Reviews

What you have here in essence, is a Polish Hallmark movie, with apologies to reviewer 'bmvrztvt', as I came to this conclusion on my own before I read their review. The actual idea of the film isn't bad, but it does get hokey with some of the ancillary characters, like the pair of Polish farmers and the female cop Matylda. Yet another reviewer pointed out how the story seems to take place over a couple of weeks instead of the two days Oliwia Madej (Anna Szymanczyk) committed to in order to attend her grandmother's funeral. Turns out that was a con job, and not a very pleasant one if you come right down to it. The simmering romance between Oliwia and Kuba Walek (Mateusz Janicki) felt awkward at best until the latter part of the story, I think it was that bright red lipstick that turned the trick. Hey, I'm of Polish descent myself (both sides), so I'm not making fun, but this was quite an uneven flick. The attempt at comedy overshadowed the romantic angle and the director might have lost focus while attempting to get in a lick about global warming and same sex relationships. For a real treat, take a look at the credits list here on IMDb, and you'll be enthralled by the names of all the Polish actors. My favorite is Angelika Cegielska-Swiatek, the actress who portrayed Matylda. Right there is a mouthful.

Well, at least they got Reg Barclay's (Dwight Schultz) Terellian Death Syndrome and Symbalene Blood Burn out of the way early, so the story could move on to the Enterprise becoming infected by an intron virus caused by a synthetic T-cell Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) experimented with on Barclay to alleviate his hypochondria. The resultant de-evolving of the entire crew had different repercussions for everyone, with Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) living out the dream fantasy of Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) in the previous episode, 'Eye of the Beholder', and biting her on the neck in a moment of aggressive passion. Right after, Worf began mouth spraying venom to further the infection, with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) turning into a caveman, or at least like one of those guys in the Geico commercials. Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Commander Data (Brent Spiner) had all this to come back to after retrieving an errant torpedo via shuttlecraft, so they missed the initial hysteria. Leave it to Data though, his analytical mind saved the day while the Captain was beginning to succumb to the effects of the syndrome himself, getting increasingly paranoid and on the verge of panic. Hypothesizing that dormant and prehistoric genes in humans and other species were reawakened by the intron virus, he concocted a way to reverse the process and bring all thousand people aboard the Enterprise back to normal. Which was quite a feat in the case of Counselor Troi, who was breathing her bath water with the help of gills that developed in her metamorphosis. Besides the major positive outcome, Dr. Crusher found a way to calm Barclay down following his turn as a spider, and awarded him by naming the problematic virus the Barclay's Protomorphosis Syndrome. That had quite a ring to it.

No other reviews here for this televised special? That seems surprising, although this was filmed just two weeks ago as I write this. Billy Joel's performance at Madison Square Garden was captured in this, his one hundredth appearance at the fabled arena in a residency that has spanned eight years and counting. The concert was done in the round, and I have to say, as Joel begins his first song in a darkened arena and the bright lights of the Garden illuminate the entire place, the feeling was electric sitting at home and catching it on the Paramount Plus platform. The show is interspersed with comments from Joel and some of the musicians performing with him, along with celebrity guest appearances by Jerry Seinfeld and Sting, who belts out 'Big Man on Mulbery Street' in what looked like a Frank Sinatra tribute. I never made the connection before, but many of Billy Joel's big hits have something to do with New York, Long Island, and the places he grew up, and it's more than palpable as he works through the song list. The effect of seeing this performance made me want to get up and buy a ticket to one of his next shows, but I have to say, even the nosebleeds behind the stage go for hundreds, making me wonder how the average person gets to see Joel in person without breaking open the piggy bank.

There's a very obvious clue in this story that ought to alert the attentive viewer that it would turn out to be a dream or hallucination. It's when Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) has a panic attack while standing at the edge of a platform observing the plasma force field where Lieutenant Dan Kwan (Tim Lounibos) committed suicide. With the opening of the door to the visible plasma field, a warning countdown begins at ninety seconds, then eighty seconds, but then when Troi hurries away from the troubling feeling she had, Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) is gone and the countdown does not continue to an expected closing of the plasma force door. It's a very disorienting moment in the story, while it continues to examine what might have happened during the original construction of the Enterprise at Utopia Planitia. Skeletal fragments found behind a panel in a nacelle tube were the key to determining why Counselor Troi experienced her very real feeling dream in the space of seconds with her empathic imagination running wild. Personally, I can't comprehend a romance between Worf and Troi, so having it turn out to be a dream came as both a relief and no surprise.

