While full off the usual season 1 insufferability, we still must hold up this episode for not only introducing Lore, but also for introducing to the world the magnificence that is “Shut Up Wesley”.
The lovecraftian nature of the Crystalline Entity could even go deeper. Considering the confusing timeline of the attack, it's possible that specifically the children of the colony were afflicted with nightmares about the attack weeks before it occurred, drawing their dreams in such detail that their parents mounted the pictures and framed them (not something you would do in the middle of a sudden attack).
@scockery such a shame it went more or less unexplained. Maybe the Tholians made it in their version of an artificial life project. Maybe entities like these naturally grow out of the diamond rain atmospheres of gas giants. Maybe they're extra-dimensional beings whose "mouths" appear as the entities filter-feeding on organic matter like shrimp in a pond.
Good idea. If tv were better back in the day, the crystalline entity could've been a recurring opponent. He'll, you could've done something like having it encounter other races or the borg and see what happens. What about Q? There's a lot of possibilities.
When I first watched TNG as a kid, I thought the ending was setting up a long term storyline where they'd find out Data was really Lore. What a missed opportunity.
Hmmmmmmm maybe it's talked about later in the episode but there *is* a bit of a difference between Lal and Lore being assembled here; Lal was literally brought into existence; Lore already existed and was just deactivated. It's less "you created new life" and more "this person is injured and we have the means to save them".
"It's not like he's going to use a contraction after the show made such a big point about that being a characteristic of Lore..." I know this is a restoration of a much older review, but Wil Wheaton's book "Memories of the Future" claims that Brent Spiner deliberately ad-libbed a contraction into the line at the end to keep the audience guessing. It's not enough to save the episode, but its a nice little tidbit - along with how the actor for the one-off Chief Engineer this week got himself fired because he got his friends to start a letter-writing campaign to have him brought on as full-time Chief Engineer in season 2.... only to get the broadcast dates mixed up and the producers started receiving said letters before his episode aired, tipping them off to his ploy.
I heard another argument that it's meant to be a refutation of what Lore said earlier... that Data was flawed because he couldn't learn things like contractions. And Data was proving him wrong. The timing, though...
Honestly, as a biologist I would personally press the fire button to destroy that space-faring crystalline entity, regardless if it's sentient or not. It's not a predator that "has the right to feed to survive"; it's parasitic in nature instead of regulatory, and it destroys entire ecosystems at a planetary scale without being part of any lifecycle. There's no way that crystalline entity is the result of natural selection, as even parasites evolve alongside their hosts (and go extinct if their host species goes extinct). If it's an anorganic abiotic intelligent "lifeform", then it committed mass murder, ecocide, and an act of war against the Federation. If it's some sort of Lovecraftian entity that travels from galaxy to galaxy sucking up lifeforce, killing entire civilizations, we have a duty to stop it. That entity is suspiciously close to the ancient soul-devouring C'tan from Warhammer40K, and only stops short of being the biomass-devouring tyranids from WH40K by the fact it doesn't use the energy it absorbs to spawn a million copies of itself. But it's far more likely the crystalline entity is an artificial A.I.-controlled weapon system left by a long-dead high-tech civilization. Either with the purpose to eradicate its enemies... or more sinister, to eradicate all life on planets to "clear" them for ecoforming and colonization.
The reasons given by the followup episode were that communicating might lead to coexistence because they could figure out a way to feed it without it eating planets and learn from its unique mind/structure. I'm still not shedding any tears for it though, as you're right on all points: It's a monster, especially since the worlds it hits become dead worlds. >.> I wonder if Lower Decks did a callback to the Crystalline Entity?
@@hariman7727 Only sort of for Lower Decks. It hasn't appeared in an episode, but it's shown amongst the various horrifying enemies in the current opening credits when the Cerritos sees them all fighting and "nopes" out of there. That scene in the opening credits gets more and more insane as each episode comes out. It now includes: Borg, Romulans, Klingons, the Pakleds, the Crystalline Entity, Apollo's giant green hand, friggin' V'Ger, the Whale Probe, and a Tholian Web. The thing about making peace with the entity was that it seems a fool's errand. This episode indicates that it's not only sentient, but communicates willingly with other life forms. Meaning that it must, on some level, know what it's doing. Thus it's hard to argue that the CE is killing things out of ignorance. Feeding it would be incredibly dangerous... what if, in doing that, it's simply biding its time to become more powerful such that Starfleet's weapons can no longer stop it? The only way that NOT destroying it is really a possibility is if it's simply an animal (though it's an animal that destroys ecosystems, which is not good), or is sentient but unaware of other lifeforms. But it ISN'T unaware. It just doesn't care.
