Probably the best episode of the season so far.
Excellent finale to a terrific season.
There are more New Order songs out there than True Faith!
A masterclass of a finale to such a terrific season - more than rewarding of the slow start. AppleTV+'s best original series.
Excellent. Fantastic portrayal of the Sontarans - arguably the best of the current era - and the Crimean War is a perfect backdrop for them - great visuals with the work of director Jamie Magnus Stone, and the humour that the Sontarans have always had comes through. Chibnall's fantastic at writing classic monsters + historicals so classic monsters + historicals is a match made in heaven, and although his storyline was rather short this week almost echoing The Lie of the Land with the suburban fighting of the Sontarans straight out of The Stolen Earth (and the parents/companion dynamic too!), Dan is already becoming a favourite. The set-up with Swarm and Azure is brilliant - just hope it sticks the landing with both of them. Jodie Whittaker is at her best in the confrontational scenes with the Sontaran/British General - and playing to the Sontarans weaknesses is classic Doctor Who.
Proper good Doctor Who - one of the best of the current era, suitably chaotic and all over the place but I love the dog monster and both Vinder and Dan Lewis are more charismatic than both Ryan and Graham, who I admittedly quite like. The Doctor being a Liverpool fan I'm less of a fan of though.
Chibnall's best at serialisation and this is him playing to his strengths, the ending shots of all the major players involved felt very Broadchurch episode 1 ending-y. There's a lot going on - almost too much, but it's fairly simple to follow - The Doctor fighting the end of the universe, and I loved it. The bit about the alien Dogs being man's best friend was hilarious too (as was The Doctor being Trent Alexander Arnold's ball boy, and the nod to the Scottish accents) - very Moffat-y in tone and sheer amount of stuff going on. This feels like what Series 6 would have been like had it been allowed to be full serialised and I'm absolutely here for this Shada/Trial of the Time Lords approach. The smaller TARDIS crew works wonders for now, and Yaz has gone full Clara here - meaning her days are surely numbered (possible death of both The Doctor and Yaz at the same time but with The Doctor regenerating looking on the cards here?) - but I like that she's getting to call out The Doctor.
Also like - as one of the 5 people that didn't mind Timeless Children - that they're going full in with The Division plot. Hopefully this leads to more surprise cameos and it'd be rude to not see Ruth!Doctor one more time - Jo Martin was excellent in Fugitive of the Judoon. The Weeping Angels haven't been overused (they last appeared in Obama's first term) so I'm excited to see more of them especially under a different showrunner than Moffat. More to come with most of these - it's all set-up and so much is now riding on the payoff, but what a way to keep me hooked for next week.
Might actually rewatch this before next week's as I'm also in the middle of a Series 12 rewatch (just ran out of time to do it before Series 13, sadly) - and it's been a while since I watched a Who episode twice in the same week. Big fan. Will miss 13 when she goes...
Really fun mood setter featuring an early performance from Andrew Garfield doing an American accent. Infinitely better than Evolution of the Daleks that holds up so much better on a rewatch, the Murray Gold score is firing on all cylinders. It's one of those stories that captures its time setting perfectly.
A mostly really solid episode that follows the present day-past-future formula of the first three episodes of any given season that RTD stuck to quite frequently during his era. The dystopia set-up of an endless motorway of caravans is established with ease, the return of the Macra is handled really well, and I love the establishment of the "You Are Not Alone" mystery with the return of the Face of Boe. Maintains its suspense throughout and Tennant is able to sell even the cheesiest of scenes with the emotional beats handled really well. Novice Hame is handled much better here than in New Earth, and it acts as a great sequel.
"I've Invented a Sport!"
A really fun episode with a nice twist on the time traveller being from the past rather than the future. Matt Frewer hams it up a bit too much but the final reveal was, as ever, classic Trek.
Loved just how fun this episode was with some good role reversal for the characters. Picard working with children after they got trapped in a lift together was hilarious no matter how poor the child actors were, and Worf delivering a baby is a classic Star Trek moment. Troi getting the chance to command the bridge too was excellent, and a real welcome change of gears for the show.