As I write this review, some of these 'Believe It or Not' stories are making the rounds on Turner Classic Movies. I thought they would be more interesting than what this one proved to be, but you have to keep in mind they were made in the early 1930's and documentary film making was in its infancy. This one starts out on a moving train with Robert Ripley drawing some of his oddities in front of an audience of train passengers. They include an Alaskan man moving a piano on his back and a Chinese woman he found fascinating with two and a half inch eyelashes. Video footage then offers a host of totally unrelated subjects, among them a twelve-thousand-ton sandstone boulder in Colorado in the shape of a potato, a ten-foot high, fifteen-ton pile of horseshoes in New Hampshire, and a large garden in Winnipeg, Canada carved out of wood. What I found most interesting was a rotating cafeteria shelf where diners could pick out their lunch as it passed by. Why don't we have something like that today? It would seem to be a draw for a certain type of customer. Ripley wraps things up with a view of the Pyramid at Cheops, the only surviving Wonder of the World from the seven usually mentioned in one breath, and finally, a spider attacking a lizard three times its size. I don't know how to take some of these stories credibility wise. Of course, being so old, some may not even be verifiable.

I didn't know Fern Brady when I tuned into this Netflix special. My usual caveat with comics appearing on these shows is how vulgar most of them are with the language they revert to in order to get a laugh. Brady used expletives a few times, but it wasn't overdone. What brought my attention to this program was the 'Autistic Bikini Queen' tag attached to the special. After only a few minutes, I wasn't able to affirm that she was really autistic, even though she mentioned it a number of times. Her delivery was impeccably smooth, moving from one idea to the next without hesitation and with complete control of her routine. Being Scottish though, and using some distinctly British colloquialisms, I think American audiences might be left in the dark on some of her bits. As for her Bristol audience, the camera didn't pan across the people in attendance, so it wasn't really possible to get a fix on how she was being received. From what one could see, the front row of principally women seemed attentive but inert in reaction to her jokes. There were a few laugh out loud moments for this viewer, but I couldn't tell how her subject matter was getting over in person. After a first look, I think I might tune into another one of her specials if there is one, though for many I think she would be an acquired taste.

Ever get the feeling that the Enterprise crew manages to get out of cosmic sized trouble just a little too easily? Brent Spiner as Data takes center stage in this one, having gone from an Iceman in the prior story, 'Thine Own Self', and taking on multiple personalities in this one, led by a forceful presence calling itself Ihat, emerging from an eighty seven million year old rogue comet. There's some kind of force in the comet that begins transforming decks of the Enterprise into alien forms simulating such things as an aquarium in Ten Forward and a swamp on the Bridge. It was also leaving ancient looking artifacts lying around on the Enterprise, which was right up Captain Picard's (Patrick Stewart) alley, who's interest in anthropology was by this time well known. Taking the lead, the Captain questions the various personalities residing in Data to learn that only an entity called Korgano would be effective in stopping a being known as Masaka from completely overwhelming the ship. No problem, Picard dons a mask fashioned by Data right before all this occurred and speaks to Data's 'Masaka' presence to convince this 'queen' to release the Enterprise from her terraforming grip. Along with Commander LaForge (LeVar Burton) disabling the alien transformation program, everything turned out hunky dory. You have to wonder why the Captain and crew had such a hard time with Romulans and the Borg.

This struck me as just an awkward viewing experience. It took quite some time to get going and when it did, the story seemed to turn on a dime. What one gets is a casual glimpse of the activity on board a fishing vessel when the crew hauls up all those scallops. Do they really stand around and pick them up one by one to place them in buckets for individual shelling? That seemed like a tough way to make a living, certainly for a guy like Charlie (Toby Wallace), who looked like he could have been fast tracked through law school. One of the problems here is that every character is a one-note individual, Tommy Eldridge (Ben Foster) being a harsh captain, and step-brother Charlie not really sure what he wants except to get away from school for a year to clear his mind. Tommy Lee Jones, looking like ten miles of bad road, doesn't make an appearance until the latter part of the picture, dying of stomach cancer and finding it almost impossible to mend fences with his intractable son Tommy. The gangster angle with Weeks (Clayne Crawford) felt like it should have been introduced earlier in the story to build tension with Tommy and his crew. With various threads holding this film loosely together, at least the denouement was satisfying with Ray Eldridge (Jones) going for broke against the bad guys, knowing that time served for murder wouldn't amount to much in his case. For a while, this film was being touted on one of the streaming platforms as a must see, but I can fairly assure you it's not. Even diehard fans of the principals might find it just tolerable enough for a single viewing.

