Schisms

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Science Lizards Abduct Helpless Humans! It's a trap!

Data's poetry is really fun. I love the rhyme and structure, and they make me laugh. Nobody in the crew seems to agree with me.

Bait and switch!  It's not a funny story: it's a scary one. Riker can't get any rest and is scared of Crusher's exam. Mr. Mott's haircut drives Worf insane. Geordi's got an unknown bacterial infection in the brain. Despite what he was told, intracranial tattoos do not help him win over the ladies.

There's a tetryon leak emanating from a subspace manifold. Is it subspace's monthly visitor already?

Those with troubled memories head down to the holodeck with Troi to recover the experience. They determine that they were strapped to a cold metal table, with sharp things around them in the dark and ominous clicking sounds. It's a 7.4 on the Velma Dinkley Scale of Creepy!

Crusher determines that Riker's arm was severed and re-attached. Lt. Edward Hagler returns from an abduction with liquid polymer for blood. It does not seem to do him any good, what with killing him and all.

Riker wears a homing device and takes Crusher's stimulant to stay awake. He is soon snatched into a Subspace Domain deep in the infinite realms known as 16.2 KEV. You won't need to remember that, since I don't think you'd want to book a weekend there.

Does this order of fish monks come with an order of fries? It's like a Dr. Zoidberg convention.

Will rescues Ensign Sariel Rager just ahead of Geordi's graviton pulse that closes the rift.

A blue slinky slunk out with them, slinking out through the walls. An unknown menace they remain. Perhaps someday they will team up with the bugs from 'Conspiracy' and wave their pincers once more in the dance of conquest! Or not. You know, whatevs.

"Schisms" is effectively eerie, with a jump-out-of-your-seat surprise ending unless you faithfully watched the show and saw last episode's trailer.

Relics

 **** (4 stars out of 5)

Looking for starship Jenolen, missing, lo, these 75 years, Enterprise happens across a big, BIG candy with a big, BIG chew. It's an everlasting grey gobstopper the size of Earth's orbit.

And who's inside an old transporter inside the old starship on the old Dyson Sphere in the hole in the bottom of the sea? Old Scotty. Great Scott! 1.21 GIGASCOTTS!

Thanks to his 7.5 decades stored in a computer, Captain Montgomery Scott is 147 years old. He was headed for a retirement colony when he crashed. Admiral McCoy is going to be happy to see him, after Bones gets his eye surgery, since Scotty was bringing the glaucoma weed.

Ensign Fartknocker is too busy to listen to Scotty's hoary old chestnuts about a wee bit o' trouble on Argelia. Sorry, I mean Ensign Jerkweasel. Seriously man! It's SCOTTY, for blinking blue blazes! You don't have 10 minutes to listen to Scotty? Fifty-two years in Starfleet! They name Starbases after this guy!  Have some damn respect!

Freakishly, even Geordi thinks Scotty is an old relic, gathering too much dust to even phaser up.

"I was driving starships while your great-grandfather was still in diapers!" jowls Scott.

Data tends bar for the classic cameo. Scott and the Bot enjoy a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (or something green, anyway). It's still true: where Kirk chases green women, Scotty chases green booze.

Enterprise says 'hello' to the sphere and it responds: 'Hey, hey, hey! It's Dyson Sphere Albert!' and drags them into its maw. The interior surface is a massive inside-out livable world, but they'll never get to check it out, since they're getting awfully toasty from the chewy centre: a flaming old star.

Another old star and Geordi mend their unnecessary personality conflict, save the day, and jury-rig the Jenolen into a doorstop so the Enterprise can squeak out again.

If, while watching a story about engineers, it bothered any of you that a glaring technical error occurs, (namely that people can't beam through shields, as they do in the climax) it's actually a reminder that you are dealing with a miracle worker. Offscreen, Scotty plainly solved all that with wizardry, phase fluctuations, and a generous handful of peanut butter. For the road.

Finally, the new kids on the block stop being jerks and give Scotty a shuttlecraft of his very own. But playing hover-shuffleboard with Robert April will just have to wait!

"Relics" features the final TNG cameo of a TOS character. And one of the finest. That enormous globe was ASTOUNDING! Plus, the Dyson Sphere is really cool.

