6:13 Aquiel – What is it about Geordi that the writers always set him up to fall in love with an image rather than a real person? I mean, first that warp engineer babe on the holodeck, and now, he’s reviewing the logs of one of the two crewmembers who mysteriously vanished from a subspace relay station, and he starts to fall in love with her. He’s like the Enterprise‘s dedicated Instagram stalker. And why do I suddenly want to watch John Carpenter’s The Thing?
6:14 Face of the Enemy – This is one of those “We’re going to take a really dumb inciting incident and make a pretty good episode out of it” episodes: Deanna awakens to discover that (a) she’s been surgically altered to look Romulan, (b) she’s aboard a warbird, and (c) she’s supposed to pretend to be a member of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan secret police. Even bracketing the issue of whether a non-Romulan could speak Romulan convincingly enough to pass thanks to the universal translator, there would have to be people in Starfleet better qualified to play cloak-and-dagger than someone who has had literally no briefing or prep. (Yes, I know, they try to paper over why it had to be Troi… but it doesn’t pass the smell test.)
6:15 Tapestry – One of the best episodes of the series, and one that could only have been made this late in the run, when it could grow organically out of the personal history and character which have been established little by little for Picard. I’m glad that the original script concept of closely homaging A Christmas Carol was dialed back, in favor of allowing Picard to correct a single big mistake in his youth and see how that affects his life. (It also allowed Patrick Stewart to star in a pretty good version of A Christmas Carol later without making it seem like he’s already done that story.) And the fact that it’s left ambiguous whether Q actually offered him a chance to change the past, or whether it was all a near-death scenario created in Picard’s mind where his subconscious teaches him a lesson, it a perfect touch.
(Nothing to complain about? Okay, how about this: the arrangement of the Nausicaans’ tusks makes to sense — not only can they not be used as a weapon or intimidatory display, they would also get in the way of eating.)