Synopsis: Beverly reveals her long time lust for Riker while we learn she is not bi-curious.

Memory Alpha Summary:  So I got this nagging pain in my side…

Review:  The Trill, much like the Bajorans, are a race that become much more developed during DS9.  However, their introduction is plausible and successful enough to create an interesting story.  The dispute Odan has to resolve from this never before seen planetary system is just a distraction from the love story.  Some people find it objectionable that Crusher was immediately turned off when Odan became biologically female but was able to overcome her discomfort when Odan was in Riker’s body.  I say hogwash; human attraction always starts with the physical and it becomes part of the person we come to cherish.  Crusher just doesn’t dig chicks or her mate changing bodies every two days for that matter.  What I find objectionable is that Crusher fell in love with Odan in the span of a week.  Perhaps it’s what happens on deep space assignments when you don’t use the holodeck enough, but I’m tired of it being used to create plots that last only one episode.  It feels very high-schoolish.

Also, why do Beverly and Odan sneak around Data?  The best way to safeguard a romance from the rest of the ship is to tell Data and tell him to keep his mouth shut.  If you make him guess he’ll start asking everyone else questions.

Synopsis:  Where Troi tries to make us care about suicides and murders of crew members we never met, or her own suicide, which we don’t care about either.

Memory Alpha Summary:  Spoiler Alert–Troi lives

Review:  The suicide discussion at the beginning is pretty shallow.  It’s a very worthwhile subject to discuss for 24th century humans, but they didn’t dig deep enough.  Then we get “It’s not like Don to take his own life.”  Right, because he’d never done it before.  What an awful line.

At least once that part is out of the picture, the episode is fun.  Watching Troi slowly become more paranoid is entertaining, and it was a better vehicle for her than Man of the People.  It’s kind of annoying, however, that we later find out most of the episode was Troi’s hallucination (not that it should be a surprise in season seven), yet in this hallucination we see some scenes from other characters’ points of view.  That’s a little dishonest to me.

Synopsis: The Enterprise has to freight a deadly plague while Troi gets knocked up by an energy force (no, not Worf).

Memory Alpha Summary:  Better than the movie Jack

Review:  I love the opening moments of this episode.  The music is triumphant, like “Yeah, we sucked in season one, but we’re back!”  (Like the Romulans).  We also have the promotion of Geordi to chief engineer and Dr. Pulaski making her one-year tour of duty.  I think both developments were great.  Muldaur is a better actress than Gates, and she actually has a personality.  She reminds me of Bones in that he had irrational distrust of Vulcans, while Pulaski shares the same distrust of androids (they also both hate transporters).  As for Geordi, I’m glad he’s no longer on the conn.  He acted like a ten-year old kid pretending to be a cowboy and had no reason to be important other than his visual acuity.  As chief engineer, he eventually grew confidence and felt like he belonged with the bridge crew.

As for this episode, it takes another chance and broaches abortion, though unfortunately in a rather over-the-top manner.  Worf, of course, wants to kill everything, so he recommends Troi abort her baby.  Sirtis actually plays this role fairly well, even if I will never be convinced by her crying.

Data does a fantastic job at handling Pulaski’s prejudice, especially when she calls him Dah-ta.  “One is my name.  The other is not.”  I have felt this way many times when people butcher my name.

Picard:  “I’ve never played with puppies.”  Really?  Wow.

I almost forgot to mention that Riker now has a beard (great move) and we have another new character in Guinan.  She winds up giving a lot of sound advice to the crew over the seasons.  And it’s a good thing because in this episode she convinces Wesley not to leave.  Whoops!

An okay episode, which could have been pretty good if Sirtis was better.

Synopsis: The second episode and TNG is already ripping off entire plots from the original series.  And nobody gets naked (on-screen).

Memory Alpha Summary:  Indeed, it did happen.

Review:  While a delightfully risky episode, it simply came too early in the series, before the audience really knows the characters.  Thus, the context for the humor cannot be as appreciated as much until later.  However, it does establish some key relationships and personality traits of the main crew.  Beverly is cute as hell and she and Picard complement each other well.  Wesley shows some glimpses of his precocious arrogance, but it can be forgiven considering he was drunk.  However, the writers will soon exploit this to aggravating proportions.

Not only is this a poor man’s version of Naked Time, the episode has some pretty significant and obvious script flaws.

After the hatch of the Tsiolkovsky is blown, Data tells Picard that the sound they just heard is impossible.  Then they quickly prove how it indeed was possible.  Data would never use a work like “impossible” unless something truly was.  Even then, he would likely say “theoretically impossible” or “highly improbable.”  And this isn’t just an issue of a character not being developed yet.  Data is an android.  His programming should not allow him to say that word in this situation.

Despite Data’s explanation of how he could be infected, I just don’t buy it.  He is immune to every biochemical problem the crew faces for seven seasons, yet something that enters his pores here can make his computer program emulate a drunken person?  At least it made for an iconic moment, and gave Tasha Yar more action than she ever saw as security chief.

Even though Wesley has Picard’s voice–which would be needed to transfer command of the ship–how could he do it without an authorization code?  Sloppy writing, that’s how.

I wonder how I would rank this episode if I saw it for the first time back in 1987.  Of course, I had just turned seven years old.  I probably would have turned it off and played Excitebike.  Also, this episode aired two days before the Twins faced off against the Tigers in the ALCS, so I’m sure I had other things on my mind.

Synopsis:  The entire crew gets duped by Tasha’s sister because Troi just isn’t good at reading emotions.