Man of The People

** (2 stars out of 5)

Deanna Troi, Super-Bitch!

If that sounds appealing, this is the episode for you. Otherwise, well, coin a phrase, WTF?

Ambassador Ves Alcar is a Lumerian. He sports a forehead tramp stamp, limited empathic powers, and a suitcase filled to the brim with Douche.

Ladies, should a Lumerian offer to touch your Pet Rock with his Pet Rock, I encourage you to punch his junk like he was a Ullian historian.  Anyone duped into his ceremony becomes a psychic dumping ground. While this dink stays serene and suave, his receptacles whore themselves up, then crumble away into decrepitude.

He's come aboard to trade up from his last model, who's just about ready for an oven in a gingerbread house.

Guess which empathic Counsellor naively indulges in a "funeral rite" for Alcar's dead "mother"?

On the prowl like she's a bike messenger with cat DNA, Troi treats her meek patient Ensign Janeway like crap, and jumps the bones of some young guy she bumps into in the lift.  Also, she claws Riker's face, and takes a stab at Alcar. Literally.

Picard and Crusher get wise to the chump. Picard waggles his finger and launches into a lecture. Why? Can't we just torpedo this vampire back to hell like on Devidia II last month?

Instead, even more magically than usual, Troi returns to normal somehow when Crusher temporarily kills her. Alcar Dorian Greys it up to Full Cryptkeeper and dies Walter Donovan-style from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Was this guy the only one with this ability? Where did the rock come from? How come the other Lumerians are oblivious? I can understand how Troi got fooled, she's not from there. But his next victim seemed like a clever lass. She's from his world. Wouldn't she say, hey, wait a minute, that's not a Solemn Reflection Stone, that's a Slutty Death-Conduit Rock! Screw you, Draculon!

"Man of The People" is easily the worst episode of the season. Your experience may vary: it's certainly not Marina Sirtis's acting, or the make-up effects. I've read that the script was a rush job, and I was definitely aiming the blame torpedo in that direction.

Realm of Fear

 *** (3 stars out of 5)

Guess what Reginald Barclay is scared of this week? Yup, transporters. You guessed it!

Reg has somehow managed to reach this point in his career without using them. He mostly clings to the safety of slidewalks, shuttles, and space elevators. He even hides if he sees Miles O'Brien coming so he won't have to think about transporters.

But with a great show of bravery and his therapists' Betazoid endorphin-stimulating neck tap (plexing, don't cha know), he beams to the rescue with the away team seeking some missing scientists or something.

On the beam back, however, Barclay spots a wormy grey shape, seemingly on the approach with a horrendous gaping maw. He feels it touch his arm, and although everything checks out, he starts to go a little squirrelly. Well, squirrellier.

Reg decides rather than go to Crusher or Troi he'll just dignose himself on 24th Century WebMD. He immediately concocts or imagines most of the symptoms of an obscure illness called 'transporter psychosis'.

Barclay asks La Forge whether he's ever experienced anything unusual in the transporter.

Thankfully, Geordi adds no fuel to the hypochondriac's fire by saying "Not unless you count the time I became an intangible spectre for two days and everyone thought I was dead. Why do you ask?"

But it's time for the worm to turn. In fact, all the worms have turned! Acting on a hunch, Barclay brings the slugs out of the beam and for some reason they were the missing scientists all along. I'm serious! That happened.

I've seen more logical science on Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

"Realm of Fear" is still quite good. That's because Dwight Shultz and Colm Meaney make everything better.

Next week: Barclay's fear of spiders. And then his fear of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark: The Musical.

Time's Arrow Part II

**** (4 stars out of 5)

1893 San Fransico is right where we left it last season-slash-yesterday, but with Mark Twain now playing the intrusive Mr. Furley for a 'Three's Company' of stranded Future Men.

Having duped apple-cheeked landlady Carmichael into letting them loaf around her boarding house rent-free, our penniless heroes posing as actors manage to snatch the magic snake from the Brain Cavity Creeps. Yes, that's a sentence.

Data's head pops off in combat according to plan, just like so many dandelions in so many playgrounds.

Sam Clemens tags along to the 24th Century and gapes in awe and wonder at their magnificent star vessel, their blue servants, and Counselor Troi's instant tan.

