The Highlanders by: Gerry Davis

 

The Highlanders was written by Gerry Davis, based on his and Elwyn Jones’ story of the same name.  It was the 90^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Sometimes there really isn’t much done with a Target novelization.  The Highlanders is one of those times.  Despite being a serial that is completely missing with a full set of telesnaps and one or two existing clips, it’s never been one that’s particularly difficult to understand or follow.  It’s just that Gerry Davis and Elwyn Jones’ script is one that just kind of meanders from situation to situation and falls into the trap of pure historical stories being motivated by getting the TARDIS team back to the ship so they can leave.  Were it not for the introduction of Jamie McCrimmon, it would be remembered as a fairly decent though highly flawed missing serial.  It was Patrick Troughton’s only pure historical and the last until 1982’s Black Orchid, but there are so many better options for exploring history.  This does have some great comedic bits of Patrick Troughton that informs his early performance as the Doctor.

 

The novelization suffers from being almost entirely too faithful to the television script.  Gerry Davis adapts it, as he was really the only one actually writing The Highlanders for television.  It was his fourth novelization but his first, Doctor Who and the Cybermen, remains his best for how it played with pacing.  Davis’ sense of novelization really hadn’t developed from the previous stories he has novelized: Doctor Who and the Cybermen and Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen both work off the original scripts and take out any ad-libs, The Highlanders follows suit.  The book doesn’t quite drag despite the meandering pace, Davis at least spends some time in the heads of the characters especially Ben and Polly (even if Polly is slightly mischaracterized as more of a damsel in distress).  The best bits of comedy are at least retained.

 

Overall, despite not having the same problems as Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, The Highlanders suffers from Gerry Davis not making many choices when deciding how to adapt it to the page.  The ones he does make sadly weaken Polly into quite the damsel, only too relieved when the Doctor is rescued so he can make decisions for her and then terrified when he pushes to back into thinking.  It takes a story that was at best decent and just kind of brings it down to meh.  5/10.

The Gunfighters by: Donald Cotton

The Gunfighters was written by Donald Cotton, based on his story of the same name.  It was the 101^st story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

Donald Cotton managed to pull the same trick twice, and considering he also contributed the novelization of Dennis Spooner’s The Romans, it’s possible he did it a third time.  When looking at Target novelizations, especially those 1984 and later, you realize less and less that they were being published to relive the story as the BBC had begun the VHS range at that point, but really to complete the range.  The exceptions to this are of those serials that were missing and several of the Seventh Doctor serials, the former attempting to recapture the missing episodes in some way while the latter would often be expanded as tests to see if proper Doctor Who novels would work.  It makes The Gunfighters a weird beast of a novelization.  Published in 1986, the VHS range had started but was still limited to a handful of Baker stories, The Five Doctors, and The Seeds of Death, and there was a copy of The Gunfighters in the archive as well to draw from, yet it seems Cotton didn’t have access to draw from.

 

Cotton clearly was interested in adding characterization to much of his supporting cast.  In television there certainly was characterization and larger than life performances, but Cotton seems to understand he can’t really replicate some of those performances in prose.  Instead, he decides while sticking to a lot of the original script (or perhaps an earlier version with some differences lacking some improv), Cotton keeps a lot of the humor to more wry dialogue.  Johnny Ringo is the character perhaps most expanded by this, much time is spent going into how he’s motivated by wanting enough money to buy a particularly expensive set of Latin classics.  He and the Doctor speak to each other in Latin, and is generally calmer and more collected.  His shooting of Charlie the barman is changed from a sudden act to this genuine buildup of suspense.  Cotton writes it as if Charlie is dead as soon as Ringo enters the bar.

 

The same can be said for Dodo, a character already served well by the comedic stylings of the serial, Cotton makes the decision to make her completely competent.  There seems to be an injection of the original, more working class less BBC English version of the character here.  Dodo plays poker and actually puts Holliday out of money in a very brief description that nevertheless says a lot more for the character than nearly anything on television ever did.  It helps inform her actions when she threatens Holliday at gunpoint to get back to Tombstone.  There is time given to both Dodo and Steven’s pasts, though Cotton seems to think Steven is actually an American which kind of reflects the 1980s view of where space travel was going which is an interesting addition, even if his dialogue is still very much Peter Purves’ Steven.  The one character hurt by the change in style of comedy is Kate, while she’s still proactive and there is some added characterization to specify she is Big Nose Kate Elder, the dialogue being reserved means she isn’t nearly as fun or flirty as Sheena Marshe’s television portrayal.

 

Overall, The Gunfighters is just a plain different interpretation of essentially the same serial from the same author.  It’s just about as enjoyable in almost every different way, and perhaps if you’re one of those Doctor Who fans stuck in the ways that the television serial is bad, you may actually enjoy the more reserved take, even though the comedy is where it excels.  8/10.

 

When the Bough Breaks by: Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Kim Manners

 

“When the Bough Breaks” is written by: Hannah Louise Shearer and is directed by: Kim Manners.  It was produced under production code 118, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on February 15, 1988.

 

Last week saw an episode going back to “The Deadly Years” for its inspiration, this week there is yet another inspiration from Star Trek to inform a plot of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Star Trek had several episodes that made children central to their plot.  “Miri” and “And the Children Shall Lead” are the prime examples of this, and with how Star Trek: The Next Generation likes to either remake or just go to the well of original series Star Trek ideas it is surprising that it took until over halfway through the first season to go to this particular well.  “When the Bough Breaks” like so many original series titles is a quote, this time from a lullaby, and is the first script from Hannah Louise Shearer who had the idea for the script based on the fact that the Enterprise also had several families living on board.  It’s not an inherently bad idea for an episode, and based on the premise alone could easily be set apart from Star Trek in terms of inspiration.  Star Trek: The Next Generation has the added bonus of having two main cast members playing a mother and son.  The premise is that a technologically advanced planet is suffering from planet wide infertility, so they decide to purchase the children on the Enterprise so their civilization can continue.  Aldea is a paradise ruled by a computer and the people of the planet have lost their drive to continue growing, meaning they have overlooked the obvious problem at their society.  Mainly they are actually all suffering from a form of radiation sickness that has left them infertile and eventually the crew just help them heal from it.  This is a particularly bad plot development in an otherwise fine episode, it means that there’s actually very little conflict in the episode and the reveal is treated like a grand twist.  The resolution just kind of happens really quickly, Shearer seems not to understand how to fill the episode in general as neither the plot with the kids on Aldea nor the Enterprise trying to get back after being catapulted away actually have any developments.

