XweAponX's reviews

The moment Pusher said "I don't care that you are tracing this call", Mulder should've known this was not the standard Modell scenario. Also, later clues were very Un-Modellish.

Mulder should have had Skully on the phone with him, should have had some protection to monitor that his brain was not going to be taken over again.

But... Pusher should not have made that Hoke-joke "It's Alive" cack.

Everybody makin a mistake here. Mulder got Mistake, Pusher got Mistakes, eveybody got mistakes. Even Mel Cooley got mistakes.

This episode is a huge cluster of Effs of dire mishaps.

Because there is something worse than Pusher rearing its ugly head, Pusher pooch-screwed his only chance at getting Moulder to seriously listen, and "Mouldar" became a dummy, pretending to be Clint Eastwood.

This episode could have been several levels higher than the original, it tried to be, hell it almost was... but instead, it was a classic example of how we believe something is going to be exactly the same as it was the first time that we encountered it- and it very rarely ever is.

In fact, we are living through that right now as a country. We should have known, but nobody listened. We were warned, but we shrugged it off.

And that is what this episode is the best example of: people refusing to listen to each other, people refusing to believe facts, people refusing to leave their own comfort zones. That's exactly what this is about. And how an unscrupulous person can take advantage of that tendency in people, so that they ultimately act against their own best interests.

And the end result of this inability to really listen almost turns into a major disaster for Sculder and Mully.

I don't think this is the first time we have seen this tendency, especially with "Mould-AR" (refer to John Barnett in "Young at Heart")...

But this is probably the prime example of this type of idiocy.

That's what makes this episode great, because we know what is happening, but we also know exactly how everybody will act, we are expecting it. But they weren't, they believed it was the same as before. So we are scraping our fingernails across the worst of all chalkboards, waiting for the stuff to hit the fan, and it does.

This time, it's Skully that snaps Mulder out of it.

The irony is, Mulder starts getting it. But he is slapped down.

Another irony is Diana Scarwid, who at one time was Christina Crawford, this time almost is Joan. She succeeds in making us hate Linda Bowman's guts. Great character actress.

But there is still something strange going on here, not with the character herself, but with the fact of who she was, and her ultimate existence. Her husband, Nathan Bowman, "tried" Pusher for his earlier crimes, and according to the plot here, he was successful in acquiring a conviction.

Wait, What?

How did they manage to bring pusher to trial? Did they roll Pusher into the courtroom in his life support unit? Or did Pusher roll his big plastic wheel into court? The last we saw, Mulder had shot Modell through the head and he was in a coma.

So the whole concept of putting a comatose man on trial doesn't make any sense at all. Unless there is another suggestion here, somebody else caused a courtroom appearance of Pusher, even when he could not attend himself?

Season 3, "Marionette", perp stalks victim, pokes them with a drug coated spike...

Season 5: "through the looking glass" has a disheveled apartment similar to what Schnaus was working in.

Pruitt Taylor Vince was the perfect Gerry Schnauz, he was born to play the part... at first I thought he had played a "sleeve" in Altered Carbon, but that was Matt Biedel...

The concept behind the Schnauz conundrum was creepy and freaky, he didn't know his unusual photographic talents.

There is a small section where Mulder gets into one of the images, and it's the stuff out of many nightmares.

We are also shown Schnauz perversion process, how it started, what he thought he was doing. But he never knew he was making magic brain pictures.

This shows where he went from trying to save people from Howlers to how he deliberately became evil.

As the episode goes on, some of this is explained, but it's up to Skully to dig into Schnauz.

The end is most distressing. Very disturbing. Which is what makes it great.

This is actually bothering me right now I'm going to have to get back to this. It's just crazy on so many levels...

This episode has everything, and for the first time since season eight it includes the entire X-Files membership.

The only one missing was Leyla Harrison...

Mulder is suddenly back, wearing his suit.

What is he doing, and where is he doing it?

And it also appears that he has an ability that he never had before: characters that we know that are dead are giving him advice. Good and helpful advice actually. Even from Krycek.

