and modify the thing themselves. Is this a crew composed only of cooks?

Our heroes storm the conference, and save the delegates. Scotty guns down the sniper: Colonel West in a Klingon mask.

"Once again we've saved civilization as we know it." gloats Kirk.

"And the good news is, they're not going to prosecute." snarks McCoy.

"STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country" has good writing, fine performances, effects up the ba-zoom, and yes, it's a worthy send-off for the classic crew. But, boy howdy, that forcible mind meld really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Essentially, Spock saves the day by publicly mind-raping this woman, evil though she clearly is. Uhura's last line is a JOKE about it. Not cool. Not funny. Proud, deductive genius Spock, reduced to a blunt instrument?

And people think Jar-Jar Binks is an embarrassing misstep.

A Matter of Time

*** (3 stars out of 5)

An asteroid strike on Pentara IV is about to cause severe cold effects. Like 21st Century Earth's nuclear winter, it's the aching, snuffling, sneezing, life extinguishing kind of winter, and Enterprise is the cure. They hope to phaser drill up a bunch of CO2 and warm the place with a nice, safe greenhouse effect.

Professor Berlinghoff Rasmussen, an oddball historian from THE FUTURE (late 26th Century Earth), arrives in a plasticized titanium timeship to be cagey, twitchy, and observe the crew on this Most Historiffic Day!

Riker asks "At what point does time travel become a tool for historians?", clearly having missed 'Assignment: Earth', where Captain Kirk's crew used it for that very purpose. So the answer, Mr. Riker, is 2268. A century ago. Pay attention, man!

Speaking of other series causing continuity problems: Crusher claims 22nd Century space vessels still used surgical masks and gloves, not having perfected quarantine fields. (A certain Dr. Phlox might beg to differ...) Riker says the warp drive wasn't around in the 22nd Century, and Worf says there were no phasers. (In fact, we will later learn that both those things existed plenty in the 2150s. Thanks to 'Star Trek: Enterprise', Will, Bev, and Worf now seem to have a very poor grasp of history... or were they cleverly TESTING Rasmussen with false information? You decide!)

The Professor's pocketing knick-knacks while passing out questionnaires. Troi and Geordi also fail to catch him in his lies, even with leading questions like: "What would be required to mass-produce isolinear circuits starting from scratch in a dingy basement in, say, the 2150's? That is to say, after the Post-Atomic Horrors but before the Federation. Be specific. Show your work."

Picard tries to argue Rasmussen out of some advice about his options in saving Penthara, but Rasmussen sticks to his guns on the temporal version of the prime directive. Not from morality, of course, but from total B.S.

"Oh, this IS a time pod. And it is from the 26th Cenutry... at least, that's what the poor fellow said." Rasmussen himself is actually from 22nd Century New Jersey. The Radioactive Garden State.

His attempt to kidnap Data fails, the computer deactivated his stolen items, and the pod vanishes. The con man is arrested and deposited at Starbase 214.

Not the best solution they ever came up with. Probably better off not leaving empty time pods full of anachronistic trinkets cluttering up their own past, wouldn't you say? They don't even lock it. But, then again, where's the fun in being sensible with time travel? What's the worst that could happen? (And DON'T Say 'Star Trek: Enterprise'...)

"A Matter of Time" by Rick Berman tied for an Emmy for Visual Effects. But the true star is the tremendous Matt Frewer, filling in at the last moment when Robin Williams ducked out to make 'Hook'. Like a chump.

Join me tomorrow as we take a little trip back to yesterday. Not with an abandoned time pod, but through the magic of the silver screen! (Bring your time pod in case of boredom.)