Title: Yesterday's Enterprise
Series: TNG
Season: Three
Writer(s): Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler, Richard Manning, Ronald D. Moore, Trent Christopher Ganino and Eric A. Stilwell
Main character(s): Picard, Guinan, Yar
Plot: The
Enterprise is sucked into a time vortex which changes the timelines; in this future, humanity is at war with the Klingons and the
Enterprise is a battleship. The episode features the return of Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar, and rather too much of Guinan.
Without question one of the top three episodes of TNG, the ideas explored here --- what would happen if there had been no peace treaty between the human race and the Klingons --- are expertly woven into the story, which allows a return for Yar as she has not, in this reality, been killed by Armus. Guinan tells her though that she does not belong in this time. Yar realises there is something she is supposed to do, and eventually decides to go back with the alternate
Enterprise (NCC-1701C) in order to sacrifice herself that the treaty happens as it was supposed to, and her life can have meaning. The episode is top-heavy with Guinan, one of my least favourite characters, but she's used well, as the only one who has the sense that what is happening is not what is supposed to be.
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Title: Let that be your last battlefield
Series: TOS
Season: Three
Writer(s): Lee Cronin (Gene L. Coon), Oliver Crawford
Main character(s): Kirk, Spock
Plot: The
Enterprise picks up two aliens, the only members of a warring race who have achieved mutually assured destruction. One is a law enforcement officer (he says) the other a criminal (he says) and Kirk is torn as he tries to show the two that being the only two of their race left alive they should settle their differences, but the prejudice and hatred of so many thousands of years is too ingrained, and they go on fighting to the bitter end.
If ever a clearer and more clever representation of, quite literally, the ugly face of racism and bigotry was shown on TV, I haven't seen it. The two aliens have faces and bodies that are partially black and partially white, and when Kirk, unable to sort out the difference between them says incredulously “But you're both half black and half white” the policeman says “I am black on the right side! He is black on the left!” So simple, a message some have called heavy-handed but in the racially sensitive times of the late sixties, very telling I believe. The episode also carries another “heavy-handed message”, that if we allow our differences, or our perception of them, to colour (sorry) how we treat each other we risk total annihilation.
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Title: The Raven
Series: VOY
Season: Four
Writer(s): Bryan Fuller and Harry “Doc” Kloor
Main character(s): Seven of Nine, The Doctor
Plot: Seven begins to have troubling dreams where she dreams of a black bird (a raven) and soon realises that she is beginning to recover her lost human memories as the Borg implants, which have been removed from her body, no longer block them. She inexplicably steals a shuttle and heads for a deserted moon...
As ever, a decent
Voyager episode centres on either Seven or the Doctor, in this case mostly the former. As Seven's memories come back she acts like someone under a compulsion, and eventually finds the crashed ship (The
Raven) her parents and herself were assimilated from. It's pretty touching as we learn her real name, and see for the first time her giving in to human emotions, emotions she had thought gone forever.
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Title: Defiant
Series: DS9
Season: Three
Writer(s): Ronald D. Moore
Main character(s): Sisko, Riker (Thomas), Kira
Plot: Thomas Riker, the duplicate of Commander Will Riker created in TNG's “The Pegasus” comes to DS9 to steal the
Defiant and use it against the Cardassians. Sisko is placed in a painful and awkward position, as he must now team up with Gul Dukat to hunt down the rogue ship, and hope to try to save not only
Defiant but also its rebel captain.
Another example of the “grey areas” DS9 explored. Starfleet hates the Cardassians but at this point there is an uneasy truce, and Sisko knows that Riker's actions could spark a new war between the races. He is also, as a Starfleet officer, duty-bound to hunt down and bring to justice any of the Maquis. In addition, he does not want to let his new pride and joy be destroyed. The episode also hints darkly at the hitherto not quite understood power of the Obsidian Order, and is a nice tie-in with TNG, one of the few since the pilot.
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Title: The trouble with Tribbles
Series: TOS
Season: Two
Writer(s): David Gerrold
Main character(s): Kirk
Plot: An army of grain-eating, self-reproducing furry little creatures takes over the Enterprise. But they don't like Klingons!
Ah, what can I say about this episode? The plot is wafer-thin and it was obviously written to appeal both more to younger children and to women, with the purring trilling tribbles “so cute!” and it's as close as TOS ever came to an all-out comedy storyline. Shatner finds it hard to keep a straight face, and even cold, logical Spock is won over by the furry little things. You can't call it one of the greatest ever written episodes or anything, but damn are those tribbles cute. A real instance where the show just let itself go and said, f
uck it, let's have some fun! The only thing that could have made this episode better was if they had had Harry Mudd in it.
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