Change Your Image
avisarr
Reviews
Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Chase (1993)
This episode should have been a movie!
Partial Spoilers here...
This is an extremely important and revealing episode for the Trek universe. It literally gives us an explanation of origins for all the major species in the Alpha quadrant (which, as has been mentioned, gives us a rather sophisticated explanation as to why so many Trek races are humanoid and vaguely similar). Of course, originally it was a budget limitation. But this gives us a great "in story" explanation.
This is an underrated episode. In my opinion, this episode should have been a MOVIE. The scope of this episode and the ramifications of the discovery demand a larger canvas. Not to mention the relationship between Picard and the professor, which we only got to glimpse. Can you imagine this storyline, expanded out to a full two hours, with a massive budget? It's a terrible tragedy that such a incredible premise was wasted, yes WASTED, by being stuffed into a single episode (not even a two parter!). With a little rewriting and a true movie budget, this would have resulted in a much better Trek film than Generations, Insurrection or Nemesis.
Supernova (2000)
Heavy on special effects, light on plot
Supernova was a disappointment. It has excellent special effects, but that's about all. The movie was unclear on a lot of areas and overlooked a lot of information. For instance: What century did it take place in? What kind of government structure had evolved - a federation, an empire, etc? Was the ship a part of large fleet of rescue vessels? Where exactly was the ship was at the beginning of the film? How far did it travel to respond to the emergency call?
The plot was too simplistic and it degenerated into typical horror/violence like too many current sci-fi films (Event Horizon for example).
The special effects were excellent - especially the dimension drive - but that's all. The rest of the film was predictable.