Masks

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Moussaka is waking!

Yes, the Greek food I had for lunch is angry, and planning a vengeful return.

What could be lurking under the accumulated comet dust of the ages? Why, it's the Lost Library of Someplace other than Alexandria. And in Soviet Someplace, LIBRARY READS YOU!

Our starship begins to transmute into Quasi-South American temples and arcane symbols as Mr. Data provides the voices for a cast of mythological misfits. All of them have a beef with something called Masaka. (Apparently, she's hot stuff.)

One minute Data's a devout worshipper, the next a frightened child, and often he's the capering trickster Ihat. (By the way, Apple is due to release the iHat next year. With four cardinal points on its Masaka-Proof brim, all of your multiple personalities will want to wear one!)

Data dons the mask he made in art class and sits on a throne to oversee the final change of his vessel into the Transformer Aztekimus Prime.
Picard uses the improv skills he learned in archeology class to don the mask of the moon man Korganu and coax Musaka down from the sky. (I wish he'd do that now, this is one bloody hot summer for us roasty-toasty Canadians.)

"Masks" is Brent Spiner's show and he's amazing, though I've read how difficult a time he had making sense of multiple roles from an unexplained alien mythos. My favorite is his 'old man by the fire', kind of the D'Arsay alien version of the Chronos archetype. He's still so captivating.

Re-enact the episode with your loved ones HERE! (Click for hilarious comic strip link. Will not transform your couch into a stone Olmec head. Probably.)

Shadowplay

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Odo and Dax encounter a welcoming, sleepy village with a mystery. Other than the mystery of how a village populated exclusively by white people in white sheets is so welcoming.

While job shadowing O'Brien, Jake admits that he doesn't want to join Starfleet. Turns out O'Brien's dad wanted him to be a cello player. "You've got to live your own life," says the Chief. O'Brien doesn't fiddle around.

Speaking of fiddling, (or was that diddling?) Vedek Bariel stops by to see Kira. They have opposing religious views, but, boy, do they enjoy a game of springball. It's just like she used to play with her brothers, only hopefully without the smooching. Bariel is worth her while! So when she finds out Quark did the matchmaking only to keep her ridged nose out of his nefarious schemes she only beats him up a little bit.

Back in the Gamma Quadrant, Odo and Dax match their Footy Pajamas against the Village of Nightshirts.  Protector Colyus is a regular Sheriff Andy meets Wee Willy Winkie! Which is not to say he's asleep at the switch, although broken switches do enter into it.

Do the missing villagers have something to do with the big matter-antimatter reactor in the town square? Why does no one ever leave the valley? How did local girl Taya become the identical cousin of little Clara Sutter from the Enterprise? Why do Data and Odo avoid romance in favor of spending time amusing prepubescent girls?

Taya's Grandpa Rurigan is miserable at the loss of his daughter, but utterly fatalistic. Turns out he built everyone and everything in this valley: he's the only non-hologram here. It's a re-make of the world he lost to the Dominion. There's no phone, no lights, no motor-cars. There's no holo-dogs leaving holo-poops on the holo-lawn. But with his fantasy disrupted, he's ready to pack it all in.

Odo's impassioned plea to fix and reactivate the village always makes me misty: our fantasies are important, and the characters in them are real. Because they're real to us.

 "Shadowplay" would be a lesser work without Kenneth Mars as good-natured Colyus. Ken Mars died last year, but you probably saw him in something (maybe The Producers or Young Frankenstein) since he had a 45 year long career. Personally, I found him endearing as the addled Dr. Hunterhanker in my beloved cartoon 'Freakazoid!' Which kind of proves the point: the characters we love live forever.

Thine Own Self

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Troi returns from a class reunion with a greater desire to pursue her career, by which she means bossing people around and shooting at bad guys, apparently. You, know, like a psychologist. She notices Beverly sitting in the big chair on night shift and takes the courses to move up to Commander rank herself.

Deanna has a particularly hard time with the engineering emergency portion. She fails it three times and Riker tells her she's just not qualified. As Malibu Stacy once giggled: Thinking Gives You Wrinkles! Troi earns some Thinkles today and beats the test by sending her simulated friend Geordi to his simulated demise. Like a boss!

The pre-industrial civilization on Barkon IV gets a shock when a Federation probe crashes there, and a strange pale monster with amnesia wanders into town with a suitcase full of radioactive death.

Garvin the magistrate befriends the odd ice man, and Garvin's daughter Gia names him 'Jayden'. Gia says her mother has gone to "a beautiful place where everything is peaceful and everyone loves each other and no one ever gets sick." Although he cannot remember why, Jayden also believes there is such a place.

Unable to remember what his valise contains, Jayden passes the contents out like rock candy.
Hair begins to fall out and skin to burn. Local sage Talar treats with rest and fresh air.

