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Friday, September 2, 2016

Star Trek TNG The Battle





Not much to go on with this episode.  They were still trying really hard to push the Ferengi as a primary adversary.  In "The Lonely Among Us" where they had kept the threat alive indicating that the Ferengi had had dealings with both the races in the episode.  But, for as flippantly as they treated that part of the story, it was no more successful than the introduction of the Ferengi in "The Last Outpost."
 

Still, this one is a slight improvement for the poor, struggling new villains.  As I mentioned before they decided to go with a little one on one action between DaiMon Bok and Captain Picard.  A simple revenge tale.  Bok accuses Picard of murdering his son in a battle that the Ferengi started without provocation.  Really, it begs the question, how are these people allowed in "civilized" space?  The Klingons of old were at least a warrior race... the Ferengi seemed, in the beginning, to be no more than highly advanced pirates.  I suppose that's the idea behind their desire for "profit" in a universe where money (at this point) doesn't exist.  But they're tolerated because they have a homeworld, I guess, instead of treated like criminals.


It's not a bad concept on the whole; just done unevenly and sloppily.  A mind control device that makes Picard relive the incident in a way that would damage his own ship and people that he cares for.  Kind of a stretch since they made the Star Gazer such an inferior ship to the Enterprise.  They also added the touch of doctored records to make it seem like Picard was the aggressor of the incident which really didn't amount to anything.  It was like two different storylines at play.  Storylines that could've been separated into two different episodes, though thankfully, they didn't do that.  Also, another gaff in that Troi could read the Ferengi emotions in this episode but later it was determine that Betazoids couldn't read Ferengi.  But, I don't want to whine about small things like that.  It shows that improvements were made and this is one case where the later plot device is a nice improvement.


And then you have Wesley the Wonderboy saving the day in lieu of a chief engineer.  Very weak.  And what's more, in a list of the unfairness to the character of Wesley, after they made him an acting ensign and were openly supporting his chance to evolve as the Traveler indicated, they still didn't take him seriously for a long time.  That was fine before he had responsibilities, but no longer acceptable at this point.  The scene in question is further evidence of over-simplistic writing that was geared more towards tweenagers of the 60's.  The Young Adult demographic was just so much smarter by the late 80's... or if not smarter, more cynical and less innocent.  I'll have many complaints on  Wesley over the course of episodes, but I'll always reiterate that it's not the fault of the character or actor; it's the writing and directing that makes him nearly unbearable at times.



The saving grace was Patrick Stewart's acting, and I think that's what they were going for.  It was a good "Picard" episode.  "As was The Lonely Among Us."  My only complaint about this is that in this first season they seemed to be leaning towards a simple triad of main characters, no matter how many others there were.  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in the first series, with Kirk as the star of the show.  In this series they were starting to single out Picard, Riker, and Data, with Picard as the star of the show.  If "The Lonely Among Us" had been made later on, it wouldn't have been a malevolent entity and they would've created a throw away character that would be happy to go and be one with it exploring the galaxy.  This is a revenge story on Picard.  Trying perhaps to emulate the Khan-Kirk dynamic.  I'm only pointing this out as a bad thing because as the show progressed, all of the main characters ended up being developed beautifully and if they'd stuck to this template, it would've been very unsatisfying.  I'll be bringing up the pattern again later.  I'll also be referring back to this season often when they tweak and retool these early concepts and improve them, much like they did with the Bok-Picard rivalry in the last season.  

Two stars.


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