The SmarK DVD Rant for Star Trek The Next Generation: Season Six
– Yes, after skipping a season we double-back to the penultimate season of one of my favorite TV shows of all-time, as TNG recovers from the death of Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman struggles to maintain the same level of quality and imagination with a nimrod like Brannon Braga acting as story editor and doing much of the brainstorming for it.
The sixth season is one that the actors and crew love because it allowed them to be “experimental” and explore new directions for the show, but fans aren’t as big on because the highs weren’t as high and the lows were pretty bad. Still, overall there were some very good moments and very good shows, but the show was starting to show its age and wear out its welcome. I think the blame lies squarely with Berman and Braga, but with the addition of Deep Space Nine to the schedules of the writers and the movie going into pre-production, you can easily argue that the workload contributed as much to their stress levels and subpar scripts as Roddenberry’s absence did.
With that in mind, here’s season six
The Film
Disc One:
– Time’s Arrow Part 2. The conclusion to the fifth season cliffhanger sees the writers grasping at straws for ways to wrap up the nonsensical plot while remaining in the 19th century. They really dug themselves a HUGE hole with the first plot, because it’s one of those mind-bending Braga plotlines compounded by the writers having no idea where the episode was going. In the end, the crew saves the day (although I’m still not sure what exactly the threat was) and Data’s head is left in the cavern for no reason other than it was supposed to be there in the future.
– Realm of Fear. One of the stupidest of Braga’s stupid ideas sees Barkley developing yet another phobia, this time transporter phobia. You know Braga is writing because someone has a neurotic episode (usually Troi), goes insane (again, usually Troi) or Things Are Not As They Seem. And indeed, it turns out that there really ARE things swimming around in the transporter beam, thus showing that Barkley was right all along and the crew should have believed him. It’s funny listening to LaForge describing how the transporter breaks up your component molecules one at a time and then beams them thousands of miles away at a time, and then dismisses Barkley’s fears because it’s obviously such a safe mode of transportation.
– Man of the People. And hey, what would a season of Trek be without Troi getting hysterical about something? In this case, a visiting diplomat seduces her, but she turns into a bitchy femme fatale, shrieking at Riker and trying to claw his eyes out. But of course, Things Are Not As They Seem. The diplomat is quite the evil guy and the end he meets is quite dark and cruel by family entertainment standards.
– Relics. The first real quality episode of the season sees Scotty recovering from a transporter loop 75 years after the first series, and teaming with Geordi to rescue the Enterprise from a gigantic biodome called a Dyson Sphere. The Dyson Sphere is such a cool idea that it’s a shame it was used as a throwaway plot device and never turned into a full-blown movie idea or series. Still, James Doohan chews the scenery, and his explanation to Geordi about how one becomes a miracle worker is great stuff.
Disc Two:
– Schisms. Yup, Brannon Braga is back, this time taking FOUR crew members with him into the depths of his own neurosis about being abducted by aliens and tortured. Sadly no aliens have taken him up on that in order to test it. Riker, Worf, LaForge and a fourth unnamed crew member are haunted by dreams of an alien table and all have neurotic episodes as a result. Pretty creepy the first time you see it, but after that, look out below.
– True-Q. Cute-as-a-button Olivia D’Abo makes a guest appearance as ingénue Amanda Rogers, who appears to be a common honors student but may actually be a member of the Q Continuum. A pretty good episode about the seduction that true power offers and being a better person by doing things the hard way.
– Rascals. The final appearance of Ensign Ro Laren (as a regular cast member) sees a laughably stupid plot about Picard, Ro, Guinan and Keiko being turned into children as the result of cosmic technobabble. How Picard’s artificial heart would keep working in a 12-year old’s body is beyond me. The highlight here is Picard interacting with a children’s computer interface so retarded it must have been designed by Microsoft. The takeover of the ship by a renegade Ferengi faction is little more than a backdrop for comic relief, as there’s never any sense of real danger. And this one boasts one of the most unintentionally awkward and creepy moments in Star Trek history, as Miles O’ Brian copes with being married to a 12-year old. This is one of those ones where you can picture the writers going “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if the crew got turned into kids!” (okay, I can picture BRAGA saying that) but not having any real story to back it up with.
РA Fistful of Datas. This is more like it, as Patrick Stewart again gets to direct Brent Spiner acting up a storm. Worf and Alexander go on an Old West adventure on the holodeck, and are soon joined by Deanna (playing the Mysterious Stranger and having a ball doing it). However, the holodeck has a malfunction and things go badly (in the supplements, even Braga himself points out what a clich̩ that became later on), resulting in Data portraying about 8 different villains and being awesome as all of them. The solution is wonderfully non-techie: They just have to figure out how to win the scenario and let the game play out. Probably the best episode of the entire season, all things considered.
