Re:View - Star Trek The Next Generation Season One

why hello my friend rich evans hi mike i i see you've had us gather here today what are we gonna talk about are we gonna talk about star trek discovery season three nope oh okay well the the mandalorian season two not that either the expanse uh-uh today we're gonna talk about star trek the next generation season one oh my god [Music] so star trek the next generation season one the dreaded star trek the next generation season one yes this is the thing the internet wants us to talk about the least so we both kind of ignored star trek the next generation when it first came out i was like that's not kirk because that this was this had been in like the works for a while star trek phase two everybody knows about that phase two became the motion picture so it's like a whole back story i think we talked about this before and it got off to a rocky start to say the least for a number of different reasons yeah one being gene roddenberry uh was a notorious a notorious prick running star trek the next generation season one i feel that it was because he felt cut out of the movies that he wanted absolute control on this tv series and that put a lot of pressure on him when he wasn't in the best of health and also i sometimes think he thought we were all his enemies but we weren't there were there were writers that were just quitting left and right new writers would come in he had this mandate where you know all the characters can have conflicts the star trek uh crew they can't have inner conflicts they all have to you know work together peacefully uh you can't have this you can't have that now and they're like how do we write dramatic television when we have all these rules and and he would come in and i think i read that the first 15 scripts of the first 15 episodes gene roddenberry would take it and you know i'm going to fix everything there were scripts that there was no discussion gene would take them and and and just eviscerate them or rewrite them completely so it ended up being sort of a not so great experience for a lot of the actors and people involved in season one yeah rocky start yeah to say the least um and then it of course found its footing we're growing something about us compels us to learn it's also a challenge when like i feel bad like i love star trek the next generation and i want to recommend people watch it but i feel bad because i know what i say i know when i tell you that you should watch star trek the next generation you go okay i'll start at the beginning that's the logical thing to do and then you get hit with the encounter at farpoint which is one of the better episodes of season one and it's also terrible well that's the thing is like i i went through all the episodes of season one and i found little bright spots here and there that i enjoyed and you you challenged me specifically you challenged me to find three episodes i like in season one you say challenge i say tortured yes i i i will fully admit i did this for my own sick pleasure because i got like i got like two and a half oh two and a half like two and a half i technically have three i have three and a half oh yeah and i'm very we don't know each other's picks yeah i'm very curious to see what you picked um because oh boy there are some episodes i hate and and and i'm i've almost finished watching season two now and there are some episodes that i hate in season two but there are some really darn good ones season two is really weird one is like consistently uh season two it's it's it's got the worst episodes of all time but it's also got like the best season two is like peaks and valleys ironically the valley is i don't want to say peak performance [Laughter] but i thought peak performance was shades of grey yeah yeah that joke really would have worked it wouldn't have shades of gray it was called performance but we all know peak performance is [Music] we talked about the production of it how it was a disaster everything went wrong uh everybody hated being on the show to the point where one of the main cast members said she wanted to quit have you been treated well lieutenant um the writers all hated gene roddenberry gene roddenberry hated the writers the production crew hated the actors there was a real uncomfortable dynamic that existed between what was going on on stage and what was happening in the offices um there was real conflict there you're not careful you could kill yourself the actors hated the production crew craft services hated the actors the actors loved the craft service food though [Music] uh my first pick is episode called one one zero zero one zero zero one okay the the binars episode all right all right uh and this is an episode it's it's not it's not the most complicated plot in the world uh let me stop you there yeah that can be applied to all 26 episodes of season 1. so the the the enterprise is coming in to get some some upgrades to its computer systems and so it's it's going into starduck and they reuse some gorgeous star trek three shots of a star base they just replaced the uh enterprise a with the d going into the dock yes and in 70 years time they built a star dock that is 55 times bigger than the star dock scene in the because did the d is so much larger yeah that makes sense it fits right in that door that's right just also i believe it's season two when the enterprise goes oh it's measure of a man when the enterprise goes to the the regular one base and oh boy it is not to scale the regular one base is a tiny base that they reviews that model multiple times and then the regular one base is behind it's not that base it's a star base yeah but it's behind the enterprise d and the base is this big and the enterprise d is floating in front of it this big which means the windows on the starbase would have to be about 15 stories tall but the the main reason i picked this up is like the the main one um it took some time to flesh out some crew members this is like the first time i think of the series we see the crew like have a life outside of their jobs then i'm under my cabin i gotta put my feet up i'm gonna turn on my personal relaxation light am i gonna lose myself in the pages of some old novel picard is talking about how he's looking forward to just staying at his quarters and reading a good book which is a very picard thing to do uh data is she's trying to paint and his best friend jordy is there helping him paint and that's oh that's that's that's a character thing that is data he's not just on the bridge saying i have calculated the odds of us surviving there's no just just little you see we see some of the first human moments on this show the season one what i found re-watching season one very dry as far as far as the characters go and it's like just saying tasha yar and wharf dressed in like some kind of sports outfits they're getting ready to play a game together that those little touches like that was neat if winning is not important then commander why keep score if winning is not important then why keep score yes i don't have much other good to say about it this is uh the minuet episode yes yes that's that's my least favorite thing about it yeah i mean okay so the premise is the binars the binaries are this alien race and i that's not that's another i guess i'll get into that later that's another good thing i like the binars but they are like a race that is highly integrated with their computers like their their central computer on their planet is very important for them to even live they are so connected to their computers but the problem is a star near them has gone supernova which is going to wipe out their computers for a bit and that will kill them all so they need to steal the enterprise so they can upload their computer onto the enterprise temporarily to save their species so the their whole thing is they're going to fake this little disaster on the enterprise that'll cause them to like eject the ship out of the stars hijack the ship they're going to hijack the ship to save their planet as a backup in in case they all pass out and die before they can finish their task they they want uh riker and picard on the ship just as a backup like you know we all die these two guys don't they'll come about and they'll solve our problems for us but we need to keep them on the ship while getting everybody else off the ship so they create minuet rights gentlemen if this is what you call enhancement you've got a gift for understatement because they're so computerly advanced they the holodeck is probably just like a child's toy to them they did some tweaks to it and they realized they could create a very realistic human uh that riker who is the the resident sex predator um he is enamored with and distracted by and of course um picard this is a wonderfully awkward moment where picard walks in on riker's sex fantasy [Laughter] picard's almost got this like smug look on his face like he knows what's going on right no two's company three's a crowd record's like oh no no it's fine come on in we weren't doing anything i don't need your fantasy women and then we can get into some unintentionally creepy stuff here riker does creepier things in later episodes yeah sure but one of the things i you have to notice when watching season one is just the way they write women like okay the episode naked now the drunk virus all of the all of the male characters in that show they're bravely holding their their space liquor like no we gotta oh we gotta fight this and solve this problem all of the female characters