You made a great point about how dangerous the Crystalline Entity is. But i wonder if it's negated by it seems to need help finding life to consume. Maybe it can't sense life except at a very short range. It just goes through space hoping to stumble on the next planet, moon or spaceship that it can feed on. There's animals here on Earth that gorge on alot of food and go a long time between meals. So when someone like Lore contacts it, it quickly swoops in. Not because of it likes killing like Lore does, but because it is literally starving. So it is grateful someone found it life to consume, but not for the reasons Lore puts on it
I always assumed the crystalline entity can't travel faster than light. So it takes it a long time to find a new world to strip. Maybe hundreds of years.
The effects on this episode are SPOTLESS. Even compared to modern effects the Data and Lore scenes are just perfect, and the Crystalline Entity is still imposing and alien despite being dated. This is honestly one of the best episodes of Series 1, warts and all. EDIT: Thinking about it, this episode's reveal would've worked better if they'd shown Wesley and Data becoming friends earlier in the season. As a gifted kid on the spectrum I gravitated towards adults who were calmer and more logical, and it would enhance his position as a misunderstood genius like Roddenberry wanted, that he felt like the only person he could truly relate to was an android.
I didn't realize Star Trek actually did beam an adversary into space to defeat them once. It's amazing that the transporter is basically never used as a weapon when it's the most powerful precision assassination weapon in the universe. Stargate demonstrated it almost immediately after it was introduced in that show.
Well, Stargate also quickly introduced countermeasures for that attack: Shields stop it (same as Trek) and also some kind of scrambling device that the Wraith employed. Arguably, it mostly isn't used in Trek because of the shields. Though why they don't beam more ship invades into space is anybody's guess. Recall that Kirk jumped to that idea immediately when it came to the Tribbles (though he was also horrified by the prospect).
They also did that with Redjack from Wolf in the Fold in ToS. They not only beamed him into space but also dispersed his body over as wide an area as they could to prevent him from returning.
I think a neat twist would be that the crystalline entity was another Soong creation, perhaps the crystalline core of a third version of the android brain that self replicated out of control into a giant crystal.
In Birth of the Federation, even as the Federation, if the Crystalline Entity attacked I would immediately send a fleet to destroy it. (The only way to deal with it the game allowed). At the age of 9 I had more of an idea of the damage & strategic impact it would cause than the writers of the show 😆
For many years, Wil Wheaton joked that people have put their kids through college with how much money the fans made selling homemade t-shirts emblazoned with "Shut Up, Wesley!" However, in 2016, he tweeted that he was over it and would insta-block people who did, even if it's done ironically.
Even being season 1 this is still better than Silicon Avatar, where the writers inexplicably tried to make sparing the Crystaline Entity, which destroyed life on a planetary scale, moral. Imagine if they wrote the Doomsday Machine in TOS with Kirk arguing "It's a life form, it has a right to live." just after it destroyed a planetary system and a ship.
I really REALLY want Chuck to review Silicon Avatar. You see a bunch of Trek fans defending sparing the Crystalline Entity because the episode told them to think that. And it's like... what? It's like the Doomsday Machine or the giant space Amoeba. Some creatures/things are anathema to humanoid life. And a choice has to be made.
@@Swiftbow When something is determined to kill you, there is no longer any debate. They wouldn't genocide the normal races, Klingons in TOS, or Romulans, because they can be negotiated with, and don't destroy entire planets just to feed.
@@Swiftbow Picard: It's simply misunderstood and I can't spare any feelings for the billions of people it's probably killed. Dr. Marr: Kill it now! With Fire! I have personal beef with it! Pick your side.
