CRAP!! I didn't see that coming and they did it to me again!!
How can you not feel empathy after hearing her testimony about what she went through?! Worse of all, she keeps being gaslighted! (I'm not surprised the Waterfords have supporters when there are Trump supporters in the real world)
With characters like these it’s hard to know who you’re rooting for. I guess a show that can do that while keeping you hooked and feeling a whole bunch of dread, resentment and frustration must be doing a lot right.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder and harder to root for June. I get she’s flawed, I get she’s damaged and I get that she’s got a score to settle. But nothing about her character’s portrayal is even remotely likeable anymore.
That said, utterly enjoying the season and looking forward to what the following episodes may bring.
When June saw Rita again, mannnn someone started cutting onions in here. Those traumatic bonds that all of them share with each other, I hope the show goes into that more.
Extremely painful episode to watch. impossible odds, led by two mad characters - a mindless ill prepared attack against a walled city. Yet all the main characters miraculously survive while seemingly thousands are dying. Technically brilliant but the story is getting more painful as Ragnar and Floki compete with each other in mental illness.
Why do the writers have to conflate gun safety with women's right to choose. Dr Glassman's concern about a gun in the house he lives in is just as valid as Debbie's concern about feeling controlled. Dr Glassman can be a controlling person, but he can also be right about not wanting a gun in the house.
If the genders were reversed, and a woman didn't want a gun where she lived, the storyline wouldn't be about the man's right to choose. It would just be about whether two people can find a compromise, and if neither side can compromise, then it's just bad compatibility and shouldn't be together.
I also don't understand America's obsession with guns. Could you imagine if Debbie wanted a super aggressive dog in the house, one that attacks, maims and potentially kills intruders, but also has a high rate of accidentally attacking and killing the owners of the house (which guns do!)... how is that allowed? And in that scenario, how would it be okay to force Dr Glassman to accept that the guard dog has to be allowed in the house?
Not so bad, but still not great either.
I think this is the first time I liked Megan Boone's acting, as she cried holding a dead person in her arms. Usually her acting is just cringey and one dimensional, but seeing her hold the person in her arms and cry felt genuine, the first time in 8 seasons, I feel.
[5.8/10] “The Game” gets one thing right. If you were plotting to take over the Enterprise, the best way to do it would be to run a honeypot scheme on William T. Riker. Most of Starfleet’s crises stem from bizarre spatial phenomena, or an enemy force poised to strike, or a god-like being holding our heroes’ fate in its hands. This week’s stems from the ship's First Officer getting too snuggly with a pretty face who;s concealing a bad motive. And somehow it feels more believable as a means of nearly taking down the ship for it.
That is, strangely, the best part of this one, and it’s over in the first five minutes. “The Game” matches a standard Invasion of the Body-Snatchers-style mystery plot with the return and romances of one Wesley Crusher. I know, I was shocked it wasn’t a banger too.
But we make due. On the romance side, Wesley is on vacation from Starfleet Academy and runs into another engineering wunderkind, Robin Leffler, and strikes up a quick friendship. Unfortunately, the two are supposed to be the romantic backbone of the episode, and instead come off like inane, barely-sketched clichés. I don’t know why The Next Generation is so hit or miss when it comes to romantic chemistry, but in this one, the powers that be hope that throwing a pair of winsome young adults together and smile a lot suffices for character development.
Of note, Leffler is played by a very young, pre-fame Ashely Judd, who does OK in the role. There’s not a lot of depth in the script or the performance, but she’s at least semi-plausible as someone who would make goo-goo eyes at Wesley, which is good, because it’s most of what she does for the hour. The only other wrinkle to Leffler is that she keeps a list of her own “Leffler’s Laws,” which turn out to be a collection of hollow aphorisms to help her get through everyday life. If I didn’t know better, I’d say their overall triteness was supposed to be a gag, but I don’t know if I’d give good ol’ Brannon Braga, who penned the teleplay for this one, that much credit.
When the episode isn’t giving us a pair of teenagers flirting in about as uninvolving a way as you could imagine, it’s giving us a Pod People plot. You see, while vacationing on Risa, Riker started playing footsie with an alien temptress, who introduced him to the titular game. But it’s not just a diverting fad. It’s a plot by the seductress to take over the Enterprise, since the game is not only addictive, but brainwashes its players into doing her bidding and spreading the game to others.
