Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.26

Descent

Data rushes from a game of poker with Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawkings on the Holodeck to the bridge after he receives a summons. Commander Riker leads an away team that includes Data and Worf down to Ohniaka III. Everyone there seems to be dead One of the killers, a Borg, is found behind a locked door. 

A fight breaks out between Riker’s team and the Borg. A few more Borg quickly join the one that Data found. Most of the Borg are killed thanks in large part to Data who gets angry in the midst of the fight. The last remaining Borg transports all the neutralized Borg and himself off the planet and back to their ship. The Borg ship evades the Enterprise and quickly departs the star system.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.15

Tapestry

Captain Picard dies and is welcomed into the afterlife by Q. Picard rejects the idea that he is dead. Q explains that it was Picard’s artificial heart that was to blame for his death.

Q gives Picard a chance at redemption. He takes him back to when he was an ensign, two days before he got into the fight in which he was so badly injured that he had to have his heart replaced with an artificial one. If Picard can avoid the fight then Q will restore him to life, otherwise he will be doomed to spend eternity with Q.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.12

Ship in a Bottle

Reginald Barkley is trying to repair the Holodeck when he encounters Professor Moriarty. Barkley tells Data and Geordie about what happened. Meanwhile, the Enterprise arrives in the Detrian system to observe the collusion of two planets and the creation of a new star.  

Together, with Captain Picard, Data and Reg return to the Holodeck. Picard tries to explain to Moriarty that he can’t leave the Holodeck but Moriarty insists that he must. Moriarty walks out of the Holodeck, something he should not be able to do.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.06

True Q

The Enterprise is picking up supplies at Starbase 112 when Amanda Rogers, the Enterprise’s newest intern, boards joins the crew. They are headed for Tagra IV, a planet with serious environmental issues.

Amanda gets to know the Enterprise as she interacts with Dr. Crusher, Commander Riker, Lieutenant Commander La Forge, and Lieutenant Commander Data. Without anyone knowing it she saves Riker from injury by preventing a large container from falling on him. The ship’s engines go critical while Amanda is visiting Engineering. She does something that resets the engine back to normal but this time Geordi and Data witness what she does.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.20

The Chase

Captain Picard gets a visit from Professor Galen, his elderly archaeology teacher. Galen is working on something big and wants Picard's help. Picard is tempted but can't abandon the Enterprise for months or possibly years to help out Galen. The old archaeologist departs disappointed in Picard.

Galen hasn't traveled far when his shuttlecraft is attacked. The Enterprise rushes in to help but Galen has sustained serious injuries and dies soon afterwards. Picard examines the datafiles aboard the shuttle and determines that Galen was working on something very important. He has the Enterprise divert off its planned course and digs further into Galen's work.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.14

Face of the Enemy

Counselor Troi wakes up on the Romulan Warbird Khazara. She was captured while attending a conference and surgically altered to appear like a Romulan. She is now Major Rakal of the Tal Shiar, a Romulan intelligence service. All this is explained to her by Sub-Commander N'Vek a member of the Romulan resistance who needs her help to get three high level members of the Romulan resistance to safety.

Troi doesn't like it but she goes along with N'Vek. She plays the cards she has been dealt and for a time is able get the captain of the Khazara, Commander Toreth, to listen to her and follow her instructions. Toreth, as a member of the Romulan military, bristles at having to take orders from the Romulan secret police.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.02

Realm of Fear

The Enterprise finds the USS Yosemite, a science vessel, which was observing a plasma stream in the Igo sector. The Yosemite is caught in the plasma stream and fails to respond to communications from the Enterprise. Captain Picard wants to send a team over to investigate but doesn't want the Enterprise to enter the plasma stream or to send a shuttle into it.

Lieutenant Reginald Barclay comes up with a way to get over to the Yosemite via transporter. Lieutenant Commander La Forge asks Barclay to join himself, Commander Riker, Doctor Crusher, and Lieutenant Worf on the away team. The team members have to beam over one at a time due to the current conditions. Reg loses his cool when it is his turn to beam over.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.11

Chain of Command - Part 2

Gul Madred interrogates Captain Picard. He uses drugs and other means to extract what he can from Picard but that isn't enough. He continues to torture Picard in other ways. At one point he flips a switch and four lights come on. Gul Madred asks Picard how many lights he sees. Picard says that he sees four lights. Madred insists that there are five lights. Picard insists that he only sees four.

The Cardassian representatives with whom Captain Jellicoe is negotiating, reveals that they have captured Captain Picard. Commander Riker wants to mount a rescue mission but Captain Jellicoe says no. Captain Jellicoe forces Commander Riker to step down from his role as first officer for disagreeing with him.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.10

Chain of Command - Part 1

Captain Picard is relieved of command of the Enterprise. Doctor Crusher, Lieutenant Worf, and Captain Picard begin training for a secret mission. Captain Edward Jellicoe is given command of the Enterprise. He immediately starts to make changes, changes that get on the nerves of all the senior officers.

