#the arsenal of freedom

[episodicnostalgia]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 120 (Apr. 11, 1988) - “The Arsenal of Freedom”

Teleplay by: Richard Manning & Hans Beimler Story by: Maurice Hurley & Robert Lewin Directed by: Les Landau

The Breakdown

The USS Drake has gone missing after being sent to investigate a planet (Minos) whose entire population has ALSO gone missing; so naturally the Enterprise has been sent to figure out why there are so many missing people connected to one planet.  On a probably-unrelated-note, it turns out the Minosians were arms dealers who sold super advanced weaponry, but I’m sure that won’t be relevant to the following 45 minutes.  Anyways, the Enterprise arrives at Minos to find zero signs of life, except for a hailing frequency originating on the planet’s surface.  Obviously Picard accepts the call, but it just turns out to be one of those un-skippable YouTube advertisements for a highly advanced weapons system, and Picard is like “That was weird. We should send some people to the surface to check that out.”

For what must be a first for this ENTIRE crew, Tasha makes a rational security decision in convincing Riker to keep the away team as small as possible, in the interest of general ship safety (since there is absolutely no sign of the missing Drake, which I honestly think is a MUCH bigger red flag than Picard is making it out to be).  Riker agrees (taking only himself, Tasha, and Data), but gets himself caught in a statis field almost immediately, so Picard throws caution to the wind and beams himself AND Dr.  Crusher down to help out… somehow.  Although, credit where credit is due, Picard does have the foresight to leave Geordi in charge of the Enterprise with orders to abandon him and the away team if it means protecting the ship.

Naturally all this leads to a double-jeopardy situation.  Down below, the away team keeps getting attacked by little killer drones that regenerate-and-adapt every time one gets shot down; meanwhile separate drone starts attacking the Enterprise, slowly picking away at the shields (oh, and it can cloak, making it tough to kill).  Geordi finally figures out a way to outsmart his mechanical nemesis by using the displacement of Minos’ upper atmosphere to reveal the drone’s location.  At the same time Picard conveniently falls into a pit that happens to contain a control panel that activates the holographic salesman (from the aforementioned automated message) who prompts him to finalize the purchase of their killer drones, in order to “end the demonstration”; thus completing what has apparently been a VERY high-stakes sales pitch. 

At this point it’s been concluded that the Minosians accidentally created a killing machine that was so effective it accidentally murdered their entire species, in addition to anyone who came poking around.  Since the Enterprise is now safe, and the mystery of the Drake’s disappearance is solved (in that the crew are confirmed to have met a nightmarish end), we can chalk this up to another happy ending!

The Verdict

There’s something to be said for a straightforward adventure story, and ‘arsenal of freedom’ successfully delivers on that front.  I can’t say there’s enough going on here for me to classify this episode as one of “the greats,” but it makes good use what it does have.

The highlight of this episode has to be Geordi’s command of the Enterprise.  It’s nice to see some genuine progression for a character that I’ve often felt gets overlooked, made all the better by the fact that I found his solution to the drone battle refreshingly plausible!  Usually when Star Trek is dealing with cloaked adversaries, it gets resolved with some kind of tachyon-scanner-upgrade-techno babble.  That’s all well-and-good AS LONG the writers also take care not to abuse such genre-conventions (which is another matter entirely), but I still tend to prefer solutions that adhere to the laws of physics.  As for Geordi’s time in command, I also appreciate how this episode builds on his previous experiences, in throwing him a greater challenge to overcome.

The away team’s adventure definitely makes up the weaker half of the episode, but even that is at least cheesily entertaining, avoiding any glaringly cringy moments.  My main criticism would be over how convenient Picard’s discovery of the control panel was, allowing him to call off the drones; but this is far from the most egregious deus ex machina on a Star Trek show, and it certainly won’t be the last.

But yeah, fun stuff.

3 stars (out of 5)

Additional Observations

I’ve gotta say, the skies of Minos are a beautiful shade of bluescreen- I mean blue.

TNG always suffered from a “women character problem”, in that the writers seldom knew what to do with them, so I was pleasantly surprised with this episode.  It’s not so much that writers did anything groundbreaking with the ladies here, but this has been their best overall use of them up to this point, by my reckoning. Tasha is shown to be competent and reliable, Crusher is able to keep her wits about her after she’s injured (even getting some added backstory), and even Deanna’s council to Goerdi isn’t half bad (which is really saying something for these early episodes).  The show still has a tremendous amount of work left to do in this regard, but it’s at least a tiny step in the right direction.