instantly become man crazy and horny i'm a woman i haven't had the comfort of a husband a man you wanted me i'm getting sick wouldn't you rather be alone with me with me in your mind and it's the most cringe thing ever so so you you have you have this the scene in minuet where they're talking to minuet like she's an object i mean she is an object but it's it's just kind of you know works at another unintended level great job boys but computer blondes and jazz seldom go together it's a show that was made in the late 80s with scripts that were written in the 60s for the original show by writers who grew up in the 30s now that is truly exceptional [Music] see here's the thing roddenberry very progressive gentleman but when it came to sex his attitude was yes please and so he wanted them women in those mini skirts i thought that the women's roles i thought they didn't have to tell me were um [Music] stereotypical and not thought through uh and and that they were fulfilling a kind of archetypal female television role you know the token dark-haired one the token in our case redhead the token blonde with denise uh one one zero zero one one binary code yeah uh fine episode i i kind of like that the binars are they're kind of childlike i like okay this is something else i like them as like a race in star trek every other star trek race is just like normal people but with [ __ ] on their forehead but we recognize them as basically being an acting you know human like frankie's they're just greedy people basically but the the binaries feel alien to me and just like the way their society potentially is the way they behaved would you like to try the enhancement all right they communicate they work in pairs yeah that's the binars um and then yeah they're linked to their partner and they communicate back and forth they find speech is too slow um and the makeup's a little bit more complicated than just we're gonna slap some [ __ ] on your nose yes and they're they're shorter they're little people yeah they're pink and they have interesting look to them an interesting idea that they're so advanced that they've incorporated technology yeah it's probably the future of humanity at some point yeah um which is which is nice um and then at the end picard's just like why didn't you just ask for our help why didn't you just ask us for help and they said if we asked you could have said no for for a race that's connected to the computer just all logic made perfect sense too important to ask we must do this yeah yeah even though there was like a 99 chance the federation would have agreed to help them comp the computer logic can't take the chance one percent chance not worth it yeah so those are some positives i found i think i just found the the holodeck stuff creepy oh yeah oh yeah general unexcitement of it season one which is season one season one oh i will say i haven't i have a thing here in my notes for the one one zero zero one zero zero one episode jordy says the dumbest thing that jordy has ever said because um i think it's wesley detects like a major anti-matter malfunction i'm reading in problem with the magnetic containment field which contains the anti-matter could you come up here like the ship might blow up and jordy says don't tell the captain until we've checked this out ourselves we'll go to engineering since that's where the trouble is wes don't disturb the captain or commander riker until we check this out i sir i was like jordy jordy he spent a little too much time on benzar wait wait wait oh yeah okay that makes i get that joke i get that joke it's a good season two episode didn't mean to offend you uh my first pick from season one symbiosis and i think i mentioned this to you well that's that's one of mine very good we can talk all about it and now i'm left without a good third so this is great this is this might be the best episode in season one it's pretty good even though it's it's very simplistic again but that's fine that's not bad yeah i i have it as ethical and a prime directive yeah it's both so the enterprise is is out to mediate the dispute between two neighboring planets while they're out there they run into a freighter that's that's falling apart the guidance system's broken and i think it's about to crash into a planet right and everybody on the freighter just seems like they're drunk well that is a little vague what is the computer analysis well a computer's not working very well or stupid they seem like they're stupid because i think like they seem like they're drunk that's kind of a clue as to what's going on but at first you watch you just think they're stupid it reminded me of the paclids do you need help we are pack lids our ship is the mondor it is broken captain how long have you been in command of this crater seven years this is my 26th voyage to fracker and you don't know how to align a control coil never come up can anyone else over there do it oh hold on i'll ask the the lead guy there's two guys uh the lead guy is merrick buttrick who played kirk's son yeah it's also a wrathicon uh reunion because the the other guy on the from the other planet yeah he was kahn's henchman oh yeah that's right yeah yeah that's right the brekkians yes the breckians are the bad rays the guy the one of the breckians there's a male and a female the male is is the guy who is cons like right-hand man um and then there's a lady brekkie and they both their costumes they both look like they walked off the set of battlestar galactica like right out of 1974. um and it's just it's just great um did they did they use costumes from when they were developing phase two in the seventies maybe um but the onarians are the victim race that's merrick buttrick and his friend um and and first of all i approve of the choice of names onarians right onarian nice nice flows right off the tongue and then brekkians some hard consonants in there makes them sound bad right and and the ship is falling apart and very importantly none of them have any idea how to fix it or even how the damn ship even works which plays into the story later yeah um and and so they're like you know picard and riker they're on the bridge and they're like what do you need they're like some kind of space coil and they're like we could send it to you oh cool thanks i guess do you know how to put it in does anybody know how to put it in i don't know dave i don't know bob you know how and so they sound like they're drunk or high uh or stupid and so the is just like baffled like how do you not know how to fix your own ship you're flying around in a spaceship like do you know anything and they just sound like totally out of it what is the matter with these people how can we captain of that vessel and not understand its simplest function so through a little little adventurous sequence they manage to beam out they lose some crew members right the first thing they do is they beam over their cargo that's the most important thing more important than their lives they beam their cargo over them because of what the cargo what get it off the pad beam some people over they beam over two o'narians and two breckians are the the core of our conflict i want to say right now too by the way if you have any intention of watching this [ __ ] stop right now and watch this because i think this is better to watch like when you don't know the twists that are coming yeah yeah you could skip ahead to this time code for our next pick it's nice that we overlapped here yeah which is good we don't know our picks uh so we're going to continue with spoilers for symbiosis star trek season one well that's like it's almost like a double twist to this episode because that's like the first reveal that's like what you think the episode is going to be it's like oh no we need that race our medicine because our race has a deadly virus and then you you think watching this oh this is going to be a virus episode then picard goes through all the protocol he's like wait a minute they're in the briefing room you know and uh the conference around picard's like wait a minute you you're both infected he's like medical emergency you know did this get filtered out during the transport and records like i don't know solar flares um maybe picard's like whoa star trek has a lot of virus episodes there's a lot of virus episodes um and so we discover that yeah this race is sick um the breckians were on the ship to bring over the medicine to onaria these two planets that are nearby technically the onarians went over with their ship to the breckins to pick up the medicine because the breckians importantly they don't have much in the way of technology the big situation of the episode is they're they only between the two races on two different planets they only have three working spaceships the first one is destroyed and then they have other two with similar problems right it's sort of like you know your drug addict with the barely working 1982 honda accord right who's got to go and get and pick up his uh his stash but the engine won't start you know they they have two barely working spaceships now that's how they get back and forth between the two planets the breckians produce the medicine the onarians desperately need it to to survive this plague and so the the brekkians say okay well we'll allow a dose right and so dr crusher's just got her nose in all the business she said what's going on you know what are your symptoms right well once we get the medicine we feel pretty good for about 48 hours and then we start to then it starts to come back and she's like