After dragging my feet across the second season of TNG, I've finally come across a somewhat long stretch of interesting episodes, ranging from good to excellent. I haven't posted for a while, this is my first run through TNG, ever.
What's keeping me going is knowing that it's gonna get better and also likeable/interesting characters like Data, Geordi and Worf.
I'm also waiting on the actor playing Ricker to get better, there's no way he's gonna be this way until the end.
Troi was such a ridiculously unnecessary character, she's evolving a little bit now, becoming more like the ship's shrink.
Here we go:
Time Squared: First episode in the string, although not great; it was unique enough for me to want to go to the next one instead of waiting a couple of month as I have been doing.
The Icarus Factor: Ricker is hardly tolerable when the episode is not focused on him, so this episode was kinda difficult to get through, it almost set me back into my TNG-stagnation mode. But the Worf storyline kept it interesting, it was fun to see a crankier-than-usual Worf heh
Pen Pals: Good episode, the actor playing Data has been knocking it out of the park from the beginning, striking the right balance between displaying his robotic side and his developing embrace/understanding of emotions. As far as I remember, this is the first TNG episode that deals with the prime directive. The discussion the crew had about it was pretty cool. I stayed engaged in the plot the whole time, rare for TNG so far.
Q Who: Excellent episode, the best TNG yet. Some of you may remember I couldn't stand Q on his previous appearances but this time was different. I feel like I understood the reason for his presence and his attachment to Picard and/or the Enterprise, not understanding what the fuck he wanted before was the main reason I disliked his previous episodes, the superior-being-is-bored-and-playful theme wasn't interesting for me. Now the Borg are a pretty freakin grim prospect, I hope/think we'll see them again. Species that aims to use you for raw materials and refuses to even acknowledge your intellect because they deem it inferior to them? That's pretty cool heh. Some serious 1990's money had to be spent on the CGI of this episode, the inside of the Borg's ship looked awesome by 1990's TV standards. Whoopi has more speaking lines here, I like that a lot, I know she becomes a series regular later and I think she'd be the much needed "human" element that the show sorely misses.
Samaritan Snare: Funniest Star Trek aliens ever! Fun episode, I get the feeling that Geordi would be working at Home Depot if he hadn't joined Star Fleet.
Up The Long Ladder: Good episode. A couple of raised eyebrows for me here, I looked them up and it seems like nobody else thought anything of it so I must have over-thinking it:
1 - Riker murders two almost-fully developed human clones in cold blood.
2 - Picard's plan for these two civilizations dictates that every woman of the under-developed group would have to mate with three men.
Just thought for 90's audience, maybe even now, that these two points would poke somebody the wrong way, but I was wrong.
O'Brien is now being given relatively too many lines, I just don't wanna see this guy talk, I hope they don't start giving him plotlines.
Manhunt: Troi's mom is as annoying as ever yet Picard can't seem to stop having erotic thoughts about her for some reason. Meh episode, more O'Brien lines, shit!
The Emissary: Great episode, first time we get a hot female Klingon and played by a decent quality actress too. I liked the prospect of seeing Klingons from TOS days, I was hoping for a reference to the TOS crew but they didn't do it. I would've also liked to see a longer interaction between Worf and the awakened Klingons, more details on how/why the Klingons accepted a peace treaty with the federation.
Two episodes to the end of season two. Most of y'all said it picks up in season 3. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, if it continues to be of the same quality as the last 5 episodes then I'll stay on. What I'm hoping to see over the next few seasons or on the next spin-offs is a season-long arc of a big disastrous event occurring to the Federation, like an advanced civilization invasion, and the Enterprise being a rouge ship in some kind of under ground resistance, I've always wanted to see something like that. Seeing the Borg revived these hopes for me, but I'm gonna try not to get too attached to the idea.
Topic: Star Trek: Thread Space 9 (Read 275366 times)