They never explain whether or not he is really interacting with these people or if this is just some mental aberration. I prefer to think of it as if they are actually helping him. Somehow. It was never explained, and none of the characters ever talked about this. Mulder never even explained it to Skully.

I had written a more substantive review, but it was magically disappeared by bean counting pencil pushers. I would prefer to have my original review returned.

Actually, this "episode", while answering some X-questions, poses more.

I never thought that in 2016 they would pick it up and continue, but some of the conundrums posed here are resolved in those extra seasons.

Remember how I told you previously that the toothpick chewing man scared the bejesus out of Gibson Praise? There is a good reason for that.

But Gibson is not the only one scared by this guy... Kirsch is also cowed by him.

We finally see a turnaround with Kirsch, and we think that he is embracing normality, but in season 11 he is back to the same old Mulder hating Kirsch.

One thing that is in the back of our minds is that as much as these "super soldier/alien replacements" scare everybody, they are killed by Magnatite rocks.

So maybe keeping a flock of pigeons near the X-Files office would help...

The super soldiers were a distraction, and I like the way that the story got back to William in the final seasons. Can't really call them seasons as One was six episode episodes and the other was 10. This was a show that had at least 20 episodes per season.

Maybe if the show had not been canceled, and I thought that the show had been gracefully ended, but it was actually canceled... we would have seen Reyes and Doggett carry on the Mulder/Skully show retired.

This should have happened after season 11 as well, they could have carried on with Einstein/Miller.

But the one thing that happened after this season finale, and the truncated 10th/11th seasons, people were not ready or willing to retire MulderSkully.

Although there were interesting things that happened after this episode, including a pretty good second film:that everybody hated (I didn't, I thought it was a great entry), there really wasn't anywhere else for the X-Files to go.

Because the real world has turned into crazytrain, so having a show about it would just be too redundant.

Maybe something else will happen with this franchise. I know that I would be interested in it. Hell I'll follow this show wherever it goes.

We know that Skully does not want to return, the last I saw she was playing the Queen or some Prime Minister. Making more and more British shows and films.

But, they came back after this ending. So anything is possible, even Santa Clause...

The building filmed as the Museum is the same building used for Excelsis Dei. Gung should have been there too...

So it's kind of appropriate...

Freaky and creepy episode. Plus there is some guy drinking "Yahay", which can turn you into a Jaguar of some sort.

The best part of this is "the attack of the cats", I've seen feral cats act like that, but well fed domestic cats generally will fall asleep instead of attacking, so however they got the cats to act, it was well done. Maybe they used Catnip, that stuff really works... I had a little catnip mouse, my cat went whacko over it...

And then we have the standard X-Files "DisGUTsoRama" when Mulder discovers "It ain't Raining..."

These episodes, including hell money, take a look at indigenous and Asian religions and practices.

The relationship to Val Lawton's "Cat People" is obvious, but there is also a connection to "The Relic", which is a pretty scary film... look for it.

Another hilarious Leyla Harrison ep.

People these days are too hung up on CGI, eh?

Remember, this episode was produced during the infancy of such effects. The X-Files never really was a special effects driven show, at least not until the last two "seasons".

If you think back to the first season, occasionally, we got a UFO that looked pretty convincing, but then we had aliens attacking a space shuttle that looked like green hoke, but there was that one episode "shapes" where they had a darn good werewolf transformation. Also season ones "squeeze" and "shadows", which had some good things but compared to modern day special effects, it was early 90s hoke. They did well when they animated the black oil, but for the creatures depicted in this episode well, they were just bad. But that did not make the episode bad.

It is the story that makes the episode good, not the special effects. Also, we forget, or rather the people who are making a big stink about this forget that we are looking at these creatures through the jaded eyes of John Doggett, and he just doesn't believe in anything even when it is right there in front of him, so of course they are going to depict these creatures in such a way that he will not believe in them even though he is seeing them.

And that is the entire point of the episode, John Doggett does not believe in these things. And because of that, he is able to save everybody's lives.

Save everybody's lives from the 1013 "I made this" kid... who played a similar boy in a Roswell (1999) episode.

Leyla helped a bit too, she knew the levels of Doggetts disbelief.

And there is a definite comedy factor when they depicted the creatures, along with some pretty good levels of Disgust-o-Rama.

