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forestofgloryR and I recently finished watching season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). When we started watching TNG the plan was to watch the highlights but we quickly changed to just skipping the worst episodes. I have lots thoughts about season four but they aren’t really a proper review or essay -- I lack a thesis statement. So I’m just going to write up bunch of bullet points and share my thoughts that way.
***Minor Spoilers***
*I’m still really enjoying Star Trek. The tone is just what I want right now -- tackling moral issues seriously but still a bit goofy. The beginning of season four had a lot of episodes that focused on family. Which was great! I wish it continued more into the second half of the season. Also Worf’s parents are great.
*This season saw more episodes that played with the structure in various ways which I also enjoyed. Things like “Family” -- which doesn’t have any grand space adventure but instead focuses on how the events of “The Best of Both Worlds” affected the characters, “Data’s Day” which is “day-in-the-life,” and “First Contact” which is told from the aliens point of view. I enjoyed all this format creativity very much.
*This season was the first one of TNG where I was really pissed off at the Prime Directive. I hate Picard’s moral relativism so damn much. Just admit that your very existence interferes with other cultures and then treat them as your moral equals and cut the paternalist bullshit.
*There were a couple of episodes exploring the darker side of the federation (other than the prime directive which the show doesn’t think is problem). In the “The Drumhead” a federation judge comes on board and starts a witch hunt, and “The Wounded,” where a Starfleet captain is attacking the Cardassians (because they are up to something but still.) These were some of my favorite episodes of the season.
*I didn’t know I have so many feelings about Keiko until she showed up in this season of TNG. She’s a recurring character in DS9 who I always thought got a bad deal -- stuck on a space station and not allowed to do cool botany. (I still don’t understand why she couldn’t help out Bajor with all its agricultural problems.) Anyways she’s a character who I know from DS9 where she’s a mom, and she’s a botanist so I always felt a certain amount of kinship with her. So when in her first appearance in “Data’s Day” she considers not marrying Miles, I wanted to rush into the screen and tell to definitely not to marry him. And so far their every interaction in TNG has supported me. She may laugh off picking up his socks, but really it's not cool. She did get a small moment of techo-bable in "Night Terrors" which pleased me very much. I wish she got to save the day with awesome botany sometime.
*Dr Crusher seems to be coming into her own this season. She gets to do a lot more useful doctor stuff even when she’s not the focus of the episode.It may help her that Wesley is gone, though the two of them didn’t interact on screen much. But it is nice to have woman getting to do more plot stuff, and be good at her job.
*However Dr. Crusher getting more good moments makes Tori’s position in the show even more frustrating. She is still getting creeply hit on, and not getting to do much beyond answer the physic phones, and is sometimes even pretty incompetent, for example she fails to figure out that something is going on with Barkly after suffers head trauma then gets a personality change, or shooting Data with a arrow by accident. She seems like a interesting character who should get to do more. Plus I always want to see character with caretaking roles get to shine. I think the writers were having trouble because they were sexist and also didn’t really understand why therapy helps people, but it's very frustrating. I’ve been told that this doesn’t really get better.
*Data is such a great robot pal! I love how baffled he is all the time while still also being really nice. I enjoy how utterly oblivious he is to so much human interaction --even if it does lead to some embarrassment squick
*This season Worf seems to have gone from someone who maybe didn’t know a lot about Klingon customs and was conflicted about his dual human Klingon hertiagate to someone who is very Klingon and also a Starfleet Officer but not conflicted about it. And I wanted more character growth on screen between point A and point B. It doesn’t help that they killed off the character who was doing the most to bring this conflict to the fore. Worf’s talk with Guinan in the final episode real severed to show how much this conflict had been resolved off screen.
*I continue to love all the arts a crafts bits. Dr Crusher dances and also grows moss! Worf teaches martial arts! Many people play musical instruments. Data paints and also has Spot the cat who we finally get to meet this season.
Now for some notes on specific episodes:
"Remember Me" -- In this episode Dr Crusher, get caught in warp bubble and doesn’t know what is happening so she wanders around the enterprise as everyone disappears; She gets understandably worked up that everyone is disappearing and no one really believes her super frustrating and gaslightly. Like I agree that with a friend who said that Dr Crusher gets to solve her own problem and that's a good thing but I still found the episode very frustrating to watch.
“The Host” AKA the Trill episode. I was not expecting to like this, I knew going in that the Trill here didn’t really line up with the Trill in DS9 and that Dr Crusher was going to be homophobic at the end, but I did not expect what turned out to be my biggest problem. Which was that the romance was super creepy! I made it hard for me to care about anything else. I was so glad that Crusher was finally dumping that person that I didn’t care why she did it which took a lot of the sting out the the homophobia for me.
That’s it for now we are taking a short break of maybe a week or so before we get back to season 5, and we’ll probably re-watch The Undiscovered Country during that break.
***Minor Spoilers***
*I’m still really enjoying Star Trek. The tone is just what I want right now -- tackling moral issues seriously but still a bit goofy. The beginning of season four had a lot of episodes that focused on family. Which was great! I wish it continued more into the second half of the season. Also Worf’s parents are great.
