Never thought of that. Oh my god, they had an evolved electronic AI and it died and no-one cared. The Humanity. WHY!

Unless they shipped him off in his wee cube after ship in a bottle to the Daystrom institute for study. Who knows, the EMH may be a direct descendent of what they learned from Moriarty

One can only hope he's sitting on the Federation equivalent of an USB stick somewhere

Ohhh yessss. Q-Who. No fuzzy memories here. I would have actually re-watched it. Going through boxes I found my old VHS Borg Boxed set (A muckle great cube with 3 tapes containing all the TNG Borg goodness) sadly in all the boxes I did not find a Video player. Cruel world, why do you mock me.

So, I stared really hard at the tape and these are my thoughts.

In my view, the Borg were never more scary than they were in this episode, including Best of Both Worlds. I remember first watching the scenes on the Borg ship and jumping at every movement. I really thought at any point all those borg were going to wake up and do terrible things to our intrepid heroes. The relentless nature of the Borg is used to great effect as Q says "You can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains – they regenerate and keep coming... eventually you will weaken – your reserves will be gone... they are relentless."

The effects work is pretty impressive, particularly the Borg carving a section out of the Enterprise hull. If I was to criticise the battles are fairly static, the Enterprise and the Cube basically sit in front of each other, but its a minor niggle in some very tense and dramatic scenes. And people actually die. The Borg don't cut out a conveniently uninhabited section of the ship, nice bit of realism there.

Also, how could I not Mention Q. While not as involved in the action as he is in later Q Centred episodes, when he's on screen he shines. Most of his lines are memorable in particular his "Bloody Nose" speech at the end. Patrick Stewart also puts in a good turn with the definite sense of desperation as he begs Q to send them back.

Now, memory has gone a bit fuzzy, we see Ensign Gomez again do we not? I was sure we get her appearing in at least one other episode.

Anyway, I'm off to find out if my wife will divorce me if I buy a Video player off of Ebay. Keep up the good work.

Cheers sir & good luck with the video player hunt.

First, bit more on QWho, Just to agree with Anne-Marie, The Borg personal shields were cool. I actually liked them better than the nicer effect used from First Contact onwards, just gave more of an impression of a force field.

Anyway, on to Samaritan Snare. Picard faces the most terrifying experience so far, stuck on a shuttle for hours with Wesley. He is clearly a finer man than me, he didn't designate a side of the shuttle as his or insist Wesley make the journey in a spacesuit towed behind the shuttle. What is worth mentioning is we get something set up that is refered to in a later episode (Picard's Bionic Heart) I used to say TNG didn't do continuity and I've been proven wrong a good few times just in this season. The other plot, with the packleds, riker outsmarts a ship crewed by fairly thick people, well done.

Not going to say too much about Up the Long Ladder, attack of the Oirish Stereotypes, small mercy that Riverdance hadn't become big until after this episode aired or we'd probably have had some impromptue dancing. Still, Picard looks like he's having fun.

Keep up teh good work, may we stave off Shades of Grey for a few more weeks.

Completely agree- there's definitely more continuity than I remembered there being in the series when I first watched it.

Don't remember much about either of these. Manhunt is a very exciting name for an episode which ultimately is about Lwuxana Troi really wanting to boink Picard. It should have included a Benny Hill style chase scene. Still, I always found Troi's mum entertaining, and it Keeps Majel Barrat off the streets. This episode, for pointless things, features attempt 2 or 3 of the dress uniform. I think they finally ditched the leggings but kept the extra long uniform.

The Emisary I remember being pretty good even if the plot doesn't make much sense. Why were the klingons using a sleeper ship to attack the federation, they had warp drive. Perhaps it broke but A warrior does not return home for repairs, he keeps charging very slowly into battle.

I do remember the monsters in Worf's holodeck programme being very shonky though.

PieMan70 wrote:


Genius

Had a thought on the universal translator, while it does basically amount to "Don't think about it, Please" I did come up with why anyone would bother speaking in someone elses language. Arguably while not seen on the show, we could assume that if you are speaking through the translator you would appear like a badly dubbed film, so if you were speaking, say Klingon to a Klingon, they would know because for once your lips matched the words. This all falls down because this isn't how it is seen on screen but without this massive flaw it is at least an explanation.

Peak Performance

I really liked this epsiode. First, some more TNG Continuity, the wargames excercise is a response to the Borg threat discovered in Q Who. Similarly the Asymetric aspect (Enterprise vs an 80 year old derelict) was designed to simulate an encounter with the powerful Borg ships. We see some old friends, Another Constellation class ship and Armin Shimmerman playing a Ferengi. Quark clearly comes from a large family.

Either way the episode deliveres a lot. The space battle I remember being good for the time, and the buildup, from Worf's brief dalliance with building model ships to Data's crisis of confidence is all entertaining. It also gives pretty much everyone something to do at some point, possibly Troi is a bit sidelined but that's it. One of the best of season in my view.

Shades of Grey

Riker has to Re-paint Cargo Bay 3, but federation regulations state it must be gray. To indulge his creative side he must explore the different shades of gray and come up with a striking design in time for Picard's birthday. This is not the plot of Shades of Gray but would have been preferable to what we got.

Riker gets stung by a plant. He is then forced to re-live past episodes, including distressing scenes where his chin is naked for all to see. Fear of never seeing his beard again cures Riker.

Not much to say. Lazy clip show, falls into the usual traps, riker has memories in the 3rd person, often of events he didn't actually witness and we all feel cheated that we didn't get anything new for our time.

Roll on season 3

I remember Peak Performance being fun too- hope the memories don't cheat otherwise the next 'cast is going to be hard work.