Jayden believes his shiny metal fragments caused the sickness, but before he can cure it the locals attack him and tear half his face off.  Icepick for the Ice Man! His head is full of lights and shiny metal which they don't find reassuring.

You know the rest. Monster saves village, angry mob spears and buries monster. Act in haste, repent... oh, sometime.

"Thine Own Self" raises the question: if there was a ST:TNG season 8, would Data have made a better vampire or a werewolf?  Second rumination: this is not the last time half of Data's face will be torn off. Fortunately, Geordi must have a vat of Data Spackle somewhere.

(And many thanks to my amazing wife for the portmanteau word 'Thinkles'.)

Paradise

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Miles and Commander Sisko encounter a cult of personality on Orellius. A bunch of trapped dupes went back-to-nature under the charismatic granola-munching dictator, Alixus. Stranded for ten years after their colony ship crashed, none of their technology more advanced than shovels works. Alixus is happy to force Ben and Miles into her killing fields. Did I say...! Ho ho, no, I meant Happy Fold!

Alixus believes man's recent quest for self-improvement is ludicrous: rather than evolved she feels humanity has become "fat, lazy, and dull". Modern technology is ruining the classic community! Tie sticks to your iPads and start tilling the soil, kids!

Sisko's dad was a chef, so Ben and his brothers worked in his vegetable garden. What a coincidence! Alixus punishes dissent by cooking people in a metal box out in the sun!

Trying to figure out where the men have gone, Dax and Kira catch the missing runabout at warp with no one behind the wheel. Kira recklessly plans to beam over on the fly, but asks if Dax has a better idea. Dax responds,"I'm the science officer. It's my job to have a better idea."

Rather than the better idea of remote controlling it with prefix codes (like even backwards Alixus apparently did) Dax uses a reckless tractor beam rope trick that barely works without getting them killed but DOES fills time with special effects. Just the way I likes it!

Ben is hot boxed, (and not in the good way), for Miles' "crime" of wasting time attempting to fix his wretched technology instead of filling rusty replicators with hog slops or whatever the hell. Meanwhile, a local woman dies from lack of modern medicine, and she wasn't the first. Curse you, technology, for taunting us by still existing!

When Miles uncovers Alixus' hypocrisy-powered Technology-Stopping Technology, her son Vinod tries to directly explain the virtues of the primitive arrow-in-the-back process.

Sisko takes Alixus & son in to the authorities but nobody, THAT'S RIGHT, NOBODY speaks up to go back to the Federation with them. They claim they'd rather keep living in this crap-hole, I mean... community.

"Paradise" was apparently written as a subtle reference to the lovable antics of the Khmer Rogue. In case (like me) you didn't pay enough attention to Cambodian atrocities of the 1970's, Pol Pot and Friends used some Alixus-like tactics and rhetoric (plus genocide) in pursuit of utopia but only the elite benefitted while the people slaved in the fields, sweatshops, sex dens, and government torture chambers. The 80% of them that survived did, anyway. Three cheers for humanity, ladies and gentlemen! (Sorry. It's been really hot all week, I'm a little punchy.)

In case the episode's (ambiguous?) attempt to present Alixus as reasonable and her disciples as laudable caused any confusion, let me offer my own tirade. Technology does not stop people having communities! We've had both since long before the shovel and the arrow. And while I'm ranting, are you telling me NOBODY abandoned Alixus' principles?!? EVEN when it became clear she'd been lying the whole time? Letting her followers starve, puke, stroke out and die for ten years? I would find this story easier to believe if these "fat, lazy, and dull" but otherwise perfectly decent people had decently shoveled her self-righteous head off.

Lower Decks

**** (4 stars out of 5)

The senior staff seem to keep the underlings out of all the interesting stuff when an injured Cardassian beams aboard.

Ensigns Sam Lavelle and Sito Jaxa are chums, and up for the same promotion.  They also hang out with Nurse Alyssa Ogawa, a gossipy Ten-Forward waiter called Ben, and Vulcan straight man (aren't they all?) Ensign Taurik.

Despite her Nova Squadron mis-step, (back in 'The First Duty') Sito's doing well as Worf's security protege, although Picard tells her flat out that he doubts her character. After that body blow to her confidence, Sam looks a little ridiculous when he says Riker's too mean. And Taurik charts new frontiers in Ridiculousity when he can't get his mean boss (yes, Geordi, apparently) to notice him. Teacher's pet Alyssa loves her boss, gets a promotion, and her boyfriend proposes to her. Ben beats The Peons and The Opening Credits alike at poker. What, me worry?

Worf keeps Sito after martial arts class to blindfold her and beat her up. She only passes this "gik'tal challenge" by finally telling him off. Pointing out that gik'tal is Klingon for "to the death", Sito asks if it was even a real challenge. Worf admits he can't speak Klingon. Just kidding. He actually says: "Perhaps next time you are judged unfairly it will not take so many bruises for you to protest."