 

This is an episode that puts a lot on the several children making up the supporting cast, a mix of outside actors and children/siblings of the crew.  Kim Manners is the director, her only credit for Star Trek in general and while she shoots the episode perfectly fine (the final scene on the planet actually does some brilliant and foreboding lighting), she doesn’t do the best at directing the kids.  She also doesn’t do nearly enough to direct the adult supporting cast, this is an episode that knows it has to show the families who have had their children taken but they feel like day players who don’t know how to get their lines out properly.  “When the Bough Breaks” is incredibly stiff with Patrick Stewart being surprisingly the only loose actor, attempting to guide some of the kids through their performances while maintaining Picard’s stoicism and general distaste for children.  Shearer does place Wesley Crusher as the oldest child taken and therefore the leader of the kids, and Wil Wheaton also does the best with the material he has been given.  There are several moments where Wheaton has to read incredibly awkwardly written lines of exposition, but as a rallying point for the rest of the young cast Wheaton performs his task admirably.  Certainly, more than Gates McFadden who as Dr. Crusher doesn’t actually get too much to do in the episode outside of also give some particularly bad exposition.

 

Overall, “When the Bough Breaks” is an episode that honestly should have more interpersonal conflict to bring out the better performances in the cast.  The premise is something that could be a highlight of the season, but it’s an episode from a writer who gets so close to actually having something interesting happen before just kind of forgetting it (one of the Aldeans actually demands a kid of her own assigned toa different unit and that doesn’t ever actually become a conflict), and that means this ends up being a weak episode.  Shearer has a nearly competent script that desperately needs an actual angle for what it wants to say and to give actual life to the child characters, focusing on the Wesley/Beverly relationship would have made it work infinitely better.  It’s yet another below average, bland outing for Star Trek: The Next Generation as things seem to limp towards the end of the first season.  4/10.

The Crooked World by: Steve Lyons

 

In Act 2 of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, as the narrator is discussing the problem of the giant, the fairy tale characters break out of the story, drag the narrator in, and sacrifice him to the giant.  This breaks the narrative and means the characters must now actually choose what actions to take without the guiding hand of the author, they are now in control of the narrative and that leads to more death and tragedy before eventually resolving in a hopeful enough ending, though always changing and trying to be better.  It is an essential piece of metatext that is both accessible and easy to understand.  It is important to bring this up because Doctor Who novelist Steve Lyons owns quite a lot to Into the Woods for his trilogy of metafictional novels Conundrum, Head Games, and The Crooked World, the latter being the most explicitly metatextual on speculative fiction in general and the very nature of Doctor Who as an idea.  Conundrum and Head Games are a pair of directly linked New Adventures set in the Land of Fiction, while The Crooked World is a spiritual successor to the other two in a similarly fictionally linked setting though one revealed to be a physical place and single planet.  The idea behind The Crooked World is that the Doctor is a force of nature responsible for changing the narrative flow of stories.  He comes in and fundamentally changes the rules of the universe every time he leaves the TARDIS.

The Crooked World uses this through the lens of cartoons, specifically cartoons pre-1970 including expies of the characters of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, deconstructing in the first 100 pages or so what makes each of these cartoons work and the formula they have to follow before ripping it to shreds.  The inciting incident is our Elmer Fudd/Porky Pig/Wile E. Coyote expy, Streaky Bacon shooting the Doctor with his blunderbuss which nearly kills him.  The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji do not work by cartoon logic, while the rest of the world does.  Lyons specifically draws on Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, though not visually as this is a novel and there is no way to translate that technical wonder that film is, but the ideas are there.  The Crooked World as a planet is bound by cartoon morality: those shot will have an overreaction, fall over, maybe be carted off in an ambulance, but be back to normal almost immediately.  The Doctor brings injury, pain, and death in his wake to Looney Toons characters, Fitz brings meaningful relationships (through ironically the introduction of sex) to serial parodies, and Anji brings a sense of cold hard logic to the Scooby-Doo gang.  The world begins to almost immediately unravel and descend to chaos, every action the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji take ends up changing the world intrinsically and makes things worse.  Every thought they have ends up bringing the notions of war, corruption, capitalism, and death in their wake.

 

The novel eventually becomes a meditation on bringing the central idea of adult, fully formed morality, onto these cartoon characters.  What exactly are their purposes when there are consequences to their actions and the universe doesn’t essentially reset at the end of an episode?  Our Tom the Cat expy is put on trial at one point because he has genuinely attempted to kill the expy of Jerry the Mouse, and there is even at least some attempt to at least acknowledge much of the racial stereotyping of certain old cartoons.  Now this is where Lyons perhaps cannot go as far as he wishes to, the BBC was never going to get the rights to use any of the established characters, but it is clear exactly who they are so the commentary still works and is added to with the idea that these cartoon characters are already corruptions in who they are.  The big twist of the novel is that the Crooked World being this cartoon logic laden place is because of the mind of a dead child, taken and insulated at the center of the world who’s escape pod dying.  The Crooked World actually goes as far as it can go in making it explicit that changing the narrative as the Doctor and company are the ones to do is not an inherently good thing to happen.  The situation only gets worse and the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji do their best, but there’s a moment where they accidentally create an atomic bomb because they are thinking about it.  Lyons keeps reality pliable and even when the main trio try to make the world bend to their advantage, the influence of their morality eventually gives the inhabitants their own free will to override things.  It means that The Crooked World ends as a tragedy; like Into the Woods the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are the ones to leave and the world just has to get on and make its own decisions.

 

Overall, The Crooked World is Steve Lyons’ masterpiece, it’s the crowning achievement of metatext, knowing exactly what cues to take.  One minute it has you laughing at the cartoon antics, and how weird things are going, the next it has you questioning exactly how long it will take for the idea to get old, and then finally it begins to have the shift of redirecting, and eventually losing the narrative.  10/10.