But depicting these levels of disgust realistically is definitely not the point... because we also forget that it was a boy who originally drew these things, badly...

Not just because of Burt Reynolds "improbable" appearance as GOD, but everything about this episode stands out. The music, which becomes part of the dialogue during the scenes with Burt, the Cinematography which was also connected to the music. The Karl Zero songs were cleverly placed. The Location- it doesn't really say, but I suspect it was the same Fox studio where they filmed the 7 season "Hollywood Babylon" ep.

Nothing in this episode says exactly where this location was supposed to be... Las Vegas? Atlantic City? A Neapolitan Gambling Town? At the beginning of the episode, Reyes is reading a newspaper which has a story about the murders. But when you pause and zoom in, the actual article has nothing to do with the murders at all, but is instead some student body issue from a college.

This is definitely a Reyes episode, but actually a Reyes-Skully ep. She has a different, mathematical approach, compared to Skully's "scientific" approach. And Doggett, we'll he's got nothing to shoot or punch until the end.

But the action is definitely focused on Ray McKinnon as Mad Wayne and Reynolds as Gamblin' Checkers playin GOD.

Or, between the Devil and God, but Mad Wayne is too dumb to realize he's the Devil and up against God, nor does he realize he's been set up to lose. But he is clever enough to walk right into Reye's investigation at the exact time when a numerologist was going to provide valuable insight.

In the End, it was Doggett who figured out the numerology conundrum.

I could have sworn there was a scene in this episode, where Reynolds sits down to play checkers with a character that was supposed to be the devil, but it was either edited out, or never there.

Also, this episode received a way more positive reaction at the time it was broadcast then it gets now. Same thing happens with Star Treks best episodes.

It's just too bad Mulder couldn't be there.

With the 3 Wise Lone Gunmen.

This has some freaky things, it wasn't just Knowle Rohrer as a super soldier... Somehow Agent Crane had become one. Was he one the whole season, or was he absorbed between the last 2 eps? Remember, at the beginning of "Essence", Crane had no bump on his neck! But he did after Billy Miles got squished by the Dump-Truck. And we never learned how quickly the alien replacement process took.

And... why DID they drop Billy Miles into a trash compacting garbage truck?

But the Supersoldiers really weren't the problem, at least not the ones who came to Williams birth.

They never really defined the difference between Alien Replacements and Super Soldiers, or was there any?

But we knew Knowle Rohrer and the toothpick chewing man were bad, toothpickman scared Gibson Praise. But we hadn't met toothpickman yet...

But the Replacements became a threat that Mulder had to hide from, and they were just putting that arc into place at this point.

There was even a relationship between the God-Ship, William and the Superdupersoldiers. But to see all that, you gotta get into season 9...

Some great character actors too, including James Otis as Arlen Sacks, ("Sobor", from Deep Space Nine) as the first victim- but not of the creature, at least directly...

This is a monster that wretches venom on a person, waits until it hardens, then drinks your bones, almost like a Moopsy from Trek: Lower Decks. But Herman Stites (Zach Grenier) is not cute and cuddly like a Moopsy, he's slimy and slithery.

Introducing Agent Layla Harrison (Jolie Jenkins), named after a beloved X-Fan who passed on, as "Skullys Replacement", dumped on Doggett without warning.

And then we got Mulder pretending to be Kersh, and that causes even more fun.

Take note of the scenes of the creature, this is early CGI, some great transformations going on here, and they designed the monster to resemble Stites in human form, so that makes it all the more icky and disgusting.

I remember reviewing this episode right after watching it. Since my email doesn't go all the way back to 2010, I can't simply copy my original review and post it here which is what I normally do. So I'm going to have to make a whole new review.

This is a representation of the state of Walter Bishop's mind at this moment, the thing that he feared the most, Peter leaving him, happened..

And so obviously, he was a nervous wreck. And so a small dose of Brown Betty helped him cope- and this episode gives us a visual representation of his mind.

This episode starts off with the music from the show that we loved, Yes "Roundabout".

