First aired: September 28, 1987
Wow. Is this episode really 23 years old? Fuck me - I remember watching this when it first aired on RTE. I think that RTE was a few years behind the US so this would have aired here sometime in 1990 I think. I remember watching this as a kid - about 13 years old. This is probably the first time I watched this since that broadcast.
And it has not aged well.
Almost no-one on screen at any point bar Patrick Stewart seems to know how to act. They’re all playing the characters for the very first time and they don’t know who they are yet. These days, people tend to give new TV shows a few episodes to see if they’re any good. For this shows sake I hope it was the same in the late 80s.
Everyone just waffles about a bit introducing the shows concepts to the viewer, but all I managed to learn is that the uniforms don’t really fit and Riker doesn’t know his left from his right. Seriously - check it out. The computer tells him the holodeck is on his right and he turns left. And somehow, through the magic of TV he finds the holodeck anyway. Maybe left and right mean something different in the future.
To cut a long story short (too late), Q finally shows up and something interesting happens. Man, I think even as a 13 year old who couldn’t get enough sci-fi I would have stopped watching after this one episode if Q and Picard hadn’t been so good in every scene they shared.
It’s pretty much safe to skip over most of what happens in this episode. The crew of the Enterprise fuck about not really knowing what’s going on and all the head of Farpoint station chews the scenery. Michael Bell plays Zorn, the manager of the station and it’s a little weird seeing him in this. The voice of several of the Smurfs and the voice of Raziel from the Legacy of Kain games playing an overly worried manager, overacting as hard as he can. Wonderful stuff.
It all comes to a head when Q puts the pressure on and Troi proclaims she senses some stuff so obvious, the blind guy has already seen it. Picard puts it all together at the last minute, and as if he needed more convincing that he’s cracked the mystery, Q starts urging to kill the alien in such a sudden out-of-nowhere manner that if Picard hadn’t already guessed that the alien wasn’t hostile, he’d certainly know it now. Way to go, all knowing Q. It all ends happily enough, despite the slightly shaky start and the Enterprise heads off to more adventures in deep space.
Not the best start. I’ll keep re-watching this, but if Season 1 is this bad for much longer I don’t think I can take going through it again.
Next up - The Naked Now, where everyone on the ship gets wasted.
Wow. Is this episode really 23 years old? Fuck me - I remember watching this when it first aired on RTE. I think that RTE was a few years behind the US so this would have aired here sometime in 1990 I think. I remember watching this as a kid - about 13 years old. This is probably the first time I watched this since that broadcast.
And it has not aged well.
Almost no-one on screen at any point bar Patrick Stewart seems to know how to act. They’re all playing the characters for the very first time and they don’t know who they are yet. These days, people tend to give new TV shows a few episodes to see if they’re any good. For this shows sake I hope it was the same in the late 80s.
Everyone just waffles about a bit introducing the shows concepts to the viewer, but all I managed to learn is that the uniforms don’t really fit and Riker doesn’t know his left from his right. Seriously - check it out. The computer tells him the holodeck is on his right and he turns left. And somehow, through the magic of TV he finds the holodeck anyway. Maybe left and right mean something different in the future.
To cut a long story short (too late), Q finally shows up and something interesting happens. Man, I think even as a 13 year old who couldn’t get enough sci-fi I would have stopped watching after this one episode if Q and Picard hadn’t been so good in every scene they shared.
It’s pretty much safe to skip over most of what happens in this episode. The crew of the Enterprise fuck about not really knowing what’s going on and all the head of Farpoint station chews the scenery. Michael Bell plays Zorn, the manager of the station and it’s a little weird seeing him in this. The voice of several of the Smurfs and the voice of Raziel from the Legacy of Kain games playing an overly worried manager, overacting as hard as he can. Wonderful stuff.
It all comes to a head when Q puts the pressure on and Troi proclaims she senses some stuff so obvious, the blind guy has already seen it. Picard puts it all together at the last minute, and as if he needed more convincing that he’s cracked the mystery, Q starts urging to kill the alien in such a sudden out-of-nowhere manner that if Picard hadn’t already guessed that the alien wasn’t hostile, he’d certainly know it now. Way to go, all knowing Q. It all ends happily enough, despite the slightly shaky start and the Enterprise heads off to more adventures in deep space.
Not the best start. I’ll keep re-watching this, but if Season 1 is this bad for much longer I don’t think I can take going through it again.
Next up - The Naked Now, where everyone on the ship gets wasted.
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