Too Short a Season by: Michael Michaelian and D.C. Fontana, from a story by: Michael Michaelian, and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Too Short a Season” is written by: Michael Michaelian & D.C. Fontana, from a story by: Michael Michaelian, and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 112, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on February 8, 1988.

 

Star Trek struggles whenever it decides to discuss the subject of aging.  The original series firmly put aging in the category of something to be feared and reviled: getting old means getting infirm and possibly disabled, something that textually is presented as one of the worst things that will happen to people.  “The Deadly Years” is perhaps the prime example of this, an incredibly weak episode where the crew aging is the threat of the episode because they cannot operate the ship.  Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season has generally been struggling with setting itself apart from the original series tonally and in terms of the types of stories being told.  There are multiple original series writers that get story and writing credits throughout the season and the third episode is a complete remake of an original series episode.  “Too Short a Season” is an episode that looks at “The Deadly Years” and writers Michael Michaelian and original series writer D.C. Fontana decide to do that story in reverse.  Instead of characters being aged up for horror, a single, supposedly brilliant negotiator, has taken a drug that is de-ageing him rapidly as he wants to be at his best to deal with a hostage negotiation.  That is the entire episode.  No, I’m not kidding.  This episode spends its time establishing Admiral Jameson and his wife, their relationship, the fact that he is a negotiator, the fact that he is being forcibly de-aged, and the twist that Karnas and his people aren’t being held hostage by terrorists but Karnas has been a terrorist this entire time and holding his own people hostage.  That last fact sounds like it would be a great twist if it actually worked, we don’t actually see any of the hostages, and it turns out that Jameson is actually a very bad negotiator but a very good capitulator.

 

“Too Short a Season” seems to want to be about how with age comes wisdom, and you shouldn’t want to fall back onto your youth because Jameson as a character gave Karnas weapons and the Federation never found out because the plot needs the Federation to have not found out how bad Jameson was at his job.  In writing, D.C. Fontana apparently greatly simplified Michael Michaelian’s original draft from actually having two sides of terrorists and decides to have Jameson die at the conclusion instead of being de-aged to 14 years old which is a money saving effort of having to cast another person (and a child to boot) while not remembering his wife.  That original ending would have actually made the age coming with wisdom actually working, there isn’t actually anything in the episode that young Jameson says that old Jameson couldn’t do.  The idea is that because he capitulated to Karnas as a young man he was actually unwise, but Jameson doesn’t actually do anything to convince Karnas to release the hostages.  Jameson just shows up as young, isn’t believed to be Jameson by Karnas, and then dies; the drug kills him and Karnas decides to let the hostages go.  It makes you ask, what was the point, and I’m not sure if either Michaelian or Fontana even know.  This would be the last script on Star Trek: The Next Generation that D.C. Fontana was credited with writing, and considering the behind the scenes troubles on the show in general she was likely quitting shortly after this episode was written.  It doesn’t help things that the actual main cast of the show aren’t actually given much to do, the closest are Picard and Crusher: the former has clashes with Jameson over his authority on the Enterprise because he’s a negotiator while the latter is essentially an exposition machine though both Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden are trying.  The same cannot be said for Clayton Rohner as Jameson.  Yes, he is acting under several prosthetics throughout the episode as he de-ages, but Rohner’s performance is incredibly stilted.  It feels as if Rohner wants to doo the weak and wheezy stereotypical old man voice that everyone has, but doesn’t actually commit, nor does he seem to understand how to move under all the makeup.  Then you see him as the younger Jameson and he still moves weirdly and struggles with putting emphasis on the proper syllable, while doing an American accent that sounds fake but isn’t (Rohner is an American).

 

Overall, “Too Short a Season” is an episode that honestly doesn’t seem to care about really trying to say anything.  It may have its roots in being a course correction from 1960s episodes like “The Deadly Years”, if only metatextually, but the script doesn’t actually make any sort of sense in terms of telling a story.  The resolution just kind of happens, the central character could have maybe worked (or at least worked better) if the performance was at least decent.  A friend mused it’s “The Deadly Years” in reverse, and that’s honestly the best assessment I could give of it.  3/10.

Warmonger by: Terrance Dicks

 

If there’s one thing I can say in terms of positivity about Warmonger is that Terrance Dicks is an author who is always easy to read.  No matter what he is writing, his prose just has this rhythm and flow that makes it easy to get through what’s a truly bad reading experience.  There is this weird conception in the larger Doctor Who fandom that it was the Virgin line of books that were harsher and edgier, though the in house line of BBC Books always seem to go down the darker and more importantly less tasteful route.  Warmonger is no exception, once again we have another book where Peri is both reduced to a sexual object and her plot is being the hard, sexy leader of a group of guerrilla rebels made up of Sontarans, Draconians, Ice Warriors, Ogrons, and Cybermen because we need to have as many references as we can, and particularly violent aliens too because this is a book about war and the military.  It’s genuinely surprising the Daleks don’t get even a cameo, but that could very easily be the Terry Nation estate stopping them.  The reduction of Peri’s character oscillates from snarking tough guy style one liners and having to fend off potential predators, something that the Past Doctor Adventures novels just have the tendency to do with female companions.  It also feels especially weird coming from Terrance Dicks, considering how many novelizations he had previously written.  Dicks also has characterized Peri before in Players, a novel where she was a proactive character, while here she is just catapulted from situation to situation without really caring about what is happening to her.