What is remarkable about this episode? Is that the different actors performed various songs, even Anna Torv, who is not really a singer, was able to give us a few notes. The best performances were from Jasika Nicole and Lance Reddick, who gives us a great interpretation of a Traffic (Stevie Winwood) song... it looks like he was actually playing the piano as well. We will miss Lance' talents.

The funniest thing is to see the Max Headroom rendition of William Bell, communicating to Nina through a television set. I wonder how many people understood that reference?

This episode was not simply a gimmick, it was cleverly done. They used all of the proper imagery, costumes and cars, but they blended it in with modern day gadgets.

And it reaches all the way back into season one references to The Pattern.

...plus we finally get the answer for a long sought conundrum from Star Trek.

But first, Trip must needs spacewalk from the Columbia To the Enterprise at Warp 5.

And Reed, in the Enterprise Hoosegow, is able to convince what looks like a TOS era Klingon to be honourable.

The secret of the Klingon Plague is revealed, it was all stuff left over from "The A(rg)uments". At first Phlox doesn't want to help, but a little cajoling and a-kissing from Antaak convinces him.

Meanwhile there is a real Gagh-eating A-Hole, with a long tooth, Fleet Admiral Krell (no relation to forbidden planet) who is going to futz up the whole thing if Enterprise and Columbia can't get to Qu'vath colony quick enough... but Phlox hands him his just desserts.

But Antaak's Targ might not recognize him...

Veers all over the place.

From SFs Chinatown to Rigellian space to... a Klingon planet we saw in the "Arguments" trilogy.

And Section 31 even.

John Shuck has become way more than that "pompous arse" from Star Trek IV, he was well on his way to being less of that in Star Trek VI.

Here he is a talented but disrespected member of the Klingon medical corps, what little they have.

Meanwhile, Trip is having side effects from previous engagements with T'Pol, and somehow Hoshi gets sucked into it.

And then, "those old scientists" era Klingons show up, what?

This pair of episodes was a good example of Star Trek not wasting a set of previous episodes. They totally mined the Arguments trilogy and they begin answering a conundrum that has bothered Star Trek fans ever since the motion picture.

She was the aggressor

I find it wholly offensive that somebody spews fake morality and blames Trip, who had nothing to do with it. Second, the alien Ah-Len was aggressive with a bowl of alien ice cubes. 3rd, human sexual assignments sometimes don't apply to aliens. And as somebody else said, accidental pregnancy is not a joke. This was more about the accidental nature of Trips condition, and the way he dealt with it. It also provided humour for the Klingons and broke the ice (so to speak) with them.

How come these people think that an alien reproductive procedure has anything to do with human reproduction, or them personally?

They need to stop watching Star Trek, if they are not going to participate in the science fiction aspects.

I found the aliens that we met in this episode totally refreshing and totally different. It's too bad that we never got to meet these aliens in further episodes. This episode should have been circled back to, so we see how things developed.

And if these species could get the Klingons to back off, we should have met them a few more times. I'm just sorry that it never happened.

Why is my review not being added?

Plus John Noble voiced The Diviner.

Way more serious than lower decks, and it has a very interesting story if you follow the episodes.

Voice talent was good and computer graphics were great.

Also they gathered up clips of Spock, Odo, Scotty, and Uhura and used em in an episode, cleverly edited.

I had trouble with the "Medusan" character at first, but he acts like a Medusan in later episodes.

I like how familiar faces from various Star Trek shows start appearing at first in small cameos than later as more major characters.

There is even a planet that they come across that seems to be populated by Trekkers, but it actually has something to do with a character from a second season original series episode.

And the animated Janeway looks very good in both of the renditions...

I liked Season 1 a bit more, but S2 had some great things.

We get a look at The Akaali from Enterprise "Civilization".- their forehead ridges have been toned down. Just like all of the rest of the non-Westmore make up in this show.

Meanwhile we meet a jerkie who is more Stamitz than Stamitz. "Ruin" Tarka. From the moment we see this character, we know he has an agenda. He almost blows up discovery, and he knew it.

And he hits Booker at an extremely susceptible state, as he's blaming Burnham for a choice somebody else made.

The Akaali magistrate is also a piece of work, you would think that the enlightened race that we met in enterprise would not have people like that in authority.