The Doomsday Machine was an automated process that couldn't be communicated with, certainly not in the time it would take before it reached its next planet. The Crystalline Entity was proven to be intelligent and was just hanging out when they found it, they had all the time in the world to learn how to talk to it and learn how to preserve its unique form of life non destructively.
@@manjackson2772 Could have been. But they didn't know that. It was just Kirk's speculation that it was a doomsday machine. It could have been intelligent. Some other type of life form like V'ger.
It's EXACTLY one android of parts that are organized together, and it's probably got a number of differences that can be seen/scanned. It's not too out there to assume it's a second android.
It is a pity that they didn't have Lore appear on Voyager since the events of *Descent* two parter was set in the Delta Quadrant. Instead of the Data capturing and deactivating him, he escapes and becomes the antagonist in the Voyager two-parter or feature length episode *Flesh and Blood* instead of the hologram Bajoran.
4:50 wait a second... Ok - given that Data was built after Lore, there are certainly some differences. But in Unification (part1) Data says his ears are "fully integrated components" and aren't removable. 🤔
The irony of having the legendary "Shut up, Wesley!" in the one episode in which he is the least annoying and objectionable character of all. Picard is insufferable here, with his "you have to address Riker this way"-protocol-nonsense while in a tense, dangerous situation.
Star Trek: TNG would never have escaped season 1 without Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart. This episodes flaws are covered up by Brent Spiner acting his ass off.
One android could fool trained starfleet officers, imagined what could happen if Ent-D invade bunch of Jem-Hadar soldiers. Agree with SFDebris, SF in this era is really sad excuse for military and security.
@@marshallhuffer4713 It's extended peacetime utopia security: They actually barely need it because everyone's so ridiculously perfect and coddled that nobody things to break laws.
For the most part, I expect nearly everyone involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't expect for additional seasons. Heck the title of the show was corny even back in the 1980s. I think most people in season 1 especially, put enough effort to not get fired and not have the show kill their career the next year. However I think killing Yar, was a turning point. It allowed an actual sense of tension for the rest of the season and for the series as well, allowing writers to not always hit the reset button after each episode.
Killing of Yar was little bit a cheasy. It was like the scene from Friends where character of Joey from his TV show was killed off by fall into the elevator shaft. Simply they want to killed off Crosby charater and they did not really care. And we have to see outcome for that another 3 years. And only because Denise really want come back somehow, so they create this role in alternative reality and then character of Sela. I think real turning point was Q Who, Q character was finally not only annoying funny character like some kind of relic ala "TOS legacy", but something what really intended originally, someone who could show mankind, that they were able to come here and here, but is not enough and they finally found sound one who kick their butt.
"Often Wrong" is such a lame taunt, I feel more sorry for the bullies than for Noonien. Of course, Star Trek writers were the ones being bullied in school. Guess they can't do the role reversal too well.
I'm still kind of confused about why Data can't use contractions. If it were a personal choice because he considers them unprofessional or that they hamper communication, that would make total sense. It also helps explain why he doesn't use slang or swear. But this implies that it's a programming error, which is baffling. Lore should've beaten him up over not being able to use slang, or his extremely formal speech.
I always felt like it was a deliberate programming choice to limit Data to NOT be quite so human like Lore was, and that advancing beyond that programming to being a person is what Dr. Soong hoped for.
The notion that Data can't use contractions is so stupid. As a super intelligent android, he must speak thousands of languages. That's just what you'd expect from the technology of 300. years in the future.
It could be a deliberate programming limitation so that Data would always stand out a little from humans. Heck, given that Lore was TOO human and went evil making Data less human and putting in deliberate limitations makes sense.
Was the Argyle actor the one writing fan letters to the studio praising the Character of Chief Engineer Argyle in the hopes that he would become a full-time cast member. Or was that a different one?
I think it was a broken pipe or some other incident. It IS also possible to flood in surprising areas. I lived in Pennsylvania on top of a hill growing up and there were times where it rained so hard it almost flooded into the house, even with the doorstep being raised.