 

Warmonger is Terrance Dicks’ attempt at doing a military space opera that is also simultaneously a prequel and a sequel to The Brain of Morbius and incredibly interested in Gallifreyean politics because why would Dicks try to just do one thing?   Military space opera as a genre is already one I am not particularly partial to, but as with going into any book there’s always the chance I will enjoy something that isn’t meant for me.  Warmonger just doesn’t really care about appealing to really anyone, the worldbuilding is technically there.  Much of the novel is set on Karn, though the Karn isn’t presented as the gothic horror of The Brain of Morbius, again Dicks is attempting military science fiction which does not really mesh with the Sisterhood of Karn in terms of aesthetic or their role in the plot.  There is an extended sequence that is just taking plot points of The Brain of Morbius and doing them again but with the Fifth Doctor and Peri.  Losing the performances of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen particularly makes you realize both where Dicks is lacking as a writer and just the punch up to the script of Robert Holmes.  There are some that say that what would make Warmonger better is if instead of the Fifth Doctor, the incarnation of the Doctor used was the Sixth Doctor.  Dicks originally intended it to be the Sixth Doctor and Peri.  It’s certainly an easier novel to digest if the Doctor is the Sixth Doctor, the character is brash and loud and clearly meant to be.  The disagreement comes with the idea that Warmonger isn’t actually better if it’s the Sixth Doctor, because Warmonger is still a novel that posits the Doctor actually loves being a genocidal military leader.  There is an entire diatribe on how the Doctor loves power and is enjoying being the Supremo, there is a moment where characters refuse to kill Morbius so they can physically execute him and make an example of him to the rest of the universe.  This is somehow worse than the Doctor in The Twin Dilemma, were this Doctor to strangle his companion it would seem like a mercy.

 

Overall, Warmonger is essentially everything bad Terrance Dicks has ever done as a writer wrapped into a single book, with a clear lack of editorial not editing the shift in Doctor from the Sixth to the Fifth at all, maybe because Dicks is Doctor Who royalty.  It doesn’t fit in the genre it’s trying to be a tribute to and somehow is darker and succeeds less than Rags.  1/10.

11001001 by: Maurice Hurley & Robert Lewin and directed by: Paul Lynch

 

“11001001” is written by: Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin and is directed by: Paul Lynch.  It was produced under production code 116, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on February 1, 1988.

 

To say Star Trek: The Next Generation has had a rocky first season is an understatement to say the least.  Just as it looks like they’re getting into the groove of things, an episode will come along like “Justice” or “Angel One” to really sap away the goodwill the series had been building up, but with those episodes it almost makes whatever comes immediately next look better by comparison.  “11001001” is one of those episodes that comes after and is a little odd in terms of how it is constructed.  Instead of an A-plot and a B-plot, it’s really an episode that is all one plot with exactly one thread running through it and a few scenes that could be described as B-plot by way of red herring.  It’s an atypical way of constructing an episode of television, but for what “11001001” is attempting to do it works.  This sadly is an episode that only really comes together after a first act that lasts nearly half the episode for setting up what is a particularly simple situation which would be easily resolved had any communication between the Enterprise and the alien Bynars took place, they are introduced as doing routine maintenance while the ship is at a Starbase before the halfway point instigating an evacuation and leaving Picard and Riker in the holodeck.  The holodeck sequence is the red herring B-plot, and perhaps the oddest thing about the episode.  Maurice Hurley and Robert Lewin just continually cut back to Riker flirting with the holodeck program in a jazz bar, Riker playing the trombone (though it’s clearly just a jazz track over miming Riker and the trio backing him up when really they could have at least hired a jazz trio to play or director Paul Lynch could have avoided us seeing any of the instruments being played).  The sequence is really just padding so the crew can evacuate the Enterprise leaving Riker and Picard behind, and it just keeps going.  Once they leave the holodeck it doesn’t actually take long to wrap up the conflict and get the big reveals of the episode out into the open.

 

The Bynars’ sun was going supernova, releasing an electromagnetic pulse that would completely shut down their world, they are a society run entirely by and integrated biologically with computers.  It’s a perfectly good idea and sadly there isn’t too much actually given to the Bynars outside of a particularly good design: they are generally short and purple with these little computers at their waists and implanted into their heads.  They come in pairs and seem to be single life forms in pairs reflecting the on/off states of binary code, something that I don’t entirely think Lewin and Hurley were really thinking about when writing the episode.  There are technically four of them, but they aren’t given much in terms of characterization individually, or as pairs.  Only one pair is actually given names in the dialogue, the other two being given names in credits, indicating that the way that the Bynars are named could potentially mean there are only a few of them living on the planet.  The resolution actively questioning why they wouldn’t just ask the Federation for help is a particularly good resolution, and a way to do an episode without really a central interpersonal conflict, something that Gene Roddenberry was very much against as he believed the future would have all but wiped that out in a utopia situation.  What is particularly interesting is also the fact that while Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes as Picard and Riker are fine, it’s actually Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton as Data and Geordi LaForge who are continually stealing the show.  Spiner in particular as an actor is quite underrated as there is time given to Data’s insecurities on whether he is making the right call in evacuating the Enterprise.  Again this is something that doesn’t go quite as far as it could, but it’s moments like these that actually make it feel as if the characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation are actual characters and have development.  The relationship between Data and Geordi is also this really interesting mutual friendship throughout the episode, Geordi kind of being one of the few crew members to really respect Data’s autonomy and personhood fully.  This is also an episode with some particularly nice model shots, even though they don’t actually do much to advance the plot.

 

Overall, “11001001” despite having a title that is a pain to type out because it is binary code, is actually a fairly decent episode.  It’s not one that would ever be a standout with the best of what has come before, or even the best that this season has actually been able to do, but there are certainly good character moments that elevate a script that at best is just perfectly fine if once again underbaked in terms of its ideas.  The final scenes are really what makes the entire thing become tied up to actually work as an episode, but the first half does drag far too much for what it's trying to do.  More time to make the B-plot a B-plot and not just a red herring would have probably helped this work better.  6/10.

The Book of the Still by: Paul Ebbs

 

Perhaps it’s because it has been such a long time since I’d dipped back into the adventures of the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji, but I found their involvement to be the best part of Paul Ebbs’ Doctor Who debut The Book of the Still.  Okay, this isn’t really doing much to move forward the larger arc, but Paul Ebbs as a writer is clearly overflowing with ideas on what he wants to do with this book that The Book of the Still is at its core a fascinating read.  Structurally, it begins at the end with an epilogue opener and prologue closer, both written with this very light tone of an author beaming with the fact that he is getting the chance to play in this little sandbox.  The Eighth Doctor Adventures as a series of novels often likes to play around with the idea of the Doctor being unable to stop things, often making the Eighth Doctor far more deadly and dangerous than the Seventh Doctor before him, paradoxically with an almost lighter attitude towards the universe being on the surface.  The Book of the Still is Ebbs’ one chance to really explore that, wrapping the titular book as in a roundabout way a take on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but for stranded time travelers, plus the actual plot involving the creation of a species that should not exist means there’s a lot of influence on the novel from other eras of Doctor Who.  The plot itself actually wraps itself up nicely by the end, sadly being perhaps the weakest element outside of Ebbs brimming with ideas.  When you get to the end of it, despite Ebbs using his structure to be intentionally backwards, it’s a simple creation of a paradox that the Doctor, Fitz, and Anji are technically only tangential to actually happening.