Sito gathers the courage to face Picard again: which is what the Captain wanted in the first place. He needs her bravery on maximum for a dangerous mission. She's got to help smuggle Cardie double agent Joret Dal back into enemy space, while posing as his bounty. It works all the time in 'Star Wars'...

Two days later, the Cardassians celebrate the death of their 'One Millionth Escaping Terrorist', good for one free round of war reparations and a medium-sized muffin basket. Hooray...? For the good guys...? No? Oh... just sadness.

"Lower Decks" brings slice of Enterprise life from an outside perspective, which was a such a good idea they made it a TV Trope. The ugly uncertainty of the ending is most effective, as it still bums me out. 'Killed during escape' might actually be the best case scenario but they've left me feeling it might be worse. Sito's 'Tee Hee, Dr. Crusher gave me fake bruises' exchange with Worf now seems just awful. Is it better drama to get to know a security guard before they die? I felt just as bad about Sito dying for a cause as I did about Yar dying at random.

Whispers

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Spoiler alert factor 7. There's virtually nothing I can say about this episode that is NOT a spoiler. I am therefore going anyway.

Know this about me: I love Miles O'Brien. He's a great character. Hard worker, genial friend, good husband, some personality flaws, but overall a good egg. Now you get to spend 43 minutes watching him fight and flight with a world that's quietly turned against him. FOR NO RAISIN!

Why is it that everyone's so cagey? His daughter's avoiding his affection. His team won't let him check their work. Sisko keeps sending him away from the secure area for the upcoming Paradan peace talks, and he's talking behind O'Brien's back.

Bashir seems extra nosey about every little detail, while Quark seems fuzzy on the details of his beloved Rules of Acquisition. The computer is also playing its cards close to its computer vest: beyond a certain date it won't let Miles look at any station logs.

To quote the great Goof: "Sumpin Wrong here!"

Keiko has no desire to get frisky, but makes Miles his favourite stew. She won't touch it herself, eating only salad. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE STEW? Miles can't stop stewing over it.

Odo gets back from a trip and quickly sides with increasingly suspicious O'Brien. Normally, Odo is a touch too paranoid, but now he's EXACTLY THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF PARANOID. The shapeshifting lawman is his only hope- until Odo comes back changed after a meeting with Sisko.

Who else has been changed? And why?

"Whispers" is very clever. The mystery is ruined after the first viewing, but the performances are still worth it.

Sub Rosa

** (2 stars out of 5)

Starfleet is very damn serious about demerits. They don't even let Wesley go to his Great-Grandmother's funeral.

Beverly Crusher's Nana, Felisa Howard, has passed away. The 'sure and certain hope' mentioned at her service is not of the resurrection, but she gets one anyway.  Yerggh.

Nana lived on Caldos Colony, terraformed to resemble Scotland. The Howard women (except Beverly's mom and Beverly) all had green eyes. Bev has inherited a house, a candle, and... A CURSE!!!

According to high-functioning lunatic Groundskeeper Ned Quint, the candle has been "a carse on the Hoowards" for generations. (It even cursed Howard The Duck!) In Nana's journals, the only 'curse' is Ronin, the 34-year-old lover who liked him some 100-year-old Nana!

Not by coincidence, Beverly has some sex dreams about a man-ghost. Troi does not seem overly concerned... although you'll recall: Troi was once knocked up by an energy being in her sleep! (D'ya think Wesley wants a new baby brother?!?)

Ned claims the Howard family ghost is angry and causing storms by sabotaging the weather control grid. As ghosts often do these days. The bodiless specter seemingly enjoys a classic John Forster ditty, particularly the lyric that goes: 'the pleasure of entering Beverly far outweighed any feelings of guilt.' Invisible Ronin spins a tale of falling for red-headed Jessel Howard in 1647 Glasgow AND HER EVERY LAST FEMALE DESCENDANT EVER SINCE. In twenty years, there's no chance I'm the first to say... ICK. I guess I should be thankful a ghost can't collect STDs.

"I admit... it's unusual." remarks Troi, Mistress of Understatement.

Crazy the Central Casting Groundskeeper dies trying to fight the thing in the weather machine. Beverly's eyes turn green. From orgasms, I guess.  Bev resigns to live on Caldos. Well, how is Captain Picard supposed to compete with a sex-ghost?

Ronin possesses Nana's Mouldering Corpse to electrocute Geordi and Data. Beverly finally turns against her hot mess ghost boyfriend and phasers him right in the candle.

"Sub Rosa" is a showcase for Gates McFadden's acting talents and Frake's direction. Plus, I'm sure it's fun times for the goth romance crowd. Personally, I think it makes 'Catspaw' look dignified. It's overwrought, shuddering nonsense from end to end- but, damn, if they didn't give it 110 percent.