* Would simply not have my entire life ruined by some Frenchman's Main Character Syndrome problems. Pitting Sisko so strongly opposite Picard is a smart choice.
* As is the conflict with the Bajorans -- hard not to feel like they're basically right about Starfleet setting up shop here.
* Have seen this one before, but I don't think I got very far into the season.
* That this show hasn't been remastered really makes TNG's remaster look incredible.

#startrek #ds9

Bashir/Garak is the gayest situation I've ever seen. #startrek #ds9

O'Brien being such a main character on this show gives it all such a workplace comedy vibe. DS9 itself just a big mall.

I assume wormhole visitors will be a recurring go-to thing on this show? #startrek #ds9

geordi

you're investigating a murder and though the structure of Trek means she didn't do it, /you're/ definitely not sure she didn't do it

geordi

this is unprofessional at best

(there's some unhealthy patterns in Geordi's romantic life that this 90s writers' room is just incapable of interrogating -- he was like this with Brahms, too, just instantly making himself part of a "we" with somebody who doesn't get consulted on whether she wants that)

#startrek #tng

Works, but does so define itself in relationship to the TNG Q stories that it, perhaps inadvertently, really makes clear that the dynamic he has with Picard is something special, something that just doesn't really exist with Sisko, who simply takes none of the guff Picard so beleagueredly tolerates from Q. #startrek #ds9 #tng

I think this is a pretty great story, and a great display of exactly what makes the dynamic between Q and Picard tick. Great take on "Christmas Carol"/"Wonderful Life" only TNG could do.

But that whole friendship completely falling apart immediately just because Picard, given the chance, would strongly prefer not to get stabbed in the entire Hades-damned heart, woof, Johnny, make better friends.

#startrek #tng

On the one hand, lovely to see Worf connecting with his Klingon culture, finding not just value but beauty in those traditions.

On the other hand, frustrating that that means being racist to Romulans, that it means trying to force violent and outdated ways of doing things on a peaceful colony of people who are clearly fine without all that junk. #startrek #tng

Between the collaboration between enemies and the personal angle for Picard, enjoyed this one, though I think its ultimate conclusion is just so much bigger than it has space for. Totally get, now, why Discover gave it so much more space.

#startrek #tng

The Bashir and O'Brien story here is kinda rote -- you can see every single part of its shape the second the old geezer asks for O'Brien in the first place -- but the Jake and Nog hanging out with the kid ambassador story is very charming to me. #startrek #ds9
bashir is so cute
Rare great "is he in an insane asylum" episode. Hangs entirely on Frakes' performance, and it works exclusively because he nails it. #startrek #tng

Worf might be the only character on TNG you could do a sincere belief in the return of a prophesied messiah figure story with, but even then I don't think this really works. It's all a little too Jesus, and the conclusion it comes to to dodge the Jesus of it all feels like the writers room trying to please Gene's ghost.

Simply too compromised to work.

#startrek #tng

Lwaxana Troi has grown on me, and it's fun to watch her removed from the Enterprise, hassling DS9 — and poor old beset-upon Odo. She's so nice to him — the character is always at her best when she has to play vulnerable — when he has to revert to his puddle form.

You just know this evil computer A-plot will never come up again for even a sentence.

#startrek #ds9

Another one that fully hangs on how good Frakes is and he just /nails/ it, perfectly squaring in on the difference between Will, who loves his life, has everything he wants, and Thomas, who doesn't have any of that and can't. Love that they don't just, say, erase him at the end.

#startrek #tng

Season 1 is too early for a full hour of these characters not behaving like themselves. This is a season 3 story that got lost. #startrek #ds9

Fascinating choice to end this new show's first season on the conflict of a religious person trying to rigidly enforce their beliefs on a secular classroom, so much more solidly real than the Borg taking Picard. (Vedek Winn is such a piece of shit.)

I dunno if there /should/ be Roddenberrian balance to be found when one side literally does terrorism about it, but I suppose I respect where Sisko lands on it.

#startrek #ds9

I enjoy when TNG interrogates what it means to be a person, but even if it wasn't clearly a scheme by Lore, we've /done/ Data's first emotion before, and any appearance of the Borg where they do anything less than killing somebody we care about is always just gonna be diminishing returns.

Liked the DS9 season finale, but this one's just kind of ploddy and dull. #startrek #tng

There's stuff I like here, but this is a deflating followup to an already poorly-inflated balloon.

None of this will change Data in a meaningful way, not really, because Lore hasn't convinced him, he's just controlling him. The rest of the crew get subplots of them running around that are on the level of an overstretched Doctor Who six-parter.

A shame to make this where Hugh goes next, too.

#startrek #tng

The Borg were really too scary to be used the way TNG clearly wanted to use them — every encounter with them should've mattered in a way this really didn't.