 

Despite the simplicity of the plot, being split into Anji doing the actual work, Fitz having a fabulous romance and heist for the actual book, and the Doctor just trying to keep everyone alive while being a prisoner himself, it’s actually a lot of the set pieces that Ebbs includes that really make The Book of the Still stand out.  There is a museum of locks, a masquerade ball, and several high-tension chases that are at the very least competently written.  The idea of the villains literally being the Unnoticed is another great conceit for storytelling, the way they eventually come about is perhaps a bit obvious in hindsight, Ebbs is tributing a bunch of Doctor Who with this.  The supporting cast is also quite small, only really having five characters because this is attempting to replicate what possibly could have been done on television in I suppose 2002 when this was published (or possibly recalling the cast sizes of Big Finish Audio Dramas as Ebbs had written The Greatest Shop in the Galaxy around the same time).  Yet, for whatever reason this is a novel that just doesn’t ever quite add up.  It’s certainly a well-written book, the plot is interesting and fun, the characters are brimming across the page (there’s this one moment where Fitz nearly realizes that he actually loves the Doctor yet for whatever reason the BBC Books range never makes that connection proper), but somehow it is held back because there are almost too many ideas.  Despite hitting both the page count of approximately 280 pages, plus enough of a word count to use a smaller font size while keeping the hard page limit of these books, it doesn’t seem to have enough time to explore everything that it wants to.

 

Overall, despite having several problems with how everything adds up, The Book of the Still is actually a very solid little adventure that puts a lot of classic Doctor Who ideas together.  Really what’s impressive is actually Ebbs’ strengths as a novelist establishing a surreal mood that while clearly being inspired by Douglas Adams isn’t trying to be or even emulate Douglas Adams.  There are problems but it made me realize how much I still love this particular team.  6/10.

Angel One by: Patrick Barry and directed by: Michael Rhodes

 

“Angel One” is written by Patrick Barry and is directed by: Michael Rhodes.  It was produced under production code 115, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on January 25, 1988.

 

After three weeks of Star Trek: The Next Generation generally looking up in terms of direction and tone, “Angel One” is another episode to plummet everything back down.  The B-plot is probably the best place to start, mainly because it is a B-plot that could have been anything to pad out the episode and keep the away team on the planet Angel 1.  A better writer would have found a way to tie events on the Enterprise into the rest of the episode, something that could have been done by making the pathogen as it is a virus which strikes the crew down, could have come from the planet.  No, instead there is just a random virus that is slowly making its way through the crew, travelling through smell and presenting as a respiratory virus, and that’s literally all the B-plot is.  Okay, so Geordi La Forge has to take command and Dr. Crusher spends much of the episode looking for a cure, but scriptwriter Patrick Barry clearly doesn’t understand the point of a B-plot in an episode because there really isn’t any plot to be had.  Barry seems to have heard B-plot and thinks it just means something that the episode can cut back to that is completely different, oddly enough taking up approximately half of the episode itself.  There is barely 10 minutes of material for the B-plot, going so far as to even have a moment where it looks like Crusher has found a cure.  She feeds an ill Picard some liquid which will apparently help his symptoms and both Barry’s script and the way director Michael Rhodes shoots the scene makes it look like this is meant to be the cure.  It also feels as if the writers want to commit to a Crusher/Picard romance, except without actually ever having the pair address the romantic tension.  Picard is stuck being hoarse throughout the B-plot, barely being in the episode which would be fine if there was actually any focus on the other characters on the Enterprise.  Geordi being put into command should allow him to develop, Crusher looking for a cure should do the same, but they are both just relegated to having a function to perform.  That’s about it.  In Crusher’s case it’s probably worse because it was also her function in the equally weak “The Naked Now”, some of the dialogue being quite similar.

 

The rest of “Angel One” isn’t so much stretched, as an example of Star Trek: The Next Generation not understanding its own politics and the messages it is pushing.  “Angel One” as an episode wants to be about the apartheid in South Africa, setting up a fictional society run by authoritarian oligarchy against a group of people, subjugating and segregating them while working tirelessly to put them down.  This is a perfectly laudable idea for Star Trek: The Next Generation to do, something the original series often did with both good and bad results, and something that seems obvious to comment on in 1988.  If we take this episode purely as a commentary on apartheid, ignoring almost any other aspect of the episode itself, its ending something framed as the best possible left forward puts the people who are meant to represent those fighting back against the oppression being put into exile.  Riker even ends the episode with a smile on how great a situation this is, because the anti-apartheid inserts could have been executed by the authoritarian regime and were only saved in the end not through direct action but because Riker is good in bed (more on that later) and because one of the oppressors is in love with one of the oppressed.  Now, the idea of romance between oppressor and oppressed is a framework for storytelling that is a tricky needle to thread at the easiest of times, West Side Story is a story that is perhaps the most interesting way of making it work because of the gang violence framework.  This episode does not thread that needle, something that shouldn’t really be expressed because it’s treated as a twist, again about halfway through, and the supporting characters are not really fleshed out characters despite there literally being only four of them.