Like with Family, Star Trek: The Next Generation is really good at those Picard-centric second episodes after a big blockbuster series opener. The performance here again by Patrick Stewart was excellent as the episode really got what Starfleet was all about and showed it perfectly down to a T. One of the best episodes of the series so far for me, carefully contained.
As season premieres go, this was a pretty good one that upped the stakes from the last episode with all the set-up out of the way. Having Denise Crosby return was a welcome surprise in a new role especially learning what happened to her after the events of Yesterday's Enterprise which was something I wasn't expecting the series to touch on again; and seeing Data in command of his own ship was so satisfying.
I'm a sucker for a good Robin Hood story and it was great to see a Q-inspired take on the legend. The concept of seeing the crew of the Enterprise as the Merry Men was hilarious and played for laughs to brilliant effect, and they were brilliantly chosen to match up with the characters. It's another fun opportunity for Patrick Stewart to play Picard playing someone else in a fun, light-hearted affair that is one of the better Q episodes and involving Vash made for a nice continuation of her arc.
A strong episode, overall - and a good, optimistic look at the risks that can go when Starfleet's practise of First Contact goes wrong - encountering an xenophobic society who maybe aren't quite ready to reach for the stars just yet. It was good to see the decision to switch from the space race to education being made, with the outlook of preparing the planet for first contact rather than forcing them to make it when they're not ready for it yet.
It does feel like the Enterprise jumped the gun a bit too early - they should have known that they arrived at the world too early. But it's a very nice contrast to Discovery's New Eden, my favourite episode of that series so far, and the decision to take the Minister with them rather than leave her behind echoed Pike's approach in that episode. No surprise to see that Jonathan Frakes was heavily involved in both episodes.
This episode kept me hooked from start to finish - its plot was gripping and the stuff with Riker kept things unpredictable if there were a few things that didn't quite have the intended effect.
This episode felt so out of place with Season 4. Would have been more at home in the earlier seasons - it's one of the weakest of the season so far. Entirely devoted to a bland plot about a fraudster posing as a Devil come to collect her due whose tricks are found out by La Forge at the last minute after an extended and rather lengthy courtroom sequence, this feels like a classic Scooby Doo episode where the villain is revealed to not be a supernatural threat all along. Maybe it would have been more interesting if Ardra had been Q after all...
To be fair, you can tell Marta DuBois is having fun as Ardra even if there isn't much depth to her character and she's very one-dimensional. But everything feels really lazily done here - which is a shame after the excellent episode that preceded it. Very much TNG on autopilot.
That was a good, strong philosophical episode that Trek does really well. Colm Meaney was as great as ever as Miles O'Brien, and another O'Brien heavy-episode in a row? I could get used to this. Feels like a very heavy stage-setter for Deep Space Nine and it's easy to see why O'Brien out of all people made the jump to that show. Hard to believe that only Captain Maxwell was held responsible for this - wouldn't his senior officers be indicted too? Feels like a rather weak response on Starfleet's part and Maxwell deserved far greater punishment. It felt more like a casual, dismissive shrug - also, wouldn't it have been more effective if we'd known Maxwell before this? We've only really seen one side of him here. But aside from that it was a good episode, although the conflict could have been resolved better.
Love to see how well developed the Cardassians are so early on and the whole scenes with them working in the background allowed for an incredibly tense final standoff between Picard and Maxwell.
This was another highlight from Season 4 so far and one of my favourite episodes of the eleven from this season that I've seen so far.
Data and Dr. Crusher dancing in the holodeck was a great scene that the two shared together; I really like both characters and they come into their own here. This was a big Data-centric episode too as he learnt more about human wedding customs and the show reflected on the definition of what marriage was as a concept and what it meant to him. Brett Spiner knocked it out of the park - he was really born to play Data. I couldn't imagine anyone else in the role.
This feels like very classic Trek in all the best ways. Having seen Deep Space Nine Miles O'Brien is one of my favourite Trek supporting characters so he had that advantage coming in and it's great watching Colm Meaney grow into the character and get bigger and more important roles in episodes rather than just cameos as The Next Generation continues - and it was fascinating to meet Keiko for the first time here. Rosalind Chao was great too in her role, and she more than delivered.