Even for a pre-industrial society, I found it hard to imagine that the teacher Talur (Ronnie Claire Edwards) couldn't figure out that Data (brent Spiner) wasn't human. A good clue would have been Data picking up that immovable anvil with his super endowed android strength. Be that as it may, the story has Data gradually restoring at least his scientific memories in order to come up with a cure to the radiation sickness brought about by a Federation space probe that crashed on Barkon IV, releasing radioactive material from a broken casing. I thought Talur was going to come up with some sort of breakthrough on the android's real identity after he showed her the result of his studying the radioactive elements from the probe. She stated, "I will examine your 'data' in detail". If nothing else, I thought mention of that word would have triggered a memory in Data himself.

Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise, Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) becomes intrigued with the idea of becoming an officer and submits to testing under the guidance of Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes). I think the writers were groping for an interesting side story with this tack, because if you think about it, Troi had spent enough time on the bridge to have been considered for this kind of promotion long ago. However, passing a test in a holodeck simulation hardly seemed definitive enough for her to have earned the qualification needed to be a commander. I don't want to overthink this one, but it seemed kind of hasty.

Ultimately, Data is retrieved from his 'grave' by Riker and Doctor Crusher (Gates McFadden) on their beam down to Barkon IV, after he had been immobilized by the irate citizens for causing their illness. What baffles me is why they would have drunk the water from their only well when they all saw Data dump a pail of his antidote into it. They didn't know what it was, and in their collective frame of mind, might have thought it was yet another attempt to poison them. Which all goes to illustrate why Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) had very little to do with this episode, showing up at the finale to make almost what seemed like a guest appearance.

The gangsters in the story make mention of the fact that the garbage man wasn't always a garbage man. We get that idea pretty quickly because Clean (Adrien Brody) handles himself like an ex-military Rambo type, but unless I missed it, there was no allusion to his actual past. Flashback scenes show how he lost a young girl he was caring for to drug abuse at one time, prompting Clean to look after a pretty teenager (Chandler DuPont) and her grandmother (Michelle Wilson) in the present. With a gang of mobsters running smuggled heroin via a Chinese connection, there's not much more you need to know about this adrenaline-fueled story in which Clean takes it to the bad guys with a pipe wrench for a weapon and revenge in his heart. The gritty action is sometimes obscured by the low light filming; some would consider that a plus, but I found it annoying. A side story of gang boss Michael (Glenn Fleshler) trying to make a man out of his teenage gang-banger son (Richie Merritt) comes to a blazing halt when Clean dishes out his brand of justice in the first round of the story's delivery. Mikey Jr. Gets his measure of revenge against a domineering father as things reach a smashing climax, while Clean cleans up the neighborhood of the criminal element and a dirty cop willing to let things slide. I'm not sure if the garbage man theme is developing into a genre, but only a year later, Sylvester Stallone drove a sanitation truck in 2022's "Samaritan" in a slightly different take on a super-hero theme.

I enjoy movies that leave the conclusion to the mind of the viewer. The one is presented as definitive with the acquittal of Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) in the accused murder of her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), but to my mind, it could have gone either way. The testimony of her son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) was poignant and insightful, enough to sway the jury at the end of a contentious judicial hearing, and without it, his mother would probably have been found guilty. You do have to wonder though, what would have happened if Daniel had not concocted the 'experiment' with his dog Snoop. Keep in mind that the tribunal judge (Anne Rotger) called a recess for the entire weekend, announcing that Daniel would offer as yet unheard testimony on the following Monday. Was Daniel thinking at that point that he was going to follow through with Snoop, or did he decide that after, while home in the company of his monitor, Marge Berger (Jehnny Beth)? If one were cynical, you could almost argue that Daniel manufactured the conditions to exonerate his mother of murder. While I like to think that Sandra was innocent, those recorded arguments by Samuel pointed to a very contentious dynamic between the couple, and it would be easy to believe that Samuel's death was helped by a little push over the balcony. Daniel's recollection of his father preparing him for Snoop's death as a precursor to his own was a novel twist in the story and got the jury over the finish line, but I can't help thinking that Sandra might have been more culpable in Samuel's 'suicide', given the overall tenor of the trial and the revelation of their tenuous marriage.

