Star Trek TNG The Lonely Among Us

Ending the week with another review.  Partly because I grow weary of the episodes from the first season and I'm starting to get anxious to be rid of them and partly because I've not seen this one very often.
I'm not like other reviewers or fans in this sense.  I don't have any of them on DVD/Blu-Ray because I'm not married to a Trek fan and I don't see the sense in hoarding something away that I'm not going to watch because I have nobody to watch with.  (I watch T.V. and movies socially, not alone.)  I also don't do the Netflix thing which probably puts me in the minority now, but I'm sure I don't give a damn. I'm different and proud of it!

This episode was a little busy.  There were too many things going on.  First you had the two groups of aliens applying to be in the Federation.  A group of furry people and a reptilian race...(is this what they originally had in mind for Code of Honor?)

By the way, Marc Alaimo was the main furry guy.  I did not know that.  He, of course, was in many episodes of TNG and settled on DS9 as the inimitable Gul Dukat.  I really love this guy.
Unfortunately it's not an idea they took seriously.  In a later season they revisit this idea and fix it.  That happens quite a bit in TNG and I'll be referring back to this first season quite often when the improved stories start unfolding. It's just another example of the immature and cartoonish writing style of the first season.  It was enjoyable to watch the first time, but after the seasons went by and the they started dealing with the situations in a more adult fashion, it's just sad to look back on an episode like this.

 And lets not forget the smug preaching that goes on in these first seasons.  I want to get into the Star Trek notion of the kind of Utopia they envisioned that the future would hold, but not in this episode.  There's one coming up in either this or the next season that I can draw better examples from but I want to complain about this particular aspect since it's here... this notion that meat eating is evil and those who partake are barbarians.  I don't mind people who are vegetarians or vegans.  Whatever you do for your health and happiness is fine, but the omnivorous are repeatedly abused by these types to the point where it's become a cause.  And this scene is not merely speaking out against hunting, which although I approve of hunting I can almost see the point, but this scene is also trashing the notion of farming; keeping livestock.  Look I can see the point of health advocates who are touting the health benefits of a non-meat lifestyle, but the brow-beating that average people who eat just whatever tastes good in moderation is even more out of hand now than it was back then.  And I don't understand the ignorant denial of the fact that humans are part of the ecosystem and natural food chain.

Moving on, in addition to the federation applicants which were a comic subplot, we have the mysterious cloud with an entity that wants to take over people.  I'm sure they had the best of intentions with this part of the story, but, as with other ideas, it was a bit more than they were prepared to handle at the time inasmuch as the technical writing and explaining of how it's all supposed to work.

I know that once Picard beamed himself into space they explained it as him becoming energy, but it seemed a little thin, and I couldn't help wondering how he didn't die in the vacuum of space.  I guess he was one with the mysterious cloud.  It probably shouldn't have gotten that far to begin with.  He all but admits that he's possessed to Crusher and she still doesn't relieve him of duty until it's too late.  That's another small aspect corrected in later episodes.

But we do get to see Patrick Stewart behaving differently... stretching his acting muscles and showing that the Picard character is capable of a wider range of emotion if necessary and I really did love that part.

Then there's this guy... Singh.  I actually liked him.  If they'd not chosen Geordi to be the chief engineer I'd have like to have seen this guy again.  But he was the first red-shirt type casualty of the show. It didn't make sense in the flow of the show.  All other possessed characters were allowed to live and no reason is given for killing this guy except... well... the red-shirt syndrome.

This part with the console is a little silly as well.  Another example of the show growing beyond this sort of thing as the years progress and it's just hard to look at now.

However, this episode had a lot of important firsts.

A prediction of real life technology... the PADD.  It's just so cool that we now have computer tablets that are what they envisioned here.

First use of the dress uniforms which are actually believable after all that man-skirt nonsense.  And this is Tasha's only time in a dress uniform.

Most importantly this is Data's first brush with Holmes.  It's obvious they didn't know how popular this would become.

I rate this episode 2 1/2 of 5 stars.  It's better than two stars because of all the great firsts and Patrick Stewart's acting, but it's still a very frustrating episode.