I love how goofy the premise is! I'm pretty sure a famous scientist or sci-fi author once flippantly remarked that if time travel is real, we'd expect to see time-traveling tourists all over; this episode takes that idea and runs with it. Plus the guest actor does a great job inhabiting the role as a quirky and mildly annoying time traveler.

On the downside, the pacing is really slow. The tone shifts from being goofy to being deadly serious in a very jarring way. I give it a B-.

Yeah, the writers played fast and loose with Troi's powers through the entire show. Between her and Wesley there wasn't a problem the crew shouldn't have been able to overcome

FYP.

Grunching through the episode again. While the pace is slow, the lead character (a time traveler), convincingly swivels between being obnoxious and charming. It's worth watching once. 6.0/10

yeah, Matt Frewer is good.

On paper, that character should have been annoying, but the actor really made it work.

Agreed. I feel like the writers knew the actor well enough where they wrote a role that he was made to play. I would've rated it higher except it wasn't deep like other STNG episodes, and the pace seemed slow. Many of the scenes were essentially the same scene. The time traveler alludes to knowledge about the future while not saying anything. Well delivered, but repetitive.

The character though is one of the best for guest stars. It reminds me of the Soong character, and the Mark Twain character in Time's Arrow.

ST TNG S5E10: New Ground

Dull entry with Worf trying to keep Alexander - Worf Jr - in line while figuring out what to do with the little tinker (who is lying, stealing and bullying at school), with an unengaging subplot about creating waves in space ('soliton waves') so everyone can surf everywhere - only to create the galactic equivalent of a tsunami.

Filler.

3/10

Riker got to save an endangered species.

I know my posts are often off topic technically, but anyway...

The antenna channel that plays Star Trek for 5 hours every nite has The Royale playing now for the TNG episode. I always call it "Casino Royale," but I think that's incorrect.

My personal fave.

I love Picard's expression when he begins reading the novel. It was a dark and stormy night...

ST TNG S5E11: Hero Worship

Another dull filler episode (one directed by Patrick Stewart, no less), where some orphaned kid bonds onto Data like a newly-hatched gosling and starts to pretend to be an android to cope with his loss. Yeah, yeah, very worthy, but not fun.

Also they deal with some shock wave that turns into a whole 'if you use more energy to fight it, the stronger it becomes' Zen metaphor.

2/10

Two disappointing episodes. Characters becoming unexpected father figures has been a recurring theme in TNG, but awkward parent-teacher conferences just don't make for riveting sci-fi.

Hero Worship was a bit dull, but Brett Spiner's snesitive portrayal of Data made it watchable. Also, this is one of the very few times we get to see Troi actually doing her job as the ship's therapist.

also this is a good scene



Exemplifies all the characters most notable attributes: Data's quick thinking, Picard trusting his subordinate's judgement, Worf bravely following orders, Riker being a little *****

ST TNG S5E12: Violations

Quite surprising TNG episode, verging into exploitation horror, with mind rape conveyed quite effectively (though I did laugh at the unintentional humour of Riker being involved in rapeyness yet again). A surprising episode after the 2 bland instalments before it, but a little flawed in its rather anodyne resolution after all the nastiness.

7/10

User keshaldra's avatar is from the end of this episode.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/163751/

The writing was really off on this: the concept of implanted memories gets repeated three times and the ending just ran out of steam. Most notable part of this was the rather vivid handling of sexual violence, which felt way out of character for ST.

I believe the basic theme for this episode was inspired by memory recovery therapy, which was an idea that was making the rounds in the mid-90's.

ST TNG S5E13: The Masterpiece Society

A slightly dull and disappointing episode, trying to deal with big themes like eugenics, the prime directive and its application to human societies - and fumbling it somewhat. I do like Picard's final words.


5/10

I've been watching some TOS episodes recently. I'm a Star Trek fan but actually haven't seen that many episodes of the shows. I watched "Errand of Mercy" "Space Seed" and "Court Martial."

Errand of Mercy was pretty cool, the Klingons are badass and it's an interesting story but it kind of feels like a deus ex machina ending. I think this would've been a good movie script since with a bigger budget they could show the space battles, the fleets, maybe have more than just Kirk and Spock stranded on the planet. They would've needed to change the ending though.

I've seen Wrath of Khan multiple times but finally saw Space Seed for the first time. Damn, Ricardo Montalban has so much charisma. It's amazing they got him to come back 15 years later. They also dropped the ball with the ending on this one. Kirk tricks him and beats him down with a metal pipe. Meh. And when they go to the wide shots of the fighting the stunt doubles are really obvious. At least with TNG they don't have a captain who gets involved in fist fights in half the episodes.

Court Martial had a cool concept and it's why I love Star Trek so much. They can do a legal drama episode! I mean each of these 3 episodes were totally different and all worked perfectly as Star Trek.

One of the main takeaways though is how low budget and dated the series feels. I was watching the non-remastered versions. However, the concepts, characters and stories work well enough that it's still great TV. I guess we'll see if that holds up once I get to the Spock's Brain-tier stuff.

I hated this episode because it imho catered to teenagers who are notoriously obsessed with sex, and rape.

This was slow and full of technobabble, but I did enjoy it as a return to the Roddenberry style of sci-fi. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" here, just two very different cultures trying to reconcile their differences. I think the writers were careful in giving us a scenario where both sides of an argument have reasonable ideas and intentions.

This is absolutely the best way to experience TOS.

This has always been a high point of the franchise; they do everything from serious sci-fi to goofy campy sci-fi to legal drama to murder mystery to monster of the week to political allegory, etc. etc.

I do enjoy shows that have that intrinsic elasticity of form. The X-Files is another great show that has that ability.