The Second Season of Star Trek the Next Generation has often been downplayed due to multiple production and writing staff problems, and several major cast changes. Although of mixed quality, it does contain some outstanding and brilliant episodes. Senior Trekker is extremely grateful to all those people who worked so hard under difficult circumstances to keep it on our screens.
Demons of Air and Darkness. This episode is not one of the most popular with many considering it over-wordy and rather too rapidly resolved. Personally, it has always been a great favourite.
This may be partly due to my memories of a small, family run convention which took place in a London suburb and gave us one of our first opportunities in the UK to see the new look. Second season Enterprise. Excited chatter about such subjects as "the New Doctor", "Riker's beard" and "O'Brien's promotion" fuelled the overall level of enthusiasm and this episode's script stood out for it's quality. Even if there was, as yet, little to compare it to.
"Now that should not have happened"............"I hope that's not a stutter".............."but not, I think, today"............... Most of the best lines were given to Patrick Stewart but Dr Pulaski's "Try a splint.............a time honoured way to practice medicine: with your head, and your heart, and your hands. So jump to it." was one of the best lines given to any doctor in the whole of Star Trek.
The concept of an enigmatic, vanished race such as the Iconians, from a long distant past was nearly sabotaged by the way in which their control room was able to preserve plastic consoles and cheap laminate wall coverings totally unscathed for over 200,000 years. Digital remastering has not been as kind to some aspects of 1980's television as to others but the distant destinations, seen through the mysterious gateway, were based upon a well-chosen set of photographs of real places and cleverly engender a sense of wonder. The Temple of Jupiter at Baalbeck? Now that's real class.
(The clever folks at memory Alpha have identified most of the rest of the pictures by now, should anyone wish to check.)
This was the first Star Trek appearance by busy actress, Carolyn Seymour, who continued to provide her talents to the canon in many different roles to come. She still works prolifically in Science Fiction to this day so perhaps we will yet see her make another return.
(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)
Demons of Air and Darkness. This episode is not one of the most popular with many considering it over-wordy and rather too rapidly resolved. Personally, it has always been a great favourite.
This may be partly due to my memories of a small, family run convention which took place in a London suburb and gave us one of our first opportunities in the UK to see the new look. Second season Enterprise. Excited chatter about such subjects as "the New Doctor", "Riker's beard" and "O'Brien's promotion" fuelled the overall level of enthusiasm and this episode's script stood out for it's quality. Even if there was, as yet, little to compare it to.
"Now that should not have happened"............"I hope that's not a stutter".............."but not, I think, today"............... Most of the best lines were given to Patrick Stewart but Dr Pulaski's "Try a splint.............a time honoured way to practice medicine: with your head, and your heart, and your hands. So jump to it." was one of the best lines given to any doctor in the whole of Star Trek.
The concept of an enigmatic, vanished race such as the Iconians, from a long distant past was nearly sabotaged by the way in which their control room was able to preserve plastic consoles and cheap laminate wall coverings totally unscathed for over 200,000 years. Digital remastering has not been as kind to some aspects of 1980's television as to others but the distant destinations, seen through the mysterious gateway, were based upon a well-chosen set of photographs of real places and cleverly engender a sense of wonder. The Temple of Jupiter at Baalbeck? Now that's real class.
(The clever folks at memory Alpha have identified most of the rest of the pictures by now, should anyone wish to check.)
This was the first Star Trek appearance by busy actress, Carolyn Seymour, who continued to provide her talents to the canon in many different roles to come. She still works prolifically in Science Fiction to this day so perhaps we will yet see her make another return.
(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)