#TNG Rewatch

[loudfederationscreeching]

straight up obsessed with this screenshot from the tng pilot btw. baby obrien... troi with the boots. worf mid-stride. theres so much official bridge energy compressed into this shot... everyone mid-action and busily going about their business

[gildedsunshine]

data is too funnny

[2mimikyute4u]

I'm rewatching TNG and I have a few thoughts:

Q and Picard should fuck. I don't think it would be a good idea, per se, I just think they'd both have fun

Q kinda falls into that "do I want to do you or be you" category tbh

Q has a very enviable gender and I would like to inject it into my veins

I could absolutely be trusted with that much power...

Data is just like me forreal (autistic)

Picard is NOT a people person and having like the first thing we learn about him be "child hater??" Mood (okay, like, I don't hate kids, but I do NOT know how to relate to them. Unlike adults which I'm clearly an EXPERT at relating to lolol)

The effects, the COSTUMES, it's all such a vibe and I just fucking love Star Trek okay

[100pizzas]

Random thoughts on my TNG rewatch:

So neat to see the costumes in more detail than on the crappy tvs of my childhood — so many pleats and textures! My favourite are Picard’s casual clothes (like his outfit in “Starship Mine” and Riker’s shiny blue shirt.

Love the dynamic between Crusher and Picard in the middle/late seasons. She enjoys teasing him so much. It’s great.

Poor Data has to deal with Riker putting his leg up on his work area right at eye level. I laugh every time.

I finally realised that the theme music for the first season (or two ?) of Picard is based on one of the flute pieces from “Inner Light”

Trying to imagine what it would be like to work on the Enterprise and having to go to all those classical music concerts and poetry recitals— not to mention getting roped into one of Dr. Crusher’s dramatic productions. Like you can’t really escape your coworkers and have to take part in their weird hobbies because you’re all on the ship together.

[notnownotthis]

For a scientific exploration vessel the crew of the enterprise get into a lot of fights

[daforged]

please don’t

[yamoksaucebodyshots]

Encounter at Far Point goes hard right off the bat.

[skelerangart]

"None of your past experiences helped prepare you for this consequence."

[loudfederationscreeching]

tng introducing the saucer separation concept within the first FIFTEEN MINUTES is crazy btw like they really did that, what a fun cool sci-fi concept and they just fucking dont hold back. TWO BRIDGES

[gildedsunshine]

deanna calling riker bill should not exist in this world

[chacusha]

TNG rewatch: 5x21

Still doing my TNG rewatch. I might go back and write up some thoughts about other season 5 episodes when I have more time, but I had so much to say about this episode (“The Perfect Mate”) after dissecting it with my partner so I figured I should just write my thoughts up quickly before I forget them.

I think I always disliked the obvious sexual fantasy aspect of this episode. The sexual fantasy is most obviously embodied by the plot device that there’s this sex slave who literally becomes whatever the client desires (and also she’s perfectly happy and fulfilled to be that way!). But I’m also pretty sure that the “repressed captain with Responsibilities cannot act on attraction” which is such a big thing in this episode MUST be another sexual fantasy of the writers given how frequently it shows up in TOS/TNG.

But setting that aside, I guess at a more fundamental level, the problem with this episode is that it’s just extremely incoherent. It’s not quite at the level as the TOS episode “The Omega Glory” which features, like, four extremely clashing/incoherent plots, but it’s kind of getting to that level. There’s wacky Ferengi hijinks/plotting, there’s this Prime Directive dilemma, there’s all this blatant sexual fantasy/fanservice, there’s character study of Picard as seen through his taste of women. None of those things really work with each other. And then there’s the complete downer ending which ALSO doesn’t really fit anything that came before in this episode. It’s just very uneven.

If there’s one thing of the many disparate threads I would salvage from this episode, it would probably be the interesting dynamic between the metamorph and Picard where the metamorph likes matching the preferences of whoever she’s with, but Picard’s ideal woman is someone who is free-spirited and independent-minded -- that is, Picard’s ideal woman is someone who would despise being someone who merely lives to please others. When I described this to my partner, he summarized it as “Picard is her Godel sentence.” Yes! It’s like the sentence “This sentence is a lie” -- it’s unstable and unresolvable. The metamorph when she’s with Picard is in a constant state of anxious flux where (as a metamorph) she is keen to become what Picard wants her to be, but the second she becomes what he wants her to be, she no longer wants to be the kind of person who would simply become what Picard wants her to be. This is something that is already present in the episode, but kind of indistinct and in the background. I think in order to truly convey the notion of a metamorph paradox, we have to get some of the subjective experience of the metamorph character, but instead we only experience the metamorph through the eyes of people attracted to her, particularly Picard.