interesting virus you know it it doesn't have a lifespan it doesn't have symptoms it just it just is very persistent can't detect it in any way shape or form it seems very much like something else and she wants to keep her mouth closed then they show them get their drug this is little which which they describe the drug amount as something something milliliters what's the dosage .01 milliliters but they take the little pill and they put it in the thing and then they i don't know how they use it but they're like ah you know they feel better and dr crusher's like she figured this out rather quickly i like that there's enough clues that you as an audience member paying attention right you can figure this out on your own before they tell you i like that yeah well you know something suspicious because the brekkians are just like they look smarmy and like they're filled with lies they're clearly villains they're up to something yeah yeah and this is i think another one of those episodes where troy is conveniently not around the breckins are just full of total [ __ ] they're lying this is not medicine they're laughing all the way to the bank but troy's just she's in her bath she has the week off i don't know um dejean and romas are feeling fine in fact too fine felicium's a narcotic crusher figures it out that this is a drug the brekkians hundreds of years ago figured out that the plague wasn't really a plague and when you say by its drugs you mean the whole race of onarians are just addicted to this there's no virus there is no virus they are not sick they are just addicted to this medicine and they they don't even know it right right the the president of onaria like phones and he's also tweaking he's just like you got the stuff or what and they're like we're working on it yeah we need to stop done do you have it yes it is here but you gotta get into it so please and then picard calls them out on it and they're just like hey you know it works for us man it's a it's a symbiotic relationship hence the name of the episode the breckians have have nothing their total source of income which is all these are all very simplified things for planetary scale yeah in simplified terms the breckians have no industry or whatever they their sole source of income is the money the bulk of their society is entirely geared towards making drugs yes to supply to a planet that pays for them it's a symbiotic relationship and they they knowingly are the bad brekkians knowingly are the bad guys because they are keeping them enslaved to them by drug use it really should have been called parasite though symbios usually benefit both ways but really the brechaians are just using the factionarian so the anariyans don't know that they think it's a symbiosis if i could correct you a parasite usually kills the host okay okay jean-luc this is not a symbiotic relationship this is exploitation pure and simple well they say well you know now what are you going to do about it with the sly grin the the breckians are just like you have no jurisdiction here we're not members of the federation it's not your business well captain picard he basically just says my hand's tight i can't do anything this is a prime directive issue and then uh what's her face the breccian girl just the smuggest look on her face you just want to slap that lady right in the face you just want to slap her face off you want to slap the 1970s right out of her outfit [Music] go back to battlestar galactica battlestar galactica doesn't want her no she's a piece of [ __ ] mike people are awful but in a sly move picard knows knows the solution to this problem crusher's like why don't you do something just [ __ ] bomb the planet breccia and destroy their drug facilities like our hands are tied and so uh david so it comes time to give them their drugs and put them back on their ship and off on your way and they're they're like oh good you're gonna you're gonna give us the the new classic coils we need you're gonna fix the other chips and picard's like nope in this situation the prime directive prohibits me from helping you that's absurd you did not think so when it worked in your favor you can't do it no he they've lost they've lost the way to um to transport the the drug and so the prime directive has tied my hands here too right and that slapped the smug right out of her [ __ ] face like eventually these ships are going to break down and we can't move the drugs back and forth well the onarians are going to have to go through withdrawal dr crusher assures them once you get through the withdrawal you'll be okay well they don't even know about the withdrawals because they don't even tell them they don't even inform them of that yeah yeah it's just something they have to deal with and and picard's non-interference policy the prime directive applies perfectly here now could the breckians like put out a message into space like hey we got a bunch of money can we buy some spaceships from you know to solve this problem maybe maybe picard washed his hands of it and did his best and said uh this is how i want to solve this problem engage [Music] and so season one contains a bunch of weird things that doesn't happen in other shows i just wanted to make note of they there's the the sun their their star is solar flaring up right which gives both races some kind of ability to use like solar energy to i don't know if they say that's why but yeah they both have electric powers the electric powers are from the sun which doesn't really have a point it gives one of the it gives uh i'm calling him david because that was his name in wrath of khan it gives david the ability to take riker hostage like near the end yeah no we need our drugs i'll kill him which which is a an interesting alternative to just pulling out a phaser saying don't move you know yeah uh but could that have played into the the plot of you know maybe you could use your solar energy to help you get over uh your um withdrawals or like what was the point of that specifically not it didn't really have a conclusion i think it was they didn't want to make them look like idiots because they didn't confiscate any phasers they would have had on them okay okay they had i think the point was to give them a weapon that tashiar couldn't confiscate yeah and then another interesting like thing that whoever wrote this put into it was when they approached the sun picard goes uh and then they mask it with a little black dot and so i always thought huh that never happened in later episodes like yeah you look at the sun even from the distance we are from it on earth but imagine being in a spaceship relatively close to it how that would [ __ ] blind you in a second oh it's sucking 10 forward oh yeah you can't put up the dot and 10 forward no um but i i i attribute that to maybe the view screen has a filter you know you put on those glasses to look at a solar eclipse maybe the view screen has an automatic filter built in but i thought that was a neat touch yeah i found that interesting i also want to point out the most 80s thing ever happens in this episode when uh in the middle of mr t showed up the name is mr t first name is mr middle name is that period last name is t no well he might he you know what he may as well have because tashiar and wesley that's on my list they have they have the dare psa the more you know what i can't understand is why anyone would voluntarily become dependent on a chemical like mr t should have showed up at the end of that that's right don't do drugs kids on my home planet there was so much poverty and violence that for some the only escape was through drugs yeah that was um i don't know if you'd call it cringe or cute it's cute of its time yeah and you see like i did a little reading up on denise crosby and tasha yar and it was her decision to lead the leave the show crosby asked to be written out of the show because the large ensemble cast just left no room for her to explore many of her own acting frontiers because she felt she wasn't doing much you know what watching season one i i think i get it a bit more because they did not really use touch tashi r much in season one not as much as i kind of remembered her being used right it was no longer fun to be there anymore i thought this is not this is not fair this is not fair to them my other cast mates this is not fair to the legacy of this show and it's not fair to me to be in a place that i i didn't want to be in and i was beginning to to you know have feelings that i didn't like the irony is if she if she lasted into like season two and three that's when they started focusing on the characters more she probably would have been fleshed out a hell of a lot more yeah i mean she had uh they've she mentioned the living on the planet with the rape gangs um and then they had they show a flashback in season one of her escaping a rape game now run this place isn't safe at all but her complaint was yeah she just was basically like i'm saying lines and she didn't the last episode where her character died was um skin of evil and in the beginning of that she has some kind of like conversation with wharf and she's like if only my character had more moments like that where i got to act you are favored in the ship's pool you bet on me a sure thing and and do something and say something important um and this is one of those moments there's like three in the whole whole first season and her telling wesley all about drugs naive little wesley why would someone intentionally become addicted to a chemical well they only make you feel good