This episode brings back young ensign Sito Jaxa (Shannon Fill), last seen in Season Five's 'The First Duty', a story in which she participated in a failed Kolvoord Starburst maneuver that wound up killing a fellow squad member. Even worse, the members of the squad, which at the time also included Wesley Crusher, tried to cover up the reason for their disastrous training maneuver. With Sito potentially up for a promotion aboard the Enterprise, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) found it appropriate to dress her down exceptionally hard over the incident in order to test her resolve. Her direct report, Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) also tested her mettle by frustrating her in a martial arts test to the point of challenging the unfairness of the trial. Both instances toughened her up in the eyes of the officer crew, leading the Captain to assign her to a dangerous mission impersonating a Bajoran prisoner of a Cardassian working undercover as a Federation operative. This was a poignant episode in which the viewer expects a successful mission for the young ensign, even when the escape pod prepared for her proved over thirty hours late in meeting a rendezvous with the Enterprise. Her loss hits her fellow ensigns particularly hard, but even though evidence pointed to her demise on the mission, I thought the story left it questionable enough that she may have survived to return at some point in a future story. At least I like to think so, as I did like the character. My only other reservation with this episode had to do with the civilian character Ben (Bruce Beatty) aboard the Enterprise; why would he have been welcomed to join in on a poker game among the officer crew?

For a movie with the word 'miracle' in the title, there is little to support the idea. Irish village priest Father Dermot (Mark O'Halloran) attests to that fact when he states to a disappointed Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates) - "You go for the strength to go on when there is no miracle" - after the matronly woman comes away from her dip in the bath at Lourdes without assurance that a lump on her chest has been removed. I felt the movie was awkward at times, especially when Bates' character had that meltdown in the church and started berating the priest and her friends. It was very unseemly, and even though she apologized the next day, she didn't take any of it back. And then, the admission by Lily Fox (Maggie Smith) to Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) that she withheld her own son's avowal of love for Chrissie after the woman became pregnant and left for America struck me as a confession for the deaths of two people, her son and the baby in Chrissie's womb. It's said 'to forgive is divine' but that just struck me as a horrible thing to do and then seek forgiveness for. So, if you're watching this movie and expecting some 'aha' moment to justify the premise, you'll probably be disheartened. Even the young boy Daniel's (Eric D. Smith) finally uttering a single word is done in solitude with no witnesses, preventing the film from having even an upbeat ending.

Oh my, the first red flag that pops up in this story is when it's mentioned that the thirtyish Scottish highlander named Ronin (Duncan Regehr) carried on a lustful romance with Dr. Crusher's (Gates McFadden) one-hundred-year-old grandmother! Try to get that image out of your head. It's not surprising this episode has the dubious distinction of being one of the entire Star Trek franchise's worst; it was just too foolish to take seriously. Especially when considering that an unstable anaphasic energy signature gave form to Ronin living in a candle flame! Ned Quint (Shay Duffin) knew it, but he was just too loopy for Beverly to take seriously. I have to wonder what Gates McFadden thought about what the script writers and director had her do in the story, and then putting Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) in the position of seeing her experience an orgasm all by herself. If anything, at least this show might have served as inspiration for 1993's "When Harry Met Sally", with Dr. Crusher reading her grandmother's journals and coming to the conclusion that "I'm having what she's having".

I seem to recall a time when "Starman" had a ubiquitous presence on a lot of the cable channels (similar to "The Godfather"), and then, all of a sudden, no more. Streaming makes it easily accessible, I guess. I was never motivated enough to watch until last night while making my way through various selections. Quite honestly, the longer I watched, the less sense the story seemed to make. When it came to the point where a dozen or more helicopters started chasing Starman (Jeff Bridges) and Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen), I all but gave up on the story. I mean, why? Any one or two of those choppers could have touched down and taken them captive, but instead they're firing massive amount of ordinance to have them give themselves up. It was just too ridiculous. And the boxcar scene stretched credibility just way beyond reason. Jenny makes love to an alien that she saw emerge from a baby shaped form only hours earlier? Really? The only thing notable here for me was the way Jeff Bridges portrayed his character with the halting speech and jerky twitches. Seeing as how the film was released in 1984, I wouldn't be surprised if his alien mannerisms served as a template for Brent Spiner's android character on "Star Trek: Next Generation". He took it quite humorously to the next level.