Picard, Crusher, and Worf train until Picard feels that they are ready. They depart in a shuttlecraft. It is at this time the Picard explains the mission to the other two. They are to sneak into Cardassian space to a planet called Celtris III. It is believed the Cardassian are developing metagenic weapons, extremely deadly biologic weapons. Their mission is to determine if this is true and destroy the weapons if they do exist.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.09

The Quality of Life

The Enterprise visits a potential mining operation on Tyrus 7A. Captain Picard and Lieutenant Commander La Forge need to evaluate the particle fountain and report back to Starfleet. Doctor Farallon, inventor of the particle fountain, is having trouble keeping it up and and running. This leads to the discovery that she has also created small, robotic assistants that she calls Exocomps.

The Exocomps exhibit considerably more intelligence and ability than most robots. One of them refuses to follow and order that would have placed it in danger of being destroyed. Data posits that the Exocomps might be a form of life similar to himself, despite looking radically different. Doctor Farallon thinks that the Exocomp that refused to follow an order just malfunctioned.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.04

Relics

The Enterprise finds the Jenolan, a transport vessel that has been missing for over 75 years. The Jenolan crashed on the exterior of a Dyson sphere. Commander Riker, Lieutenant Commander La Forge, and Lieutenant Worf beam aboard the Jenolan. Geordi discovers that someone's pattern is still locked into the transporter. Geordi activates the transporter and Captain Montgomery "Scotty" Scott materializes.

Scotty returns to the Enterprise with Geordi and the others. He is very curious about the "new" Enterprise. He asks lots of questions and tries to "fix" things in engineering. Geordi has to educate Scotty as to how things have changed in the decades that he has been gone. Scotty tries to fix things in engineering based on his knowledge of starships from 75 years before. Geordi gets frustrated with the older engineer's attempts to be useful and goes off on him.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.24

Second Chances

Commander Riker leads an away team (which includes Worf and Data) down to the abandoned base on Nervala IV to retrieve the data logs. They only have a few brief windows during which the transporters will be able to transport them down or back up. They quickly discover that the base isn't abandoned. There is still one person living there, Lieutenant Will Riker.

Riker served aboard the Potemkin, the last ship to visit Nervala IV. He was the last person to leave something went wrong when he was beamed out and a duplicate of him remained on the planet. The Potemkin was unaware of what happened. It has been eight years since that day.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.01

Time's Arrow Part Two

Several members of the Enterprise crew are pulled back in time along the same path that Data took. They wind up in late 19th century San Francisco, as did he. They are there not just to find him but also to learn more about the aliens from Devidia II who are killing humans from that time period. They are hampered a bit in their quest by Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain and helped by Guinan's earlier self who is meeting Picard for the first time.

There are a few too many things in this episode happening off stage and without explanation to satisfy me. It seems like they tried to pack a little too much into this story. On the whole I am not impressed by it. Time travel stories often get more attention than other ones. If that is the case with this one then I feel than it is not deserved of this sort of a response. If you are going to make a story epic then it needs to feel it. This one felt slapped together. I do wonder if it was originally supposed to be a three-part story and it got chopped down to two parts. I'm not sure that the story would be better told in three parts but the potential would certainly be there.

Star Trek: The Next Generation 6.21

Frame of Mind

- Commander Riker is in the midst of preparing for the performance of a play; in the play Riker is playing a patient in mental institution who murdered someone and Data plays the doctor who is treating him; Dr. Crusher is directing the play; whie taking a break from rehearsing Riker is informed that he is needed for a search and rescue mission
- before taking off on the mission Riker and Data perform the play for a small audience; Riker begins to have hallucinations of a crew member that isn't on the Enterprise; then he is in a mental institution and can't remember his name, then he back on the Enterprise; the story whips back and forth between the two locations making it very difficult to determine what is real and what is not
- this is a done-in-one, there is a resolution which resolves the question of what actually happened

- this episode really messed with my head; it was a wild ride; it kept me guessing right up until the reveal at the end
- Susanna Thompson didn't have a very big role in this story and looks nothing like she does on Arrow; she plays an alien and is wearing a fair amount of prosthetic makeup
- Jonathan Frakes was great in this episode, very convincing even when he was rehearsing for the play at the beginning of the episode
- this episode made me think of Existenz, a virtual reality film written and directed by David Cronenberg in which similarly it became increasingly difficult to tell if the main characters were still in the VR environment or not

- a little background on what brought me to watch this episode; I listened to a recent episode of the Daily Rios yesterday in which Peter was talking about the back half of Season 1 of Arrow; one of the subjects that came up was some of Susanna Thompson's (Moira Queen) previous roles; he mentioned an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9; I decided to look her up on imdb and found that she had also appeared on The Next Generation and Voyager, playing different roles on each show
- she appeared on two episodes of TNG but this is the one that I chose to watch, in part because it reminded me of a story I heard about on a recent episode of Word Balloon from an original series novel or fan film which sounded a bit like the one sentence description of this episode that I found on Netflix: Riker begins to question reality when he finds himself in an insane asylum and faces the prospect that his life on the Enterprise is a delusion
- I started watching the episode thinking I would just dip my toe in the water and finish watching it later; I quickly got sucked in and felt compelled to stick with it