UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Up the Long Ladder
Season 2 Episode 18
Original airdate: May 20, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

When Starfleet receives an old Earth distress signal from deep in space, the Enterprise is sent to investigate.

My Brief Review

Shit sandwich.

But seriously. I should have known from early in the episode when they all (including the computer) pronounced “hegemony” with a hard G. (Kind of the reverse of “1.21 jigawatts.”) This definitely the worst episode I’ve bothered to watch so far.

The Enterprise follows an antiquated distress signal and discovers a forgotten 22nd century Earth colony. Its ship departed with an odd mix of high technology, farm animals and spinning wheels.

The people Enterprise finds are an agrarian society that plays up every imaginable Irish stereotype. Their planet is endangered by solar flares, and they need to be evacuated — along with their farm animals. Hilarity ensues.

On board Enterprise, the daughter of the leader of the colony, inexplicably dressed in a cable knit crop top, makes out with Riker (a subplot that never comes up again); meanwhile the leader himself asks Picard about the other colony. (Ah, so that’s where all of the technology went.) They locate an M-class planet a half lightyear away, populated by a society of erudite, celibate clones. It turns out only 5 members of this colony survived the landing on the planet, and they used their scientific knowledge to populate the planet with copies of themselves. But genetic degradation is creeping in and their society is doomed.

Long story short, they steal DNA samples (hence the episode’s title, I guess) from Riker and Dr. Pulaski, who then beam down and kill their own clones. Then Picard sets up a meeting between the two leaders, a real Odd Couple, to concoct a harebrained scheme to merge their societies as a solution to both worlds’ problems. Of course there will be polygamy.

We never find out why these two groups left Earth together in the 22nd century. Or anything else that would help this terrible, sloppy episode make any sense.

Memorable Moment

I didn’t even mention that the episode starts with Worf grunting at his station and then collapsing. He apparently has the Klingon equivalent of the measles, which humiliates him, but Dr. Pulaski keeps his secret and he thanks her by performing the Klingon tea ceremony. Which has nothing to do with anything else in the episode, and of course is not mentioned again.

And another throwaway moment: we learn that Geordi’s visor is basically a lie detector. Who knew? (Apparently no one before or after this episode!)

I really feel like this episode was the result of every writer on the staff throwing their worst idea in a hat, and then stitching them together into a bare semblance of a story.

Crew Rando

None. Even the red shirts had the good sense to avoid this disaster.

Distance Rating: 4K

IMDb score: 6.3/10

Samaritan Snare
Season 2 Episode 17
Original airdate: May 13, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

With Picard away for routine surgery, the Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Pakled vessel.

My Brief Review

Structured like an episode of The Love Boat, this is a mostly entertaining but not great episode. In one storyline, Picard and Wesley spend 6 hours on a shuttlecraft to Starbase 515, where Wes will take exams and Picard is going for what turns out to be a heart transplant. In the other storyline, Riker and the Enterprise deal with a ship full of simpletons on a ship full of stolen technology that is beyond their comprehension. They kidnap Geordi, but a clever ruse by the Enterprise bridge officers saves the day.

Then, with Picard’s surgery going awry, the Enterprise travels at warp 9 to get to the starbase so Dr. Pulaski can save his life. Which makes one wonder why the whole shuttlecraft scenario happened at all. (Bad writing!)

Memorable Moment

Communicating with Geordi in front of the Pakleds, Riker, Data and Worf speak in code to relay their plan to rescue Geordi from his dimwitted captors. Worf gets quasi-mystical for a moment.

Crew Rando

It’s the return of Ensign Gomez! I expected her appearance in the previous episode to be a one-off, but she’s still here… presumably because the story needed someone in engineering, and we don’t really know anyone there besides Geordi.

Distance Rating: 5K

IMDb score: 6.6/10

Q Who
Season 2 Episode 16
Original airdate: May 6, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

Q tries to prove that Capt. Picard needs him on the crew by hurling the Enterprise 7,000 light years away, where they first encounter the Borg.

My Brief Review

Here we GO. This may not be the absolute best episode of TNG, but it is unquestionably one of the most pivotal. This is our introduction to the Borg. Q of course is involved, and this is also where we learn that Q and Guinan know each other (and not on friendly terms). Q manages to “Q” it up without being too annoying (unlike the episode in season 1 where he tried to recruit Riker to join the Q Continuum), the Borg conceptually are still a bit rough around the edges, and all of the core crew play meaningful roles in the progression of the story. I actually ran for the entire episode this time, a first for these reviews.