I wasn't too much of a fan of the Vulcan/Romulan subplot but then the show has usually - at least so far - never really been able to balance two plots in one episode that well, with it feeling tacked on in comparison and lets anotherwise good episode down. But even so; it's not the weakest subplot that we've had.
This was Wesley Crusher's best episode, so naturally, it's his last one as a series regular - I know he returns semi-regularly further on down the line so I've got that to look forward to at least and I'm glad he wasn't killed off.
Shooting on location really helped this episode especially with the hostile atmosphere of the desert planet; and Wesley aspiring to not dissapoint Picard led to some great, emotionally charged moments between the two - and Wil Wheaton has really grown into his role as an actor and went from strength to strength this episode. It's another one of the standouts from Season 4 so far for me, along with Family, Best of Both Worlds Part 2 and Reunion.
The strongest parts of the episode were easily the scenes between Picard and Wesley - I couldn't care about the supporting throwaway character at all this time out but at least the plot was interesting and he was a good foil to both characters, allowing Wesley to come into his own. this was very much a character-centric episode first and foremost and TNG usually does these very well. The less said about the stuff on the Enterprise; the better as well, but we can't have everything be perfect, can we?
It says something about Wesley's growth as a character that by the end I'm actually going to miss him being a permanent feature on The Enterprise.
Utterly unforgivably bad even before the use of a Gary Barlow song; Dracula's third episode is a trainwreck of a finale that makes Dracula Untold (which is only a few minutes longer than this episode and that was a feature length movie released in cinemas) look like Citizen Kane in comparison. It's a complete and utter mess. The storytelling is the very essence of a script that thinks it's smarter than it actually is, and if you thought the second episode was Moffat and Gatiss at their most self-indulgent then you haven't seen anything yet because this is a new brand of awfulness altogether.
I did love the performances throughout though - Claes Bang and Dolly Wells deserved a much, much better Dracula adaption as Bang is one of the best Draculas that we've had in an age; and I still love nearly all of Moffat's work on Doctor Who and think his run on the series doesn't deserve as much flack as it does, but this is the worst thing that he's worked on to date and I can't offer any kind of defence for it. It didn't need to be as long as it was and just like Dracula drinking blood from his victims, any sign of life that this show had is sucked dry by the end.
A holodeck within a holdeck concept was a fun idea, I liked seeing Riker's dynamic with the kid and his eventual acceptance of him as his own son - and then for the second time when he realised who he really was. It was fun seeing Tomalak again too after The Defector, and seeing the older versions of the crew - including a promoted Picard and Riker in charge of the Enterprise - was rewarding - it turns out I'm a fan of most Riker-centric episodes at this point.
Nothing special in terms of Trek episodes - although I'm always a sucker for these sort of episodes - but the highlight was easily the confrontation between Riker and the "Romulans" on board the ship when he realised that the whole thing was just a simulation and him telling Picard to shut up which is unironically one of the best moments of the season so far.
Probably the weakest episode of the season yet. It's always cool to see more Tasha Yar-related stuff - and exploring Ishara as a character and the differences/similarities between her and her sister helped; why Tasha went to Starfleet and she didn't etc, but as the time went by it felt a bit flat-footed with an all-too generic Coalition vs Alliance fight that I couldn't care about. But it just felt very Season 1-2-y and that's not a good sign. Riker and Data's scenes were the strongest of the episode here.
Better than Season 4 so far but that doesn't take much and it's usually after the midseason break this show goes downhill.
An amazing end to a brilliant series. One of the greatest series finales ever.
Finally back and well worth the wait!
Well, the stakes just got raised. Excellent episode.
Fantastic to have this show back.
This was okay. Has potential but the cast needs to improve. Too much exposition.
Excellent finale to a terrific season. Really hope this show gets a third go. One of my favourites of the year.
This episode was awesome. Loved Constantine's appearance but he should have had more screentime though.
Good premiere. Glad I caught up on this show over the Summer.
