Tin Man

Harry Groener's remarkable performance as Betazoid telepath is the highlight of this TNG story. The two on the crew Groener bonds with are his fellow telepath Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner who being an android he can't read the mind at all.

I really felt this character and the torment he was going through. As Deanna Troi explains it her people for the most part develop their abilities as adolescents. But some like Groener develop it almost from birth. The rush of hearing emotions and not developing proper filters is too much and many become unstable.

In a sense Groener is on a mission of life because the Enterprise is sent to contact a space creature who is orbiting around a star about to go supernova. The Romulans are interested as well and their intentions are less benign.

I won't go any further, but this gifted and troubled telepath at last finds peace and content in a curious symbiotic relationship with the orbiting creature.

This is one TNG story that will stay with you.

The Betazoid sense walks a delicate balance in these episodes. With Deanna, it has to do with emotional signals and body sense; with others, it's almost like mind reading. Tam Elbrun, the young empath aboard the enterprise, is a super reader of life forms, almost to the point of insanity. He has a checkered history which leads people to fear him, but he is a master at first contact. He has hooked up with "Tin Man," the name given to an entity that looks like a large pine cone. It used to be ship with a crew but circumstances have ended that. The thing has immense power and thinks on its own, but like so many one-of- a-kind creatures, it is filled with dread and loneliness. Tam-Elbrun, being empathic, feels the creature's pain. There is an issue in that the Romulans, who attacked Tin Man are set on revenge because the thing destroyed one of their war birds. Data is taken in on this whole thing because he does not send out any human baggage. This is a really thoughtful episode and well worth the viewing.

Mildly obnoxious overacting, one-shots brought in to make one par, and thus low-quality, episode of a television program. Standard stuff for this crew of writers. Only thing missing from standard efforts is an overzealous progressive bent. On the plus side some pointlessly evil Romulans die.

Harry Groener did an outstanding turn as Tam Elbrun. He made his character seem real and three dimensional, which compensated for most of the shortcomings in this episode's writing. There wasn't enough tension in this episode (the clichéd, old, "I DON'T KNOW IF WE CAN DO THAT, CAPTAIN" from engineering doesn't suffice for me) and I didn't real feel much empathy for the "Tin Man" creature-- some near the end, but not enough.

But again, Groener delivered everything that could be expected for his effete, hyper-sensitive character. I'm disappointed that he was in only one "Next Generation" episode. I wish that he was recurring character like de Lancie's "Q" entity.

This episode is worth watching.

The Enterprise picks up an extremely powerful but disturbed Betazoid, Tam Elbrun, as part of a mission to make first contact with a previously undiscovered space-roaming life-form known as Tin Man. Meanwhile, the Romulans are never far away and have their own agenda dealing with Tin Man.

On paper, this is classic Trek stuff - new life-forms, hidden powers and the costs that go with them and of course, more Romulans. But in practise, something doesn't quite work. Tin Man itself is not expanded upon all that much and guest star Groener's performance is wildly over-the-top, to the point where it becomes distracting. The ending felt a bit of a cop-out as well.