 

I’ve been dancing around the other aspect of the episode that makes an episode that has already largely fallen apart to fall apart and be on about the same level as “Code of Honor” in terms of how it doesn’t work.  Apartheid was based on race.  “Angel One” decides to draw the lines of the authoritarian regimes on lines of sex.  Angel 1 is a matriarchy, the men are the ones who are oppressed, being forced to wear sexually revealing episodes (by 1980s television standards).  Patrick Barry is clearly a man who knows how to write men, but hampering the episode is actually the guest cast in general.  None of the four can actually act, and for once it doesn’t seem to be Michael Rhodes’ poor direction, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Marina Sirtis, and Denise Crosby are doing fine with the poor material even if they clearly are hating it.  The matriarchy of the episode is poorly defined, men are literal servants yet aren’t given any inner life or characterization.  The ‘sexism’ of the society is reduced to the simplest sexist talking points about how one sex basically needs to be providers and doing all the duties, the leader having to be taught that the right way is to share the duties.  It’s basic egalitarianism, I’d say feminism but the script feels more like what an online anti-SJW would argue for circa 2015/2016.  The episode is also really strict in exploring gender roles, to the point of coming across as subtly homophobic.  Riker puts on one of the men’s outfits for diplomacy’s sake and is ridiculed for it, the implication being that it makes him less of a man.  I say homophobic because the outfits are clearly meant to be coded as queer, and therefore lesser in what the episode is presenting.  At least Riker as a character is totally confident in wearing it, partially making it a shame that explicitly making the character bisexual would not happen (he could have been an icon).

 

Overall, I’m going to put as much effort into concluding this review as “Angel One” did in making it.  If it could go wrong, it did, and this is clearly the fault of a writer that like “Code of Honor” the cast tried stepping in to stop but failed utterly.  1/10.

Doctor Who: The Novel of the Film by: Gary Russell

 

The Novel of the Film was written by Gary Russell, based on Doctor Who: The TV Movie by: Matthew Jacobs.  It was the 164^th story to be novelized by BBC Books.

 

The TV Movie is one of a handful of Doctor Who serials to have multiple novelizations, though one of the very few to be novelized by the same author twice.  Gary Russell wrote the initial version in 1996 before the film even finished filming, based on Matthew Jacobs’ script, and then did extensive revisions for a 2021 reprint.  This review is of that 1996 edition, and not the 2021 reprint simply because it is the copy I happen to own.  The TV Movie as a story is one of those Doctor Who stories that is largely a mess of ideas wrapped up in an attempt at a pilot for something that would have been a very different version of the show than what it was and what it would eventually become.  The Novel of the Film as an adaptation has a similar number of issues, but by the very nature of being in prose it can actually communicate the ideas far better than what Jacobs and director Geoffrey Sax communicated on-screen.  The greatest benefits of this are Bruce before he is killed and his body is stolen by the Master generally feeling like an actual character and not just some guy played by Eric Roberts because the producers wanted something close to a big American star for the role.  The same can be said for so many of the minor characters, as a writer Gary Russell really does like to give each character just a little backstory and at the climax when the film cuts back to the party, the novel actually has made us care about the little people on the ground, however small making the stakes actually feel much larger than they are.

 

What is perhaps most interesting is that despite being an author largely known for his continuity references, Russell is fairly restrained throughout.  The chapter titles are split into sayings that vaguely describe each of the previous Doctors, and of course there is the fact that the film centers the Seventh Doctor because they were insistent on a regeneration yet so much of this lacks them.  The oddest reference to me is perhaps a reference to Saul and Cheldon Bonniface, explicitly tying in the New Adventures to something that happened, odd because in between publication and the launch of the Eighth Doctor Adventures the mandate would come to largely ignore those adventures in favor of simply doing the in house adventures.  The Novel of the Film is a novel that is at least partially hampered by the fact that Russell is working on an earlier draft of the script, while Paul McGann was cast there isn’t nearly as much of what he brought to the role of the Doctor in this book.  The character is there but is more of a generic characterization of the Doctor, who also happens to flirt and kiss.  The same can be said of the Master, Russell when describing what he does clearly falls back on the Delgado and Ainley portrayals and not Eric Roberts’ over the top idea, ‘I always dress for the occasion’ is treated like any other line and not the camp statement that even the script hints at it being.  It also means the book ends on a simple note of the Doctor just going on to more adventures potentially and it opens with an actual prologue of the Master’s trial.  The Daleks are there and described as Daleks making me wonder if at one point until very late the plan was to also get the license for the film to use them from Terry Nation.

 

Overall, The Novel of the Film is actually a better experience than watching The TV Movie in a lot of ways.  While it still suffers from a lot of the messy aspects of the script, Gary Russell has actively worked to convert it to a novel and tries making the plot work by deviating from what would eventually be laid on-screen making it an incredibly enjoyable time, though probably not for people who aren’t already fans.  7/10.

Datalore by: Robert Lewin and Gene Roddenberry from a story by: Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Datalore” is written by: Robert Lewin and Gene Roddenberry, from a story by: Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 114, was the 13^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on January 18, 1988.

 

It seems the world has slipped into a parallel universe where Gene Roddenberry is actually a good writer and not stuck in the 1960s frame of mind as “Datalore” is an episode that somehow almost entirely clicks together to be a genuinely great piece of television and Star Trek.  This is especially surprising since there are three writers credited, though the idea and script are both largely coming from Robert Lewin who is technically this season’s head writer despite only contributing three scripts to the season and the show as a whole, “Datalore” being his first contribution.  It is also Roddenberry’s last credited contribution as writer to Star Trek, though he would remain as producer for the rest of the first season before being pushed to the periphery until his death in 1991.  As a script, despite having a writing credit, “Datalore” lacks the hallmarks of a Roddenberry script: it’s largely a focused character piece on Data, exploring his past, the only larger science fiction idea that could be Roddenberry’s influence is the general script questioning Data’s personhood, however, in my mind it does feel as if Lewin as a writer is also developing that idea further.  If that idea was Roddenberry alone, it would likely have been a simple yes or no and the rest of the cast would immediately be acknowledging Data’s humanity and complete trust, but “Datalore” actually decides to leave things in the air quite a bit.  Picard as a character certainly treats Data with personhood, but the introduction of Lore brings that into question.  Lore is referred to specifically as an ‘it’ and not a ‘he’ by Picard.  The episode even has Data call this into question, bringing up the age old flaw in logic for many people’s tolerance of marginalized groups: they are not tolerant of that group if they are willing to still see individual members of that group as an other.  This is both explicit in the text and quite possibly something that wasn’t as thought through by Levin and Roddenberry had intended, this is still 1988 after all and is a bold idea to put forward with the restrictions of 1980s television.