BATTLE BRIDGE:  This is only the second time we’ve been shown the Enterprise’s saucer section separating from the rest of the ship.  It’s a pretty cool feature that will be seldom used, but it’s an effective way to sell the raised stakes of a given situation, and thoughtfully applied here.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Geordi La Forge

By Ames

Our tour through the Enterprise-D wouldn’t be complete without a dive under the door to engineering, so join A Star to Steer Her By for this week’s character spotlight as we take a look through Geordi La Forge’s schematics. There’s a lot to love about The Next Generation’s chief engineer, probably the greatest being the portrayal by film and television legend LeVar Burton. In any other actor’s hands, Geordi just wouldn’t be Geordi.

But sometimes, Geordi can really just be way too Geordi, as you’ll see as you read on below for our best and worst La Forge moments! Let’s just say, he’s a character who makes remarkable friendships throughout the show, and he really should leave all his relationships at that. You can also adjust your VISOR frequency to our corresponding banter over on this week’s podcast episode (discussion at 1:17:39). Now get ready to tuck and roll!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Prepare to initiate separation sequence When La Forge is left briefly in charge of the ship in “The Arsenal of Freedom,” he is almost immediately put to the test by the planet’s defense system, and he keeps his cool even while receiving constant backtalk from Logan. It’s one of few instances we see the saucer separate as well, allowing Geordi to make use of the battle bridge to save the day!

Elementary, my dear La Forge One of the highlights of all of Next Gen is watching the friendship between Data and Geordi take shape and grow, and early on we get some great moments of them playing Holmes and Watson together on the holodeck in “Elementary, Dear Data,” which is undoubtedly sweet. Extra kudos to La Forge for putting up with Data’s shenanigans when he’s got all the stories memorized too.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? It’s always a joy getting to watch the engineers do their whiz kid stuff, and we get a good taste of that in “Contagion” when Geordi is inspired by Data randomly restarting himself and uses that as a launching point for wiping the Yamato’s records out of the Enterprise as well. It’s Information Technology 101, and he does it so well!

The best piece of engineering we’ll ever need Speaking of great engineering feats, La Forge does it again in “Booby Trap” when he concocts the purely manual solution to get out of the literal booby trap. Because the issue is with the computer, he opts to turn the whole thing off and have Picard pilot through the debris field himself. All you gotta do is ignore some of the weird holo-Leah stuff and it’s quite brilliant!

I will be your eyes Somehow, all of La Forge’s platonic relationships hit some really high marks, and he forms enough of a trust with Bochra in “The Enemy” that the two are able to survive on Galorndon Core. You’d never think humans and Romulans could find common ground before, but when these two find that they need each other, you think there might be hope yet.

Computer, identify the source of this shadow Geordi has another very nice friendship with his old crewmate Susanna Leijton in “Identity Crisis,” but the most impressive part of this episode is the great sleuthing that he does with some video tapes and the holodeck to determine that there was more on planet Tarchannen III than met the eye. In fact, there were otherwise invisible transfigured rave apes!

A blind man who never would have existed in your society Appropriately, we saw Hannah Bates’s actress in our podcast coverage this week in “Two Days and Two Nights,” and that makes it a good time to bring up that Geordi totally schools her biologically engineered ass in “The Masterpiece Society.” He uses his VISOR to save the day, something no one in their colony would ever have because of their ableist views.

BBFF: Best Borg Friends Forever As with his bromance with Bochra, Geordi connects with another unexpected being in “I, Borg.” Indeed, it’s the engineer’s ability to humanize even the least human, most frightening enemies that proves to be one of his best qualities throughout the show. Watching Geordi remind Hugh of his individuality, give him his name, and save him from Picard is the best of La Forge.

Are you saying I'm some blind ghost with clothes? Speaking of forging friendships, La Forge shared a very clever plot with Ro Laren in “The Next Phase,” and it turns out the two of them work together splendidly! Not only do they confront what could easily be interpreted as their deaths, AND find an ingenious way back to the correct phase, but they also foil a nefarious Romulan plot. Oh dear, what would Bochra think?

