Writing in 2021, it is great to see that I am not the only person taking a retrospective look at Star Trek, the Next Generation. When this series was first released in 1987, a little less than twenty years after the end of the Original Series, many people thought that, without Captain Kirk and his crew, it couldn't really be Star Trek. However, original creator Gene Roddenberry, was fully invested in the casting, writing and overall look of the new series, so let's see how it shaped up:
In this episode we see the classic "two stories in parallel" motif with (a) an alien cloud-like entity hitching a ride and getting stuck in the Enterprise computers and (b) some comical aliens intent on eating one another rather than engaging in more conventional diplomacy. The presence of Dorothy Fontana on the writing team ensured that it kept up the pace and made sense, and the prosthetic team and guest actors excelled themselves.
Senior Trekker liked the character of Assistant Chief Engineer Singh, played so sympathetically by Kavi Raz and would much prefer to have seen him stick around than be so casually killed off. Otherwise, this was a sound establishing episode much appreciated by fans and toy-makers alike.
(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)
In this episode we see the classic "two stories in parallel" motif with (a) an alien cloud-like entity hitching a ride and getting stuck in the Enterprise computers and (b) some comical aliens intent on eating one another rather than engaging in more conventional diplomacy. The presence of Dorothy Fontana on the writing team ensured that it kept up the pace and made sense, and the prosthetic team and guest actors excelled themselves.
Senior Trekker liked the character of Assistant Chief Engineer Singh, played so sympathetically by Kavi Raz and would much prefer to have seen him stick around than be so casually killed off. Otherwise, this was a sound establishing episode much appreciated by fans and toy-makers alike.
(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)