 

The actual plot of “Datalore” does have its roots in science fiction as a whole: the premise is that the Enterprise returns to the planet on which Data was found, investigating to discover an abandoned underground colony and the remains of another android of seemingly the same make and model of Data.  While it is just the setup for the episode, the scenes on the planet actually show off the best of Rob Bowman’s direction, despite clearly reusing many of the sets from “Haven” and “Hide and Q”, plus several props that have been in the show before and in the theatrical films, these sequences are directed quite well.  Bowman makes things seem vast and the cave wall swinging outward is constructed in just the right way to create that atmosphere of discovery.  The laboratory sets themselves are perhaps a bit scarce and clearly on a television budget, but they are in line with the aesthetics of the show in general, plus those scenes are brief.  The episode really picks up speed once the crew returns to the Enterprise, Lewin and Roddenberry give the episode just a little bit of time before the second android, Lore, is turned on and interacts, allowing Brent Spiner to really play up this anticipation of someone discovering they are not alone and unique in a universe.  The way Spiner plays and has played Data’s emotions in this and previous episodes become integral for how he then goes on to play Lore.  Yes, with the same make and model it becomes obvious that “Datalore” is doing the evil twin storyline, but Lore as a character is immediately set apart from just being a copy of Data by Spiner’s body language and delivery.  While the script points out Lore is more ‘human’ than Data because he can use contractions, it is really all in Spiner’s performance for how evil he is.  Spiner plays Lore as almost gleefully sadistic in places, annoyed that humans dared to think him too human so he communed with a crystalline entity to kill them all.  He also tries taking Data’s place on the ship, providing the conflict for the A-plot.

 

Where “Datalore” drops the ball, at least in my eyes, outside of not going as far with its premise as it perhaps could, is in having Lore take Data’s place for the episode and the way the crew eventually discover what has happened.  It’s Wesley who ends up deducing Lore’s involvement, the rest of the crew not believing him, including Picard shouting at him “Shut up, Wesley!” which you might think if I were following popular opinion I would agree with.  However, it is not the fact that Wesley as a character is annoying, he just doesn’t really fit so far with this plot.  As a character, he hasn’t really had many scenes with Data and this plot wants to posit that they are quite close as characters when it would be more apt for say Geordi LaForge to take this particular role, especially since if we’re being honest LeVar Burton hasn’t had nearly as much focus as the other characters while Wesley has already had two episodes with rather important subplots.  Wil Wheaton actually plays the material pretty well, especially at the climax where Dr. Crusher is hurt and Wheaton just gives this look of fear that everything is falling apart.  It’s a bit too close to the end, and Lore is quickly dispatched by Data in an action sequence but there’s at least an attempt to write Wesley as a complex character, even if Lewin and Roddenberry don’t really know how to write a child character which is a recurring problem for Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

Overall, “Datalore” is honestly the best episode that Star Trek: The Next Generation has done thus far.  There are still problems and clearly places for the series to grow, but like “The Big Goodbye” the week before it’s one that works because it is a character focused story that is written from a writer who understands that it is no longer the 1960s and that television has changed.  Lore as a character is perhaps the best villain this show has introduced thus far and Brent Spiner is carrying it all on his back, but it’s actually a great episode of Star Trek.  8/10.

The Big Goodbye by: Tracy Torme and directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan

 

“The Big Goodbye” is written by: Tracy Torme and is directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan.  It was produced under production code 113, was the 12^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on January 11, 1988.

 

If “Haven” was an episode I could praise because it was an episode that managed to be a competent episode of television, “The Big Goodbye” is an episode of television that actually knows what it’s doing and is part of a show with an actual vision and purpose.  What struck me about this episode is that the characters had both personality and motivation for what they are doing, something that writer Tracy Torme did well with oddly enough “Haven”.  The premise of the episode at its core is a pastiche of film noir, specifically The Maltese Falcon, complete with Harvey Jason doing a Peter Lorre impression, period sets and costumes, and a guest appearance by Lawrence Tierney.  While Star Trek would do these pastiches by having the Enterprise come upon a planet that just so happens to be a parallel version of Earth complete with cultural touchpoints, Star Trek: The Next Generation had already introduced the idea of the holodeck to provide basically any period piece.  It’s a clear piece of technology that can allow the production team to use existing period sets and come up with these types of stories, “The Big Goodbye” establishing it as something that can malfunction and trap people inside a simulation.  In this case it’s Picard, Crusher, Data, and historian Whalen who get stuck in a simulation of Dixon Hill novels, a fictional detective in the vein of a Dashiell Hammett novel.  The A-plot of the episode is the establishing of the holodeck and the setting for about half the episode before the malfunction actually happens, and then trying to resolve it after discovering that they can be hurt inside the simulation.  Whalen is shot and is slowly dying, motivating Picard, Crusher, and Data to actually get out of the simulation and attempt to survive.  This is because Torme does run out of time to actually develop the plot in the back half of the episode, meaning the conclusion relies on the B-plot of the rest of the Enterprise crew attempts to fix the malfunction.

 

This leads to the third act of the episode to be the weakest point, the plot itself just ends up resolving itself without much agency from the characters.  Wesley Crusher is the one to save the day and there is exactly one moment where Wil Wheaton gets the chance to give a good performance since his mother is in danger, but the weakness of the B-plot is part of the problem.  The reason Picard is using the holodeck is to have a breather for himself before having to make a greeting to the alien Jarada, a species who are easily slighted and that the Federation needs to begin negotiations.  Picard has to learn a complex greeting in the Jarada language, something that is particularly complicated so when he is stuck in the holodeck, the plot of the rest of the crew becomes feeble attempts to delay the greeting and fix the holodeck.  The issue is similar to Torme’s previous episode, “Haven”, in that there is almost not enough material or proper direction to move things along.  The ending in particular weakens the episode, even if the cast play it off better than much of the other material they have had to deal with on this show.  Though again like “Haven”, “The Big Goodbye” is an episode that is competent enough to structure its episode around an A-plot and a B-plot that are weaved together to form one conclusion at the end, Torme clearly understanding how to write a competent episode of television.

