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, and Senior Trekker is extremely grateful to all those people who worked so hard under difficult circumstances to keep it on our screens.
This was one of the best episodes of this or any Star Trek series: the plot, dialogue, sets and costumes stand out for their huge attention to detail but I think the suspension of disbelief is mainly due to the quality of the acting. After all, this is a genre within a genre requiring great leaps of faith into an extremely complicated fictional construct.
And it's fun.
Well known screen and theatre actor, Daniel Davis, plays adversary Professor Moriarty with such a pitch-perfect accent that for a long time I thought he was actually British. The gravitas he brought to the character equalled or excelled many I've seen in more conventional Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
The depiction of Victorian London was first class. Of course, no one is going to get every detail correct, especially when they are working within the constraints of episodic television, but this script even went so far as to make a correct reference to Rules, oldest restaurant in London and de-rigueur haunt of the most stylish Gentlemen of the day.
(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)