Milo123

Well, this was fun. I did appreciate that little diversion in the holodeck at the beginning with Guinan adding some extra camp to it (any excuse for Patrick Stewart to act differently to how Picard normally would is always welcome) - you can tell that the writers are massive fans of classic noir in just a few short moments.

Once again this is another hour that works as a great character-centric episode for Data, and seeing the crew put together the puzzles and unravel the mystery slowly was effective if a largely fine and unessential episode in the grand scheme of things. There isn't much more to add here.

It's a fun episode, and a rare Geordi-centric one that's a sequel to another Geordi-centric one. There's not much to say about this one again but it's a cool follow up to Booby Trap despite some caveats, and seeing the real Leah Brahms as opposed to the holodeck one was cool. Susan Gibney shined here - the chemistry between the real Gibney and Burton is good even if it ultimately can go nowhere between their characters due to Brahms being married - and it's a shame these are her only two TNG episodes, would have loved to have seen her become more of a feature on the series. At least Gibney got to show up in DS9, though.

Brahms admitting that she hasn't been very fair to Geordi was a bizzare reaction, though, and was a downpoint to an otherwise solid episode. The plot about a space--born alien life form thinking that The Enterprise was its mother was a decent, if unessential, storyline, that TNG has refined enough by now.

Half a Life (Or: What happens when Star Trek does Midsommar)

In all seriousness though, this episode has a lot in common with Ari Aster's latest. It didn't quite payoff entirely - there's some rough edges around the middle, but I didn't hate this episode. It's perhaps the one that's most at home in Star Trek: The Next Generation out of all of the Star Trek shows. Picard taking a reserve, back seat action to something that feels so inherently wrong a concept as this is certainly not something that Burnham, Sisko or Kirk would have done to name a few examples.

Rather than take the easy route of making the natives of the planet the bad guys or cartoonishly evil, even though they're in the wrong and nobody would argue otherwise (apart from that cult in Midsommar, I guess), the actors do a convincing job of selling their characters' beliefs and the script does an effective job at giving depth to them.

This concludes the "trilogy" of inter-species romances (and I say "trilogy" if you take out the previous episode) that bookended the series. that began with The Host & Half a Life. It's where Trek decided to turn into a romantic sci-fi show with... mixed results, but out of these three episodes I found In Theory to be the best. Data literally taking La Forge's advice to heart and asking everyone was fun, and we got to see various takes on his relationship with D'sora from the rest of the crew.

It was sweet, and very awkward with the kind of awkwardness that The Next Generation does so well. It would have been so easy to screw up this episode and it really only works because of how good Brent Spiner is at playing such a likeable character.

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.

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.

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.