Disc Three:
– The Quality of Life. An interesting look at what defines life, as a scientist on a mining world invents a self-sufficient robot that can create new tools to deal with any problem. However, they start becoming self-aware, resulting in Data springing to their defense on behalf of artificial lifeforms everywhere. The scientist’s attitude goes rather too quickly from hostility to “Oh, well, you win”, but otherwise this is a solid outing.
– Chain of Command, parts 1 and 2. One of my favorite episodes of the season sees Picard and Crusher sent on a clandestine operation to a Cardassian planet, leaving the Enterprise in the hands of a new captain — Edward Jellico (later revived by Peter David as an Admiral for New Frontier). Jellico is an asshole, but everything he does is perfectly understandable and within regs. For instance, he insists that Troi wear (GASP) an actual UNIFORM when she’s on the bridge! You mean that jumpsuit ISN’T regulation? Oddly enough, Troi wore a uniform for pretty much the rest of the run of the show. Meanwhile, Picard gets captured by David Warner and tortured, and according to my limited knowledge of the subject from Pop-Up Video, does the right things to stay sane. Sadly, “THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!” didn’t sweep the nation as a catchphrase on par with “Where’s the Beef?”
– Ship In A Bottle. Another favorite of mine sees the diabolical hologram Moriarty released from captivity by Barkley and immediately hatching a rather brilliant scheme to take over the ship and gain actual substance outside the holodeck. But of course, Things Are Not As They Seem. A really fun episode brought down a bit by the mindbending puzzle-within-a-puzzle leap of faith required to figure out the solution.
Disc Four:
– Aquiel. While visiting a remote outpost, they discover that someone has been vaporized and the only clues lie in reading a girl’s diary. Well, look no further than Geordi LaForge for THAT task, but when she turns up alive, well, it’s kind of an awkward situation for him. But fear not, for history is made and LAFORGE GETS LAID! The rest of the plot is inconsequential to the main point of Geordi getting his freak on, but the twist ending is pretty cool and I didn’t see it coming.
– Face of the Enemy. Well, we’re four discs into the set, so it’s time for Troi to get hysterical again. In this case, she’s kidnapped and surgically altered to look like a Romulan, portraying a member of the Tal Shi’ar who’s acting as a watchdog during a transport operation intended to bring Romulan defectors to Vulcan. She protests at being unable to play such a role, but when the role calls for her to be a completely heartless bitch to everyone, she steps up to the plate. Amazing, huh?
– Tapestry. One of the cardinal rules of Trek is broken here, as Q returns for the second time in the same season, this time playing Clarence the Angel to Picard’s Jimmy Stewart. Dead on the operating table, Q takes Picard back to the Academy and teaches him what life would have been like if he had been the same stodgy dude from the present, back in his youth, and thus hadn’t been stabbed through the heart during a barfight. John DeLancie of course steals the show (“Is there a John Luck Pickered here?'”) while Patrick Stewart acts up a storm.
– Birthright Part One. Another one of those Worf episodes that I hated during the initial run of the show but I love now. While on Deep Space Nine (in a blatant plug for the new show) Worf meets an alien who tells him that his father may in fact be alive in a Romulan prison camp. Worf decides to go commando (although not in the Friends sense of the word) and mount a rescue operation. Meanwhile, Data gets zapped by a plasma whatsit and starts dreaming. Guess which portion was written by Brannon Braga.
Disc Five:
– Birthright Part Two. This is entirely Worf’s show, as he finds that his father indeed died on Kittimer, but there’s still a whole group of Klingons being held captive by Romulans. However, they LIKE it there. A bizarre twist on the Christ story sees the bearded, long-haired weirdo preaching death and violence to the peace-loving Klingons until the Romulans have no choice but to put him to death for speaking of such things. Great episode.
– Starship Mine. One of the darkest and most violent of TNG’s episodes sees the Enterprise in dock for a Baryon sweep, the upshot of which is a big laser beam that kills anyone in it’s path. Terrorists see this as a perfect chance to steal some trilithium from the engine room, but they didn’t count on one man John McClane. Oh, sorry, that’s Die Hard. I meant Jean-Luc Picard. And BOY is he pissed, so much so that he systematically hunts down and kills all of the terrorists in increasingly brutal manner (although always off-screen), ending with him booby-trapping their escape vessel and detonating it. The lesson is clear: Don’t f*ck with the French.
– Lessons. Speaking of Picard, he shows his sensitive side, becoming the Mack Daddy of the Enterprise and putting the moves on a musically-inclined astrophysicist. They play music. That’s about it.