It’s not the worst premise in the world, but there’s not much to it either. Is it a commentary on addictive drugs? Is it a grim take on how quickly fads spread? Is it just an excuse to pay homage to some old fashioned mind control horror? Whatever the case, the setup is paper thin. The various members of the senior staff just invite their friends to try the game and...they do. There’s no wrinkles to it beyond the need to incapacitate Data (since he’s not susceptible to the game device’s tricks), and there’s little intrigue beyond the affected crewmembers taking on a disturbing look of pleasure as their free will is overridden by a toy.
Even though he’s been gone for almost a full season now, this is still a Wesley Crusher episode, which means the special-est boy in the world still has to figure out what not even trained seasoned professionals can. Sure enough, with the help of his new girlfriend, Wes realizes there’s something pathological about this game, and tries to stop it before everyone on the ship is under its spell.
“The Game” generates a mild bit of tension when Wesley is racing against time to prevent a brain-washed Captain Picard, Worf, and Riker from catching him and subjecting him to the game’s effects. But you never believe for a second the chase is going anywhere, and watching Wesley outsmart trained professionals over and over again lost its luster a long time ago. The best the episode can do is try to make the cat and mouse game more exciting than normal given that Wes knows the senior staff’s usual tricks, but in the end, it doesn’t amount to much.
The episode ends with a minor twist, that the kids managed to restore Data despite sabotage from a mind-controlled Dr. Crusher, and Wesley was just stalling for time. But the solution to this whole conflagration of grand theft mental turns out to be...an epileptic series of flashing lights. It’s a nigh-literal deus ex machina, as Data just shows up with the solution in the nick of time, and that’s that. No unique motive for our villainess. Nothing particularly clever or setup for Data’s methods. Just “they fixed it -- the end.”
It’s cold comfort for an episode where the only other main focus is the “sparkling repartee” between Wesley and Leffler. We’ve seen this kind of thing before in the execrable “The Dauphin”, and Wes’s puppy love is no more compelling or entertaining here. I don’t think it’s any great spoiler to tell you that, despite the professions of long distance affection here, we never see Robin Leffler again, and nothing of value was lost.
The real shame of “The Game” is that a good writer could find meaningful story beats in Wesley Crusher’s return to the Enterprise after leaving for Starfleet Academy. In a few short scenes we get the joys of reunion, a funny conversation where Wes regales his mentor with how his first year’s been going, a mom who wants to spend time with her son while still giving him space. In a better episode, that would all be fodder to explore what it means to come back to a familiar place after leaving, without the need for an extraneous romance.
The best you can say is that maybe that’s what this episode is going for with the mind-altering game. Returning to a familiar setting can be a little jarring, as things change, even people change, without you, to the point that what was once familiar and soon feel alien. There’s the wisp of that in “The Game”, but it’s so thin as to probably be accidental.
Instead, the high point comes in the opening minutes, where you realize that all this trouble started because, of course, Riker couldn’t keep his phaser in his pants. It’s good to know that even as ensigns come and go, some things always stay the same on the Enterprise.
[7.2/10] You can’t spoil a good story. That’s not give people free reign to blast key details from barely-out superhero movies or hold up signs giving away the ending to Harry Potter books. There’s something unique about consuming some piece of art without knowing what comes next, and fie on anyone who would try to pop that bubble for someone else. But something genuinely well-done can never be fully spoiled, because even when the surprise has faded, what’s left is (hopefully) still a compelling tale full of excitement, emotion, and vibrancy.
“A Matter of Time” is...not that. I’ll confess that I remembered the twist here from childhood -- Berlinghoff Rasmussen is not a historian from the future, but a conman from the past. And rather than adding intrigue from the dramatic irony of knowing Rasmussen is full of shit when our heroes aren’t quite sure, that knowledge simply takes all of the dramatic air out of the balloon.
That owes to lots of different reasons, from performance and pacing to simple aesthetic choices. But I think the problem boils down to three key things: 1. The crew blindly accepts Ramsussen’s story for most of the episode, 2. They then don’t really react to him and 3. His plan isn’t terribly interesting.
The first is the most baffling. Rasmussen shows up, claims to be a timeline-hopping student of history, and Picard’s response is to “extend him every courtesy.” For starters, that strains credulity and plays as a story contrivance. In fairness, giving randos the run of the place during time travel escapades is nothing new for Star Trek (see “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” from The Original Series), but it seems unlikely, to say the least, that Picard would just let this totally unknown guy with a fantastical story roam around his ship and learn as many details about it as possible.
(As an aside, the crew’s ignorance about future historians time traveling for research purposes doesn’t track with “Assignment: Earth” from TOS, where Kirk’s Enterprise randomly traveled back to the 1960s for historical study, but I’m happy to chalk that up to broad strokes continuity for the sixties show.)