*This season saw more episodes that played with the structure in various ways which I also enjoyed. Things like “Family” -- which doesn’t have any grand space adventure but instead focuses on how the events of “The Best of Both Worlds” affected the characters, “Data’s Day” which is “day-in-the-life,” and “First Contact” which is told from the aliens point of view. I enjoyed all this format creativity very much.
*This season was the first one of TNG where I was really pissed off at the Prime Directive. I hate Picard’s moral relativism so damn much. Just admit that your very existence interferes with other cultures and then treat them as your moral equals and cut the paternalist bullshit.
*There were a couple of episodes exploring the darker side of the federation (other than the prime directive which the show doesn’t think is problem). In the “The Drumhead” a federation judge comes on board and starts a witch hunt, and “The Wounded,” where a Starfleet captain is attacking the Cardassians (because they are up to something but still.) These were some of my favorite episodes of the season.
*I didn’t know I have so many feelings about Keiko until she showed up in this season of TNG. She’s a recurring character in DS9 who I always thought got a bad deal -- stuck on a space station and not allowed to do cool botany. (I still don’t understand why she couldn’t help out Bajor with all its agricultural problems.) Anyways she’s a character who I know from DS9 where she’s a mom, and she’s a botanist so I always felt a certain amount of kinship with her. So when in her first appearance in “Data’s Day” she considers not marrying Miles, I wanted to rush into the screen and tell to definitely not to marry him. And so far their every interaction in TNG has supported me. She may laugh off picking up his socks, but really it's not cool. She did get a small moment of techo-bable in "Night Terrors" which pleased me very much. I wish she got to save the day with awesome botany sometime.
*Dr Crusher seems to be coming into her own this season. She gets to do a lot more useful doctor stuff even when she’s not the focus of the episode.It may help her that Wesley is gone, though the two of them didn’t interact on screen much. But it is nice to have woman getting to do more plot stuff, and be good at her job.
*However Dr. Crusher getting more good moments makes Tori’s position in the show even more frustrating. She is still getting creeply hit on, and not getting to do much beyond answer the physic phones, and is sometimes even pretty incompetent, for example she fails to figure out that something is going on with Barkly after suffers head trauma then gets a personality change, or shooting Data with a arrow by accident. She seems like a interesting character who should get to do more. Plus I always want to see character with caretaking roles get to shine. I think the writers were having trouble because they were sexist and also didn’t really understand why therapy helps people, but it's very frustrating. I’ve been told that this doesn’t really get better.
*Data is such a great robot pal! I love how baffled he is all the time while still also being really nice. I enjoy how utterly oblivious he is to so much human interaction --even if it does lead to some embarrassment squick
*This season Worf seems to have gone from someone who maybe didn’t know a lot about Klingon customs and was conflicted about his dual human Klingon hertiagate to someone who is very Klingon and also a Starfleet Officer but not conflicted about it. And I wanted more character growth on screen between point A and point B. It doesn’t help that they killed off the character who was doing the most to bring this conflict to the fore. Worf’s talk with Guinan in the final episode real severed to show how much this conflict had been resolved off screen.
*I continue to love all the arts a crafts bits. Dr Crusher dances and also grows moss! Worf teaches martial arts! Many people play musical instruments. Data paints and also has Spot the cat who we finally get to meet this season.
Now for some notes on specific episodes:
"Remember Me" -- In this episode Dr Crusher, get caught in warp bubble and doesn’t know what is happening so she wanders around the enterprise as everyone disappears; She gets understandably worked up that everyone is disappearing and no one really believes her super frustrating and gaslightly. Like I agree that with a friend who said that Dr Crusher gets to solve her own problem and that's a good thing but I still found the episode very frustrating to watch.
“The Host” AKA the Trill episode. I was not expecting to like this, I knew going in that the Trill here didn’t really line up with the Trill in DS9 and that Dr Crusher was going to be homophobic at the end, but I did not expect what turned out to be my biggest problem. Which was that the romance was super creepy! I made it hard for me to care about anything else. I was so glad that Crusher was finally dumping that person that I didn’t care why she did it which took a lot of the sting out the the homophobia for me.
That’s it for now we are taking a short break of maybe a week or so before we get back to season 5, and we’ll probably re-watch The Undiscovered Country during that break.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-12 05:53 pm (UTC)Regarding Worf and the Klingon stuff -- I feel like this is around the time that Ron Moore started having more influence on the show, and he was known as the Klingon guy. (He went to Deep Space Nine when TNG ended, and I think it's no accident that Worf soon showed up there too.) It's been awhile since I've watched TNG in order, so I don't remember this progression, but I wonder if that's part of why.
Yay, The Undiscovered Country! I love that movie so much.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-05 12:21 pm (UTC)*I didn’t know I have so many feelings about Keiko until she showed up in this season of TNG. She’s a recurring character in DS9 who I always thought got a bad deal -- stuck on a space station and not allowed to do cool botany. (I still don’t understand why she couldn’t help out Bajor with all its agricultural problems.)
Random FoaF driveby to say that in the books she ends up on Cardassia, helping rebuild their extremely effed up ecosystem.