"Young lady, I come from a time when men achieve power and wealth by standing on the backs of the poor, where prejudice and intolerance are commonplace and power is an end unto itself, and you're telling me that isn't how it is anymore?"

"That's right." Troi chirps.

Reminds me why I fell in love with this darn utopia all over again!

Geordi hot-glues Data's dead head onto his dead body and hey-presto, Data is just as alive as ever he was! But harbouring a 500 year old decoder ring message tapped into his brain with an iron filing by stranded Captain Picard. (The same Captain Picard who last episode didn't know Data's Type R Phase Discriminating Amplifier from a Type L now can tap more than a hundred binary characters into the right location of Data's noodle from memory. So... FOR THE WIN!)

All Devidians Destroyed Probably! (And these people didn't even want to attempt genocide on the Borg.) That'll teach those horrendous soul-sucking things to be so endangered... and huddled together in one cave!

Historically gut-shot Guinan is left in the tender care of 19th Century Earth medicine. Still, I assume she has a strong constitution, living unchanged for centuries and all. (cough Time Lord cough.)

"Time's Arrow Part II" remains a hoot. Bring it on, Season 6!

Time's Arrow Part I

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Is there a better teaser opening than that sight of Data's severed head? I can't think of one. I know, I know, I say that every teaser I see. Anyway, DATA'S SEVERED HEAD...!!!

...was found under the Starfleet Academy. Some cadets were playing hacky-sack with it for an hour before they called the Enterprise.  It's 500 years old, which isn't that bad when you consider that's the same age as most of Joan Rivers' head.


The only one who isn't disturbed by the spectre of Data's encroaching death is Data himself. He's actually gratified to discover he's as mortal as everyone else.

Personally, I think he's just enjoying the idea of carving his own tombstone with 'Here Lies Data' 2335-1893 just to mess with everybody.

San Francisco, 1893: Freaky-Deaky Soul-Sucking Demons from the Time Between Seconds are using a Snake to open Portals to Historical Plagues. This has so far failed to make the front page.

Data falls into the temporal Snake-Hole and wins a bow-tie in a poker game. Bow ties are cool.
Cocky Bellhop sidekick Jack helps the android fish-out-of-water make his first flops.

Data, consumate pooper of parties, becomes a crasher instead. Pompous Samuel Clemens is regaling hostess Madame Guinan with a story of man's insignificance, when in blunders the pasty time traveller. Data discovers Guinan is not a temporal anachronism, but merely an immortal. (Rumours persist that in the centuries to come she would go on to date Connor 'Highlander' MacLeod, and also star in 'Jumpin Jack Flash'.)

On the advice of THEIR Guinan, Picard and everybody who doesn't have a rubber tire for a forehead jumps down the Snake-Hole after their robot pal. Temporal Prime Directive, Shmemporal Shrime Shirshmective!

"Time's Arrow Part I" invents a great villain, never giving them a name or enough time to prove themselves. But that's one morbid scheme: harvesting the consciousness of the sick in past defenceless times? Dastardly! Will our heroes be able to stop them? Don't wait all summer... tune in tomorrow! Now go play hacky-sack with your robot head.

The Inner Light

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

What if Picard took a Quantum Leap, but stayed after kissing the girl?

Lived, in fact, a whole life in another man's shoes?

In less time than it takes to watch the episode, and slightly longer than reading this blog, the Captain's mind is filled with the lifetime experiences of Kamin the Ironweaver, husband, father, and flautist from Ressik on the planet Kataan.  Never mind how: a thousand years back these people died of a drought before they had space travel, yet they somehow had sophisticated brain scanning technology.  Picard even had to invent sunscreen here. And later, his spoken word version of 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)'. In his version, wearing sunscreen is mandatory.

Romance and fatherhood ensue. It's like a more in-depth version of 'The Paradise Syndrome' only this Captain never grows giant bushy sideburns.


Reluctantly easing into a marriage he never made, the uncomfortably landlocked space explorer finds meaning in the people of a single doomed village.

"Seize the time, Meribor. Make now the most important time." he urges his child.

"The Inner Light" is strong, thoughtful, and bittersweet. Boy, if you hate 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and you're only going to watch one, well, then you have my pity. But WATCH THIS ONE!