Memorable Moment

For me the most chilling moment with the Borg is when we first learn how they relentlessly adapt: a drone beams aboard the Enterprise and begins scanning the computer. After first trying to stun it (to no effect), Worf is given permission to set his phaser to kill. Which it does. But a moment later a second drone beams aboard, and when Worf attempts to shoot it with the same phaser setting, we see that it has adapted its personal shielding to the phaser and is not harmed at all. Then it removes data packs from the dead drone, beams back out, and the dead drone is vaporized. Yikes.

Crew Rando

Talkative Ensign Gomez, newly stationed on the Enterprise, bumps into Captain Picard with a cup of hot chocolate in her hand, leading him to return to his quarters for a change of clothes. It’s at that moment that he’s whisked across space by Q and the entire scenario begins, so in a way… she’s… responsible for the Borg coming after humanity? Perhaps I’m overthinking it.

Distance Rating: 7K

IMDb score: 9.0/10

Pen Pals
Season 2 Episode 14
Original airdate: April 29, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

Upon arriving at a newly identified planetary group, the crew finds that the entire region is unstable.

IMDb Synopsis

Data befriends an alien girl in distress, breaking the Prime Directive, while Wesley commands his first team.

My Brief Review

I’m posting both the Netflix and IMDb synopses here because they’re so extremely different. In many cases, the two have almost word-for-word identical synopses, but in this case there’s a huge difference between the two. And if I had checked IMDb before watching this episode, I would have remembered exactly which episode it was before I started watching.

(As an aside: I’ve noticed that when Netflix doesn’t almost exactly replicate IMDb, its synopsis tends to mainly describe just what happens in the cold open, before the opening credits. Which leads me to believe that whoever Netflix hired to write their synopses is incredibly lazy; when they’re not just watching the first minute of the show, they’re straight-up plagiarizing!)

Star Trek episodes tend to fall into a few different categories. This one is a bit of a grab bag of all of them: mysterious space phenomena, interpersonal drama, philosophical/metaphysical struggles, and even the Holodeck.

Overall it is not an amazing episode, but it is pretty solid, and Sarjenka, the orange, long-fingered alien child Data befriends via radio transmitter, is a memorable character.

Memorable Moment

Data beaming down to Sarjenka’s home, finding her, and beaming back to the ship with her, massively violating the Prime Directive, certainly stands out. Picard spits at Riker, “He has brought a child onto my ship. Onto my bridge!” (If there’s one thing Picard hates, it’s having children on the bridge.)

Crew Rando

Ensign Davies, the geologist Wesley Crusher picks for his survey team, who challenges the young Wesley’s authority initially, but when Wesley, after consulting Riker, grows a spine, he immediately and joyfully complies with Wesley’s order to conduct a time-consuming scan. (Which, of course, is pivotal to saving Sarjenka’s planet.)

Distance Rating: 5K

IMDb score: 6.8/10

Time Squared
Season 2 Episode 13
Original airdate: April 1, 1989

Netflix Synopsis

The Enterprise comes across a Federation shuttlecraft that is floating in space and without much power but does exhibit life signs.

My Brief Review

In some ways this episode is similar to the previous one. It’s almost as if the writers of the two episodes were given the same minimal premise and asked to create competing stories. This one is definitely the better of the two, but it still has some significant flaws.

Here, the Enterprise retrieves a derelict shuttlecraft that, eerily, bears the exact same identification as the craft sitting next to it in the shuttle bay. And when they open it, they discover an unconscious Picard on board!

Long story short, time travel, energy vortex, freewill vs. determinism. “Our” Picard ends up killing the “other” Picard and choosing to fly directly into the vortex instead of trying to distract it by sacrificing himself in a shuttle. It works, but it is never explained, and a lot of the story just doesn’t hold water.

In particular, I struggled with Picard’s uncharacteristically hot-headed behavior when attempting to interrogate the “other” Picard in sick bay. The writing isn’t just out-of-character, it is extremely sloppy, because when Picard leaves sick bay he orders Deanna Troi to stay with the “other” Picard, but she immediately gets into an argument with Dr. Pulaski and then storms out.

Memorable Moment

The episode begins in Riker’s quarters, where Riker is apparently demonstrating his culinary skills, using a weird alien egg to supposedly make “omelets” for his guests (Data, Worf, Geordi and Dr. Pulaski). When he starts preparing it, at first he appears to be actually making a crêpe, not an omelet… but then he just tosses it all up and serves them scrambled eggs. I should have known I was in for a sloppily-written episode right at that point, but I was most distracted simply trying to figure out if the writer didn’t know what an omelet was, if Jonathan Frakes was too unskilled to even feign preparing one, or if no one involved even cared about the inconsistency.

Crew Rando

The “other” Picard, of course!

Distance Rating: 5K

IMDb score: 7.6/10