Memory Alpha Summary: Yar she blows

Review:  Not a whole lot to this episode, other than a rather banal allegory to gang warfare.  Data being betrayed by his new friend could have been pretty poignant, except he was just betrayed three episodes ago in Brothers, and I didn’t really buy how quickly the Enterprise crew trusted Ishara.  Troi voices out loud that Ishara’s leader is crooked, and says she’s pretty unsure about Ishara as well.  And yet they jump into this war with hardly a second thought because they miss Tasha?

We hear that this society severed ties with the federation 15 years ago.  Yet, Tasha was being exploited by rape gangs 30 years ago.  Why would the federation have had ties with them?

Moreover, the captain is warned that these gangs kill ALL visitors.  The first thing he does after hearing this news?  Orders Riker to assemble an away team of senior officers.  Right on.

Finally, Worf shows an unseen before (though we’ll see it later) sexist streak while trying to get Beverly to not go on the away mission.

I love it when Data tells Ishara that he and Tasha had “many conversations.”  No word on how many of them ended with, “It never happened.”

Synopsis: Riker’s whoring around nearly destroys the Federation, and Wesley saves the day.

Memory Alpha Summary:  Ashley Judd’s first on-screen kiss!  And Marina Sirtis’s first make-out session with a chocolate sundae.

Review:  It’s been a long time since Wesley got to be the only person on the ship smart enough to prevent disaster.  And this time he gets help from Ashley Judd, who like many isolated girls in the 24^th century, fall for dopes.  At least Wesley doesn’t act arrogant this time around.  I do like how Wheaton and Judd work together here so the episode isn’t too unpleasant.  But I’m having a hard time buying that Wes was the only one on board who was ultra suspicious of this game.  Did they tie Picard down and force him to play it?  Or did Beverly seduce him with it?  Hey, look at that—chase scene!

In reflection, several more things annoy me about this episode.  This is neither here nor there, but why are students studying Latin at the Academy?  While it’s not a useless subject, what’s the point with universal translators?  I imagine there has got to be more pressing science-fiction stuff for him to learn.

Second, Lefler’s laws are basically a bunch of lame platitudes.  Granted, she started them as a teenager, but I’m going to go with she’s just simple-minded, because that also explains her falling for Wesley.

Three, the takeover plan using this game is ridiculous.  Even assuming one gets everyone on the Enterprise addicted, having crew members pass them out at Starfleet just seems like a disaster waiting to happen.  Someone’s going to catch on.  The sinister plot is an embarrassing insult to the audience.  If not for the charming romantic subplot and the above average chase scene, this episode would rank in the bottom twenty.

Synopsis: The Enterprise finds a long lost society of humans (back from when the Federation kept shitty records) that have been genetically engineered for a predestined, perfect life.  But the crew proves to them that GE does not always bring good things to life.

Memory Alpha Summary: The script went through the hands of five writers.  Too many engineers in the pot, I think.

Review: Troi wants to see more of Conor’s colony.  That’s the first sign that she’s about to violate some ethics right there.  Thankfully, Picard still remembers what it was like to be horny in season four, so he forgives her major transgressions.

This episode is pretty much Ensigns of Command, only using a hot topic rather than an alien race.  I much prefer the alien race.  It seems less contrived.

I was kind of enjoying seeing this race battle with their own independence until Picard has the gall to say that the prime directive should have been used because their arrival has been just as destructive as any core fragment.  Shut the fuck up, Picard.  The core fragment would have killed EVERYONE.  Destroying their way of life will make their lives difficult for a long while.  But they’re not DEAD.  And it’s not like you would have saved their society by denying asylum to those who wanted it.

Synopsis:  Taking her turn in the season seven family reunion, Troi finds out she has a sister.  A dead sister, but whatever.

Memory Alpha Summary:  Of course, being seven season, she has to first hallucinate her dead sister.

Review:  Lwaxana’s final episode on TNG is her second best, six seasons after the best.  The five seasons in between of her character being only annoying was a crime.  The writers finally decided to give her some depth and a reason for her being an insufferable mother.  She’d get a couple damn good episodes on DS9 at least.

Synopsis:  The Enterprise picks up a passenger who proceeds to bang all the female staff before they find out he’s a fugitive on two planets.

Memory Alpha Summary:  Now that’s sex appeal.  Or something.

Review:  This episode, despite being a bit hackneyed, is fun because Okona (William Campbell) is as charming as he advertises.  I love how Riker recommends that Okona gets limited access to the ship, but that apparently didn’t extend to all the vaginas that Riker was likely trying to keep for himself.

There are three awkward moments, however.  The first one comes when Riker tells Wesley that Okona has good eyes after he ogles the transporter girl.  Talk about inappropriate talk about a subordinate.  The second one comes when Worf catches Okona making it with another crew member and he says, “I like that, but I have my orders.”  What the fuck?  Gross, and inappropriate as well.

But the third is different, as Troi gives a speech about how some cultures still hold an arcane view of procreation.  And by that she means “mating for life” is arcane.  While I believe it is not the only option in nature, I certainly can’t imagine that in 400 years it will be obsolete or even a bad idea.  And for realsies, Troi’s culture still has arranged marriages.  Get off your soapbox Deanna.

I almost forgot that there’s a subplot with Data getting advice from Guinan and Joe Piscopo on how to be funny.  Data is mildly amusing as he tries his hand at stand-up comedy, but it gets old after about nine seconds.