Synopsis: Data has his first sober kiss while Picard dances with the Sheliak.

Memory Alpha Summary:  You enjoyed that!

Review: Quite a marvelous episode for both Data’s character development and Picard’s savvy diplomacy.  Data begins to learn that logic is not enough to persuade people, a skill he will eventually use very well when he becomes a captain in Redemption.  His brashness is a sight to see as he actually causes significant property damage to make his point. His romantic scenes are quite poignant as well.

I love how Geordi and Wesley trying to get the transporters to work is a red herring.  For once, no amount of technobabble can save them.  Then Picard cracks me up when he’s told things were going as expected with the transporters.  “Splendid!  Splendid!  Carry on!”

Picard’s final triumph over the Sheliak by turning their own strict adherence to statute against them is a delight to see.   Excellent work.

Synopsis: The Enterprise returns to Earth, setting their phasers to kill.

Memory Alpha Summary: Suck it, Nibbish

Review:  My favorite episode of season one.  It actually feels way longer than 42 minutes with no wasted exposition.  Picard’s covert meeting with various Starfleet captains is chilling.  The return to Earth is fraught with more uneasiness and tension.  Crusher gets to use her phaser to save Worf and Geordi’s life.  Riker’s fake parasitic abduction is brilliant.  And despite the goofy looking claymation effects, I love the gory destruction of Remmick.  TNG swung and missed on some daring things in season one, but this episode was a home run.  Finally, Data’s announcement of a homing beacon being sent out is creepier still.  It’s too bad it became a dangling thread, though being as that the Borg replaced these aliens as the Federation’s nemesis, I can deal.

Even with all the tension, the episode also added some humor.  The computer cutting off Data’s rambling is a hoot, and Worf lands the best one-liner of the season when asked if he ever goes swimming.

“Swimming…is too much like bathing.”

Synopsis: Professor Moriarty, upset he didn’t get to fill Pulaski with crumpets, commandeers the ship.

Memory Alpha Summary: A little device sitting on someone’s table.

Review:  Now this is everything Elementary, My Dear Data was not.  There is a tension throughout as we try to navigate all the twists and turns.  Moriarty is once again brilliantly played by Daniels Davis, and Barclay is a perfect fit.  The ending is cunning and sweet.  A near perfect episode.

Synopsis: Geordi gets a pet Borg and asks Picard if he can keep him, please.

Memory Alpha Summary: Resistance is not futile?

Review: Putting Guinan and Picard, two of the most mature members of the Enterprise in a situation where they both are predisposed to be prejudiced is just great storytelling.  Hugh becoming sympathetic after the Borg were previously evil incarnate also speaks to this episode’s great design.  There are multiple emotional confrontations here that are executed to perfection.  Beverly to Picard.  Guinan to Geordi.  Geordi to Guinan.  Guinan to Picard.  Picard to Hugh.   “No.  I am Hugh,” is such a powerful line. Kudos to all the actors as well as Echevarria and Lederman for writing and directing this nearly flawless reintroduction of the Borg.

The only part that didn’t sit right to me was Troi confronting Picard on his past demons, and quite violently.  It was reminiscent of flooding therapy which has been proven to be quite damaging.  Bah.

Synopsis: Gilgamesh retold where he has virtually no clue what Enkidu is saying.

Memory Alpha Summary: Troggles, their eyes opened

Review: What a brilliant hour of television.  What is essentially two races meeting who don’t speak the same language is transformed by Picard’s skill and grace into a powerful and satisfying resolution.  Hat tip to Joe Menosky for creating this species that speaks only in metaphor and for somehow writing a script that doesn’t lose the audience.  This would be higher, except it really feels like this needed to be a feature-length film.

Synopsis: Beverly nearly loses the most epic of hide and seek games.

Memory Alpha Summary: I’m a doctor, not a traveler!

Review: The premise of this episode is fantastic.  Every scene where the Enterprise loses more people is both creepy and hilarious as her senior officers begin to think Beverly is crazy.  Data explaining why the Enterprise crew would only consist of 100 or so people is great.  The best is when Picard tries to comfort Beverly when it’s just the two of them by saying, “We’ve never needed a crew before.”  It’s bone-chilling stuff.  We even get Beverly’s second “Jean-Luc I need to pour my heart out to you” moment right before he vanishes.

But then, dammit all, we end up having to watch from the other side of the glass, as the Traveler shows up in the real world to help Wesley get his mom back (and to ask him out now that he’s legal).  This instantly removes all tension for the remainder of the episode, as we’re now watching Beverly try to figure out the solution when we’ve been secretly let it on it by the writers.  Argh!

That said, this is by far Gates’s best episode to date.  She actually shows some range here rather than being just the nice-looking doctor.  Her conversation with the computer is wonderfully written and performed.

