Watching every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time Part Three by C T Thorbens

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Part Three of mocking a thirty-year-old scifi series for being hokey and rubbish. In this installment, we learn about Data’s backstory, Riker’s sexual fantasies (SPOILER ALERT: they involve trombones) and how to fix the ozone layer. 12. Datalore: Data, we learn, was found 26 years ago, the sole survivor of some catastrophic tragedy, like a waxen-skinned Harry Potter. The Enterprise returns to his planet and finds a SECOND Data – called Lore – who seems really nice and eager to be friends with everyone. OR IS HE? This episode is a tricky one — bits of it are good, and yet the whole is so irretrievably stupid. On the plus side, Data does a cracking performance as Evil Twin Lore, Read More

Watching every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time Part Two by C T Thorbens

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Part Two of what happens if you wait twenty years to finally watch a beloved scifi series and find yourself baffled by it. 8. The Battle: The Ferengi are back to offer a ship ‘as a gift’ and since none of the crew have ever heard the phrase ‘Trojan horse’, they accept. It contains a Picard-specific magic box, the effects of which are too silly to go into here. Despite their obvious shiftiness (including significant pauses and actually rubbing their hands together) no one, including Troi, picks up on their hidden agenda. Her empathic abilities are limited to saying quickly ‘ooh, I felt something too,’ when Picard lurches out of his chair, clutching his forehead in agony. I’m going to Read More

Watching Every Episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the First time, Part One by C T Thorbens

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With the launch of the latest Start Trek big-screen adventure, could there be a better time to finally get round to watching Star Trek: TNG? Well, pretty much any time in the past 20 years would have made more sense. During my preteens and adolescence, the show seemed to be on every week, requiring dogged persistence and ingenuity on my part to avoid watching even a single episode. And remember, this was 1990, a time when my house had access to only four TV channels and no internet. I didn’t avoid it out of a lack of interest in the genre (I was entering peak sci-fi interest years, and by the end of ST:TNG’s run on British TV, would have Read More