Where No One Has Gone Before

 

I hope that my fellow Richochetti are Trekkies, too. I know that @jameslileks certainly is. I’d like to talk about something–anything–other than politics. I was excited to see that, yet again, we have landed a rover on Mars. I can’t get over how cool it is that we can put such an advanced piece of equipment on another planet. It got me thinking about space. So, let’s talk about something that no one has strong opinions about . . . Star Trek.

What I want to know is this: what is your favorite Star Trek episode and why?

I saw this question posed on Twitter, and it got me thinking about my favorite Star Trek episodes. You see, I love Star Trek. I have since I was in elementary school. I went as Captain Kirk for Halloween in 4th grade (I even made a communicator out of Legos–you really cannot imagine how cool I was). I still remember seeing Star Trek VI at our downtown movie theater (remember those?).

So, what is your favorite Trek episode? I don’t care which series. I also don’t want to know the “best” either. I want to know which episode you just enjoy watching.

I’ll go first. I only really know the Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. I’ve watched Voyager, but never got really into it. My favorite episode of TOS is probably Space Seed. Who doesn’t love Khan? But my favorite episodes of all time are Q-Who on TNG and In the Pale Moonlight on DS9.

I love Q-Who because it’s the introduction of the Borg. The Borg are the ultimate villain. Yet the reason I love it is a brief scene at the beginning of the episode between Q and Guinan. Q and Picard appear in Ten Forward and there is a brief, but very tense exchange between Q and Guinan. They have obviously encountered each other before. Q warns Picard that Guinan is “an imp, and where she goes trouble always follows.” The exchange is short. An utterly forgettable moment. But in that brief exchange, Guinan’s backstory is limitless. Her “powers” are unknown. It is a great jumping-off point for an underrated character. I’ve always wished that the show ran with that. But, alas, they forgot it. Anyway, I love that episode and happily rewatch it.

As for In the Pale Moonlight, it is–hands down–my favorite Star Trek episode. I love the entire Dominion War story arc in DS9. I think that the concept of a multiple-season plot was new for that time period, and DS9 did it well. What stands out is that DS9 was grittier and more realistic than other Trek series. What I like about In the Pale Moonlight is that it is told simply, and without regret by Captain Sisko. Avery Brooks gives what I think is his best performance. Through the plot device of a personal log, Sisko walks through a series of events that leads him down a path from which he cannot turn back. Sisko knows that it is a dangerous path, but he also knows that the risk of not acting is too great. In the end, his monologue is perfect. I don’t know why. It just . . . is.

Star Trek is the ultimate escape for me. I think it’s a great franchise with a number of great episodes. I can’t wait to hear what others think–and I can’t wait to watch the episodes you all recommend.

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  1. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    MDHahn (View Comment):
    Thinking more about Mr. Lileks’ first comment, I can’t help but mention how Miles O’Brien has to be the best character in Star Trek. Think about it: he was in two series. He has an enigmatic back story–the Hero of Setlik III. First, Colm Meaney is a really good actor.

    He’s the everyman, and there aren’t enough of those. No one’s fool, content with his rank and job, a engineer, not a philosopher. He even managed to redeem Bashir, whom everyone didn’t like at first because he was such a stuffed prig. 

    • #61
  2. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    MDHahn (View Comment):
    Thinking more about Mr. Lileks’ first comment, I can’t help but mention how Miles O’Brien has to be the best character in Star Trek. Think about it: he was in two series. He has an enigmatic back story–the Hero of Setlik III. First, Colm Meaney is a really good actor.

    He’s the everyman, and there aren’t enough of those. No one’s fool, content with his rank and job, a engineer, not a philosopher. He even managed to redeem Bashir, whom everyone didn’t like at first because he was such a stuffed prig.

     

    • #62
  3. Tyrion Lannister Inactive
    Tyrion Lannister
    @TyrionLannister

    @josepluma

    I have seen the Red Letter Media review.  I actually agree with them (most of the time).  I like the Star Trek movies more than they do.  The Picard review was a terrific takedown.  In many ways, watching their reviews is more enjoyable than watching the show.  

    I watched every episode of Picard as they came out.  I nitpicked the episodes to death as I was watching it with a friend and I was keeping a list of plus’s and minus’s of every episode, and I had like 100 complaints by the end of the series.  Then I talked it over with my friend and watched the review by RLM (among others) and hated it all the more.  I felt like Palpatine was cackling as I let the hate flow through me.  