Then she’s saved by Wesley, and the hug they share is so devoid of emotion that you wonder if they need family therapy.

Money Quote (by the computer):  The universe is a spheroid region, 705 meters in diameter.

Synopsis:  A culmination of three years of Klingon politics (and some previous time travel shenanigans) comes to a head.

Memory Alpha Summary: And another paycheck for Denise Crosby

Review:  While the politics story is decent (but not great) as usual, Worf’s character develops even further as we see him interact with his brother and Gowron.  The two key moments in the first part of this cliffhanger are Worf’s resignation from the Federation and seeing Sela (Tasha?) come out from the shadows at episode’s end.  It’s not quite the impact that Best of Both Worlds had with its cliffhanger, but it’s still pretty effective.

The second part is a mess of stories, but I love them all.  Sela and Picard talking about Tasha and the Enterprise C is a moving scene.  The faceoff with the Romulans is low-key but tense.  The episode’s slam dunk to win the game is Data getting his first chance at captain and treating his prejudiced first officer like a bitch.  I for one am glad this subplot wasn’t an entire episode; we’ve had plenty of “Humans rule, androids drool” episodes, and the writing team managed to encompass what they needed.

My only quibble is that the fall of the Duras fleet seems to happen fairly quickly without any real exposition to make it seem natural.  The Klingon civil war is too abrupt to even feel like a war.  Perhaps more weeks passed by then I felt, but it wasn’t made very clear if that was the case.

Money Quote:  I understand your concerns.  Request denied.

Synopsis: Picard destroys humanity, then saves them just in time for Voyager.

Memory Alpha Summary: The End

Review:  When lauded series get ready for their final episode, there is often a palpable tension amongst fans expecting to be blown away.  The stress for the writers to send things off with a satisfying bang has to be enormous.  And while this is certainly not the best series finale in television history, it’s quite solid and a worthy sendoff.

Having Q back was a must, and they got it right.

Having the episode center around Picard was a must, and they got it right.

Bringing back O’Brien and Tasha were solid ideas and the plot as written successfully allowed for it.

The touches with the past were done with great care.  Data’s babbling, Picard forgetting Worf isn’t security chief, and a subtle nod to Admiral Satie all showed how much care was put into this.  It was also nice to see future Geordi making fun of the technobabble.  “Captain, we’ve got a problem with the warp core, or the phase inducers…or some other damn thing.”

While there are a couple of continuity issues (even allowing for the fact that there was purposeful discontinuity between the three time periods), the major plot hole is that when the Pasteur created the anomaly, it should have only appeared for a brief time in the future, gotten smaller, and then disappeared (if it should have appeared at all).  Rather, it is shown getting bigger in the future as well, which goes against what Picard learns later.  However, it’s a minor quibble in what otherwise is a very well written episode.

Hearing Q say “all good things must come to an end” is as poignant a line as ever.

It’ s only fitting the show ends with one final poker game and Picard joining the senior officers.  The final line feels appropriate without being overly cheesy.

So, five-card stud, nothing wild… and the sky’s the limit.

Synopsis: Picard grabs his saddle and yells, “Yippy-ky yay, motherfucker!”

Memory Alpha Summary: Though he doesn’t order a pizza.

Review: Season six up to this point had been rather talky, so it was nice to finally get a good action show in there, especially one where it’s pretty much all Picard.  There’s several gruesome deaths along with cunning escapes by our hero.  I felt the story was tight, solid.  I think the B-plot down on the planet (specifically, dealing with the conspirators) was unnecessary, and seemed mostly there to give the rest of the bridge crew something to do.  But before that, Data’s new “small talk” subroutine was freaking hilarious.  I also kept smirking at the ongoing saddle joke all the way through.  It just seemed like a bunch of actors who loved working with one another having a great time.  Incidentally, it’s one of Stewart’s favorite episodes.

Synopsis: Three seasons too late, we finally get a kickass humanoid adversary.

Memory Alpha Summary: The minstrel boy to the war has gone

Review: I heart the Cardassians.  They’re smarter than the Romulans, less obvious.  Their presence in a room is also quite formidable.  They become a huge part of DS9 for a reason.  We’ll just ignore the fact that the Federation was supposedly at war with them just one year ago, as they were never mentioned before.

I also love this episode.  It’s a lot of talking between Picard and Gul Macet, but their conversations are calculated and tense.  O’Brien develops a personality, knows as “O’Brien must suffer,” and he almost becomes a main character before he leaves for DS9.  The interactions between O’Brien and Benjamin Maxwell are also quite dramatic.  I’m surprised Roddenberry even allowed this episode to be made, what with Maxwell giving into the primal human emotion of revenge.

Picard’s final speech to Macet is dynamite, a perfect ending.