But, they were under the Emerald chain so apparently they too got affected by Ossayra's cruelty.

Tarka has wheels within wheels spinning around. We hated the characters guts immediately. He is a master manipulator.

Obviously, he latched onto Booker because he is the only other person in the galaxy who can operate the spore drive.

This is just the start of bad things... very bad things.

It occurred to me halfway through watching it this time.

It has some of the elements, missing others.

But we basically have here Trip and Zho'kaan trapped, not being able to communicate, and a treacherous sunrise on the way.

And then to top it off the only thing they have to drink is alien booze that's a little bit too strong for Trip.

Meanwhile, Enterprise and Zho'kaan's mothership are searching for them through 62 moons... that's a lotta moons for a SuperJovian.

Hell, Zho'kaan even looks a bit like a Drac.

But we don't have a bunch of space slavers or a mine.

Are there any references to Mickey Mouse in this episode? But Trip does recite Mary had a Little Lamb.

Just like the "10C" from Discovery. Non Humanoid, hard to talk to. And Trek brought them to life.

The Female Guardian is a BEEP though, Ugh Shudder. Perfect casting, I recently saw an interview with the woman who played that part, you would never know.

The Senior Senior Trekker Speaks. And I've been that ever since "The Man Trap" premiered on NBC and The Salt Vampire tried to suck out Kirk's salt. I was 8 years old.

This is where everything kicks into high gear.

The Xindi storyline, if the pertinent episodes were lined up back to back, would only fill about six to eight full episodes. Season three kept on having side trips to "Loqueckeck" and Northstar and Carpenter Street, even though Carpenter Street was part of the story.

And we miss Degra, but his legacy continues in this two part finale, four parts if you include Storm Front 1&2.

The Xindi Insectoids wake up, but it's too late.

So now it is a race to Earth. Fortunately Enterprise will have unexpected help...

And Robert Duncan McNeil's direction is definitely NOT weak. Otherwise he would not be producing Resident Alien these days... he is a fine director.

...Tesseract Ship.

The Senior Senior Trekker Writes.

This ep is a direct reference to a short story by Robert Heinlien, except it is not a house, but a ship.

But it's basically the same thing, as Tripp and Malcom stumble upon the mystery of mysteries.

And if that is not bad enough, the ship emits some kind of Tachyon Radiation- which attracts pesky Suliban and Tholians.

They could have included even more participants of the Temporal Cold War, But Suliban and Tholians are bad enough. Reading the trivia, it was suggested that instead of this Tesseract ship, they find the USS Defiant, which would have made the Tholians' interest more appropriate, but then they would not have the Tesseract ship, so it is better like this.

The Tesseract-Ship was interesting enough, I don't really care that much about aliens fighting over it, but this is just something that happens: Enterprise finds something cool and unique, and then of course somebody shows up to take it away from them.

Of course, there was a little twist added. Not gonna tell you, watch it.

And then find a book of Robert Heinlein short stories, and read "...and he built a crooked house" followed by "... All you zombies".

Nuff Said!

... S_cked!

I don't like that this series redesigned several alien races. The Nausicans were the worst. The Tellerites were the 2nd worst. Even the Klingons were fiddled and diddled with.

As far as the episode, I did not think it was that bad. Chip DeLucia, Who portrayed a Dorian Greyish slimeball in TNG "Man of the People" S6E3, is a more positive, normal person type Captain here. Unfortunately, he is taken out of the picture for most of the ep, his place usurped by Lawrence Monoson from "starship troopers 2" and DS9 "The Storyteller" - He plays a real jerky here... and he almost gets his just desserts until Kieran Mulroney from TNG's "The Outrageous Okona" steps up with help from Mayweather. Too bad Billy Campbell did not make an appearance.

Ensign Mayweather of course is able to assert some authority here, as this episode involved Freighters, which Mayweather previously crewed.

But what we have here is basically a confrontation between the second officer of this freighter, and the leader of a gang of Nausicans.

Which is totally unbelievable, as the Nausicans that we are familiar with From next generation and deep space nine never spoke complete sentences. The grunted and mostly fought wielding serrated blades.