    I’d have to rewatch it to refresh my memory, but here’s a few major complaints which aren’t super detailed to avoid spoilers:

    1. Picard.  This was Star Trek Patrick Stewart.  The original series he was just a darn actor and said his lines, it was the writers who understood the character.  In Picard, he’s a part of the writing process and allowed his personality and beliefs into the show ruining the character.
    2. Battlestar Picard.  This show was dark and humorless (aside from cringy attempts at out of place humor).  There are several scenes where you just wonder why they went there with the gore.  There was laughable F bombs dropped.  The world is not like Star Trek used to be in feel or tone.  Don’t get me wrong, I love BSG.  As a matter of fact, it’s my favorite show ever.  But Picard tried to go dark and it failed. 
    3. The characters were dumbies.  Swordy-McSword space Elf Elrond.  Seven of Nine (also ruined).  
    4. Laughable Villain Narissa.  And Oh.  Oh….
    5. Politics.  Patrick Stewart injected stupid politics into the show unnecessarily.  Of course the lefty show – runners went along with it.  Why not?  They were all libs. 
    6. Plot contrivances, and even worse, characters do maddeningly stupid things to move the plot forward- they don’t make sense for the character to do but they happen to move the show along so we can get stupid violent action moments, or stupid spaceship battles.  
    7. The end of it.

    I know I can go on, but frankly I haven’t seen it since it came out and I would need a refresher.  Save  yourself some time and watch the RLM take down of it.  You’ll enjoy it more without suffering as much.  Mr. Plinkett’s Star Trek Picard Review – YouTube

    • #63
  4. MDHahn Coolidge
    MDHahn
    @MDHahn

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    MDHahn (View Comment):
    Thinking more about Mr. Lileks’ first comment, I can’t help but mention how Miles O’Brien has to be the best character in Star Trek. Think about it: he was in two series. He has an enigmatic back story–the Hero of Setlik III. First, Colm Meaney is a really good actor.

    He’s the everyman, and there aren’t enough of those. No one’s fool, content with his rank and job, a engineer, not a philosopher. He even managed to redeem Bashir, whom everyone didn’t like at first because he was such a stuffed prig.

    Absolutely! He is really the only enlisted man in all of Star Trek. At the very least, he’s the only NCO. There’s a certain quality about him that fits that description regardless of whether it was intended. It also helps that Colm Meaney is great in that role. I don’t think it works with anyone else.

    • #64
  5. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Tyrion Lannister (View Comment):
    I know I can go on, but frankly I haven’t seen it since it came out and I would need a refresher. Save yourself some time and watch the RLM take down of it.

    As I said, I let myself enjoy it, despite misgivings and irritations, and I did. As for the lefty politics, nothing, and I mean nothing beats the galactic speed limit imposed because dilithium-powered engines were bad for the cosmetic environment. I CAN’T WARP . .  . 5 POINT 5

    • #65
  6. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Tyrion Lannister (View Comment):
    I know I can go on, but frankly I haven’t seen it since it came out and I would need a refresher. Save yourself some time and watch the RLM take down of it.

    As I said, I let myself enjoy it, despite misgivings and irritations, and I did. As for the lefty politics, nothing, and I mean nothing beats the galactic speed limit imposed because dilithium-powered engines were bad for the cosmetic environment. I CAN’T WARP . . . 5 POINT 5

    Apparently that was just temporary, unless you mean they were still yammering about that in Picard.  Last I heard, technical improvements took care of that, such as the adjustable-nacelles setup like Voyager had.

    • #66
  7. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    kedavis (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    TOS: This isn’t hard, even though there are so many. Most of the shows that have Important Messages are lauded for their Important Messages. There’s nothing that tops “City on the Edge of Forever” for its gut punch at the end, but what we really want is spaceships doing space things, and that means “The Doomsday Machine.” It has it all: the wrecked Constellation, William Windom’s over-the-top job as Commodore Decker, and a great soundtrack that saws away like the “Jaws” theme as Scotty curses and jams a sonic screwdriver into a sparking port in the Jeffries tube, because Ach the transporter’s out. It’s the tightest thing they ever did, and it’s a testament to the ep that no subsequent show has ever encountered another one of those hellish cornucopias.