While I liked Lore (as an antagonist and foil to Data), the awfulness of Season 1 TNG makes this a hard watch. The awful smugness, the actions without considering the consequences, the Wesley Crusher; it's all so much to take in together. I liked the CONCEPT of the Crystalline Entity, but it needed to be fleshed out. It was different, it consumed LIFE seemingly without any emotions; No anger, no glee, no sorrow but with the acceptance that it needs to do this to survive, NOTHING. It was mysterious, but it was too mysterious to the point it seemed partially finished.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
While full off the usual season 1 insufferability, we still must hold up this episode for not only introducing Lore, but also for introducing to the world the magnificence that is “Shut Up Wesley”.
Honestly ‘Are you prepared for the kind of death you’ve earned, little man?’ far exceeds it.
The lovecraftian nature of the Crystalline Entity could even go deeper. Considering the confusing timeline of the attack, it's possible that specifically the children of the colony were afflicted with nightmares about the attack weeks before it occurred, drawing their dreams in such detail that their parents mounted the pictures and framed them (not something you would do in the middle of a sudden attack).
But we have to communicate with it. Maybe we can find a way to meet its needs...
@scockery such a shame it went more or less unexplained. Maybe the Tholians made it in their version of an artificial life project. Maybe entities like these naturally grow out of the diamond rain atmospheres of gas giants. Maybe they're extra-dimensional beings whose "mouths" appear as the entities filter-feeding on organic matter like shrimp in a pond.
Good idea. If tv were better back in the day, the crystalline entity could've been a recurring opponent. He'll, you could've done something like having it encounter other races or the borg and see what happens. What about Q? There's a lot of possibilities.
Yes, the old flooding dissaster. Remember when Chuck suffered from NORMAL things like that? Not chimney's coming out of nowhere?
OTOH, if the chimney had surprised him before the flooding, it could have acted as a dam.
Not a very good one, but every little helps.
There’s no proof the chimney wasn’t the cause of flooding
Data saying "I'm fine" at the end is the writers' way of saying that Data could use contractions, but chose not to.
Or simply that Data learned from Lore to be less stiff.
When I first watched TNG as a kid, I thought the ending was setting up a long term storyline where they'd find out Data was really Lore. What a missed opportunity.
We sure learn a lot of Data lore this episode.
The fact that the original idea for this episode was that they would discover Data's "mate" is wild.
Berman would have insisted they were roommates or good friends
@Chris-et2fm Berman would have insisted she wear a catsuit.
If nothing else, it'd make Lal's story from season 3 easier to believe 🫠
"Are you prepared for the kind of death you've earned, little man?" is one of the greatest TNG lines. LOL
You left out the second best line
"Back off, or I'll turn your little man into a torch."
Hmmmmmmm maybe it's talked about later in the episode but there *is* a bit of a difference between Lal and Lore being assembled here; Lal was literally brought into existence; Lore already existed and was just deactivated. It's less "you created new life" and more "this person is injured and we have the means to save them".
"It's not like he's going to use a contraction after the show made such a big point about that being a characteristic of Lore..."
I know this is a restoration of a much older review, but Wil Wheaton's book "Memories of the Future" claims that Brent Spiner deliberately ad-libbed a contraction into the line at the end to keep the audience guessing. It's not enough to save the episode, but its a nice little tidbit - along with how the actor for the one-off Chief Engineer this week got himself fired because he got his friends to start a letter-writing campaign to have him brought on as full-time Chief Engineer in season 2.... only to get the broadcast dates mixed up and the producers started receiving said letters before his episode aired, tipping them off to his ploy.
I heard another argument that it's meant to be a refutation of what Lore said earlier... that Data was flawed because he couldn't learn things like contractions. And Data was proving him wrong.
The timing, though...
"You people are just sad."
And said sadness only gets worse when one of the finest starfleet security performances came from a comedy spinoff.
6:17 Even in the future, there will still be meetings scheduled that could just as easily been an email.
Worth noting, in early episodes - including this one - Spiner uses contractions as Data.
Just like how Deanna could read Ferengi.
"But everyone in the audience should realize that was a necessary question."
Jeez your family has the same luck mine does.We dont die but we get everything right up to that line.
The Strange Case of Dr Data and Mr Lore .
