Friday, August 19, 2011

To the Life

Deep Space 9: To the Death

We do learn something about the Jem'Hadar, and we meet Weyoun for the first time. We get to see the Jem'Hadar as soldiers, and since we will spend the next 3 years seeing them as cannon fodder, it is welcome. We learn to hate Weyoun, and we have some fun with TNG continuity.

But we never do see them rebuild the docking pylon.

Relatives

Voyager: Relativity

So, it's time for more temporal mechanics, Voyager style.

Actually, I think it's Back to the Future. Only with more stuff. I like stuff, don't get me wrong. But... time travel in Voyager is... actually not that much more than anyone else, but it seems like a lot. Maybe because there's more time travel two-parters, or maybe because the eps just tend to be kind of stupid but either way, it seems like I've had enough of it.

But it's not that bad. We should remember that.

Percentage-wise, TAS was the worst. an impressive 9% of the 22 eps were time travel. That's 2.
Just thought I'd mention that.

Who Mourns for Crabby Hologram Designers?

Voyager: Lifeline

Here's the thing. I like Barclay.

I like Troi.

But they're on TNG. And this is Voyager. And they don't belong here. And you know what else doesn't fit?

In Act Three, Janeway gets a transmission about the "status of the Maquis." You could do an entire episode about the "status of the Maquis" but here it's shuttered to the background of an episode, and look at that, there's Brannon Braga taking partial credit for the teleplay.
He's lost the mission, bro.

Suspicious activity

TNG: Suspicions
Beverly Crusher is not having a good day.

In fact, she's about to have her best episode ever. She just doesn't know it yet. Usually she has some pathtic romance (Doctor Beverly, anyone?) But this time, oh, this time, she decided to dabble in physics and there isn't a long-haired lover in sight.

Tangent over.

There is, however, a problem, which is that a lot of people don't like Crusher, and Star Trek was not up to story arcs at that point. This is, of course, the pre-Coto years. There were practically no story arcs, everything was self-contained. Which means, since no one said boo about Gates leaving the show, we were not going to see a trial and everyone knew it.

Anyway, she tells Guinan she's no longer the CMO on the ship, begging a huge WTF from everyone who likes Crusher. Guinan starts complaining of tennis elbow.

Credits.

Beverly says she was trying to get some scientists, any scientists, to give some credit to the theories of a Ferengi scientist named Rega.

The scientists, however, are argumentative. So it is decided that Rega will not test his invention, which will allow a ship to survive in the corona of a star. Instead, another scientist, a Tarkalean named Jo'Brill, will fly the shuttle to test the device. The test goes pretty well... until Jo'Brill collapses. They get him back to sickbay long enough for him to gasp out, "I saw... the sun..." before he dies.

Commercial.

He's dead for no reason. Beverly performs an autopsy and there's literally no reason why he's dead. The only weird thing of note is that his cellular decay is really slow but his innards are so messed up that Beverly doesn't even worry about it.

Neither Data, no Geordi, nor Rega can find anything wrong with the shuttle either. And Beverly has to end the test of the shield... which is not what Rega wants. But that, as she tells Guinan, is the last time she saw Rega alive.

Commercial.

They detect a plasma surge on the ship, in the science lab, and when they investigate they find Rega, dead, clutching a plasma tool of some kind. Worf is convinced it's suicide. Beverly is not so convinced... but Picard tells her there will be no autopsy, it is against Ferengi custom.

But she's sure the scientists did it - or at least one of them. So she interviews Drs. T'Pan and Christopher, and then Kurak. None of them is very flattered, although Christopher says Kurak and Rega were arguing in the lab earlier before he died, and when Beverly questions her about that she gets thrown across the room for her trouble.

So Beverly does the only thing she has left to do. She autopsies Rega. She then goes to Picard and tells him so. Picard is, quite understandably, furious. He is very very sad, and he wants to protect Beverly as much as he can, but she tells him not to. So she goes back to her quarters and that's when the episode starts.

Guinan tells Beverly to go do something about it. In the immortal words of Jonathan Frakes, "What are they gonna do, fire me?"

Commercial.

During the flight, the shield may have been sabotaged. It's tough to tell. Beverly now knows to look for tetryon traces in Jo'Brill's body. On her way to Sickbay, Will stops by to tell her to stop looking, but she just can't and tells him to butt out. Instead of butting out she goes to her office and tries to access medical records. She can't do that, though, because she's not actually on the medical staff. So Alyssa comes in and helps her. Beverly tries to order her not to, but... "Too bad you're not my boss anymore."

Anyway, they recheck Jo'Brill, and there are tetryons, so maybe... but in the end, there's only one way to know. Someone is going to have to get in the shuttle, fly it to the star, and see if they die or not.

So Beverly does.

Commercial.

She flies into the sun and survives, but communications drop. Then Jo'Brill climbs out of a locker and attacks Beverly. She gets to be Action!Bev for a change and kill the dude by disintegration. As far as I recall, she used a phaser about 3 times. This was one.

Anyway, of course, that means only one thing.

She's cleared!

And then there's a problem.

Because Guinan doesn't play tennis.

So.

It's not Trek.

There's no police action, no guest character solving their own problem, no recreation of Earth's past, no alien aliens. I mean, sure, there's a dude you can shoot a hole through, and Beverly solves her own problem but I'm pretty sure I took that far enough with expanding #2 to recurring guest characters - Roddenberry specified that you never see the character again, and we see Bev all the damn time. I'm putting enough in just letting them use Barclay or Naomi Wildman or Zek or Brunt or Ishka or Morn.