    What about Balance Of Terror?

    That’s my favorite. Mark Leonard is great as the honorable Romulan commander.

    “If we should meet at other times, we might have been friends.”

    • #67
  8. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Clavius (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    TOS: This isn’t hard, even though there are so many. Most of the shows that have Important Messages are lauded for their Important Messages. There’s nothing that tops “City on the Edge of Forever” for its gut punch at the end, but what we really want is spaceships doing space things, and that means “The Doomsday Machine.” It has it all: the wrecked Constellation, William Windom’s over-the-top job as Commodore Decker, and a great soundtrack that saws away like the “Jaws” theme as Scotty curses and jams a sonic screwdriver into a sparking port in the Jeffries tube, because Ach the transporter’s out. It’s the tightest thing they ever did, and it’s a testament to the ep that no subsequent show has ever encountered another one of those hellish cornucopias.

    What about Balance Of Terror?

    That’s my favorite. Mark Leonard is great as the honorable Romulan commander.

    “If we should meet at other times, we might have been friends.”

    Close.  But it’s Mark Lenard, and he actually said “In a different reality, I could have called you ‘friend.'”

    P.S.  I didn’t have to look that up.

    • #68
  9. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    Tyrion Lannister (View Comment):

    @ josepluma

    I have seen the Red Letter Media review. I actually agree with them (most of the time). I like the Star Trek movies more than they do. The Picard review was a terrific takedown. In many ways, watching their reviews is more enjoyable than watching the show.

    It’s definitely more enjoyable for me because I have no intention of wasting my time on the show.

    • #69
  10. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    Hey!  How come nobody has mentioned Star Trek:  Lower Decks?

    {Quickly ducks}

    • #70
  11. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Dennis A. Garcia (formerly Gai… (View Comment):
    Okay; controversial opinion time. The only bad Star Trek is on the big screen, which includes the majority of the films (I,IV,V,VI,Insurrection, Nemesis, The Abramsverse). The series are varying degrees of awesome.

    It is controversial, inasmuch as it is wrong. ;) The first movie gets a lot of flak, partly for its stately interminability that answers the question of what you would get if you said to Doug Trumbull “Okay, you got 20 minutes to do what you want” but the director’s cut improves upon things. (Still odd to think that that director was the editor for Citizen Freaking Kane.) People wanted fun Trek with phasers and space combat, and they got a Spock who behaved like the Vulcan he was supposed to be.

    IV is not bad by any definition. Sorry. One thing that stuck out, though: so Klingons have . . . Pepto-bismol colored blood? We thought their ship interiors were red because, you know, BLOOD and WAR, but if their blood was pink, shouldn’t their lighting and decorating scheme be pink as well? Imagine that.

    Insurrection . . . I didn’t even like the new design of the ship. Nemesis had some great moments. I enjoyed the Abrams reboots, partly because Quinto and Urban were excellent as Spock and Bones, and Pine did a damn fine Shatner without a slavish imitation.

    You mean VI. Also- they had to change the color of the blood to avoid an automatic R rating. 

    • #71
  12. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):
    But browsing through the comments above, nobody’s mentioned Star Trek: Picard, which I legitimately enjoyed, both as a long, unfolding conspiracy/mystery, and as a love letter to the Next Gen era of the show.

    And you have to love a show that has an inert Borg Cube used as a research station that has a sign “This Facility has had 245 days without an assimilation” as a humorous OSHA notice.

    No, you don’t. It is a glacially slow trashing of everything we liked about TNG’s Picard and much of what we liked about ST generally. Cute moments like that and the good use of TOS musical cues don’t extinguish that dumpster fire, they make its flaws that much more glaring. 

    • #72
  13. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Allegories and metaphors etc, exist within an “external” language, which has to come first. Darmok and his people appear to have nothing like that, so I find it difficult to accept that they could have achieved space flight, among other things.

    I figured they had another language entirely for practical issues, and it may have been numerical or non-verbal.

    Correct. And keep in mind, it is not what they are saying, really. It’s what the thrice-accursed universal translator can make out of it. 

    • #73
  14. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    KirkianWanderer (View Comment):
    Balance of Terror is excellent

    As you and others have noted, yes. It’s a submarine movie, and there are no bad submarine movies.