Honestly, as a biologist I would personally press the fire button to destroy that space-faring crystalline entity, regardless if it's sentient or not. It's not a predator that "has the right to feed to survive"; it's parasitic in nature instead of regulatory, and it destroys entire ecosystems at a planetary scale without being part of any lifecycle. There's no way that crystalline entity is the result of natural selection, as even parasites evolve alongside their hosts (and go extinct if their host species goes extinct).
If it's an anorganic abiotic intelligent "lifeform", then it committed mass murder, ecocide, and an act of war against the Federation.
If it's some sort of Lovecraftian entity that travels from galaxy to galaxy sucking up lifeforce, killing entire civilizations, we have a duty to stop it. That entity is suspiciously close to the ancient soul-devouring C'tan from Warhammer40K, and only stops short of being the biomass-devouring tyranids from WH40K by the fact it doesn't use the energy it absorbs to spawn a million copies of itself.
But it's far more likely the crystalline entity is an artificial A.I.-controlled weapon system left by a long-dead high-tech civilization. Either with the purpose to eradicate its enemies... or more sinister, to eradicate all life on planets to "clear" them for ecoforming and colonization.
The reasons given by the followup episode were that communicating might lead to coexistence because they could figure out a way to feed it without it eating planets and learn from its unique mind/structure.
I'm still not shedding any tears for it though, as you're right on all points: It's a monster, especially since the worlds it hits become dead worlds.
>.> I wonder if Lower Decks did a callback to the Crystalline Entity?
@@hariman7727 Only sort of for Lower Decks. It hasn't appeared in an episode, but it's shown amongst the various horrifying enemies in the current opening credits when the Cerritos sees them all fighting and "nopes" out of there. That scene in the opening credits gets more and more insane as each episode comes out. It now includes: Borg, Romulans, Klingons, the Pakleds, the Crystalline Entity, Apollo's giant green hand, friggin' V'Ger, the Whale Probe, and a Tholian Web.
The thing about making peace with the entity was that it seems a fool's errand. This episode indicates that it's not only sentient, but communicates willingly with other life forms. Meaning that it must, on some level, know what it's doing.
Thus it's hard to argue that the CE is killing things out of ignorance. Feeding it would be incredibly dangerous... what if, in doing that, it's simply biding its time to become more powerful such that Starfleet's weapons can no longer stop it?
The only way that NOT destroying it is really a possibility is if it's simply an animal (though it's an animal that destroys ecosystems, which is not good), or is sentient but unaware of other lifeforms. But it ISN'T unaware. It just doesn't care.
You made a great point about how dangerous the Crystalline Entity is. But i wonder if it's negated by it seems to need help finding life to consume. Maybe it can't sense life except at a very short range. It just goes through space hoping to stumble on the next planet, moon or spaceship that it can feed on. There's animals here on Earth that gorge on alot of food and go a long time between meals. So when someone like Lore contacts it, it quickly swoops in. Not because of it likes killing like Lore does, but because it is literally starving. So it is grateful someone found it life to consume, but not for the reasons Lore puts on it
I like to say this title repeatedly as one would say "Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo."
I always assumed the crystalline entity can't travel faster than light. So it takes it a long time to find a new world to strip. Maybe hundreds of years.
The effects on this episode are SPOTLESS. Even compared to modern effects the Data and Lore scenes are just perfect, and the Crystalline Entity is still imposing and alien despite being dated. This is honestly one of the best episodes of Series 1, warts and all.
EDIT: Thinking about it, this episode's reveal would've worked better if they'd shown Wesley and Data becoming friends earlier in the season. As a gifted kid on the spectrum I gravitated towards adults who were calmer and more logical, and it would enhance his position as a misunderstood genius like Roddenberry wanted, that he felt like the only person he could truly relate to was an android.
The nature of this thing is even more frightening considering that it's sentient.
Give it to Cmdr Maddox along with a salad fork 😂
I didn't realize Star Trek actually did beam an adversary into space to defeat them once. It's amazing that the transporter is basically never used as a weapon when it's the most powerful precision assassination weapon in the universe. Stargate demonstrated it almost immediately after it was introduced in that show.