The Titan’s Turn Boys We picked on Riker the other week for how he acted when Jellico had command of the Enterprise in “Chain of Command.” But you know who took it like a champ and did his damn job? Freakin’ Geordi! He helped Jellico with the solution to their Cardassian problem and even used his friendliness and good nature to get him to involve that whiny Riker to pilot the shuttle.

They see me rollin’, they hatin’ Whenever a chief engineer gets to roll under a slowly closing garage door, you know you’re in for a good time. It happened in “The Best of Both Worlds,” critically one of the best episodes of all of Trek. But an even better roll is in Generations in which Geordi gets a perfect score for the pirouettes and for sticking the landing in a great pose, all while saving his whole engineering crew!

I’ve never seen a sunrise Finally, let’s close out the Best Moments with just a small detail from Insurrection. While we must admit that the rejuvenation storyline on Ba’ku wasn’t terribly well fleshed out, the character who really gets something out of it is Geordi. When his optic nerves have regenerated, he gets to enjoy a sunrise the natural way for the first time, and it’s tragic because he knows it won’t last.

—

Worst moments

This is why you wear PPE Who’s keeping count of how many times “The Naked Now” or “The Naked Time” has come up in these character spotlights? Well, in the case of the TNG spinoff, you can thank La Forge for catching the Psi 2000 virus in the first place by handling a corpse with no protective equipment. And am I the only one it rubs wrong that he spent the episode complaining about being blind?

An adversary capable of defeating Data Here’s another shipwide problem that was basically Geordi’s fault. With his imprecise wording, he effectively made the computer create Moriarty in the holodeck in “Elementary, Dear Data” and we see the repercussions of his mistake throughout both that episode and “Ship in a Bottle,” which I’ve already given Picard some guff about.

Their rubber band broke, right? La Forge starts the abysmal “Samaritan Snare” off on the wrong foot from the word go. He makes fun of the Pakleds pretty much to their faces, which is uncomfortable on its own. But he simultaneously underestimates them, assuming them to just be dopey but affable instead of dopey and malicious. Getting kidnapped by caricatures makes for a pretty rough day.

That’s a Coco No-No! It begins. Why the show decided Geordi had to be weird with women is beyond us, but it starts with his weird date with Christy in “Booby Trap.” He takes it way too personally that she’s not that into him on their date and gripes about it to Guinan afterwards. And that’s not even mentioning the rest of this squicky episode that sets Geordi up as the incel of the franchise.

Hold the Broccoli Despite La Forge generally being a friendly guy and a good boss, the way he treats Barclay when we first meet him in “Hollow Pursuits” is downright shameful. Throwing around the disparaging nickname. Complaining to Picard whenever he has to be in the same room with him. Overall treating him like a leper. Not great boss behavior.

I’m guilty of a terrible crime, Doctor. I offered you friendship. There’s good reason for “Galaxy’s Child” making our Worst Episodes of TNG list, and that’s that it entirely besmirches the character of Geordi La Forge. It’s one thing to get a little action with holo-Leah, but it’s another to expect the real Leah to treat you the same way. And then to turn it around so it’s all her fault? Nothing on our Best Moments list makes up for this railroading of an otherwise good character.

Even in a La Forge post, O’Brien must suffer Geordi just plain wasn’t having a good day in “The Mind’s Eye” and it’s full of bad behavior that can easily be blamed on the brainwashing, but blame we will! Manchurian Candidate’d or not, Geordi La Forge was capable of killing the simulation O’Brien at the command of some Romulans, and later dumping his drink on him in real life… but that’s nothing new to the chief.

A century out of date Okay, so it’s plain and true that Montgomery Scott was entirely underfoot and a bit of a hindrance for the engineering crew in “Relics.” But it’s also so sad to watch our resident miracle worker from The Original Series get treated like an obsolete dunsel. Geordi is prepared to ignore the old engineer until the captain takes him aside with another of his patented Picard pep talks.

I'm starting to feel like I know her If falling for a holodeck version of Leah Brahms wasn’t creepy enough for you, don’t worry, Geordi can go lower. In “Aquiel” he falls for the eponymous character by watching her personal logs, ostensibly for an investigation, but then when he hooks up with the murder suspect when she turns out to still be alive, no one can doubt that he’s taken it too far. Like freakin’ always.

