Star Trek TNG: Episode 155 - Liaisons

Everyime I hear the word Liaisons, I just think of Dangerous Liaisons and how evertime I went into my local video store the VHS cover looked so similar to the Ms. Doubtfire cover. Seriously Robin Williams could have replaced Glenn Close in that movie.


Anyway, this episode is about an exchange program gone crazy. Everyone is put in odd predicaments and Picard is pretty much held hostage by a "fake" sexy woman who seduces him ... this is all an experiment so that this alien race can experience love. They also play poker in this episode for like the 20th time in the series and it's really starting to piss me off. In short, this episode seemed sort of recycled. Also in the very beginning Troi is with one of these aliens and he offers her a drink. She says No, because her stomach is still recovering from all of the dessert from the night before. Does this mean she had diarrhea?? Seriously. I could not stop thinking about that. Does she have diarrhea??


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 154 - Descent II

So, Data is now under the influence of Lore. Along with these Borg, they plan on destroying all organic life. Riker and Worf discover Hugh in a cave or something and find out that he is heading a group of rebels trying to overthrow Lore.


Long story short, Data turns on Lore and defeats him. Hugh is then put in as the head of these Borgs. Lore's emotional chip is taken out and given to Data, of which LaForge advises him to not yet destroy it. That's basically it. It was easily on of the best two-parters in the Star Trek universe.


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 153 - Descent

This episode begins with Data playing poker with Einstein, Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking. I respect the mind of Hawking, but man he is fucking disturbing to look at. Anyway, he did a good acting job on this one, at the end of the scene Data freezes the program and the actors have to stay perfectly still....Hawking nailed it. So the actor that played Einstein was Jim Norton, I thought it might be the American comedian Jim Norton ... but it wasn't, it was some UK actor. So I looked the dude up and here is what it said on Wikipedia "one of Norton's earlier UK television roles was as the timid Gardener in the first series of the long-running CITV children's series T-Bag".  ..................???


So the Enterprise answer a distress call and soon find themselves in combot with a free-thinking guerrilla faction of the Borg. They suspect that this may be the doings of Hugh. Data is sent to speak with the Borg but is quickly captured and an away team is sent to save him. The away team consists of every important person on the ship except for Dr. Crusher (who is now the acting Captain of the Enterprise).


Down on the planet, the away team party of Picard, Troi and LaForge stumble upon a building. This ends up being the home base of the Borg. Now they finally meet the leader of this Borg faction .... Lore.


AWESOME episode. Also, this ends season 6, which I found to be rather enjoyable.


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 152 - Timescape

"Picard, Troi, LaForge and Data must save the Enterprise, which they find frozen in an explosion of time, taking weapons fire from an also-frozen Romulan Warbird." ... Adam Nimoy directed this.


I just could not get into this one. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't that memorable. Everyone is frozen in the middle of a fight, both ship to ship and hand to hand .... it is due to some trans-dimentional being that sort of got stuck in the middle of it...or something. Picard, Troi, LaForge and Data escape being frozen because they are in the process of returning from a conference on the Runabout Shuttlecraft. So the real question is "why the hell do they keep taking these friggin' shuttlecrafts when they can just beam anywhere??"


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 151 - Second Chances

An episode with two Rikers? Be still my heart. Its just too much goatee for one fan to handle.


So Riker discovers another Riker. Not a clone, but an actual Riker. The explanation as to how this happened is quite believable, it involves some kind of transporter screw up. I was concerned as to how dumb the "split screen" would look...it could easily look shitty like the Patty Duke Show or that episode of Full House when Uncle Jesse meets his evil Greek cousin Stavos. Anyway, it looked very believable, Burton did a good job directing and Frakes was fantastic.


The weird thing is that at the end I totally expected one Riker to die, because surely there can't be two Rikers existing in the Star Trek realm. Wrong, they both are still alive and living their own lives. Isn't that kind of crazy?


It's strange how nowadays TV shows seem to be a springboard to bigger things for most actors. But go back 20 years and it seemed like everyone was typecast. Frakes, Spiner and Stewart were all great actors on a hit TV series and it all lead to shit.  Look Alf, what happened to his career when his series got cancelled??


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 150 - Rightful Heir

Uggh, another Worf episode. He does just fine as a baseless thunderhead, I don't want to delve into his feelings.


In this one he goes on a spiritual journey and witnesses the return of Kahless. But....it ends up being just a clone of Kahless. The one thing I did enjoy was seeing Gowron, I love that fat freak.


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 149 - Suspicions

Although I typically hate Beverly Crusher themed episodes, I must admit that this one didn't nearly make me want to die as much as I expected it to. It was themed around a brilliant Ferengi scientist (which in itself is a rarity and rather intriguing), he has discovered a way to basically fly directly into the sun without dying. Sadly he is killed testing out his device, but it is not to do to a malfunction. It is sabotage! Actually, this episode isn't that good.


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 148 - Frame of Mind

Wow. I really, really enjoyed this episode. Riker ends up trapped between two realities, one in which he is in an asylum and the other he is typical Riker on the Enterprise. While in the asylum the doctors view him as a lunatic that speaks of spacemen and after awhile I started to buy into it too. That is how well done it was. Every time Riker escaped and got back aboard the Enterprise, it ended up being an illusion. This happens at least five times! And I fell for it every time! This episode was simply crazy bananas... Appearing in this episode is the great Andrew Prine, a man that seemingly has been in every single tv show ever


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Star Trek TNG: Episode 147 - The Chase

"Four competing expeditions—Federation, Klingon, Cardassian, and Romulan—attempt to solve a genetic puzzle that proves to be the key to why Star Trek's version of the galaxy contains so many humanoid life forms."

Jonathan Frakes directed this episode and typically he does a solid job, this is no exception. I liked it. Great story and excellent visuals.

Picard's former archeology teacher arrives on board to share his ground breaking discovery, DNA that links all humanoid life-forms in the galaxy. The Cardassians plan to sabotage it and destroy the evidence. Picard locates the DNA strand and activates a program that shows an alien life-form explaining the humanoid origin. This pretty much pisses off everybody. The Cardassians are mad, the Klingons are furious and the Romulans are highly disgusted. I like to think that in real life most aliens would be humanoid ... but it seems sort of unlikely.

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Star Trek TNG: Episode 146 - Lessons

This has to be one of the top ten best TNG episodes. Its a fairly simple plot, Picard bonds with a woman (Lt Cmdr Nella Daren) over their shared passion of music. They soon begin a relationship. Nella gets sent on a dangerous mission and nearly dies. In the end Picard must let her transfer off of the Enterprise because a relationship with her would interfere with his duties.

The acting is fantastic with Stewart and Wendy Hughes giving incredible performances. Also, the cinematography was so much better than in previous episodes. I'm not really sure why. It had interesting camera angles and the quality of film just seemed much better.

Anyway, I have nothing negative to even really say about this one. Even when they had long, drawn-out scenes of Picard and Daren jamming on the flute and keyboard ... I still found it very entertaining.

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