When you come right down to it, anytime the Enterprise makes contact with an alien civilization, and the officer crew gets involved with the local population, to my mind that's already a violation of the Prime Directive if you want to get technical about it. The only time it wouldn't be is if a planet were simply observed from orbit in space and no one from the Enterprise beamed down to it. In the case of this episode, I think the writers went overboard in characterizing Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) as so vehemently opposed to saving the lives of a group of villagers on a doomed planet. Given a different scenario, Captain and crew might have been all on board with taking action to save those folks, and even though in this show they did, it left a bad taste. It made Picard look weak when he accepted Dr. Nikolai Rozhenko's (Paul Sorvino) ultimatum, and then deferred to the idea of taking the tribe secretly to a new planet. Even Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) started out on shaky ground opposing his brother, only gradually coming around to the idea, especially after Nikolai's wife Dobara (Penny Johnson Jerald) mentioned that he would be an uncle to their child. As for Vorin (Brian Markinson), I could understand his inner conflict after discovering what the Enterprise plan was, but suicide was a bit extreme. After all, there's no rethinking that strategy. This could have been a more effective episode if the Captain Picard had taken the same principled stand as Nikolai, and decided to defend that stance to the Federation later. What were they going to say - let the entire planet die?

Side stories of Commander Data (Brent Spiner) trying to train his cat Spot and one of Commander LaForge (LeVar Burton) straining to increase the Enterprise's engine efficiency in rivalry with an engineer on another vessel eventually give way to the main story in which a brother and sister pair try to convince the officer crew that warp drive is contributing to their planet's demise. No doubt this was a forward-looking episode on the part of writers responding to the impact of climate change.

As expected, this one is filled with a load of sci-fi technobabble citing tetryon emissions, verteron signals and subspace instability to make it all seem pretty dire. The sister scientist Dr. Serova (Margaret Reed) was so convinced of her theory on warp drive technology destroying the fabric of space near Hekaras IV that she departed the Enterprise unannounced in a shuttle craft to prove her point that it can cause a spatial rift. That turned out to be a self-fulfilling sacrifice mission that tended to prove her initial theory. Knowing that, the crew of the Enterprise still managed to save the crew of a medical transport ship stalled in the Hekaras Corridor using only impulse power to make their way to the stranded vessel.

As for Data's cat, I guess it proved to remain unmanageable, even if the story never got back to complete that thread. Neither did Geordi's rivalry with his engineering buddy on another vessel. Those power conversion levels were probably cinched up as far as they could go, and what's a tenth of a point difference anyway?

This episode demonstrates that even a high-ranking Starfleet officer is subject to pursuing his own agenda in violation of Federation regulations. Admiral Eric Pressman (Terry O'Quinn) was Commander Riker's (Jonathan Frakes) very first commanding officer on the USS Pegasus twelve years earlier, with both surviving the assumed destruction of their vessel during some sort of altercation in space. Shadowy reports of mutiny on the part of the crew against Pressman were glossed over in the Federation record, with a young Ensign Riker standing by his superior in a display of loyalty that didn't harm his career. That allegiance is tested in this story when it's learned that Pressman was actually violating the Treaty of Algernon by experimenting with a newly developed cloaking device for the Pegasus. When the Pegasus is discovered hidden deep within the cavern of a huge asteroid, Pressman sees his chance to recover the ship and the cloaking device. There's a bonus aspect to this device as it would allow a vessel to actually proceed through solid matter! Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) of course, won't go for Pressman's faulty logic, and after freeing the Enterprise from its embedded position in the asteroid, has Pressman arrested for violating a Federation treaty. In a noble gesture, Riker considers that he should be arrested too for his past indiscretion, but the Captain felt his twelve years of service more than compensated for the youthful error of an inexperienced ensign. Meanwhile, a Romulan warbird hanging around nearby never had a clue of what was going on with the Enterprise, and consequently did not figure in the final outcome.