My partner described the ending of this episode as watching a woman’s life get ruined, which just SUCKS to watch. And like, yeah, that is a good way to describe the ending of this episode, but I am cynical and I don’t actually think that is the story the writers intended to write? Cynically, I don’t think the tragedy intended in the ending is meant to center on (metamorph’s POV) the experience of going from being a sex slave who would have been happy with that life to being a sex slave who can never be happy with that life, but rather is the tragedy (Picard’s POV) of meeting someone who literally is THE perfect woman for you and then having to watch her be miserable with someone else who doesn’t/can’t appreciate her the way you can for the rest of her life (the dreaded Nice Guy story). IDK, I might be being too harsh here, but this is why this episode has always bugged me.

One thing that also becomes quite glaring if you reframe the episode as being about the metamorph’s dilemma/tragedy of becoming (via metamorph instincts) the kind of person who doesn’t want to be a metamorph, is that the ending would need to be changed to make more sense. If the metamorph actually imprinted on Picard’s taste in women, this absolutely would affect how willing she would be to sacrifice her livelihood for someone who doesn’t appreciate her (peace doesn’t even turn on her being a perfect gift because the guy she’s about to marry doesn’t value sentimental gestures like that!). In fact, my partner made an astute observation that there’s a scene between Picard and Beverly that’s placed RIGHT before the scene where Picard has an up close and personal interaction with the metamorph, which has the effect of establishing/foreshadowing what kind of woman Picard finds attractive -- Beverly speaks her mind frankly/bluntly to the captain, defends the rights of other women, is independent-minded (she’s basically like “Fuck the prime directive, I'm doing what’s right”, which is a consistent character trait), etc. There’s no WAY that, in becoming Picard’s ideal woman, there’s not at least a LITTLE part of the metamorph that now wants to say, “Look, peace doesn’t even turn on this and I’d never be happy here, soo... I’m out” and walk away from the life she literally spent her whole life preparing for, just as Crusher or Vash would if placed in that same situation. But! Incredibly, instead of that, we actually get this stupid line:

Kamala: Having bonded with you, I've learned the meaning of duty.

??? Um. Did the writers forget that the metamorph became Picard’s ideal woman, not uh... Picard himself...? Why would duty (Picard’s trait, the thing he’s been exercising over and over again throughout the episode to resist the metamorph’s charms) be the trait she somehow gains, unless that’s part of his ideal woman? (Is it??) More to the point, is this episode really trying to claim that the girl who was taken from her parents at age 4 and trained to be a gift for a stranger to create the extremely rare chance of peace between two worlds didn’t know the meaning of duty??

Okay okay okay, let me fix this really quick. What makes sense here is for the end of the episode to turn on a dilemma that didn’t even exist before for the metamorph: whether or not to go through the wedding. This dilemma would essentially be a manifestation of the exact same metamorph paradox issue I discussed earlier: which wins out -- the metamorph upbringing and personality she views as consistently/naturally “hers,” that there is something very rewarding in living purely for someone else vs. the very recent personality that she only got as a result of bonding with Picard that cannot find happiness in total subsumation. This is actually even a really interesting bittersweet ending for Picard because either decision she makes will be some kind of repudiation of his values. If she chooses to stay in a loveless marriage out of duty, she has chosen her metamorph upbringing over the transplant personality she got from Picard, abnegating the part of Picard she carries with her (she has free will! she uses that free will to choose unhappy servitude); if she chooses to leave, Picard still has to grapple with the uncomfortable feeling that it is ultimately HIS desires that control her actions and determine the whole course of her life, and he cannot even remove the unwanted effect he has had on her (she chooses freedom! but she might not have any free will on some level).

Anyway, tl;dr this episode would have been much better, more coherent, more interesting, and more uncomfortable/bittersweet if they just focused on the metamorph character’s feelings/angst and her dilemma rather than simply Picard’s attraction to her. :/

[100pizzas]

TNG season 7 really brought out all the long lost family members…Kinda feels like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with some of these stories, sadly. Would have preferred more sci-fi episodes in the last season, rather than these never mentioned before, and never seen again characters. 

[ianmckellen]

STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION | 3.05

[kyurochurro]

TNG character sketches!! been wanting to draw this crew for a hot sec so I got around to it at 3 am last nite… LOL

(also I haven’t started tng yet but hey I dedicate this to my DAD big tng fan first Trekkie I ever met SHOUTOUT TO YOU DAD 🗣️)

[star-trek-dumb-comics]

Star Trek - Strange New Dumb Comics #73

tfw Q invited himself in your ready room to talk about his godly problems for 2 hours

[dat4l0re]