When the Bough Breaks

It's not stellar but it's ok. It doesn't have the warts that so many first season episodes have. This one could have been slotted almost seamlessly into the second or third seasons.

Though it does have hilarious plot holes. First, are there not orphans that might want to move here? Second, how exactly can this planet disappear again? Once the Enterprise detected it, they should easily be able to quickly determine its orbital parameters. Why didn't Picard point out that he'd already transmitted all this information to Starfleet and if anything happened to the Enterprise, a whole fleet would come looking?

This TNG story has the Enterprise going to what was thought a mythical world. Aldea is a planet with a cloaking device that has kept it hidden from outside interference. With no threat of invasion the Aldeans have created a society where the super computer tends to their needs and they engage in leisure 24/7 to use the earth phrase.

But they kidnap the Enterprise children because the whole planet has become sterile. They may live for centuries, but they do die.

The same theme of a perfectly ordered world was used in such science fiction classics as Forbidden Planet and Zardoz. The Krells faced similar problems though the Aldeans haven't gotten as far as monsters from the Id.

The Crushers mother and son dominate the episode. Gates McFadden discovers what is wrong with them and Wil Wheaton organizes the kidnapped Enterprise kids.

Enterprise visits Aldea, where the inhabitants take an extreme action for the survival of their race.

This is a moderately entertaining episode that gets off to a good start but the resolution is fairly uninspired.

It starts off with a compelling premise, particularly for viewers who are parents. However, as things unfold it's clear to see the writers had some specific character development in mind for this episode and the plot feels something of an afterthought. The way everything is so neatly and quickly resolved is quite comical. The themes very much resemble those from the episode "11001001". I also liked the idea of a society losing its scientific and technological knowledge due to an overemphasis on the arts.

This is a decent episode for Captain Picard who has some strong moments of verbal confrontation and leadership, whilst also developing his character in relation to the Enterprise children.

Wesley Crusher has some strong moments, but you can see a lot of the writing is geared around his development as a young leader. I enjoyed all of his scenes up until the smug smile appears at the end which always seems to be the character's downfall.

The visuals are fairly bland with little inspiration found in the costumes and art design on Aldea.

The performance of Patrick Stewart is strong as ever. Will Wheaton is most okay and Gates McFadden likewise. The guest actors are fairly weak, with children regularly outshining their adult counterparts on Aldea. Jerry Hardin is solid but the the role isn't particularly challenging.

Another poster pointed out that some various obvious civilized, peaceful and mutually beneficial solutions were ignored, before sterility issue was discovered.

1. I am sure there are numerous families that would love to immigrate to this paradise.

2. There must be plenty of orphans for the existing families. Why must superior species always be unethical? (and speak perfect English and be bi-pedal humanoids living in suburban splendor).

The other frustrating thing, after 100s of contacts with these superior species both in TOS and TNG, why doesn't the Federation have any of these vastly superior technology that can push a starship 3 days away from a planet at warp 9, instantaneously?

Definitively worst than the others, even if its rating is 6.4/10 it is to me a 5.5/10 , worst episode in a fantastic TV show ( one of the all time best show) Only light in the episode was one sentence by data, the enterprise beeing push back from the planet and a little Comedy in the end, enough to save it from beeing a 5/10. But yeah Season 1 is really the weakest even with some great episode like" we'll Always have Paris"