– The Chase. Speaking of uninteresting, Picard’s famous teacher Prof. Galen is introduced on-screen for the first time, as he leads the Enterprise on a chase around the galaxy for clues to a DNA puzzle. The payoff isn’t very exciting, but does help to explain why all the aliens in the Star Trek universe look like humans with REALLY bad acne.
Disc Six:
– Frame of Mind. Can you guess who wrote this one just by looking at the TITLE? Yes, it’s Braga time again, and once again someone is going insane (Riker) and Things Are Not As They Seem. Also, Riker has a neurotic episode about confinement and Braga is apparently afraid of doctors judging by the treatment they get here. In the supplements, Ronald Moore shows himself to be the smartest guy on the staff by pointing out that the audience would about 15 steps ahead of the show because no one is going to buy that Riker is REALLY a mental patient on an alien world dreaming the whole show. Well, maybe the producers of St. Elsewhere would.
– Suspicions. This is a rather dull episode about Beverly Crusher spearheading an experiment with “metaphasic shielding”, which apparently allow ships to travel through a star (even though it was done previously in the fifth season). However, during the initial test-run, the scientist driving the ship was murdered, leading to an investigation and a solution that Law & Order couldn’t possibly do.
– Rightful Heir. A combination of cool Klingon politics and silly Braga plots, as Worf goes on a spiritual journey to a Klingon meditation planet, only to witness the apparent return of Kahless the Unforgettable. However, Things Are Not As They Seem. The messages about faith and belief get a little heavy-handed, and if I was Gowron I would have just had the dude executed and taken my chances with the public.
– Second Chances. Don’t even get me started on this one. It seems that 8 years ago, a transporter accident left a duplicate of Will Riker on an alien planet, which is completely ridiculous. Not because of the science behind it, but because obviously Riker would wither and die without cosmic poontang for that long! At any rate, Lieutenant Riker returns to active duty and soon finds it hard taking orders from himself, but is consoled by all the sex he’s getting from Troi. Good writers would have used this plot point to continue the Riker-Troi relationship in season seven, but these writers went to Troi-Worf instead.
Disc Seven:
– Timescape. Guess who? That’s right, Brannon works out his neurosis about I dunno time travel I guess, as the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird are trapped in a time pocket and frozen in time at the moment that Enterprise is blowing up. But, of course, Things Are Not As They Seem. Here’s the one moment that bugged the hell out of me: A bowl of fruit is trapped in a time pocket moving at 50 times normal speed. Picard sticks his hand into the bowl for a second, and pulls it out to find that he’s grown his nails an inch each. Well, that’s fine, but if it’s 50 times normal growth, sticking his hand in there would mean that he’s only aged another minute. He’d have to stick his hand in there for nearly a day to get that of growth on his nails. A dumb episode filled with technobabble.
– Descent, Part One. Wrapping up the season, Data goes insane (again) and we meet Hugh Borg again, this time leading his own team of Borg dissidents. As the episode closes, it is revealed that Lore is back and doing bad things. A weak cliffhanger.
Overall, I liked this season for the character development and some of the cool ideas, but at the same time Braga’s increasing influence was really starting to hurt the base of the show’s appeal — that being shows based on today’s problems set in the future.
The Video:
As good as 10 year old TV material is gonna look. Unfortunately one side-effect of the super high resolution of DVD is that the cheap green-screen and CGI effects look incredibly cheesy and fake when viewed on such high-quality media. Other than that, colors are bright, the picture is noise-free and without compression artifacts for the most part, and contract is always good — the black of space is a good solid black. No complaints here at all.
The Audio:
Kudos to Paramount for the excellent job of remixing everything in full 5.1. This is the treatment that the show needed all along — surrounds are used for everything from space battles to mysterious noises in the background to music. The subwoofer rumbles throughout the shows to represent the ever-present engines of the ship. Dialogue is crisp and clear and the sound is aggressive without being overpowering. I’d say this is a better sound mix than many movies I’ve heard on DVD. Great job on this season, and all the others.
The Extras:
The usual selection of supplements, a little thinner than usual this time around.
– Mission Overview. The usual 20-minute feature about memorable episodes and the general direction for the year.
– Bold New Directions. A 15-minute feature about some of the weirder episodes and the writing therein.
– Production Briefing. A feature about designing the sets and visual effects.
– Special Profile: Dan Curry. A really cool 15-minute visit to the home of visual effects guru Dan Curry, as he shows off the props he designed and various weapons and paintings used in the shows.
– Special Crew Profile: Lt. Commander Data. Another cool feature, focusing on Brent Spiner and featuring interviews with him and a look at the making of “Ol’ Yellow Eyes Returns”, his Broadway standards album.
– Trailers for Nemesis and Deep Space Nine round out the set.
Ratings:
The Film: ***1/2
The Video: ***1/2
The Audio: ****
The Extras: ****
