Title: Where silence has lease
Series: TNG
Season: Two
Writer(s): Jack B. Sowards
Main character(s): Picard
Plot: An alien entity decides to test the limits of human endurance and study death. That's it.
One of the most depressing and pointless episodes of any Star Trek series since “A private little war”, this sees the Enterprise encounter an alien who seems all-powerful, trapping the ship in a black void (much like the viewer!) and then picking off the crew in different ways to enable it to study death. The fact that Picard takes till almost the end of the episode to decide to initiate the self-destruct sequence is odd, and the ending is totally unfulfilling. After being the one to blink in their game of poker, the alien lets them go and soon afterwards appears on Picard's viewscreen. Does he rail at it for the senseless loss of life? Does he threaten it, warn of repercussions? Does he hell. He engages it in a philosophical discussion about how alike their races are, and it fu
cks off. Like th writer should have done. Awful.
Rating:
Title: The Q and the Grey
Series: VOY
Season: Three
Writer(s): Kenneth Biller, Sean Piller
Main character(s): Janeway, Q
Plot: There is civil war in the Q Continuum and Q wants Janeway to be the mother of the child who will save it. Or something.
Honestly! Just an lazy excuse to bring in Q again for a few laughs, put everyone in American Civil War uniform to satisfy some fetish of the writers and trot out the old “baby who will save the world” prophecy. Q is hardly even funny in it, far too serious and that's one of its major failings (apart from its having been written of course): when Q succeeds best it's as a clown, a foil for Picard and a sort of comic to Riker's straight man. This is why he never worked in DS9, and was only in it once or twice, and why all the good episodes with him (True Q, Deja Q, Qpid etc) all have him as something of a buffoon, with a sense of good old knee-smacking adventure and swashbuckling. This is too serious, and also unbelievable: why would a race who are practically gods go to war? And how? It's rare to have a bad episode with Q in it, but this is one such.
Rating:
Title: Playing God
Series: DS9
Season: Two
Writer(s): Jim Trobetta, Michael Piller
Main character(s): Dax, O'Brien
Plot: The station is threatened by a micro-universe. Yeah. Oh, and Dax trains up a trill. Yawn.
There are two plots here and one is boring as hell and the other totally ludicrous. Dax is training up a trill and is unsure if he is ready for the joining yadda yadda yadda nobody gives a single
fuck. As for the other part, the A-plot? Well, on a trip through the wormhole the two trills bring back a proto-universe with them. Of course they do. And you know proto-universes! They just
love to expand and wipe out all life in a few parsecs' range! God give me patience! Just lucky the series picked up soon after this; this could have turned me off it altogether.
Rating:
Title: Heart of stone
Series: DS9
Season: Three
Writer(s): Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Main character(s): Odo, Kira
Plot: Kira is trapped in some sort of alien formation that is slowly crystallising over her and reveals her feelings for Odo, but there is a twist (oh joy!). Nog applies to join Starfleet.
The whole idea of this episode is so stupid as to defy explanation. In a cave where there are seismic shifts Kira suddenly becomes trapped and finds she is turning to rock as some mad crystalline creature is taking her over. After failing to free her, Odo reveals he loves her and she responds in kind, but it turns out that “Kira” is that crafty old female changeling, and she has been trying to convince Odo to return to the Dominion. Well, lucky break for old Odo then: Kira doesn't get to hear about his darkest desires for her. Well, not yet. Lord.
The only decent thing about this episode is the strand of the plot that features Nog, which is the beginning of a serious change in the young Ferengi and will lead him down paths he could never have guessed he would walk prior to this.
Rating:
Title: Rascals
Series: TNG
Season: Six
Writer(s): Alison Hock, Ward Botsford, Diana Dru Botsford, Michael Piller
Main character(s): Picard (sorta), Riker
Plot: Picard, Ensign Ro, Guinan (?) and Keiko are all reduced in age to children. Oh joy!
Seriously: it took
four people to write this trash? How many other shows/films have centred around the idea of characters being regressed to their younger selves?
Big, anyone? Jesus! And we also get to see the only person who could be more poe-faced and stuck-up than Picard:
young Picard! Add in my least favourite people --- Ro, Guinan, Keiko --- and you have a real struggle to get through this piece of crap. Even the arrival of the Ferengi, usually a signal for comic relief, doesn't work. And we even have to suffer
Alexander in the episode! GAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: