Star Trek Short Treks: Children of Mars

By nature I love brevity: A well told story about two lonely little girls lashing out in the search for connection, until something brings them together.

If you are looking forward to Star Trek: Picard, watch this. I'll just start with that. If you are excited for the show, go and watch this right now, because it will get you a-theorizin' about its tantalizing clues.

Star Trek The Next Generation: All Good Things...

... must come to an end.

It's been awhile since I saw this episode and I'd forgotten how good it was.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Preemptive Strike

Ro: "It's been a long time since I've felt like I really belonged somewhere."

By nature I love brevity: TNG tackles a situation and a story built for DS9, and actually does about as well as one could expect. Still, this show is not the place for what they wanted to do.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Emergence

“Unlikely as it may sound, I believe the Enterprise may be forming an intelligence.”

Unlikely, indeed.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Bloodlines

"You don't have any choice. I insist on being paid."

When an angry Ferengi, Bok, comes back from the first season looking for revenge after Picard destroys his ship, he threatens to destroy the most precious thing that Picard didn't know he had – a son.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Firstborn

"As time passes, a boy inevitably becomes a man but what is not inevitable is that a man becomes a sword."

'Firstborn' is the final instalment of the ongoing saga that is Worf being a terrible father. At least, it is the final instalment on Next Gen. The saga would continue over on Deep Space Nine for another four years of neglectful parenting.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Journey's End

Not a great episode. But not bad, in a tying up plot threads kind of way. Especially for Wesley Crusher, a long-running Next Gen character often beaten up by the writers.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Genesis

Picard insists on going on an away mission to get out of some boring tests, and while he's gone, all heck breaks loose on the Enterprise.

"Doctor! My capillaries are shrinking!"

Star Trek The Next Generation: Eye of the Beholder

"There are things we do not understand, yet they exist nonetheless."

Supernatural meets Star Trek when an inexplicable suicide takes place aboard the Enterprise, throwing Worf and Troi into the middle of a deep mystery.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Masks

Data: "Geordi? What does it feel like when a person is losing his mind?"

By nature I love brevity: Picard gets to flex his archaeology muscles, and Brent Spiner his acting muscles, but ultimately it is the audience whose jaw muscles are flexed.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Thine Own Self

We didn't know his real name, so we called him Jayden.

Data is stranded on an alien world where the Iceman sort of cometh, and Troi sets herself new challenges in an episode that ultimately doesn't challenge either character.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Lower Decks

"Lower Decks" is a fabulous episode, introducing memorable characters and giving us a glimpse at how the rest of the Enterprise must function.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Sub Rosa

Steamy.

"Dinna light that candle!"

I had the dubious honour of getting to review Next Gen's most detested episode. Now I get to tackle what is probably its second most detested episode.

And I couldn't be happier.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Homeward

Worf's brother Nikolai is working as an anthropologist on a doomed planet, and asks for help to save some of the doomed population.

"I find no honor in this whatsoever, Captain."

Star Trek The Next Generation: The Pegasus

"You were the captain, I was the ensign. I was just following orders."

A good episode. But I really wish we hadn't been able to guess exactly how it would end.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Parallels

"Captain, we're receiving 285,000 hails."

When you think of a Worf centric episode, what comes to mind is melodrama and deep cultural conflict, or at least some form of primal scream. This episode is something completely different. It's a delightful trip through unrealized realities with Worf as our almost hapless hero.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Inheritance

Data: "I find I am having difficulty separating what would be best for her from what would be best for me."

By nature I love brevity: Eh. What's here isn't bad. It's just a shame what's not here is wildly more interesting.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Force of Nature

"Captain's Log, Stardate 47310.2. We are investigating the disappearance of the medical transport Fleming somewhere in the Hekaras Corridor. Our search is complicated by the unique properties of this particular region of space."

'Force of Nature' was Next Gen's big take on environmentalism and the damage we are doing because of our uncontrollable need to get to places as quickly as possible, a subject that is just as topical now as it was in the early 90s.

But before all that let's waste some time on Data's cat.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Attached

"Penny for your thoughts."

Finally! But how dare they end it that way?

Star Trek The Next Generation: Dark Page

“Aren’t you going to mingle, Mr. Woof?”

Lwaxana Troi is back on the Enterprise introducing a new race to the Federation, the Cairn, who communicate mostly through images, and a new man to her daughter, who communicates mostly through pauses.