Legacy

Enterprise visits Turkana IV and the crew meet Tasha Yar's sister Ishara.

This is a mostly good episode with some great character moments, particularly involving Lieutenant Data.

The story is okay but fairly uninspired, predictable and culminates in Captain Picard addressing the crew with something like South Park used to parody in their "I think we've all learned something here today" speeches. However, the tribal mentality of gang culture is highlighted effectively when it compares Ishara Yar's choices in life to that of Tasha.

What works very well are the character moments between Data and Ishara, particularly towards the end. It would not be a spoiler to say that we see Data learning about some important aspects of humanity such as trust and betrayal. Showing it from his perspective I found to be very poignant.

Ishara is a memorable guest character not just for being Tasha's sister, but for giving more context behind Tasha and Turkana IV. The contrast between Data and the Enterprise crew's feelings towards Ishara and Tasha is very well done.

Visually I think it is strong, particularly the action scenes on Turkana IV.

Performances from all are great, especially Brent Spiner who captivates in some of those touching moments of human discovery. Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart and Michael Dorn are also good.

Beth Toussaint is perfectly cast as Ishara. She gives a solid, natural performance, and has such a striking screen presence it almost distracts you from what her character is doing on board Enterprise. By the end of a very obvious and frustrating story, you almost forgive the crew for falling under her spell.

The Enterprise intercepts a distress call from a ship in serious danger in orbit around the homeworld of their former colleague Tasha Yar. When it appears that two crewmen escaped to the planet via an escape pod, an away team seems to be the only option on a world ravaged by gang violence.

A fairly standard TNG episode, albeit one that has some interesting elements. Toussaint's appearance is fantastic, suggesting that she could have become an interesting addition to the crew and the scenes set on the planet's surface are exciting and a bit different from the usual worlds we normally see. But the narrative is as predictable as they come and it has a horribly clunky conclusion, as if written by someone on work experience. Frustrating.

So Tasha Yar's sister, looks just like Sarah Connor, gets close to Data, talks about Cybernetics, in a decent episode. But for me was def a rip-off of the Terminator. Or maybe I just have the hots for the Sarah Connor look from Terminator :-)

Another hum drum unsatisfying episode with massive potential. The main thing I noticed is that Beverly Crusher's attitude about insisting on beaming down to a violent area is puzzling. She insists that she can take care of her self however she recently almost got herself and everyone else killed in a terrorist episode that recently preceded this one, the High Ground. At the end of the episode she admitted she should've listened to the captain and beamed up at the beginning. Apparently she learned no lesson that stuck.

I get in this era of longform storytelling the lack of continuity of TNG is even more frustrating than it was during its initial run.

The best part of this episode is Beth Toussaint's compelling performance and it's a shame that they had to throw her away so quickly rather than make her a recurring character .

I'm beginning to wonder if the Enterprise works for AAA; seems like a lot of the episodes begin with them answering a distress call. This confuses me, because of the "Prime Directive". They trot it out when they don't want to help people, but the rest of the time they evacuate people, help them fight, give them supplies, etc. I just honestly have no idea what the Prime Directive is; it seems utterly confusing and extremely hypocritical. And why is everyone obsessed with Tasha Yar? She died ages ago and was a boring, uninteresting character to begin with, yet they had a whole pointless episode that "brought her back" from the past, and now we're on her home planet with her sister. Most of the story is everyone sitting around talking about Yar. Boring and pointless episode, just trying to dredge up emotion over someone who is long gone.