temporarily yeah it was such a dare moment yeah it was cute but uh skin of evil was not her last episode filmed oh um this this was the last episode she filmed this was interesting yeah there's a there's a famous exchange between her and rick berman the producer one of the producers on star trek you know i know who rick berman is where he has tasha yar's combat and he posted a tweet that said um here's tashiro's combat tasha gave it to me on the last day of filming her final episode skin of evil and then denise crosby responded and wrote you're wrong you prick um my last episode of filming we filmed out of order technically with symbiosis you grabbed my combadge from me and said you won't be needing this anymore oh damn so denise crosby put him on blast so it's a relatively famous exchange on twitter but as noted in one of my next episodes wharf in that position just feels so much better him up there there's even a scene where tasha and wharf are both on the curved council the tactical station and he's doing something here and she's doing something here and you just when those shots are there low shots and wharfs up there it just it just feels right listen and listen good i'm talking to you i have i have two kind of half pics left out of 26 episodes i've i've got one episode that i liked but i have almost nothing interesting to say about it because i have no notes i just wrote the episode name down and that's terrible i have another one i don't know if you want to talk about this i have it written down i took notes on it because i remembered liking this from season one and then i sat down to watch it and it was crap oh boy well you're you i don't know where to start here you pick it all right i guess i guess i'll talk about the one i kind of remembered liking but it was crap all right because it's more interesting to talk about i hope it's not one of my favorites it's the neutral zone ah yeah the neutral zone is a an episode where cards he's off the ship having some important meetings somewhere on the enterprise sitting around waiting for them to show back up but they scan some old space debris floating around and because they got the extra time dado wants to check out this ancient piece of technology in space the opportunity to examine such an ancient vehicle does not come around very often and as you pointed out we do have the time and they beam aboard and uh wharf is confused by old-timey doors that you had to physically open yourself yeah it's like you just he like tries to walk into it he's confused because it's not opening on the on the ship they find cryogenically frozen people from our time and i remembered it as being this cutesy episode where people from our time get to wake up and uh it's we're in the future now and it's a cute little thing and instead they're all horrible [ __ ] except for the one lady except for the one lady but they you know they take them aboard but the crisis is at the same time they're finding these people on board the car gets back from this meeting and it turns out they want the enterprise to head into the neutral zone because for the first time in 50 years the romulans might be causing trouble this is the season finale this is the season [ __ ] finale because on the on the in the neutral zone some federation planets have just i think that they've lost contact they're seemingly gone and we have to go investigate that while we're investigating this this incident that might lead to a horrible war we've we've got these defenses from the 20th century on our ship and we got to deal with that i for one never had a doubt my stock in this company must have split at least a dozen times by now that that's uh a space cop joke comes from that the guy who's unfrozen and wants to check his stocks oh god that's a direct reference and i missed it he's concerned with wealth yeah this is where picard famously says in the future we don't need money or greed or you know material things we've solved war and poverty and hunger a lot has changed in the past 300 years people are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things we have eliminated hunger want the need for possessions we've grown out of our infancy this is one of those episodes that kind of just does a little bit to establish what life might be like on earth which we rarely see now this utopia without without without money we don't need money it's not a problem you don't have to worry about your stock sir you don't have to keep bringing it up every two minutes there's three characters three characters from the past there is sad housewife there is comical joke country singer and then there's business business business yes who's all about business and he's got his business i for one never had a doubt that my stock in this company must have split at least to make a phone call as soon as possible a phone call well yes i have provided and control it's really it's all about control i want to say he has a mild arc because at the end he storms on the bridge and kind of helps it's not even it's not even an arc we see the romulans for the first time and we're on the view screen and we find out that the romulans their their colonies have been disappearing along the border too so it's there's some kind of mutual threat that both the federation and the romulans have to worry about turns out it's the borg but none of them know that yet and picard's trying to figure out what the romulan's like tell us what you know about these colonies that disappeared and the romulans are being all koi well we could tell you but yeah and then business guy shows up on the bridge they haven't got a clue they're hoping you know but they're too arrogant to ask because he wants to talk to picard he wants to see the manager like he shows up on the bridge for no [ __ ] reason just i have to see what's going on because i am that ass i'm the [ __ ] character and i'm gonna be an [ __ ] and he just says no they they know what they don't know what's going on they're lying that's that's his only contribution that's not an arc all right i i figured it was bigger than that no that's let's see that's the thing i remembered it as being bigger i remember in my memory i haven't seen this episode in 20 years i thought he had an arc he's so good at business and reading people and negotiating deals he he just he could tell that an alien species is lying but it was obvious they didn't need him this is another episode where troy would have done the same thing she was mysteriously absent from the bridge or just sitting there i think she was mysteriously absent for the bridge i i think she was handling uh sad housewives problems oh okay yeah she was helping her look up her descendants or something ten generations of your progeny everyone i've ever known is dead yeah none of these people seem very grateful to be alive 500 years later yeah there's no trace of my money my office is gone what will i do it uh it just seems like a waste of an episode where they they could have said something but they didn't say anything for a season finale i mean i guess they were teasing some big threat that was supposedly threatening both the federation and the romulans but uh they should have had maybe something a little more exciting happen should have been maybe more focused on the romulans because this is this is the big reveal this is like we're seeing the romulans again for the first time since the 60s yeah and we we get that glorious reveal of the the new romulan warbird it's one of my it's one of my favorite [ __ ] spaceships and it's wasted in this episode but uh i'm really i'm really glad you didn't when you prefaced it by saying an episode that you thought was great a long time ago you know you were watching and sucked i'm really glad you didn't say conspiracy because i knew that sucked right from the beginning i always hated conspiracy everyone everyone always says conspiracy is a good episode from season one and i'm like what the [ __ ] are you smoking i mean it's oh god they didn't know what to do they wanted to establish a big thing coming up they wanted to establish a big threat but star trek the next generation to me it doesn't need a big threat star trek the next range is all about feeling good feeling calm star trek the next generation feels like home all that kind of paranoia there are enemies in our miss [ __ ] was far better suited for deep space nine and it was done far better in deep space nine the the [ __ ] threat with the stop-motion beetles picard meets some uh some captains on a secret planet there's a [ __ ] thing going on oh this sounds really good oh it's bugs it it wasn't the ride show for that kind of thing just next gen yeah it was too early it was too early deep space nine had to mature yeah you had to care about the world more i think first before you got to tearing it down i don't know and the yeah yes yes that's a good point and the villain was silly yeah a bug that crawled in your mouth and took over your body and their whole approach to um like getting the the scene where the admiral tries to get riker to eat a bug come have a look i think i'll summon my science officer it won't like your science officer it does like you like okay so put a hypo spray in his neck when he's not looking done you know he's like [ __ ] open the cage look at the bug it's a life form you haven't seen before it wants to crawl in your [ __ ] mouth and ricker's like ah security to the quarters help bad approach if you have this vast vast conspiracy to take over the biggest the biggest united federation of planets in in the [ __ ] galaxy you better have a better plan than that you know that episode conspiracy was also roddenberry's [ __ ] you to the studio with the censors like [ __ ] you i can do what i want i'm gonna have the goriest [ __ ] death i want to have that's why the enemy at the end of that just kind of melts oh his head blows up his yeah yeah and which i thought was oddly excessive because all they did was a fade a crusher phasered the old admiral into a subconscious and then the bug crawled out of his mouth ronberry was trying to make some kind of weird point against somebody okay that was the thing i think ramek was the the queen alien he had the monster inside of him so maybe he couldn't be saved but picard didn't know that so they just aimed their phasers and blew his head off that episode sucks yeah so does my episode that i'm talking right about now though the neutral zone that's the neutral zone it sucks enjoy it my third pick which i thoroughly enjoy and or love an episode called the arsenal of freedom oh uh it's it's great there's some there's some problems with it it's almost like a guilty pleasure because it's not i don't think you could call that like a smart episode no symbiosis ethical and prime directive uh my next episode the arsenal of freedom i wrote fun adventure yeah and i have a third one um that's a character study but uh the arsenal freedom what else could you want from an episode of star trek in season one [Music] that's not dull [Music] that's adventurous and exciting and fun i will give you this the arsenal of freedom the episode the premise is the enterprise arrives at a planet called minos in search for the uss drake which disappeared investigating the planet minos all the people are gone um when they get there they get an automated salesman who appears on their view screen who's trying to sell them weapons of war and at first picard thinks he's talking to some guy but it turns out it's a recording it is a recorded message sir uh this planet got super wealthy selling weapons to two different planets fighting each other people's races fighting each other whatever they got there and there they should have just immediately left but they have to investigate the drake so riker toshiyar and data beam down to investigate and um the planet's overgrown with vegetation this probably happened hundreds of years ago yeah no everyone's dead everyone's dead or gone equipment's still working the equipment's still working to to sell you weapons if you want to buy them so they beam down and riker runs into captain rice the captain of the drake which has just recently disappeared and he's old friends with him they went to the academy together and he's like he's like hey and he's like hello will riker keeps asking him like weird questions yes he's like what's the armament of your spaceship so rikers detects something suspicious so he plays a little prank on him and he's like he's like my ship uh it's called the the lollipop it's a good ship what is the armament of the lollipop like he's like okay no the name of my ship is the lollipop i have no knowledge of that ship it's just been commissioned it's a good ship there's something wrong with you so it's just a holographic projection of someone that they scan the data banks and you know it's a very smart sophisticated weapon system and then the fun part is when a drone comes out and starts shooting lasers at everybody and they're on some terrible set like like next gen like later seasons like they got all got in the van and they drove out to the desert of california um to to film in in in real life you know and some of the early sets in seasons one and two yeah they're like tos sets where they're on a sound stage and there's like there's like just a monochrome sky and plants like potted plants everywhere the planet looks terrible but the concept's fun and so they have to defend themselves against these drones that are attacking them that just get more get more and more powerful they keep adapting uh and then riker is encased in like a bubble where he's like frozen and picard's like okay this situation is getting bad i'm going to beam down with dr crusher they fall in a hole dr crusher horribly breaks her leg and so then it becomes like a survival episode um since so many senior staff members are down on the planet's surface our b-plot involves jordy being put in command by captain card i think by far the best part of the episode yeah battle stations there's one there's a section of the show that didn't quite develop it's the picard and dr crusher on their they fall in a cave in the ground or something they needed a really good they needed a really good bonding moment which they kind of worked on dr crusher tells picard she starts like letting him know uh she knows about herbal medicine she's like break that rudolph over there and is is there like a material in it maybe it can cauterize my you know blood clot yeah in my leg how do you know so much about roots she's like my grandmother lived on this colony and and we all know about we all know about dr crush's grandmother see seven seasons later we learn all about dr crusher's grandmother which was a nice thing they brought it all the way back to season one um but but there's always this teeming sexuality sexual tension between picard and crusher season one they they tried to write it like that was a big major subplot that was gonna be going on it fizzles out yeah um star trek naked now there's that that when they're drunk they've got that super attraction to each other um and then in the in the show attached that's when like six years later somebody said oh yeah weren't weren't we supposed to be shipping them which which dr crusher again mentions her grandmother in that episode too the sharing of thoughts and feelings is quite compelling very but but the and attached it opens with them having breakfast and it ends with them having breakfast and and they have a totally different understanding of each other and this picard saves crusher's life essentially helps her you know with her leg and then they get rescued there's not a scene at the end of this episode it's like they get beamed up and rescued and then it's not resolved at the end you know picard could have come into sickbay you know beverly says thank you for saving my life john luke you know personalize it no problem beverly i need time we'll talk more about this in the future you know season i think season one episodes like in general are like focused on whatever the plot of that episode is and they don't they don't season one i think one of the problems overall season ones they didn't stop to smell the roses with the characters like that you you're missing those moments you're missing like there's no rikers poker games in season one it's all we've got to stop the thing that's the thing this week we've got to work out the problem yeah but you know as much as i like tos that's a lot of tos it's very little backstory except for spock you know the miner character is forget it oh yeah but this this it's like yeah you after seeing all seven seasons of next-gen you want those moments in those early seasons and really it's just like let's uh picard finds the computer and uh you know so is it a deus ex machina ending more or less right just yeah we want to buy your your stuff problem solved i think that's really clever i do like the the ultimate resolution of this episode where they stop the robots from attacking them by buying the robots because their salesman it made it made perfect sense it was a way to wrap it up but um the you said you mentioned the more interesting beast story of the show does kind of deal with the the forbidden roddenberry interpersonal conflict which was interestingly enough the more interesting part of the show why are we still in orbit we're taking a beating we've got to hold out as long as we can now if we can disable our attacker if only for a few seconds we can drop our shields and beat the away team back aboard jordy is put in command jordy is um not the chief engineer in season one he's just lieutenant jordy laforge can i say how odd it is it's season one for all intents and purposes there is no set chief engineer that's so weird well i think there's one guy that shows up a couple of times the fat beard guy the fat beard guy he disappears and then there's a different chief engineer yeah i think like there's like you know there was no counselor in tos i think they wanted to say like let's have different roles like scotty scotty was like third in command whenever kirk and spock and mccoy were gone scotty was in charge always yeah um he was you commanded the enterprise like he's the next in line and so that was like in this situation with your doctor who's a commander riker and picard gone really the next in line is the chief engineer or i guess the second officer data who's also gone in view of the present crisis i believe you should relinquish command to me no i i'll rank you mr logan i'm in command yeah the chief engineer comes up and you can tell he's he's one an [ __ ] and two probably a little racist and he's like he's like yeah the captain did not anticipate the enterprise would come under attack if he had would he have left the bridge to you if he had he wouldn't have left the ship hey captain picard put me in charge until he gets back i'm in command and so there's like jordy's like stressed out troy can tell that he's really worried he doesn't know what he's doing um and then on top of that he's got two young uh ensigns that he's got to take to the battle bridge that