    Interesting how much canon was forged on the fly, no? They have pointy ears! Vulcan connection? A few lines, whatever, figure it out later – and I’m still unclear on the connection. Yes, they were descendants of Vulcans who had rejected Surak’s teachings, but when did they get off the rock, head out into space and found Romulus, and how many were there? It’s ridiculous! This is like a group of pagans bugging out of Rome in the 4th century for America, and 2000 years later there are hundreds of millions of them with a whole new civilization –

    Oh, right. Well. Let’s just say the details in the Romulan case have always been blurry. And the “centurion” – again, was that because they were ROME-ulans? (I think someone mentions a Praetor, too.) With a few words and a makeup decision, they locked generations of writers into a cultural paradigm. And it’s also interesting how the Romulans, afaik, never get the “sympathetic” treatment eventually accorded the Klingons and even the Cardassians. “Well, once you get past the outward manifestations of their culture and understand them from the inside, there’s much that’s quite fascinating.” The Klingons stared out as Russians and turned into Vikings, but the Romulans will always be, in a sense, the Red Chinese.

    As for the Empath, I dreaded when that one came along in the rerun cycle, because it had that dreary score, and it was just this actress making faces and everyone hanging around an empty set for 45 minutes. But that’s just my opinion,

    It’s kind of existential theatre with Star Trek characters. But so is “I, Mudd”, but with a comic instead of tragic tone. 

    • #74
  15. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    James Lileks (View Comment):
    It’s the tightest thing they ever did, and it’s a testament to the ep that no subsequent show has ever encountered another one of those hellish cornucopias. 

    We always played “hellish cornucopia” with Bugles.

    Image result for bugles snack

    • #75
  16. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Stad (View Comment):

    I liked “Gary Seven” from the original series as my favorite episode, and The Wrath of Khan as my favorite movie based on the priginal series.

    I much prefer The Next Generation movies over the series, with First Contact being my favorite. Who wouldn’t love blasting off Earth to the tune of Magic Carpet Ride?

    There’s some show I was watching recently, where the main character is coming to realize that he’s actually in an alternate world. One of the tells was when he was discussing Star Trek with a friend, and the friend starts recollecting all the great adventures of Gary 7 and his cat companion, traveling through time and space with Teri Garr.

    Wait, Gary 7? What about Captain Kirk?

    Captain Kirk?? Let me see . . . Oh yeah, the spaceship guy that Gary ran into in that one episode about the rocket. Wasn’t he the guy with the dude with the pointy ears?

     

    • #76
  17. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Metalheaddoc (View Comment):
    I enjoyed “Tapestry” on TNG where Q gives Picard the chance to relive a pivotal moment of his youth and his later life turns tepid and boring.

    This episode was very good – I think about it a lot.

    • #77
  18. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):
    You mean VI. Also- they had to change the color of the blood to avoid an automatic R rating. 

    Oh good, you cleared that up. I was trying to remember any whale blood in IV.

    • #78
  19. Jeff Petraska Member
    Jeff Petraska
    @JeffPetraska

    “…but what we really want is spaceships doing space things, and that means “The Doomsday Machine.” It has it all: the wrecked Constellation, William Windom’s over-the-top job as Commodore Decker, and a great soundtrack that saws away like the “Jaws” theme as Scotty curses and jams a sonic screwdriver into a sparking port in the Jeffries tube, because Ach the transporter’s out. It’s the tightest thing they ever did, and it’s a testament to the ep that no subsequent show has ever encountered another one of those hellish cornucopias.”

    Absolutely, positively my favorite Star Trek episode.  Like James said, my favorites tend include starships doing starship things, so most of my TOS favorite episodes involve starship combat, such as The Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, and The Ultimate  Computer.  I even enjoy Journey to Babel due to it climactic final starship battle.

    Oddly, even though I’ve seen every other Star Trek series except Discovery and Picard, it’s the episodes from the original series that stick in my memory.

    • #79
  20. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Jeff Petraska (View Comment):

    Absolutely, positively my favorite Star Trek episode. Like James said, my favorites tend include starships doing starship things, so most of my TOS favorite episodes involve starship combat, such as The Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, and The Ultimate Computer. I even enjoy Journey to Babel due to it climactic final starship battle.

    Oddly, even though I’ve seen every other Star Trek series except Discovery and Picard, it’s the episodes from the original series that stick in my memory.

