[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.]
(200.6 pounds, again, somehow)
A little noir action for the Star Trek crew certainly doesn’t do them any harm, and it was cool to see Picard, Data, and especially Crusher (rawrr!) in period costume! And that other guy, the one we’ve never seen before, the one we had a feeling might get a shot in the gut, it was good to see him too, I guess. “Hey, Data, invite that expert on the 20th century, will you? I hear he can stop a bullet pretty well.”
You’d think with all the times the Holodeck breaks down with deadly consequences that there’d be a big scary warning placard on the outside of it.
Sure, it’s a little corny that the alien species happens to probe the ship on the exact wavelength or whatever to screw up only the Holodeck. It might have been fun instead to have the aliens USE the Holodeck as something they mistake for a communication device, inhabiting the noir characters to see how humans treat their “servants” or something. Maybe that’s a little complicated for an episode that probably started with someone saying, “Hey! Stage 6B has the best coffee maker on the lot, but there’s a lot of 1930s shit in it!”
My grade: C+. They should have spent more time on the Holodeck and showed some actual story there instead of just cutesy moments. And my favorite Holodeck episode remains “Ship in a Bottle,” an excruciating thousand episodes from now, it seems.
Season one is a trip through mediocrity.