Well, Stargate also quickly introduced countermeasures for that attack: Shields stop it (same as Trek) and also some kind of scrambling device that the Wraith employed. Arguably, it mostly isn't used in Trek because of the shields.
Though why they don't beam more ship invades into space is anybody's guess. Recall that Kirk jumped to that idea immediately when it came to the Tribbles (though he was also horrified by the prospect).
They also did that with Redjack from Wolf in the Fold in ToS. They not only beamed him into space but also dispersed his body over as wide an area as they could to prevent him from returning.
@@shiroamakusa8075 Yeah, that was a neat way to kill an energy being.
Stargate, the MOVIE, had the heroes use a teleporter to kill the villain. They beamed a nuke directly into his command center.
@@manjackson2772 Yes, that's true. They used his own rings against him.
I think a neat twist would be that the crystalline entity was another Soong creation, perhaps the crystalline core of a third version of the android brain that self replicated out of control into a giant crystal.
God. That season 1 music drop was so great. Sinister syrh. Great stuff.
In Birth of the Federation, even as the Federation, if the Crystalline Entity attacked I would immediately send a fleet to destroy it. (The only way to deal with it the game allowed).
At the age of 9 I had more of an idea of the damage & strategic impact it would cause than the writers of the show 😆
For many years, Wil Wheaton joked that people have put their kids through college with how much money the fans made selling homemade t-shirts emblazoned with "Shut Up, Wesley!" However, in 2016, he tweeted that he was over it and would insta-block people who did, even if it's done ironically.
To which Patrick Stewart replied “Shut up Wil.” 😂
Even being season 1 this is still better than Silicon Avatar, where the writers inexplicably tried to make sparing the Crystaline Entity, which destroyed life on a planetary scale, moral.
Imagine if they wrote the Doomsday Machine in TOS with Kirk arguing "It's a life form, it has a right to live." just after it destroyed a planetary system and a ship.
I really REALLY want Chuck to review Silicon Avatar. You see a bunch of Trek fans defending sparing the Crystalline Entity because the episode told them to think that. And it's like... what?
It's like the Doomsday Machine or the giant space Amoeba. Some creatures/things are anathema to humanoid life. And a choice has to be made.
@@Swiftbow
When something is determined to kill you, there is no longer any debate.
They wouldn't genocide the normal races, Klingons in TOS, or Romulans, because they can be negotiated with, and don't destroy entire planets just to feed.
@@Swiftbow Picard: It's simply misunderstood and I can't spare any feelings for the billions of people it's probably killed. Dr. Marr: Kill it now! With Fire! I have personal beef with it!
Pick your side.
The Doomsday Machine was an automated process that couldn't be communicated with, certainly not in the time it would take before it reached its next planet. The Crystalline Entity was proven to be intelligent and was just hanging out when they found it, they had all the time in the world to learn how to talk to it and learn how to preserve its unique form of life non destructively.
@@manjackson2772
Could have been. But they didn't know that. It was just Kirk's speculation that it was a doomsday machine. It could have been intelligent. Some other type of life form like V'ger.
Glad you got Patrick Stewart to help you against the Kraken tbh
Weird that they found Lore and instantly assume it was a 2nd android ready to be assembled, and not a cache of replacement parts for Data?
It's EXACTLY one android of parts that are organized together, and it's probably got a number of differences that can be seen/scanned. It's not too out there to assume it's a second android.
It is a pity that they didn't have Lore appear on Voyager since the events of *Descent* two parter was set in the Delta Quadrant.
Instead of the Data capturing and deactivating him, he escapes and becomes the antagonist in the Voyager two-parter or feature length episode *Flesh and Blood* instead of the hologram Bajoran.
4:50 wait a second... Ok - given that Data was built after Lore, there are certainly some differences. But in Unification (part1) Data says his ears are "fully integrated components" and aren't removable. 🤔
The irony of having the legendary "Shut up, Wesley!" in the one episode in which he is the least annoying and objectionable character of all.
Picard is insufferable here, with his "you have to address Riker this way"-protocol-nonsense while in a tense, dangerous situation.
Love it when lore sings Abdul abullbull amir.
Star Trek: TNG would never have escaped season 1 without Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart.