So they are a little bit too educated here, I don't know if that is the proper word. Sophisticated maybe. And they should not have been. Also The new make up was terrible.

One of the other reviewers explains it well: Monoson depicts the average incompetent who is suddenly in charge, while De Lucia represents a man with no agendas, and operates without malice.

I think this was the main point of the entire episode, and as such it was almost a kind of prophecy about the kind of leadership (or lack thereof) that we have right now.

Of course, the episode is problematic, but if we just ignore those things that don't make sense, the redesign of an alien that is not even acting the same way as we know they act... and other issues, the main point becomes obvious from early on in the episode.

Also, the name of the episode, is also prophetic:

"It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son".

... Voyagers computer processor?

The senior senior Trekker writes.

This is an interesting pre-prime directive ep.

Actually, until phasers and tractor beams were being used with abandon, nobody really noticed anything other than people getting sick.

The Enterprise visits this planet and tries to keep it low-key, but events beyond their control cause them to act openly.

I liked this planet, it should have been visited again. But the alien crook in this episode somehow got a hold of Voyagers computer processor (or, what the Da Vinci simulation referred to as "a woman in a box") and was using it as an antimatter reactor. Huh? What! Of course they re-dressed the prop a little bit, but it was basically the exact same thing.

In case you did not notice that the controller for Radio Controlled Spock in "Spock's brain" was actually the original communicator from "the cage", later seen in "the menagerie"...

Or that the cloaking device for the USS Pegasus was also a beacon used in the Voyager episode "Gravity" (with Tank Girl)...

Fun Game: in any Star Trek episode, identify the props and which episode or episodes they originally appeared in.

My favorite thing in almost all of the Star Trek series that I have collected on DVD over the years were the featurettes by Penny Juday, where she discusses the origin of various props, and how they were used in episode after episode.

So, what else would they use to make a portable antimatter reactor out of? It had to be something easily removed using a transporter or translocation device. So, "the woman in the box" it was...

Archer was fortunate with his choice of nosy alien to form an alliance with, I don't think he stepped over the prime directive, had it even been in effect at the time.

But the alien crooks were pieces of work. I hated their guts. Great work by Wade Williams, who had previously been seen as "Ray Pierce" from The X-Files, where he was a man slowly turning into metal.

Oh Yah... somebody suggested that it was unclear what these aliens were mining. Eh? Eh? At 32:50 into the episode they name the exact substance! It's the same stuff used by Spock to locate Kirk 2 sectors away on Rura-Penthe. T'Pol mentions another use for it. Of course, nobody discusses exactly what they are going to do with it, but that's beyond the scope of this episode.

But what is really interesting is that the planet the alien crook "Garos" is from is mentioned in the "Those Old Scientists" episode "The Changeling"...

One of my favorite 1st season Enterprise eps... and I always refer to the show as Enterprise, not Star Trek Enterprise. The renaming of the show was something ordered by the head of CBS at the time as an escalation between him and Rick Berman. Who should have stayed in charge of the Franchise.

Kor aka "Gaius Balthar" from Battlestar Galactica (John Colicos) was the first Klingon that we ever saw in Trek in the episode "Errand of Mercy", "Those old Scientists", Season 1 Episode 26.

Remember when television shows had 30 episodes per season? We were fortunate that Deep Space 9 had 26 per season. And then Enterprise had 22, Discovery had 16 then 14 then 12 then 10. Strange New Worlds only gets 10.

With more available episodes there are more opportunities for episodes like this: this is the third deep space nine episode focusing completely on activities inside of a Klingon ship, although not the first to have this character.

Even though DS9 was the first Trek show to not have episodic storylines, this episode was the final piece in a three episode arc.

Four episode arc, if you include "blood oath" from the 2nd season.

The three Klingons from The Original Series: Kor, Koloth and Kang appeared in blood oath, connected them forever to Dax. Kor was the one who survived, leaving him the one to tell the stories about Koloth and Kang.

In Errand of Mercy, he was depicted as a very down to business Klingon. Confronted Kirk. Probably even respected Kirk.