How do you feel? We already saw in our spotlight on Lt. Commander Data that installing the emotion chip in Generations was a bad move. Geordi does promise to his android friend that he’ll remove the thing at the first sign of trouble… which happens at the most inopportune time right as Geordi is busy getting kidnapped by Klingons. This guy. Always getting kidnapped and reprogrammed, he is.

This is the exact spot where your statue’s gonna be One more from the movies, and that’s that Geordi gets to meet one of his heroes in First Contact… and immediately creeps Zefram Cochrane out by fanboying all over him. Word of advice, Gordo: if you’re already messing with the Temporal Prime Directive, maybe don’t start talking about going to Zephram Cochrane High School to the guy.

The Butterfly-in-the-sky Effect We get even more temporal shenanigans when Geordi gets a brief cameo in Voyager’s “Timeless.” Sure, LeVar was also busy directing this one so it’s a no-brainer to pop up on a viewscreen while he’s on set, but it also just feels weird for one of our past heroes to be the one browbeating our current heroes to stop their super cool time adventure. What a Herbert.

—

Well, our beach violinist has absconded and our Coco-no-nos have run dry, so we’ll wrap things up here. We’re wrapping season one of Enterprise over on the watchthrough on SoundCloud next week, so get ready for us to tear our hair out trying to think of highlights from that before we’re back on course with more TNG character profiles. So keep your VISOR pointed here, stay in the friendzone with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and watch the sunset with us over the bay.

[spockvarietyhour]

The Arsenal of Freedom & Q Who

[mackthemuser]

Star Trek: Deanna Troi is Great, Actually

Star Trek: Deanna Troi is Great, Actually

Scrolling through the Trek forums, fan pages, and blog posts dedicated to all things Star Trek, I was surprised to learn that many Star Trek fans have a low opinion of Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), one of my personal favorite characters from The Next Generation. Deanna Troi serves an interesting function on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise as the ship’s counselor. Maybe it’s because of my own…

[flappielxx123]

This scene will never not make me insane

Amazing gifs by @beverlygifs

[ribbittrobbit]

the is a geordi la forge appreciation post

[arsene-fixates]

GAAHHH I LOVE MY MUTUALS AND THEIR SHIPS

(Ripping my shirt off comically like that jerma gif to reveal a tshirt that says ‘I LOVE [mutual’s ship name]’)

[whoevenisthiz]

I’m so happy the Prem is back today—high key felt like I was losing my mind. Now it’s back to stressing over 11 men instead of just one!

[royboyfanpage]

I’m starting to wonder if Roy would’ve been angry at Uncle Sam over what happened to Grant

Hi!! Sorry this took me so long to answer, I wanted to get some panels for this.

My immediate thought was "he'd absolutely be angry", but I wanted to elaborate a little more than that. I haven't been able to find many comics with Grant in the Freedom Fighters, and none that go into his run with them in-depth, so I'm mostly gonna be referencing the comic your ask's referring to, Infinite Crisis #1 and, as a comparison, The New Titans #116.

Before I get on to Uncle Sam, I'm gonna go on a tangent about Roy's leadership because, despite all his self-doubt, Roy was a genuinely good leader when he led the Titans, particularly in #116. He knew when to have his team fight-

-issuing understandable and consice commands as to what to do and when to do it. He assigned people specific orders based on their skillset, and was able to manoeuvre them into a singular fighting unit once it was time. At the same time, he knew when to recall them-

-and expressed concern whenever they attempted to overexert themselves or do something above their skillset (albeit in a very Roy way)

Roy actually understands his team, he knows what their strengths and weaknesses are, and he knows what they should and shouldn't be doing at any moment. And his team genuinely respects him for it!