are also an experience and he being inexperienced and nervous himself has to be the strong leader for them he has to project the leadership and the confidence right and so it's a growth moment for jordi laforge surprisingly in an early to a season one episode yeah engage it's a rare moment when separating the saucer section seems like a good choice because usually in season one like the first time they separated the saucer section in in uncountered far point they just wanted to they would have never ended up doing it in later seasons and in later seasons when you're like separate the saucer section they should have did it far more than they did really anytime any time they were heading into something they knew was dangerous they should have been putting all of the families on the saucer and jettisoning that [ __ ] jordy's in orbit and then a bigger version of the drone is flying around in orbit attacking spaceships shooting at the enterprise the enterprise can't handle it um it's going to come back in a bit jordy has to make the decision do i let this engine this bossy [ __ ] engineer take command and do i back down to him or do i make my own decision his decision is separate the saucer send it away which is an amazing amount of space action and adventure for a season one episode it's just a fun fun all-around adventure episode that is surprisingly tight and not cringy or racist [Applause] okay i i i guess we're we're back to me then but we kind of already talked about what would have been my number one pick it would have been symbiosis so i don't i don't really have another one i gotta i gotta get a half half pick if you wanna talk about it i have a half pick as well oh that's wonderful i i wrote down home soil that is by half and and in my notes i i have nothing written down under home soil i just have home soil written down because i mean it's all right home soil feels very tos it reminds me of devil in the dark but just done worse oh yeah yeah yeah yes yes home soil is an episode where there's a there's a planet with some some colonists who are terraforming the planet and they they s stumble across uh there was what is starfleet said in there here well you know this this is my point this is my notes this is my point of comedy right okay the enterprise the enterprise visits to check up on their progress right is that all it was it was just we're seeing how you're doing and their arrival causes a cascade of events that destroys multiple people's lives so they show up right and the old man is just like we're fine we were a little behind but we're back on schedule leave us alone and troy being nosy troy's like he's hiding something it's a good thing we had troy for that it's a good thing he's hiding something captain he doesn't want us to come down there we're fine we're working on the thing we're a little behind what's going on just forget it go away he's hiding something he's like well we're coming down director manuel we've heard of your remarkable achievements in terraforming my crew would very much appreciate looking around this is not really the best time ah fine they go down thank god we had troy and then they meet the the innocent lady who's who's plucky and excited and just loves terraforming and is so excited and the the visit by the enterprise ruins her whole life her whole life so they come down and they start snooping around and then they get a guy killed [Applause] you know i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna defend troy here they actually had a clever use of troy in this episode because she senses that someone's in danger because she sensed their distress and usually they just have troy say obvious things about a character like he's hiding something we'll know [ __ ] but this time she actually she's actually useful yeah she wasn't in time to save the guy but but it was kind of like an early warning thing just because she sent somebody was in peril in the other room right right i like that yeah so one of the workers the terraformers goes in the the laser digging room the laser drilling room and the the there's little pieces of tiny glass like that are alive and when they come together with like saline or salt or something the saline works like as salt water works like a conductor yeah and so they become a life they're basically a life form of of something that's beyond our comprehension it's a life form that is so different we didn't register it as being a life form it wasn't like any life we've seen before so these poor people have been on this planet for 25 years terraforming it and when the enterprise shows up that's when the life forms make themselves known one of the terraformers gets lasered to death in the laser room and then um they're like oh god now we've got to investigate this and then data goes into the laser room and then it tries to kill data [Music] the data's too smart for it so he rips the lasers out of the wall the other guy comes in and goes oh my god these lasers they cost a hundred thousand dollars i use work destroyed and uh they're irreplaceable i had to i had to [ __ ] rip them out of the wall and trash them because i'm data oh god why won't you people leave mike if if the enterprise didn't show up these these terraformers would have destroyed this intelligent life form it would have been a shame it would have been a shame but then then they discover the life forms and they bring them on the ship and then it turns into a different episode yeah they start to take over they start to grow and then it changes from uh we're investigating the weird things going on into this planet episode into a this thing is taken over the ship episode it's fun it's fine i'm not saying it's bad episodes take or take a turn yeah humorously enough they refer to the the collection of crystals as the micro brain meaning the micro brain might be photoelectric that's okay because the collection of crystals refers to humanity as the ugly sacks of mostly water ugly giant bags of mostly water bags of mostly water but i find it funny because later on q calls wharf micro brain pity you might have learned an interesting lesson macro head with a micro brain i guess it's a prime directive episode primarily uh they realize that the crystals are a life form and then picard says i guess you're done with this planet pack up and get out yes i guess a couple of sparkling pieces of glass when they come together they are sand crystals i guess they're super small when they come together they they can think and they're different than us and we should respect that you know that all that star trek stuff but it's just kind of funny how clumsy and disastrous the whole scenario is see it reminds it just reminds me of a tos episode that was done much better over 20 years beforehand called devil in the dark just some similarities where you got the colonists with overall so instead of terraforming they're mining and this life form just keeps killing off the colonists and the enterprise has to show up and then similar to home soil and devil in the dark we find out that the life form is intelligent and it's just trying to defend itself from these miners who are destroying its offspring yep it's protecting its eggs mr vanderburg what is this it's a silicon nodule there are a million of them down there no commercial value it's against the famous spock mine meld with a big blump turd it's got one of my favorite like kirk and bones moments where uh bones is trying to heal this life form that's silicon based kind of like the sand crystals oh and he says damn it i'm a doctor not a masonist or something like that not a construction worker and kirk's like damn it bones you're a healer now he'll help it treat it i'm a doctor not a bricklayer you're a healer there's a patient that's an order but in the end instead of the colonists lives being ruined they learn to work together with life to their mutual benefit enterprise the enterprise doesn't leave with an entire industry and people's careers in ruins by just swinging by to see what's going on i guess they saved a couple of grains of sand well lastly let's talk about my last pick which i reluctantly picked now i'll remind you this was after re-watching all the episodes i've always hated this episode or kind of not really cared at all but considering all the kinds of stories they tell in the first season of star trek uh it gets it gets a nod it's heart of glory the wharf episode where there's a there's a weird freighter that's in distress and they beam over all kind of action-packed opening and they discover on this freighter which is not a klingon freighter they discover three klingons and so they're like okay we got to rescue them beam them over and um and so it's a really the first real character-centric episode and i don't like klingon stuff i don't like dwarf klingon politics i like wharf a lot yeah yeah i agree um wharf has so many great moments i just saw one the other day when i was watching the episode with the fish people you know and they've been and they're like these these ugly fish people that are frozen and wharf just goes handsome race what a handsome race that's just so like awkward what was the worst trying to like pick out a wedding gift yeah yeah just warmth trying to pick out like like looking at fancy feminine glass amusing about that right yes there is a female voice asking if we want room service the royale when they discovered that the astronaut lived to 100 and died in his sleep and were just says terrible way to die dying peacefully in your sleep yes that's a horrible way