But in season two of DS9, they bring back the three Klingons... and somehow they recovered their Brow Ridges, and they had hair that looked like poodles. Dahar Masters.

In the subsequent episodes featuring Kor, he was more like a regular Klingon, but this is not the same person who confronted Kirk. This is not the same guy who was blowing up 500 Organians at a time... he was not as cruel. Especially after discovering that he really did not harm anybody on Organia. But he had become a "drunken lag at some Salvation army mission", always accosted by Lethians.

This is a Klingon that, in surviving, developed some issues.

And those issues are the focus of this final episode.

I'm glad that he had one final scene with Dax if not Jadzia, that did not seem to matter to Kor, Dax was Dax whether Curzon, Jadzia or Ezri. Kor understood that it did not matter.

We see here that he is barely holding himself together, can't be taken seriously by any other Klingon, doesn't know what to DO... Until he finally does.

And he acquitted himself magnificently.

"Long Live the Klingon Empire"

Edit: I have to mention something about the plot, the original Klingon plan was not to sacrifice any ships at all, but the original plan got fouled up. I am not going to say by who, take a guess. Or watch the episode. Ending up being chased by Jem Hadar, who were able to locate cloak ships the same way that they had located the defiant in "the search", with a proton beam. Who can say if the same thing would have happened had the mission gone completely as planned? But it didn't.

I had to come to IMDb to determine the proper order of the episodes.

This is basically a longer version of William Shatner's great movie, "Chaos on the Bridge"

I was aware of the fact that Gene Roddenberry had been relegated to practically a fan of his own show after his failed interference with The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan.

And I never knew that Gene had a substance-abuse problem, it makes me relate to him a lot more, I know how terrible that can be.

This is a man who single-handedly created one of the largest television franchises ever, and then he was kicked out of it, and cheated out of his well earned royalty monies.

And he has a remarkable success story in how he clawed his way back not only his well deserved royalties but also to being in charge of Star Trek the Next Generation, through the machinations of Leonard Maislish, as told in the episode "Queue for Q". As despicable as the man appeared to be, he is responsible for one thing that we can all be thankful for: he brought John De Lancie in to play Q.

But what was good for Gene Roddenberry was not good for Star Trek the Next Generation, and we get to hear all about that in this series.

Gene personally wrote "The Cage", "The Menagerie", "The Omega Glory", some of the best episodes of the original series. And it even appears as if the original series when renewed for its third season at 10 o'clock Friday night, Lost a lot when Gene stepped down as Producer... so we can't really completely blame the horrible Friday night death slot, but also the fact that the show's main driving force was no longer involved in making the show.

But in this series, we learn about Gene's inability to write a movie script of any worth. Granted, he was a brilliant television producer and television writer. But he wrote script after script for proposed movies, and also the proposed "phase 2" television show which never happened, all miserable failures.

I could not understand how such a brilliant man could fail in this way.

But he made a big comeback for TNG, he was given back all, er, most of the authority that he lost. But he never really wrote any more episodes for television or elsewhere other than half of "Encounter at Farpoint", stepping on DC Fontana's toes in the process.

I was glad that they interviewed Diana Muldaur for this. I always thought that she had deliberately played Dr. Pulaski as if she were a female Doctor McCoy, and I always thought she was brilliant in that role. But I find it sad that she did not like working on the show, especially after adding so much to it.

Every television show has its dark spots, Trek has had its share.

It just goes to show that the cast and crew of this franchise are human beings, nothing more.

This is a brilliant and brutally honest series, expanding upon William Shatner's revelations from "Chaos on the Bridge".

But if you are watching this on Prime, come back to IMDb to find out the proper order of the episodes because they choked the duck, totally mixing up the order of the episodes so that the narrative makes no sense. I actually had to stop playback and come here to find out what was missing.

Which is music from the episode "who mourns for Adonis"... I never noticed this until today when I was watching the episode again, they show the spacecraft which Gary Seven is assigned to jury-rig. The music is appropriate for the spacecraft, and as an internal Trek Easter-egg.

This episode actually is referred to in the second season of "Picard", as it refers to "the travelers". Which ended up being a group founded by "the traveler", the alien from Tau Ceti who took an interest in Wesley Crusher.