An exploration of multiple realities really gets a workout in this episode. Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) is the central character, but all the other officers are seen in different aspects throughout the story as well. Worf and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) being married with a child didn't work for me, especially given that Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) had given his okay on the matter in one of the alternate scenarios. If anything, the story has you consider the virtually infinite number of outcomes that could potentially result from making a different decision in one's life, and this one really took it to an extreme when the divergent realities appeared to exist at the same time with dozens of Enterprises visible in space awaiting their fate. A somewhat surprise appearance by Wil Wheaton as Lieutenant Wesley Crusher was quite unexpected. If you looked real quick, he had a fascinating likeness to a young Elvis Presley; go back and check it out. Fortunately, and you all know how this works, a technobabble account of quantum incursions and shifting realities finally get sorted out so that everything is back to normal again with Worf enjoying his champion status in the bath'let competition on Forcas III. Sure beats dropping to ninth place.

In the series Episode #4.3 - 'Brothers', Commander Data (Brent Spiner) got to meet his inventor/father Dr. Noonien Soong, so it was only fitting, I guess, that he meet his 'mother' in this story. At least that was the basis of the plot here, although not all was as it seemed. Over the course of the story it was learned that Dr. Juliana Tainer (Fionnula Flanagan) was an android herself, created by Dr. Soong after his real-life wife passed away. Made in her exact image, Dr. Tainer left her husband when it became apparent that his work was more important than maintaining a marriage, so she moved on to become a scientist in her own right. Which is how she entered this episode, as a researcher who along with her new husband Pran (Bill Lithgow) sought help for their planet Atrea IV, threatened by extinction with their world's molten core solidifying and posing an existential threat.

As in the earlier story, Brent Spiner takes on a dual role by also portraying Dr. Soong in this one, when he engages in a holodeck simulation with his creator. References to Data's evil brother Lore were apparently at the heart of Dr. Tainer's reasoning when she and Dr. Soong escaped from the doomed planet Omicron Theta without taking Data, presuming that he might turn out demented like Lore. In his wisdom, or at least at the wisdom of the writers, Dr. Soong had equipped the android version of his deceased wife with a feedback processor that emitted a false signal to convince her of her humanity. That seemed like a stretch to me, but I guess I'll go with it.

Of course, the threat to Atrea IV was nullified when the Enterprise sent a phaser blast down to the planet's core with an infusion of plasma to liquefy the planet's core, thereby saving it from a global freezing fate. This came on the heels of the prior episode, 'Force of Nature', which also took a stab at saving a world from annihilation due to a man-made cause. Sound familiar?

Unless you're a Jason Statham fan, you can probably give this one a pass. And even then, it's not much of a crime drama story. Without too much in the way of hunting down his suspect, Statham's character Brant teams up with his department's new acting Inspector Porter Nash (Paddy Considine) to hunt down a serial killer targeting cops on the force. Nash takes heat from the other guys on the police force for being gay, but Brant gives him the leeway to do his job effectively while getting in a few digs of his own. I now know what in British parlance the words 'pillow biter' and poofter' mean. I must have missed something when the cop killer Weiss was initially arrested following an impossible foot chase by Brant and then released, but it doesn't matter. The story's conclusion leaves one with a level of satisfaction that the bad guy won't be standing trial for crimes committed. Nash, who one might have considered to be a strictly by the book officer, stood by rather complacently as Brant put an end to Barry 'Blitz' Weiss's rampage when the cop killer tried to evade notice by wearing a police uniform. Seeing him dealt with in the same manner as his own victims was what one would call poetic justice.

With the threat of World War III as the plot, this one is right out of the James Bond playbook. Sylvester Stallone steps aside from his usual lead role to allow Jason Statham to take over as nominal head of the Expendables team, even if he isn't the one so named by the mercenary team's overseer Marsh (Andy Garcia). How all the brutes on the team bowed to Lee Christmas's (Statham) gal Gina (Megan Fox) when he was dismissed for not following orders was a puzzler to me, but this isn't rocket science. The story involves stolen detonators for a nuclear device to be delivered somewhere off the coast of Hong Kong, masterminded by an unknown operative nicknamed Ocelot with the operation run by the villain Rahmat (Iko Uwais). There's no way one is going to accept that former boss Barney Ross (Stallone) died when his attack plane crashed and burned, so one bides their time until the final reveal demonstrates how he managed to escape the fix he was in to live another day. The best dialog in the picture occurred early on between Stallone's and Statham's characters, after that it was pretty much lock and load action with the usual share of weapons blazing and big things going boom. The biggest come down for this viewer was how old Dolph Lundgren looked. He's only sixty-seven against Stallone's seventy-eight but he looked like the older mercenary. Maybe it was all those shots to the head as Ivan Drago.