to die looks like the poor devil died in his sleep what a terrible way to die so wharf conflicting with with uh human culture you know the differences and there's also a funny bit too season two uh riker makes riker tries to make breakfast for everybody and it's [ __ ] awful and disgusting pulaski hates it jordy hates it but wharfs like scarfing it up he just says delicious and of course wharf eats live worms so it's not it's not the best uh compliment to riker delicious you know yeah but it's funny it was cute so in addition and wharf's not just a joke you know he's a good character and um he has good good scenes but typically i don't like klingon politics stuff this one is out of the norm because these klingons beam aboard and in in future episodes kligans are just awful to wharf and in this they're fairly polite even when the klingon commander aboard the like a it's like a d7 battle cruiser it's reused footage from the motion picture um of a klingon ship approaching and he's like he's like my brother helped me we need to find these fugitives because the klingons turn out to be fugitives yeah and um well they're they're klingons that have rejected like peace basically yes does it make you gentle has it filled your heart with peace because klangons are at peace now they're basically terrorists yeah and they don't want to adhere to the the peace treaty the norms they want they want to be warriors and to have glorious battles they want to be martyrs and um so that's why they steal this vessel but then they're like oh you know this one we have heard this ship can separate in time of battle yes when relieved of its bulk the enterprise becomes an exceptional weapon we've got one of our own on here he'll help us right and and warf's loyalties are tested albeit very not very strongly tested yeah you know like wharf knows better than to run off with these jackasses they're not really testing them but we learned it's weird that this is early enough that as an audience you might doubt wharf's loyalties yeah because watching this now it's like yeah yeah right but there's there's not they you know they're like don't you want to die in glorious battle and it works like you know kind of they make they make fun of humans they're like you want to sit around and live in comfort and injury peace they're like making fun of them and he's like do you mock me um but worth smarter than these guys and um but still there's that conflict and it's a there's a part of wharf that would love to run off and join them in battles and glories yeah a bar yeah they so they concoct a scheme to steal the the battle bridge and use it to just [ __ ] blow [ __ ] up and and um for no real reason too it's not like they it's not like they have one enemy they're focused on right they just they just want to cause trouble captain picard give us access to the battle bridge if we will separate from the rest of the ship then together we will light up the galaxy imagine the fear that will rule before us yeah yeah they're kind of insane yeah and and then so we're introduced to the klingon death ritual the opening of the eyes and screaming and dwarf takes part in it and really at the end they're put into the brig and they escape one of them dies the one last one is up on the top level of the uh yeah he's he's pleading with wharf and wharf just [ __ ] murders him and he does it right because that's the way the guy wanted to die so in in doing that he also respected klingon culture and he gives him the klingon death death chant at the end here's what i want to say about this episode how important is this episode to the development of not dwarf but klingons the original series the klingons were very different yeah culturally they were very different right they were just general bad guys yeah like we didn't start getting modern klingons i think the first time we really saw one outside of a cameo with star trek iii yes yes we see them in the motion picture we see the new makeup in the motion picture but they don't do anything but blow up yeah they just yeah they're just like ah kill it kill it and but three is when we get more that's i think the most uh the first kind of idea of klingon culture hierarchy uh the captain just executes people on the ship we discover they're basically like really bad space pirates or something like um i don't know how you would describe them i'd say pirates is pretty accurate they don't they don't really like attack other ships and loot and steal but their culture is very um i don't know barbaric yeah but yeah in next-gen terms this is where you start fleshing out their their culture their honor system yeah that's why this is a watershed episode because it really introduced us and i think that's what um like if i were to guess just blindly i would say they made this episode and they said well this guy uh that we had just as a random character is much more interesting as a guy who's in charge of security than tasha yar let's get rid of her yeah this turns out this guy we had on the show just just to establish that in the future klingons and humans are friendly look there's even a klingon starfleet now but yeah now he's a character uh yeah and wharf also talks about his backstory uh attack on kittemur and his his foster parents he even mentions his foster brother who shows up way later decline yes this is my brother wharf he's come to help us yeah that's uh that's it i wanted to talking about heart of glory made me think of some of the interesting stuff and this is technical this is shows budget related you know obviously we don't see ten ford until season two but we see an early version of ten forward it's just like a room with a window they have a they have a uh i think it's haven they have a like a dinner scene there uh heart of glory they don't have a brig set yet the wonderful brig set that we see in later seasons so they're just they just walk into like an empty room down the hallway um uh and then in one of the later episodes we'll always have paris there they show he's playing fencing and what looks to be like a half constructed gymnasium which kind of looks sort of like the shuttle bay and they only shoot it from one direction and you could kind of see the wall because an earlier in the tashi yar episode when she does the uh it demonstrates her like karate skills they go into the holodeck to do that not a gym season two when riker does um the the death the death the ultimate expression of martial arts they have a whole room devoted to it and it's like a gymnasium kind of room so obviously season two they built bigger sets but it seemed like the the fencing scene was like a shuttle bay about to appear because i don't think they showed a shuttle bay in season one at all you know what i don't remember i should have kept track of [ __ ] like that i don't think so there's a lot of work in progress with season one yes it's a really season run is really weird the way i when i was watching season one i kept feeling like uh it was just made by entirely different people oh yeah yeah yeah like none of it felt like a show where they just had the same sets and identical twins of all of the actors you know different people writing it different people producing it different people filming it characters are played differently yeah it's a it's like prototype tng right you can hear the voice of the writer um there's an episode later on i think it's season two where riker keeps saying hold fast like like dwarfs like what should i do hold fast dwarf and it's like okay is that some kind of military term like rikers never said that in any other episode as as the show moves on they they they iron all that out and it becomes much more consistent this is how this fictional technology works this is the kind of terminology they would use to say these things yeah yep somebody figure it out and gene roddenberry stay out of it he was he was too sick by that point it's probably what made the show better yeah but um anyways i hope you enjoyed i did not okay i did not enjoy it but it was it was curious i'll say that it was curious it's an interesting experiment after ignoring season one for 20 years going back and watching it with like fresh eyes and and kind of like understanding a little better of why it's bad or why certain episodes don't feel right or this changed that changed et cetera et cetera it's a good experiment to do yeah um but i hope the audience at home enjoyed us talking about it hopefully and if there's one thing to take away from this start at season three yes yes why do you say that maybe go back and watch the couple episodes we talked about here but you could kind of skip the rest of it because i think i saw like a comment on one of like our older videos it was like um you know i think of tng and i think that show has an age today what are you talking about i saw like a comment yeah i started watching it and it's kind of dated like what oh they started in season one no no of course you would but no i feel like such an idiot quite right so you should anyways thanks for watching bye and please don't ask us to do top videos from season two i guess we will that'd be easy that would be easy one of them was already uh for our top picks a measure of a man yeah yeah that's true so might be there might be some redundancy if we go through all the seasons but i got i got one from season two that's continually barely missed out my top picks what is it you know what's interesting though rich no one in the whole world is talking about star trek discovery season three not a single person you