 

The question then becomes why if “The Big Goodbye” suffers from many of the same issues as “Haven” does it still manage to be the strongest episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation so far?  Well, the big reason for that is the fact that the characters are allowed to be characters, Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in particular is actually allowed to crack jokes.  Picard is a fanboy for noir pulp fiction, and the premise of getting to live one of these stories is completely appealing.  He goes on a tangent in briefing his crew after his first peek into the holodeck because he is being a total fanboy.  This is more emotion that Stewart has been allowed to show in one scene than the previous eleven episodes of the show combined.  For the audience this means that there’s finally some relatability to Picard who to this point had been defined as ‘stiff diplomat’ and almost nothing else.  In the grand scheme of things these are largely smaller moments, but they are also finally something to latch onto Picard as a character.  That can also be extended to Dr. Crusher as Gates McFadden is getting material to sink her teeth into as Crusher plays the first half of the episode as basically an audience member having a good time and then having to switch when things get serious.  Brent Spiner as Data has had previous episodes to be comic relief to mixed effort: “The Naked Now” is perhaps the perfect example of how not to write Data as comic relief while this episode actually allows Spiner to flex his comedic chops.  It’s another bit of development in the fact that Data admires Sherlock Holmes and becomes interested in Dixon Hill as a setting because of how pulp fiction essentially grew out of the Holmes stories.  While the gag of him being South American doesn’t work and hasn’t aged well, Spiner just understands how to deliver the lines.  The episode is also helped by Joseph L. Scanlan’s direction, especially that first transition from ship to holodeck really emulating the magic of entering a fantasy world, even though it’s a fantasy world of 1920s Earth and ‘mundane’ to the modern audience.

 

Overall, “The Big Goodbye” is only the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to really excel at the concept it is trying to execute.  The plot itself is perhaps the weakest aspect, falling apart right at the end, though still being interesting to watch as it brings up philosophical questions of whether holodeck simulations are alive (and leaves them hanging for other episodes to potentially explore).  The cast are clearly enjoying the script and the fact that writer Tracy Torme is actually invested in developing the characters of the show unlike other writers, meaning that their performances are just elevated that much further.  It’s got these few problems, but it’s a shining light in an otherwise incredibly subpar season.  8/10.

Haven by: Tracy Torme, from a story by: Tracy Torme and Lan O'Kun, and directed by: Richard Compton

 

“Haven” is written by: Tracy Torme, from a story by: Tracy Torme and Lan O’Kun, and is directed by: Richard Compton.  It was produced under production code 105, was the 11^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on November 30, 1987.

 

“Haven” is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation marked specifically by how competent it is.  This is an episode that hits just about every necessary beat to propel the plot forward from inciting incident, to rising action, to climax, to falling action, to resolution.  In any other series, it would likely be an unremarkable, perhaps even mediocre episode, but here among the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation it is actually almost a breath of fresh air.  It is just so nice to have an episode that at the very least accomplishes telling a story from beginning to end, following the television structure of an A plot and a B plot that tie into each other, wrap up loose ends at the end, and end up being quite enjoyable.  Now, the actual plot is generally basic: the A plot concerns an arranged marriage set to take place between Counsellor Deanna Troi, played by Marina Sirtis, and Dr. Wyatt Miller, a friend of her parents played by Robert Knepper, in the orbit of the planet Haven while the B plot involves a vessel from a long dead species drifting towards the planet that the Enterprise must investigate.  The plots combine in the end: the ship is actually carrying the last members of the Tarellians who were wiped out by a plague, they have been communicating to Wyatt through his dreams and one of them has fallen in love with them meaning he cannot go through the marriage with Troi.  The A plot’s conflict is between the couple’s parents having several arguments while the B plot has the conflict of defending Haven from the unknown, even if that unknown is far less dangerous.  Richard Compton’s direction goes through the motions of setting up perfectly serviceable shots that flow perfectly fine.  Again, this is an episode that is almost entirely mediocre by definition, though it does open with the message of the arranged marriage arriving with this messenger of a silver box with a face on the side which gleefully announces it.

 

Majel Barrett is what elevates “Haven” from an episode of complete mediocrity, to an episode that at the very least is enjoyable in places with a completely camp performance.  Lwaxana Troi is the complete opposite of the very little that we have established of Deanna Troi: she is outgoing, over-the-top, and entirely comfortable with her sexuality.  She doesn’t love that this marriage is happening, but it was promised in the past and she can at the very least make the wedding go her way.  She hates the Millers as Nan Martin as Victoria Miller is the straight woman fed up with Lwaxana’s antics and overt flirtation.  She immediately takes command of Picard and puts him off guard with her own attraction to him, meaning that Patrick Stewart also has to loosen up in terms of his performance.  She is an argumentative woman which gets slightly grating, but it is also certainly fun as Barrett is chewing all of the scenery.  Barrett also gets one or two softer moments, mainly one on one with Deanna about her life choices which Barrett plays well.  The moments that work particularly well are when Barrett is allowed to show how much she actually cares for her daughter despite her camp exterior.  Marina Sirtis also finally gets some particularly good scenes, even if Deanna Troi as a character even in this episode isn’t particularly strong in terms of characterization.  Troi’s desires are simplified to clearly wishing to get with Riker, who gets to be a little jealous, but having a strong duty to her family’s vows, but isn’t quite grateful enough when everything is resolved.  Sirtis and Knepper actually have some screen chemistry, there are moments in the first two acts of the episode that setup the possibility they could end up together and make the arranged marriage work.  Weirdly this episode doesn’t have much to actually say about the concept of arranged marriage, more concerned with exploring duty to family above all else.  It could be because writer Tracy Torme was brought in to salvage Lan O'Kun's original idea and he had his own ideas of what to include, or it could just be because the episode is thin and only just barely making it above mediocrity.

 

Overall, despite it being enjoyable and making it to become an above average episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Haven” is an episode that really only rises above because Majel Barrett keeps making utterly ridiculous choices that translate well to a character with stronger personality and screen presence than much of the main cast.  Lwaxana Troi is a character allowed to create conflict and her introduction essentially makes her work as a character immediately, but it does prove this show can do something written to follow a plot properly and be enjoyable.  It’s Star Trek by numbers, but somehow above average exclusively because of Barrett and the fact that it's the second attempt for the show to do a straight character piece after "The Battle".  It's close to getting on what makes Star Trek and by extension Star Trek: The Next Generation work.  6/10.