The bigger problem is that it robs the episode of dramatic intrigue. How do you treat a time-traveler who might be real or might be bluffing? What proof would you have them provide (and seriously, what “credentials” could Rasmussen possibly have that would be convincing?) and how would you evaluate it? What level of trust do you show someone who could be a fellow explorer or could be a grifter, or worse yet, an enemy? These are all fascinating questions that would withstand the ultimate reveal, and “A Matter of Time” blows right by them.
Likewise, there’s little to be gleaned from how the rest of the crew treats this supposed man of the future. The tension in the episode comes from the way our heroes are attempting to save the planet of the week from a frosty disaster. Rasmussen hints that it’s a big deal, a pivotal moment in history, that will be remembered for years to come, with the excitement meant to emerge from the mystery of what form that will take.
And yet, the crew of the Enterprise treat the mission, and Rasmussen, like it’s just another day at the office. There’s something realistic about that. After all, Riker, Geordi, Data and the others are professionals, and over the last four years they’ve seen plenty of what the Official Starfleet Manual refers to as “pretty weird shit.” It’s not crazy that they’d take the arrival of a supposed researcher from the future and a planet on the verge of catastrophe in stride.
But it leads to a surprisingly staid episode. None of the crew seems to take Rasmussen’s hints or warnings terribly seriously, which removes any emotional tension from his presence and the current crisis. As a result, it doesn’t feel like there’s much at stake when the fateful moment comes for the Enterprise to try to restore the nearby planet’s atmosphere while Rasmussen pulls up a front row seat for the big event. They mostly treat him like just another guy, and he doesn’t really impact the choices they make, so it doesn’t really matter that he’s lying about his origins and purpose.
That tack makes the exceptions to these moments stand out, and create the best scenes in the episode. At one point, Rasmussen hits on Beverly, and she’s plainly creeped out by it while trying not to make a scene. The uncomfortableness of the whole thing points to the off-putting vibe a huckster like Rasmussen has, and Dr. Crusher recognizing something off about him helps sell the eventual twist.
For all my gripes with the writing here, Matt Frewer actually does a very nice job as the time-traveling flim-flammer. He’s annoying in the role, but in a believable sort of way, with a nerdy, supercilious glee about everything that helps mask his real intent. He has a carnival barker air about him, which lets him give off a bad vibe even before the truth about his path to get here becomes known.
That comes through in his blasé attitude to Picard’s request for help with how to deal with the situation down on the planet. The captain acknowledges that there’s probably rules against tampering with the timeline, just as he observes rules about not interfering with other species’ natural development. But he also acknowledges that there are twenty million lives at stake, and that he’s reexamined his convictions and broken the rules for less. He asks Rasmussen to do the same here.
It’s a hell of a scene, bringing to bear the philosophical ethos of Star Trek and the real intrigue of the situation. Is it ethical to ask someone with knowledge of the future to help you change it? Is there anything sacred about the timeline as they know it or is Picard right and we rewrite the future with every choice we make anyway? Does Rasmussen have a point when he says that for someone from the future, those twenty million people are all long dead regardless, that everyone dies eventually, so the lives in the balance don’t carry the same moral weight to him.
These questions all matter independent of whether Rasmussen is telling the truth. They take on added meaning when the viewer knows that he’s a con artist from the path who (probably) doesn’t have the knowledge of the future he claims to posses, nor the moral hang-ups he claims to be bound by. And Picard’s choice to act rather than “play it safe” speaks to who he is regardless of his scene partner. It’s a five-minute glimpse of the approach his whole episode should have taken.
Of course, Picard’s choice works out and despite a few dicey moments, the planet is saved. But before things wrap up, our heroes have to expose Rasmussen. Rather than finding him out organically, there’s some exposition-laden final scenes that reveal they were secretly onto him for some time and tricked him into letting the crew scan his vessel and deactivate the vessels inside. His whole plot was just to sneak aboard, steal some future tech, and return to the past to sell it. It didn’t require much cleverness or even the elaborate ruse he put on, rendering his whole song and dance retroactively less interesting.
It’s frustrating, because there’s some clever irony here. The man claiming to be from the future, trying to flim-flam people who are actually more advanced than him, and getting trapped two centuries after his time feels appropriately poetic. The conman getting conned is always a satisfying out. There’s a good concept here, one that buoys the episode even when the way it's constructed weakens its ability to realize that potential.
Maybe it’s just that the whole episode builds to those twists: what’s Rasmussen’s real deal and what is he here to witness firsthand? For a great episode, knowing the answers to those questions would only enhance the thrills of seeing how The Next Generation builds to those answers and resolutions. For a merely “pretty good” one like “A Matter of Time”, a rewatch is liable to try the viewer’s patience.
