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Most of season seven is just as unwatchable. That "scottish ghost story" episode with Dr. Crusher is the very worst thing to ever bear the Trek title.
Worse by far than Spock's Brian or anything Voyager related.
Descent is also extremely ill-concieved.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Yeah, "Sub Rosa" didn't do much for me (especially the fact the Crusher was about to boink someone that boinked her grandmother, her great-grandmother... her n(great)-1-grandmother, and n(great)-grandmother). That was icky. I wasn't really thrilled with "Phantasms" or "Bloodlines", either. However, season seven did have some good episodes like "Preemptive Strike", "The Pegasus", "Parallels", "The Gambit", and "All Good Things...".
I thought the first half of "Descent" was pretty all right as far as season finales go, but I think the ball was dropped on the second half. Overall, though, I think "Descent" worked better as a season ender/beginner than "Time's Arrow" (which, in my opinion, ranks just barely ahead of "Shades of Grey").
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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I tend to see TNG as a remarkably flexible show. Transcending from the idealist early-eighties scifi, to somewhat more "archish" late-eighties stuff heavy with personal drama like Worf's growing role, to soap riding almost solely on the characters for the final years, the show actually kept up with the times.
It just happened that the best results could be achieved at the interface between the early-eighties and early-nineties styles, literally by taking the best of both worlds. Which goes to show that emergent phenomena can be much greater than the sum of their parts...
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Descent sucks so hard because Picard is so tactically incompetant that he should have been court-marshalled. Evacuate the Enterprise to find ONE crewman? Leave the inexperienced CMO in charge with a bunch of newbies with no combat experience?
Really, if that were in a Trek novel I was reading, I'd probably throw it away without finishing it. Descent also marked the real begining of the pussification of the Borg.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Based on "Thine Own Self", it's implied that Crusher has routinely taken the bridge watch on the Enterprise during her tenure on the ship. She says to Troi that she wanted to do some command stuff on the side, so she took the bridge officer's exam to make commander and do it. Besides, Picard's orders to Crusher were to get the Enterprise back to Federation space at the first sign of the Borg. If anyone should be courtmartialed, it should be Crusher for disobeying orders.
Of course, it would be improper for to state that "Thine Own Self" was sixteen episodes after "Descent". Conceivably, the bit about Crusher's bridge watching could have been been written in based solely on criticism of her taking command in "Descent". The internet didn't exist back then, so I have no idea if this is really the case.
As for searching for Data, keep in mind that the one crewman they were searching for had just about every Federation and Starfleet databank in his head. Add to this that he was in the hands of the Federation's greatest enemy (the ultimate evolution of the stereotypical 1980s computer geek) and that he apparently went willingly to them. Look at the damage the Borg did to the Federation with just the limited information in Picard's head.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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The thing that sucked about a lot of the seventh season (and, quite annoyingly, the very reason why one of my best friends likes it so damned much) is the presence of so many "House of Horrors" episodes. Braga seems to enjoy that stuff a lot. Too much.
However, as pointed out above, there were still a number of good episodes even that late in the game.
I certainly wouldn't consider TNG high art, but then I really wouldn't consider any Star Trek (with the possible exceptions of The Motion Picture, "The Cage," and maybe one or two others) to be such.
Yeah, "Shades of Grey" was kind of disappointing as a finale, but I didn't think it was a major suckfest. We should be grateful that they managed to produce a script at all, given the writer's guild strike.
For some reason, "Time's Arrow" was always a favorite of mine among the finales, I'm not sure why people don't like it. Remind me why people like "The Best of Both Worlds" so much, again? (I always felt that the subesequent episodes dealing with its consequences were much more captivating.)
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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Time's Arrow suck mainly because the cast is completely nonplussed at having traveled back in time.
There was more amazment at many holodeck recreations of the past than actually being there.
Picard was an idiot in Descent because he evecuates his ship of almost everyone to a planet where scanning is nil and the Borg are probably present. Pretty dumb.
As to data having the secrets o' the Federation in his head, sure. As though the Borg care about such things (and they already have Picard's experiences saved on a floppy somewhere anyway- what use is a "primitave artificial organism" like data?).
Again, the Borg show up and no one seems really too worried. It's sad, but Johnathan Frakes delivered the best acting (besides Data, I guess) of that two parter (and he has the smallest role!).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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I rememebr watching the first part of Time's Arrow and being all excited about finding out how Guinan fit into the whole thing. Me and my friends were all debating about how she ended up in the past and what she was doing there.
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Time's Arrow suck mainly because the cast is completely nonplussed at having traveled back in time.
I was just disappointed that there was no attempt to protect the timeline. All the souls that the snake people consumed just up and disappeared with no consequences, and one of them could have been Sulu's ancestor. They flashed their 24th century wares without much concern for what it might do. They let Mark Twain know everything about the future.
Minor things that bugged me included Data's head still being intact and usable after 500 years in a cave and 90% of the senior staff just wandering into the temporal anomaly without knowing what it'll do.
quote:As to data having the secrets o' the Federation in his head, sure. As though the Borg care about such things (and they already have Picard's experiences saved on a floppy somewhere anyway- what use is a "primitave artificial organism" like data?).
Because Data, being an android with a nifty positronic brain, has more information about the Federation and Starfleet stored in him than Picard, being a simple human, could ever hope to remember? Also, it more than likely that everything Picard knew was changed in the aftermath of Wolf 359 for security reasons. Besides, this particular group of Borg were interested in becoming completely artificial (thanks to Lore's leadership).
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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I was in the most part referring to the Next Gen's treatment of the borg, Descent doesn't really count as they weren't the collective. Anyone who doesn't think the Best of Both Worlds was awesome television deserves to spend some time in the shower rooms with a gang of Jem Hadar. My argument centred around the fact serious thought went into developing the aura of the Borg with simple dialogue rather than large action set pieces as seen in Scorpions. I felt the franchise used the Borg as a cheap way of pleasing the fans, with no real thought going into the stories rather than they were counting on the fact that it was 'the borg'. The writers began to use them the way the producers of a game show use a large-breasted assistant, to appeal to viewers who didn't particularly want to think much when they were watching something, but which anyone with experience of better television would find both overstated, vulgar, and highly patronising. At no point in Scorpians was the viewer or the crew led to believe they were in serious danger, yet in the for mentioned, who didn't get serious palpatations when Riker demanded?
"Mister Data your final report? [computer voice] outer hull failure [Data] Standby [Riker]I can't Standby Mr Data! [computer voice] Decompression danger"
A level of tension achieved without the need for fifteen cubes destroying planets....
-------------------- The disappearance of Donald Love
Registered: Jan 2005
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I don't quite soo how any of the victims of the soul-gobblers could have made further contribution to history. They were all dying already, weren't they?
Also, it would have been embarrassing for Soong if a head built by him did not survive for 500 years. The profilic TOS androids were way older than that... And they had lived active lives, not been idled in a sheltering cave.
Overall, I find "Time's Arrow" rather forgettable - but then again, I don't see why our heroes should consider it memorable or momentous, either. I rather liked Data's "fish in the water" act when stranded in the past, as it echoed the absurd professionalism of our TOS heroes in similar situations.
"Descent" sucked because it *should* have been more momentous than that. It was "big" in all the wrong places, and "small" in all the wrong ones, too. As an incidental Borg story, it might have worked just fine, like "I, Borg" did. As a season-spanner, it just didn't carry.
I wonder if Q could have carried a two-parter other than "Farpoint" and "AGT.."?
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