Fortunately, the one thing the writers didn't do with Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) was have them in an up and down romantic relationship throughout the series the way they did with Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis). It always bugged me when Riker and Troi had feelings for each other in one episode, and then had Riker go all gaga over some alien space babe in a subsequent story. The lack of continuity was very frustrating. With this story, it takes some sort of brainstem implant placed on Picard and Crusher that allows them to communicate almost telepathically. It begins right after they've been captured and imprisoned on the planet Kesprytt III straight from a hijacked transporter beam. Their feelings for each other gradually emerge over the course of the story until Crusher finally asks - "Why didn't you ever tell me you were in love with me"?

The planet itself has irreconcilable factions in a virtual cold war with each other, complicating the Kes desire to join the Federation, while the Prytt want no part of any alliances including that with the Kes. Quite honestly, the suspicion and paranoia that both factions held for each other drove Commander Riker to violate the Prime Directive when you come right down to it. He had the Prytt Minister of Security (Lenore Kasdorf) beamed aboard the Enterprise and forced her to deal with Kes Ambassador Mauric (Robin Gammell) to hammer out an understanding and rescue the Captain and Dr. Crusher from the planet.

Once settled back on the Enterprise, the Captain makes an initial attempt at something more meaningful between Dr. Crusher and himself, but she warily dissuades him from a step both might find hard to reconcile if they were to take things further. Perhaps a disappointment to many fans, though a tactful way to keep options open for the future direction of this series and others to follow.

You would think that the most emotional aspect of the film would be the scenes of the war ravaged city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, where thousands of refugee families escaped to from Germany and Austria trying to evade Hitler's persecution. They are of course, a horrible reminder of the Nazi scourge, but the scenes of the adult Nicky Winton (Anthony Hopkins) on the set of Britain's 'That's Life' television program about to allay his doubts about the good he accomplished fifty years earlier is enough to bring on the tears. For half a century, Nicky harbored self doubt, feeling he had not done enough, especially knowing that a ninth train car intended to carry another two hundred fifty young kids to safety never made it. Considering the immensity of his achievements in shepherding six hundred sixty nine youngsters to safety, Nicky's reaction to seeing dozens of adults who he helped save seemed almost underwhelming, and I guess you would have to put yourself in his shoes to know what it felt like to have the debilitating stress removed from one's life and thoughts. Perhaps it was his selfless devotion to this cause that accounted for the man's longevity; Nicholas Winton lived to the astonishing age of a hundred and six! A more selfless humanitarian would be hard to find.

Starting out, this episode looks like another attempt on the part of Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett) to play matchmaker for her daughter Deanna (Marina Sirtis). This time it involved Maques (Norman Large), a telepath from the Cairn species that up till now had only been able to communicate via telepathic images, but since they sought entry into the Federation, a delegation was on board the Enterprise learning how to speak. It was sometimes difficult for Maques to put his thought images to words, and he had to find the right way to apologize to Counselor Troi for assuming that she was looking for a husband. Once that issue was settled however, the story took on a somewhat more somber tone when the Counselor's mother collapsed and went into a coma. When it's deduced that her psyche collapsed in on itself (sounded kind of sketchy to me), Maques offered to establish a telepathic bridge between Deanna and her mom to find out why seven years' worth of Lwaxana's memories were deleted from her journals corresponding to the first seven years of Deanna's life. The revelation that occurred proved both sad and tragic, as Deanna learned that she had an older sister when she was a baby, who drowned in a moment when her parents lost sight of her. The trauma and guilt of her older daughter's death were the reasons for Lwaxana's collapse into the dark place Maques saw when he communicated with her telepathically. For Next Generation fans, the unsettling revelation of Deanna not being an only child was probably as much a surprise as it was for the Counselor.