Lonely Among Us

The magnificent death of Mr. Singh... He gets shocked from the warp station at engineering and flies like a butterfly just close to the warp core and while facing downwards, spotted by Worf and declared dead.

I hope I'm not wrong, but this is the very first time we see on a TNG episode the rule "Appeared too much, lived too much".

I mean when an "appearance with a dialogue" playing actor that we see for the first time and doesn't have a relation with the story of that episode, eventually dies before the end of that episode :)

...and the last scene with the delegate BBQ is probably the funniest cultural conflict i have ever heard of.

Later on we learn that the Enterprise while passing an energy cloud has taken on a being that exists as pure energy. It goes from being to being in the ship's crew and eventually it's Captain Picard on whom it settles as the host, obviously sensing this is the guy in charge.

As if this wasn't enough problems two delegations of aliens are on board who hate each other are being transported to Federation HQ to apply for membership. They are Commander Riker's responsibility if he can prevent them from killing each other.

The climax of course is separating Patrick Stewart with what is inhabiting his body. It's a close run thing.

This episode also introduces Data to whom he adopts as a human role model, Sherlock Holmes, pipe and all.

Writing in 2021, it is great to see that I am not the only person taking a retrospective look at Star Trek, the Next Generation. When this series was first released in 1987, a little less than twenty years after the end of the Original Series, many people thought that, without Captain Kirk and his crew, it couldn't really be Star Trek. However, original creator Gene Roddenberry, was fully invested in the casting, writing and overall look of the new series, so let's see how it shaped up:

In this episode we see the classic "two stories in parallel" motif with (a) an alien cloud-like entity hitching a ride and getting stuck in the Enterprise computers and (b) some comical aliens intent on eating one another rather than engaging in more conventional diplomacy. The presence of Dorothy Fontana on the writing team ensured that it kept up the pace and made sense, and the prosthetic team and guest actors excelled themselves.

Senior Trekker liked the character of Assistant Chief Engineer Singh, played so sympathetically by Kavi Raz and would much prefer to have seen him stick around than be so casually killed off. Otherwise, this was a sound establishing episode much appreciated by fans and toy-makers alike.

(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)

Indubitably...

This is actually a rather interesting episode although from the way we know that the transporter "technology" developed, The solution to this conundrum was probably not viable...

What makes this episode of note is that it is Mr. Data's discovery of Sherlock Holmes, The beginning of his lifelong interest in the character.

Plus he was actually, literally, smoking a pipe...

I thought the Anticans and Selay we're pretty interesting and funny with the Anticans preferred live game targets. Also, we have Miles Edward O'Brien walking the corridor is wearing a gold shirt, he started off wearing a red shirt.

After season one we never saw aliens of this type much, they pretty much stuck to humanoids with weird noses or foreheads, etc. I thought the Anticans rather hilarious, being totally disgusted with replicated meat- "Barbaric" as they called it...

Mr. Data used Holmesian detective techniques to figure out what was happening, and who/what was responsible.

If they had given just a little bit more details about the energy conundrum, it could have been a very interesting episode.

As it stands it is simply amusing, worth watching a few times.

This one feels like a rewrite of Journey to Babel, the wonderful original series episode that gave us Spock's parents and the Orion Syndicate. There's a bit of humour to it but it is not exactly well thought out.

Captain Picard wishing to beam himself into the cloud while under control of the entities is a strange plot element. Don't think the show really needed it.