[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.]
(201.2 pounds)
Hey, writers. Way to name your episode something that just drips off the tongue.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for conspiracies, starship thefts, empty corridors, androgynous purple hydrocephalic IT specialists, and eerily sentient holodeck characters, but I really liked this episode. It was interesting to see the Enterprise crew with their figurative pants down instead of their literal ones; the Binars had a pretty well-executed scheme. It’s a little odd that they only planned to keep Riker around when the computer needed TWO people to decode, but–you know–they can’t think of anything, those little guys.
And though the writers played the self-destruct card, they didn’t wait until the readout said 00:00:02 to shut it off.
Plus the episode contains Riker’s best line for the next seven years: “What’s a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?” He also had his second best, about a blind man teaching an android how to paint. After those, it’s all downhill from here for him, dialogue-wise. The writers just never seem quite sure what to do with the guy. He’s an embodiment of swarthy libido, and if there’s one thing we’d better be done with by the twenty-fourth century…
My grade: Could it really be? Why, yes: this is the first A of the series.