The episode would have also served as the pilot episode of a television show based upon the adventures of Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln (and Gary Seven's cat, April Tatro).

This was a good time travel episode, which included a plot that would later be used in "Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home".

It was a fine episode to end the second season with. Clever use of NASA space footage.

I thought this episode was a tribute to the guy who used to put on the costumes for the Trek, namely the Horta and the Mugato, Janos Prohaska. He also put on a gorilla suit for one excellent Perry Mason episode. In the 60s, this was the man that they hired to wear the costumes. You will also see him on several Outer Limits episodes, there is a Bird-Like alien in one episode that is similar to the Bird-Like alien from "The Cage" as Pike looks down the hallway... and there is also a "germ" in the very last Outer Limits episode that looks a lot like the Horta. All Janos.

It is also a very important episode, as it includes the full engineering set that was made for this show. This is the first time we see it.

Gigi Edgely is an ensign who hosts an interesting alien, and later sets up a dialogue with its father... as she was the first person seen by the alien.

Of course, being made out of rock, Usdi was difficult to defend... And Usdi's father was sending waves into the ship mirroring its emotions, which were not too positive initially.

Somebody mentions that "Kirk was not quite acting like himself"- obviously, nobody was, that was the point. The waves of angry energy sent through the ship were affecting every crew member until they figured out how to block them. The first person affected was Spock, who begged to be restrained.

I thought this episode was a fantastic tribute to the original series, where aliens were not depicted with CGI, but with real people wearing costumes. And Gigi looked great as a character that was not blue.

There is a video showing the construction of this wonderful Engineering set on the Star Trek Continues YouTube channel. I don't know if it is OK to paste links in here, but it is easily found by searching the channel. Look for "Construction 06".

People who are handing out uncomplimentary reviews as if they are candy, don't understand the amount of work that was done for this show, work that was mostly done by people that were not getting paid, but they were doing it because of their sheer love for Star Trek, which should be the only reason anybody should watch this show.

Stretches back into time, with the help of Gary Mitchell and the Temporal War Soldier Yor from Discovery, who made a quick stop on Viridian III, where Kelvin Spock gave him something.

Trek is Trek whether it is "Those Old Scientists", the Motion Picture era, Next Generation, Kelvin, or Discovery.

There are little vignettes that tell a lot of story, including moving the 1701D Saucer Section, Yeoman Colt visiting the "Memory Wall", and Young Spock looking out over Kelvin Timeline San Francisco (The "Memory Wall" was from a deleted scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which included a better explanation of what Spock found when he went into the innards of V'Ger, there was a whole wall of the red sensors that we saw on "V'Ger's Probe", in the deleted scene both Spock and Kirk go into this area where they are shown the history of V'Ger's travels).

It took numerous watchings for me to piece it all together and I was mostly right. As Kirk walks up to Saavik, she introduces him to a young Vulcan. Who could that be?

The answer is obvious if you have watched the Wrath of Khan and the Search for Spock and The Voyage Home numerous times, it is a subject that has been investigated in comic books and novels and hinted at in shows and films.

It took me a while to place the alien who gives Kirk a gift, we only ever saw a holographic representation of that person.

What amazed me is that this was actually William Shatner, De-aged, with Sam Witwer playing the other two representations of Kirk.

The trivia section confirmed my speculations about certain things, but there are still a couple of things that I don't quite understand.

Mostly, this is a dropped storyline from Star Trek Generations that would have included Spock... but it was more appropriate to have Kelvin timeline Spock be the one to visit Veridian III.

Rest in Peace Leonard.

Howlin Mad Broccoli visits a ship trapped inside of a plasma stream.

During transport, something very odd occurs - is there something alive in the transporter beam?

Of course, Broccoli believes he has "transporter psychosis", and starts behaving more like himself...

Until we start seeing his internal thinking, as he starts piecing it together.

He faces one of his greatest fears and in doing so unveils an interesting conundrum.

Of course there is something alive in the transporter beam, but it is not what we think.

Classic misdirection, and a great resolution to a mystery.

Broccoli at his finest, he really is a great diagnostician.