I was literally hanging off the edge of my couch and straining to listen to whatever is the secret that they have been holding back. Can't believe they still haven't dropped it.
If you watched TBBT this was an episode that foreshadows family affairs that we already know happened. We know that a young Sheldon of 13 years discovered his father had relations with another woman and that he died when Sheldon was 14. Perhaps the time has come to know how young Sheldon will lead his life knowing this and it seems that the end of this season is hinting at problems that will begin to unfold next season. We know what the plot is coming from but I don't know if we want it to happen. I hope the series continues until Sheldon finishes college!
I excused Max's tunnel vision before but poor Ryan almost choked on the words when he had to say "Gloves off".
This show has turned into a piece of crap! Talk about wasting the talent of a great cast with stupidity and propaganda minded leftist untalented writers.
Tense ep. The ending was amazing! Looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is Adam and Fina. Their on screen chemistry seems weak as hell.
That was some great Walter White at the end.
I continue to enjoy everything about this show except literally every decision Adam makes. It's a classic case of "thrilling drama weighed down by naive teenage character" (see also Homeland's early seasons).
DO Not drink everything they say 'llifeboat', you will get liver failure.
5+ hours at the hospital with blood-stained clothes and nobody has offered them a clean set?! Sometimes I wonder if the writers have ever spent time in a hospital.
Really good episode without getting mired in political dogma. Just a touch to be relevant without getting preachy.
Well, it feels a bit like a budget saver but I didn't think it was awful. I like the old vs. new angle. I don't stand on either side completely. While I think it is important to preserve the past it should not stand in the way of progress.
I like that it turned out that Janeway's relative was not quite what she believed in. It rattles a bit on her high self esteem which is a welcome thing.
And, if for nothing else, now we know where that "I only listen to myself" attitude stems from.
I’m glad we had 3 episodes to kick start us into season 3.. I needed it to remind me of Gilead life! And boy it did... Blessed day!
I still think there is some good left in Aunt Lydia,,, I’m convinced she will come through for Joan at some point.
The escape scene total threw me... I did not see that coming...
Handmaids tale has restarted with a bang... here’s to the next 10 episodes!
Under his eye!
That escape scene was one of the best things I've ever seen.
8 hours later and I'm still speechless.
Also, Elisabeth is fvcking amazing.
Wow, this whole episode was rough.
I had the impression we knew the two women on the rooftop, but to realize after the fact that they were the ones that we first met working for Lawrence... :cry:
(https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9804298/mediaviewer/rm2711204865/?context=default)
Then there's that beautifully sad escape sequence. I knew it would be sad before it even started but I thought they were going to be forced to give up before the crossing, not that.
I rolled my eyes when they put the costume back on June, thinking we were going back to square one. I did NOT expect that ending. And Radiohead to top it off. chef kiss
How is the actress that plays Mrs. Keyes only 14??!?! Wow
She's definitely an interesting character and the dynamic with her and June is interesting already.
[5.8/10] According to Star Trek: The Next Generation writer Ronald D. Moore, the show’s star, Patrick Stewart once told him that the captain doesn’t do enough “screwing and shooting in this series.” “Captain’s Holiday” plays like a corrective to that, one where Stewart gets to play a more Kirk-ian version of the captain, who becomes more of a romantic lead and a pugilist than we normally see out of the staid and dignified leader aboard the Enterprise. And if that’s the case, it’s a damn good thing TNG didn’t go with this tack more often, as the results are, if not outright awful, than still far below the standards of the rest of season 3.
There’s a corniness and, frankly, a stupidity to all of this that drags down most of the episode. It centers on Captain Picard being cajoled by his subordinates to finally take a vacation, and when he does, he becomes inadvertently embroiled in a tangle of double-crosses, treasure hunting, and a love interest. I don’t mind the concept necessarily. Episodes where our heroes take a break from exploration and get to just be themselves outside of work can be revealing, endearing us to the characters as people, not just professionals.
But the way “Captain’s Holiday” goes about it leaves plenty to be desired. I’ll confess, while the humor is broad, I enjoy some of the attempts to trick, treat, or strongarm Picard to relax away his stress with a bit of shore leave. The humor is cheesy, but Riker’s horndog attempts to convey the “pleasures” of Risa to his captain, and Troi’s implicit threat that her mother might soon come aboard got a few chuckles out of me. I even like that what persuades Picard to take the trip isn’t any of these nudges, but rather the sense that everyone will just keep nudging him if he doesn’t.
