[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(199.2 pounds)

Oh, boy. A Klingon story.

I always found these episodes tedious, I guess because I don’t really understand the whole Klingon “thing.” Even as a kid, I saw an anti-intellectual, anti-civilization petulance behind these guys and the screwballs who adored them at conventions: “Hey, man, we’re in touch with our aggressive, powerful selves unlike all you obedient pussies.”

Sort of like the guys with “Gods, Guns, and Guts” bumper stickers.

When these episodes were playing on my television, I was in a small town high school. As hard as this is to believe, I was not as redolent with manliness then as I am now; mostly I read books, played Star Frontiers, and tinkered with my Apple II computer. I found the jocks, bullies, and rednecks all around me to be terrifying vestiges of a more primitive and brutal life, something I’d escape when I went to college or moved to a city.

Uh, not so much.

It’s sure fun to let go with your feelings, of course, and I definitely see a scary conformity among the uniformed people of the Federation. But I also see a conformity among the Klingons, too, a weird macho pissing contest to see who can revert most quickly to all the ideas that have gotten us into trouble for centuries.

What I like about Worf is that he’s balancing civilization and barbarism, using the right tool for the right job. His Klingon brothers seem a little one-note, the kind of people with hammers for whom everything now looks like a nail.

As a plus, this episode showed that conflict in Work nicely. As a minus, we could have seen that conflict in, oh, about ten minutes instead of forty-five. Again, we needed a second storyline.

My grade: D

[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(202.0 pounds, and yeah, I cycled twice in one day, desperate to fight off that weight gain. Sigh.)

This is a curious juxtaposition of episodes, showing what can go wrong and go well with Star Trek.

“Home Soil” is a standard ham-fisted screw-up in the tradition of the original series: an intelligent species of LEDs gets pissed off when humans encroach on their habitat and the crew of the Enterprise has to figure how to communicate with them. I seem to remember an episode called “Devil in the Dark” that was essentially the same premise, but that one had the luxury of being cheesy in the Sixties when everything was cheesy. This cheesy version is just, well, embarrassing.

The more they try to be like the original series, the more spectacularly they fail. Despite all our good memories of the 60s Star Trek, we should probably remember that most of those episodes were really, really bad. I’m pretty sure that I’m a fan of them at all because I read the James Blish adaptations first, and James Blish could spin D.C. Fontana over his head in the writing department like some kind of professional wrestler.

Anyway, “Home Soil” is just one of those episodes dragged twenty years into the future, blinking and confused at the change in style.

My grade: D-

On the other hand, we have “Coming of Age.” Though not mind-blowing science fiction by any means, this has something “Home Soil” lacks: humanity. The people we see here, even weaselly Remmick, express something close to human feelings and concerns. Wesley faces his greatest fear during his Starfleet Academy exam, and Picard realizes some of the things that he finds rewarding about commanding the Enterprise. There are moments here of real growth (or at least reflection) for the characters.

It’s no “Family,” but it’s better than most of the first season. Plus, it sets up “Conspiracy,” an episode I love.

My grade: B-

David Gerrold has written that Star Trek is the McDonald’s of science fiction: fast and sometimes satisfying, but probably not very good for you. I tend to agree with him. Here, then, “Coming of Age” is a good order of french fries, and “Home Soil” is a Filet-o-Fish sandwich.

[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]

(200.0 pounds)

This episode does for kids what “Code of Honor” does for black people, “Angel One” does for women, and “Too Short a Season” does for the elderly: “What? You got your own episode. We’re (stereo)topical. What more do you want from us?”

I’m fascinated by stories in which a civilization goes to intellectual seed, accepting the care of a computer. Has no one been born in all these thousand years who is, I don’t know, a hacker? An anarchist? Someone with even the rudiments of curiosity? I mean, how can it be that nobody has tinkered with the Custodian, tried to add on to it or modify it? It’s a little scary to think of a society whose philosophy seems to be, “If it ain’t broke, don’t even think about it.”

This could have been interesting, but, like lots of first season episodes, it just falls down under the weight of its own writing. At least the smallest girl was cute, though God, do we have to end every episode with people chuckling on the bridge? That’s one of the worst legacies of the original series, a very 60s (and 70s and 80s) TV-land sort of thing to reassure people that everything is okay now.

My grade: D