(Plus, Bart respecting Roy more than Wally is one of the best things to come from this era)

Now, as for Uncle Sam in Infinite Crisis. As mentioned, I don't have much of a broader scope as to what his leadership pre-Crisis was like, ie when Grant was on the team. Additionally, the circumstances they were under were definitely a lot more extreme than New Titans #116. Whereas Roy and co were only up against Gar and Kyle, the Freedom Fighters were up against-

-significantly more, to say the least. However, a key factor in efficiently leading a superhero team is the ability to work well under pressure, so Mr. American Patriotism won't be entirely excused. In the issue, I could only find two instances where Sam actually issues commands, one-

-where all he's doing is telling them what the mission is, and two-

-where he's telling them to keep fighting no matter what. This is piss poor leadership. Not only does Sam give the absolute bare minimum of commands, but they're so incredibly vague and non-specific it's embarrassing. Sure, you could chalk it up to the surprise, the number of enemies, etc etc, but that is absolutely not an excuse. In a situation like that, he should be losing his voice by the end of it because of how many commands he should be issuing. Instead, he more or less treated it like a free-for-all. Additionally, his team had been awake for 48 hours prior to this. That is absolutely not prime condition, especially since before the ambush they had no idea it was a serious threat. Intel that a group had held a meeting somewhere two days ago is not at all justification for dragging your team around when they're all exhausted. Even if the Justice League were unavailable at that time, there are countless other teams who could've taken that! And when the ambush did happen, instead of calling for a retreat like the smart thing would've been when faced with that many enemies, he ordered them all to keep fighting a battle that was impossible to win.

So yeah, Roy would be pissed at Uncle Sam for what happened to Grant. You could argue that even if they were in prime condition, even if they'd tried to retreat, even if Sam had given orders, the team still would've been beaten. But Uncle Sam absolutely did not help. Grant's injuries were, at the very least partially, a result of poor central command and awful leadership. Roy did absolutely everything he could to lead his team, giving member-specific orders and doing all he could to ensure their safety. Uncle Sam basically said "I don't care what you do, just don't give up" which, while being a good sentiment for every day life, is absolutely shit when it comes to a life or death situation. And Roy would be pissed that the kid he worked so hard to train and protect sustained lifelong injuries because of some human American flag.

Anyway I think Roy should get to kick the shit out of the old man for funsies <3

[jesternene]

Parallel: Beverly's Injured

"Arsenal of Freedom" & "The Next Generation"

[incorrectgearbreakers]

Sona: You were stabbed, do you remember anything?

Eris: Only the ambulance ride back home

Sona: It wasn't an ambulance, Nova drove you

Eris: But I heard a siren?

Sona: That was Arsen

Arsen: Sorry, I got nervous

[cher-rei]

ollie watkins my boyyyyy!!! ugh now the arsenal fans can shut up about us losing at home today. (we both just gave the league to city for the billionth time in a row)

[littlefankingdom]

~ Red Hood & Arsenal

Roy: Nobody wants to see a C.I.A. agent in a third-world cell get all wayer-boarded.

Klaus Barbie was a Nazi that tortured multiple people (some of those were children, but also he tortured to death a hero of the French's resistance) and led multiple people, like a whole school full of children, to the death camps. He was recruited by the USA in Germany and the C.I.A. hid him, before the French could find him. It's only in the 1980s that he would be found again, by a couple of smart people that tricked him to reveal his identity, and deported to France to be judged, after around 40 years of freedom paid by the C.I.A.. He was still torturing people people in Bolivia, thanks to the C.I.A.. But he was not the only Nazi the US recruited and saved from justice.

The C.I.A. also drugged a whole French town to test chemical weapon (here, it was to test mental control), which led to a couple of death and multiple lifelong disabilities. To this day, they deny it, but the proofs lead back to them.

If this is how a first wold country has been treated by the C.I.A., I cannot imagine the horror they have done in third-world countries. Yeah, torture's bad, but the C.I.A. sucks, you could save a ton of lives by making an agent talks.

No fucking C.I.A. propaganda for me, thank you.

Also, Roy speaks about how the US gov would NEVER make deals with terrorists, and I am dying. Is this a joke?

"The outlaws" Mfs aren't even against the biggest evil of them all, the US gov and military. No way those characters actually like the C.I.A. or the US gov.

[2c75ff]

((My sole contribution to any of the themes invoked over the course of this particular day is the fact that Seventeen is very weird now, for many understandable reasons, about the prospect of being outclassed to the point of helplessness; and that his figurative wires, when it comes to the thought of submission, have found themselves subsequently crossed and fried in some interesting and occasionally rather Cell-shaped ways.))

[sashanels]

[ktlsyrtis]

Nothing like getting to a particularly shippy episode in a rewatch and feeling the impending doom of being back on your bullshit 😅