Hell, there’s even some laughs to be had down on Risa. There’s something almost Frasier-esque about Picard wanting to just sit in the sun and read his book while getting increasingly annoyed by the hoverballs, splashes, come-ons, and eventually mystery and intrigue keep interrupting. Stewart as the uptight grump forced to vacation someplace tropical is a good beat, even if it’s not enough to sustain an episode all by itself.
But from there, “Captain’s Holiday” devolves into a cut-rate, tropical version of The Maltese Falcon, with a few sci-fi elements tossed in for good measure. The MacGuffin du jour is the “Tox Uthat”, a 27th century device that can neutralize a star. It’s being pursued by Vash, a wide-smiling former assistant to a professor researching it; Sovak, an unscrupulous Ferengi who accuses Picard of being in league with her; and the Vorgons, a pair of Rainbow Fish-headed aliens who claim to be from the future. Picard being annoyed by all of these people interrupting his mandatory holiday is a mild laugh, but once he gets mixed up in their actual business, the episode quickly becomes more and more tiresome.
Some of that is just the business with Vash. It’s not as though she and Picard completely lack any chemistry, but she feels like such an off-the-shelf, generic femme fatale. The bit of spark to all of this is that she likes archeology, and that’s Picard’s entire hook for getting involved in this nonsense in the first place. But their banter and foreplay is more reheated film noir dross. The rapport and sense of “knowing one another” happens way too fast. The best thing you can say is that she seems like someone who’s better suited to hold Picard’s interest than the random conquest Riker seemed to have in mind -- which seems to be the whole point of the episode -- but there’s not enough substance or charm there for the relationship to carry what “Captain’s Holiday” needs it too.
The convoluted mystery at the center of the episode isn’t much better. Sovak is the usual sniveling Ferengi, and the cloak and dagger bits of intimidation and threats don’t make the adventure more intriguing, just more ungainly. The hokey attempts to impose on one another or double cross someone else, or reveal some other mangled bit of backstory play like the results of someone who read half a Raymond Chandler novel on the ride over before switching to an Indiana Jones movie.
Then there’s the time traveling aliens, who just make the whole thing worse. Why Picard ever trusts them to begin with is puzzling (something that Vash points out). Their very existence seems to negate the import of the story, since even though Picard destroys the artifact after uncovering Vash’s deception, presumably they can just zip back in the past and recover it before he gets the chance to since they now know his location. So what was the point? Maybe they wanted to see it destroyed, and were trying to make it happen? Who knows. It’s vague and pretty pointless to begin with.
There’s an attempt at a playful, adventuring spirit in all of this. Picard is in his best explorer gear, and there’s hidden artifacts to uncover and byzantine plots to unravel. The players just aren’t terribly interesting, the macguffin’s too convenient, and the story’s too dull and overloaded. The hunt for the Tox Uthat, and Picard’s reluctant strapping hero routine, are rote and tonally off from TNG’s usual approach.
You can see what “Captain’s Holiday” is going for with all of this -- despite the unnecessary cheesecake shots sprinkled throughout the tropical locale -- and maybe it reflects Patrick Stewart’s feelings about his character. Picard is mentally exhausted from dull diplomatic negotiations, and while everyone thinks he needs rest, what he really needed, apparently, was a different flavor of adventure and excitement to recharge. It’s the difference between his dismissive “uh huh” when Riker congratulates him on a treaty versus his slightly more chipper and knowing “mm-hmm” when Riker expresses his gladness that the trip went well.
The path to get from one affirmation to the other is some combination of dumb and exhausting, with a watered down version of the old swashbuckler shtick that feels closer to the Star Trek of the 1960s than the 1990s. But as useless as this detour feels at times, maybe it’s the sort of thing that’s simply necessary to keep your star happy.
Lord knows I’m glad we didn’t see an increase in tales of Picard “screwing and shooting.” It’s telling that this episode scans as the closest predecessor to the abominable Star Trek: Insurrection. But if it meant that Patrick Stewart was willing to stay the course for the other 20+ episodes a season, it’s a concession I’d be more than happy to make.
So... Ellen never used the bus before but conveniently in this episode she does so they could put that storyline with the bomb... Nasim had been staying in the hotel several days but nobody took the trash out? In a hotel?! This episode was seriously bad written.
Well this episode is a total waste of air time, for years I have had this series rated as 8/10 but this Elizabeth recap episode has forced me to drop my rating to a mere 5/10 and I am being overly generous!
Get rid of her - then maybe I might start enjoying The Blacklist once again.
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z2021-12-31T23:59:59Z