(Wonder how I'll feel about how Voyager will deal with this.)

#startrek #tng

Things far goofier are true on this show all the time, but suddenly Geordi seeing his missing-presumed-dead mom in an unlikely place is "a fantasy"? Damn, gang.

I mean, they're right, but still.

#startrek #tng

Enjoyed this three-parter, a strong mission statement about where and how this is going. We've gotten to know the characters, see them change, now it's their world's turn. #startrek #ds9

I think seven years in, you're allowed to do a big goofy space pirates one, even if Gene would've hated it. Enjoyed the layers of deception and not-knowing and knowing here, hope part two lands it.

Data here becomes the most plausible captain of the main crew, to me.

#startrek #tng

Yeah, they land it.

It's really another one that hangs on main cast not behaving like main cast, but you /can do that/ in season /seven/.

#startrek #tng

Only six episodes into season 7, I suddenly understand the specific tone of that "TNG season 8" twitter account — we're really over here doing "Data has weird dreams, meanwhile, Picard will do anything not to attend a banquet."

#startrek #tng

After the #TNG episode where Worf gets paralysed and goes, "well, I can't possibly live with a disability, better kill myself," though I do wish this one was a little more about her thriving than about her fighting the crew over accessibility — the crew frequently make utter asses of themselves — it's still nice to get an utterly unsubtle 90s-ass one about how a disability doesn't mean you're worthless.

(Hey, it's Daphne Ashbrook.)

#startrek #ds9

"Lwxana Troi has weird dreams" is a little too close to the literally previous episode to do /already/. It's not even a bad episode, and being angled for drama instead of comedy means it's not even superfluous, but it may be for the best that TNG is about to end.

#startrek #tng

Data tries to train Spot. Meanwhile, does warp drive spell the total destruction of everything?

Was TNG always a sitcom, or does season 7 just feel that way?

#startrek #tng

Great Worf episode, but Worf/Troi feels here like such a gag pairing that I dunno how they're gonna sell the idea of doing it for real in the rest of the season.

#startrek #tng

I've seen this one before, back when I watched the Enterprise finale. Still think it's pretty good.

#startrek #tng

Had to, of course. Forgot how fond I was of this crew. Maybe I /should/ rewatch Enterprise after Voyager.

Troi and Riker look notably older, with Troi's hairstyle (and accent) even totally different, but it's hard to care when all of this is clearly about how fond everyone is of them.

That, plus the main cast appearing not as themselves but as holographic projections of the official record, is kind of a problem.

#startrek #tng #enterprise

Perfectly middle of the road Prime Directive episode, though it is one that really highlights for me how the Prime Directive works as a narrative conceit but not at all as an actual rule in any kind of real context. #startrek #tng

Love a good "everyone mourns characters who haven't been told they're dead but may still end up that way" episode.

#startrek #ds9

In this one, Dr Crusher quits her job to move to Space Scotland and live with her grandmother's ex-boyfriend the Space Scottish Sex Ghost.

I don't dislike it as the show doing something different, but I do think the extent to which it relies on Dr Crusher just losing her mind to this sex ghost kinda sucks. Gates McFadden kinda crushes (ahem) it, though.

#startrek #tng

Say, "Upstairs, Downstairs"-ing TNG is a pretty solid concept. Somebody ought-a do a spinoff about characters just like these. Animated, maybe. Could run for a season or five, easy.

#startrek #tng

Extremely obvious from the off that Alixus is the reason for all of it.

You can't just force this situation on people!! If there are as many sympathetic to the cause as she insists, surely she could've just recruited for it!!

#startrek #ds9

See, this is an amnesia episode that works. Still not a great hour of television — it transparently builds up to and then basically competently executes "what if Data was Frankenstein's monster" — but at this point we know Data well enough, and what's inherent to him even without his memory is clear enough, that throwing him at the Planet of the Undereducated is at least /something/.

Troi gets a promotion for being willing to kill Geordi.

#startrek #tng

Brent Spiner tries his damnedest to make this work, but it's just not happening.

#startrek #tng

Lt. Kwan's behaviour before he ends his own life is so transparently "this man is getting telepathic instructions from some psychic entity" that it's completely absurd that it takes 15 minutes for the episode to stop investigating it as a straightforward suicide.

Good Troi episode, though.

#startrek #tng

No show on its seventh season should still be putting out episodes this bad.

And, like, bad on a premise level, not an execution level — it's executed decently, for how bonedead idiotic it is. #startrek #tng

@Alexis I often say to people that while the best of TNG is better than anything Voyager did, the absolute depths TNG sink 2 are worse than Voyager ever did.

TNG had much higher highs and much lower lows in my opinion.