    On the starshisp doing starship things- I generally agree. But the human dramas with eternal themes that just happen to be set in space on a spaceship are good too, when well-written (for the genre/time/commercial tv constraints).

    The last comment  I understand and think, could be the age at which  you watched them. I grew up with those characters in my living room almost every afternoon or evening from the time I was in second grade through high school. Some TNG stories really stuck with me, e.g. “The Offspring”, “The Defector”, “The Best of Both Worlds”, and so on, and I watched those in college/early grad school which is to say, I think your experience is not odd at all.

    There is a cultural component of this perhaps as well. TOS was steeped in the western literary canon. It shows not just in allusions to Shakespeare and Milton, but in the dialogue the writers wrote. The degeneration of dialogue over the successive “generations” of ST is a phenomenon that you can track, and reaches its absolute nadir in my experience with Picard the dialogue of which sounds like it was written by junior high students raised on Telenovelas.  I have not bothered with STD.

    • #80
  21. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    JosePluma (View Comment):

    Hey! How come nobody has mentioned Star Trek: Lower Decks?

    {Quickly ducks}

    hahaha…you’re funny. Seriously funny though is The Critical Drinker’s take on it. Look him up if you have not. 

    • #81
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    JosePluma (View Comment):

    Hey! How come nobody has mentioned Star Trek: Lower Decks?

    {Quickly ducks}

    hahaha…you’re funny. Seriously funny though is The Critical Drinker’s take on it. Look him up if you have not.

    On the other hand, I quite enjoyed the “Lower Decks” episode of TNG.

    • #82
  23. DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone Member
    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Star Trek is an interesting test case for cultural shifts over time. The left has totally claimed Star Trek for its own, I gather that it’s almost entirely because it was all about pushing things like racial equality. But conservatives also agree with that message. In rewatching Classic Trek, what I have come away with was the sense that it was a distinctly American television series, pushing very American concepts. It also had a much stronger sense of organizational hierarchy. Even if everyone disagreed, the Captain’s word was final. You didn’t have everyone constantly questioning the Captain’s orders as you do in more modern shows. I suspect I could find a lot of messages in Classic Trek that would have today’s young and woke demanding that the show be cancelled. Because the show wasn’t leftist, really. It was “classical liberalism.”

    What I also found interesting in re-watching DS9 is the number of messages that were considered “liberal” just 20 years ago, but would now be considered entirely unWoke. (Wish I could recall some to mind, but when watching it, pay attention to the way the characters speak of other cultures and their attitudes. There’s still a strong sense of right and wrong that isn’t mushed over by “all cultures are equally valid — except Western culture which is evil.”)

    • #83
  24. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    DrewInEastHillAutonomousZone (View Comment):

    Star Trek is an interesting test case for cultural shifts over time. The left has totally claimed Star Trek for its own, I gather that it’s almost entirely because it was all about pushing things like racial equality. But conservatives also agree with that message. In rewatching Classic Trek, what I have come away with was the sense that it was a distinctly American television series, pushing very American concepts. It also had a much stronger sense of organizational hierarchy. Even if everyone disagreed, the Captain’s word was final. You didn’t have everyone constantly questioning the Captain’s orders as you do in more modern shows. I suspect I could find a lot of messages in Classic Trek that would have today’s young and woke demanding that the show be cancelled. Because the show wasn’t leftist, really. It was “classical liberalism.”

    What I also found interesting in re-watching DS9 is the number of messages that were considered “liberal” just 20 years ago, but would now be considered entirely unWoke. (Which I could recall some to mind, but when watching it, pay attention to the way the characters speak of other cultures and their attitudes. There’s still a strong sense of right and wrong that isn’t mushed over by “all cultures are equally valid — except Western culture which is evil.”)

    Well, the model for Kirk was the young John F. Kennedy, so…

    • #84
  25. BastiatJunior Member
    BastiatJunior
    @BastiatJunior

    My favorites are all from TOS.

    In no particular order:

    Balance of Terror:  Great cat-and-mouse game between the Enterprise and the Romulan ship.  The tension between Lt. Stiles and Spock was well done.  The internal debate about taking on the Romulan ship was believable. Then there was the growing mutual respect between Kirk and the Romulan Commander.

