Since we’re doing a binge-watch of Star Trek: The Next Generation to get my daughter up to speed, continuity-wise, before we can watch Picard, it’s taking the place of the movies I’d normally watch. So by popular demand (i.e., a single person’s suggestion), here are my reactions and comments to those episodes, starting at the beginning on Season 5.
(New this season: The trailing “warp shimmer” coming from the title logo, to disappear by next season.)
5:1 Redemption Part II – The second part of the season-ending cliffhanger, with Worf resigning his commission to join his brother in backing Gowron in his quest to ascend to the yada-yada-yada. To tell the truth, I find the “Klingon politics” episodes a little tedious; maybe a little better than all of the parliamentary procedure shenanigans in Star Wars: Episode I, but not by much.
5:2 Darmok – A classic! The Enterprise encounters a race whose language and mental processes are completely composed of references to mythology and other narratives. Granted, this idea shouldn’t be completely foreign to those in the Federation, as EVERY language contains a significant point of narrative or historical allusion as part of its communication payload, but when Picard finally figures out the framework and adds his own rendition of the epic of Gilgamesh to his dialogue with the alien captain… it’s a magic moment.
5:3 Ensign Ro – Pretty much everything that’s going to be a distinctive component of Deep Space Nine is set up in Season 5 of TNG. Here we get the introduction of the Bajoran/Cardassian dynamic (including Marc Alaimo as the first example of a Cardassian, much as Armin Shimerman was the introductory example of a Ferengi long before he became Quark).
Comically mundane “alien” detail: Ensign Ro Laren reveals that, among Bajorans, the family name comes before to personal name, so she should be addressed as “Ensign Ro,” not “Ensign Laren.” Yeah, we’ve never seen that kind of thing on Earth…
Funny thing about that: Deep Space Nine wasn’t the first time Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman were together in a story taking place primarily on a space station either. The otherwise relatively forgettable 1989 movie Arena featured Marc Alaimo as a sleazy extraterrestrial (but bipedal and fairly human-looking) criminal kingpin named Rogor who “unofficially” runs an interstellar space station from behind the scenes, and Armin Shimerman as the rather aptly named Weezil, a sharp-toothed black marketeer, information and power broker, and all-around lowlife scoundrel who helps find Rogor a saboteur to rig the final fight of the boxing tournament in the space station’s titular arena. About all the movie was missing was expies for Captain Sisko and Constable Odo.
Well, O’Brien Keiko (as they would call her at home in Japan) might know a few things about that…
I’ve had ARENA on my to-see list since… well, I guess since 1989.
(And Keiko O’Brien was played by Rosalind Chao — ethnic Chinese playing Japanese! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION! MARCH IN THE STREETS!)