This episodes flaws are covered up by Brent Spiner acting his ass off.
One android could fool trained starfleet officers, imagined what could happen if Ent-D invade bunch of Jem-Hadar soldiers. Agree with SFDebris, SF in this era is really sad excuse for military and security.
They act more like mall cops than security people.
@@marshallhuffer4713 It's extended peacetime utopia security: They actually barely need it because everyone's so ridiculously perfect and coddled that nobody things to break laws.
4:00 You’re telling me this cave isn’t a natural formation? That somebody made it?
Which means it must lead somewhere. If we can find the other life pods we organize an effective resistance
For the most part, I expect nearly everyone involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't expect for additional seasons.
Heck the title of the show was corny even back in the 1980s.
I think most people in season 1 especially, put enough effort to not get fired and not have the show kill their career the next year.
However I think killing Yar, was a turning point. It allowed an actual sense of tension for the rest of the season and for the series as well, allowing writers to not always hit the reset button after each episode.
Killing of Yar was little bit a cheasy. It was like the scene from Friends where character of Joey from his TV show was killed off by fall into the elevator shaft. Simply they want to killed off Crosby charater and they did not really care. And we have to see outcome for that another 3 years. And only because Denise really want come back somehow, so they create this role in alternative reality and then character of Sela.
I think real turning point was Q Who, Q character was finally not only annoying funny character like some kind of relic ala "TOS legacy", but something what really intended originally, someone who could show mankind, that they were able to come here and here, but is not enough and they finally found sound one who kick their butt.
"Often Wrong" is such a lame taunt, I feel more sorry for the bullies than for Noonien.
Of course, Star Trek writers were the ones being bullied in school. Guess they can't do the role reversal too well.
Chyck and Ahab on Tanagra?:)
Where those are the pillar here, it is Michael who comes to Piller, later!
They made 26 episodes of this and still kept going...
Contractually obligated to make 65 to get syndicated.
Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner probably had back pains from carrying the show for the first season.
crystal space vampire ;] wondering black hole type. It is alive as much as space virus would have been...
I'm still kind of confused about why Data can't use contractions. If it were a personal choice because he considers them unprofessional or that they hamper communication, that would make total sense. It also helps explain why he doesn't use slang or swear. But this implies that it's a programming error, which is baffling.
Lore should've beaten him up over not being able to use slang, or his extremely formal speech.
I always felt like it was a deliberate programming choice to limit Data to NOT be quite so human like Lore was, and that advancing beyond that programming to being a person is what Dr. Soong hoped for.
should see what Lore is up to in the current Star Trek comics.
(hint. he destroys Universe.)
@5:39 i laughed hard at that one
The notion that Data can't use contractions is so stupid. As a super intelligent android, he must speak thousands of languages. That's just what you'd expect from the technology of 300. years in the future.
It could be a deliberate programming limitation so that Data would always stand out a little from humans. Heck, given that Lore was TOO human and went evil making Data less human and putting in deliberate limitations makes sense.
Is this the episode the fan comic "My Human (Is Not)" is referencing?
Was the Argyle actor the one writing fan letters to the studio praising the Character of Chief Engineer Argyle in the hopes that he would become a full-time cast member. Or was that a different one?
I overlooked the stupid parts of the episode for a long time, because it at least has really good stuff compared to the rest of season one.
Wait, you got flooded... in Colorado?
I think it was a broken pipe or some other incident.
It IS also possible to flood in surprising areas. I lived in Pennsylvania on top of a hill growing up and there were times where it rained so hard it almost flooded into the house, even with the doorstep being raised.
While I liked Lore (as an antagonist and foil to Data), the awfulness of Season 1 TNG makes this a hard watch. The awful smugness, the actions without considering the consequences, the Wesley Crusher; it's all so much to take in together.
I liked the CONCEPT of the Crystalline Entity, but it needed to be fleshed out. It was different, it consumed LIFE seemingly without any emotions; No anger, no glee, no sorrow but with the acceptance that it needs to do this to survive, NOTHING. It was mysterious, but it was too mysterious to the point it seemed partially finished.
The crystal thing is bad!
The older I get, the more cringe Season 1 gets.