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,341,638

Rating: 4.932785 out of 5

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans

Id: fyBv_h2nyXk

Length: 80min 22sec (4822 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/XH9rIiZTtzrTiVL]

The prayers have been answered.

[u/Narretz]

RLM has come full circle. Their main topic went from Star Trek reviews to Star Trek reviews.

[u/morilythari]

80 minutes! Today is a good day to die!

[u/LoneQuacker]

"Hey Mike should we get around to doing a Re:View on season 2 of The Mandalorian?"

"You know this reminds me of that episode of Star Trek The Next Generation"

"Fine I'll set up the cameras"

[u/PsychedelicXenu]

I wish Star Trek had a Christmas special so Mike could talk about it

[u/mame_kuma]

I wish they would've have briefly touched on the worst old man makeup and acting I've ever seen, coming from Season 1, episode Too Short a Season. I had a hardy laugh and skipped it after 20 minutes, it was an incredible experience.

But yes Rich, I'm one of the people that did start with Season 1 only a couple month ago, and it was kinda bad! It has a definite quality and charm to it I've not experienced (never grew up with Star Trek), but honestly, powering through Season 1 and half of Season 2 to get to the good stuff is amazing. I'm currently in Season 3, and the jump in quality is so refreshing and exciting that I can't out it down. It almost makes me appreciate it more, but I think I'm with Rich, probably wouldn't start on this unless you work from home and have 8+ hours a day you power through it lol.

Good shit, can't wait for more of these episodes. These hack frauds finally got me into a sci-fi series that wants to be fucking scientific and I love it.

[u/Innerred_Mitorict22]

Glad to see 11001001 and the Bynars get some appreciation.

The fact that both Mike and Rich Evans picked Symbiosis is a little unexpected, but they seem to really be into any episode that's about the Prime Directive. Most people just remember that one for the anti-drug PSA, and a typical Season 1 case of "great premise, underwhelming execution"

Watching TNG for the first time, I was surprised to learn just how much variety is in the show, and that I enjoy different aspects of it than Mike and Rich do (as in, I like the Klingon stuff, and I'm not too crazy about the Prime Directive, which is the opposite of them) so it's nice to see Mike saying something good about a Klingon episode for once, and that it was Heart of Glory too, which is decent for Season 1 standards.

I don't really agree with them saying to start watching at Season 3 though, since that means not only missing out on the few actually good earlier episodes, but also losing the impact of some of the later ones that really turn the characters around, and put them in situations that are very unexpected for them. Seeing Q for the very first time without his powers, or Lwaxana Troi in a genuinely emotional role instead of being a purely comedic character will not have near the same impact if you didn't go through 2-3 seasons seeing these characters like they normally are.

[u/Smokron85]

I still eanna see their 10 worst episodes

[u/zemplis]

Mike is wrong about parasites. Something doesn't have to kill its host to be considered a parasite. In fact from an evolutionary standpoint, it's usually in the parasite's best interest that they do not kill the host. The important quality is that the parasite benefits from the relationship and the host is harmed (but not necessarily killed) by the relationship.