    Space Seed:  More relevant today because of the scary advances in genetic engineering.  Ricardo Montalban really chews up the scenery, but it was gratifying to see the “inferior” Captain Kirk win in the end.  Also, Lt. Marla McGivers provides a useful lesson in the danger presented by true believers.

    The Omega Glory:  About as patriotic as Star Trek gets.  Captain Picard would never have given that speech.  Written by Gene Roddenberry back when liberals were patriotic.

    Bread and Circuses:  Great humor.  The Roman leader constantly teased Captain Kirk about the Prime Directive – dumbest of all Starfleet rules.  The “fight” between and McCoy and Flavius is funny. One little gem (touching, not humorous) is at the the end when Lt. Uhura reveals (or guesses) the real meaning of “Sun Worship.”

    A scene worth mentioning is the final battle scene in Elaan of Troyius, where the Enterprise defeats the Klingon ships.  I actually like the pre-CGI version better, because the change in the Enterprise’s performance, after getting its di-lithium crystals, seemed more dramatic.

    • #85
  26. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    JosePluma (View Comment):

    Hey! How come nobody has mentioned Star Trek: Lower Decks?

    {Quickly ducks}

    hahaha…you’re funny. Seriously funny though is The Critical Drinker’s take on it. Look him up if you have not.

    I’m well ahead of you.  That’s where I first found out about it.  I actually watched the show to see if it’s really as bad as everyone says.  It’s not, but it’s not very good, either.

    • #86
  27. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    • #87
  28. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Guinan was an interesting character. Q referred to her as a troublemaker, revealing that he had encountered her before. She talked knowingly to Picard about the Borg and what they did to her people, so we know she’s more than just a bartender in 10-forward.

    Then there’s that episode where they go back to Elizabethan England and encounter her there, though she doesn’t recognize them. Because she hasn’t met them yet in the future, obviously. But she is obviously a player, and knows them for what they are. So she’s from a long-lived race, and travels around a bit, been to Earth at least once.

    I always wished the writers had inserted a scene where Guinan visited Earth in the 1990’s disguised as a comedian going by the name of Whoopie.

    That would actually explain a lot.

    • #88
  29. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Guinan was an interesting character. Q referred to her as a troublemaker, revealing that he had encountered her before. She talked knowingly to Picard about the Borg and what they did to her people, so we know she’s more than just a bartender in 10-forward.

    Then there’s that episode where they go back to Elizabethan England and encounter her there, though she doesn’t recognize them. Because she hasn’t met them yet in the future, obviously. But she is obviously a player, and knows them for what they are. So she’s from a long-lived race, and travels around a bit, been to Earth at least once.

    I always wished the writers had inserted a scene where Guinan visited Earth in the 1990’s disguised as a comedian going by the name of Whoopie.

    That would actually explain a lot.

    It would be difficult for even someone as wise as Guinan to play someone as stupid as Whoopi.

    • #89
  30. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    BastiatJunior (View Comment):

    My favorites are all from TOS.

    In no particular order:

    Balance of Terror: Great cat-and-mouse game between the Enterprise and the Romulan ship. The tension between Lt. Stiles and Spock was well done. The internal debate about taking on the Romulan ship was believable. Then there was the growing mutual respect between Kirk and the Romulan Commander.

    Space Seed: More relevant today because of the scary advances in genetic engineering. Ricardo Montalban really chews up the scenery, but it was gratifying to see the “inferior” Captain Kirk win in the end. Also, Lt. Marla McGivers provides a useful lesson in the danger presented by true believers.

    The Omega Glory: About as patriotic as Star Trek gets. Captain Picard would never have given that speech. Written by Gene Roddenberry back when liberals were patriotic.

    Bread and Circuses: Great humor. The Roman leader constantly teased Captain Kirk about the Prime Directive – dumbest of all Starfleet rules. The “fight” between and McCoy and Flavius is funny. One little gem (touching, not humorous) is at the the end when Lt. Uhura reveals (or guesses) the real meaning of “Sun Worship.”

    A scene worth mentioning is the final battle scene in Elaan of Troyius, where the Enterprise defeats the Klingon ships. I actually like the pre-CGI version better, because the change in the Enterprise’s performance, after getting its di-lithium crystals, seemed more dramatic.

    “If our ratings go down because of you…!”- or something to that effect- from Bread and Circuses.

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