This episode will find a way to break your heart.

PLOT

there are a ton of federation outposts being attacked by unidentified assailants. Beverly Crusher runs DNA analysis and determines that the attackers are in fact humanoids from the sector. so picard then goes to talk to them and what not. turns out, it wasn’t them exactly, but rather some members of their species (called the “gatherers”) that separated from them 100 years ago citing “cultural differences.” AKA, they wanted to kill and fight, like, I don’t know, Klingons or Romulans.

Well, Picard can’t have this. So he organizes diplomacy between the two groups so they can stop fighting each other and/or innocent research facilities.

SUBPLOT

THe person leading the more civilized group is called “Sovereign” and she has a servant girl. The servant girl is tentatively in love with Riker, probably because Riker is super sweet to her… *so cute… vomits everywhere*. Regardless, turns out…

SPOILER

Servant girl is actually like, a 100 years old, although she looks twenty-something. Only 5 people in her “clan” survived a massacre committed by an opposing group. At that time, they chose her to go on a long-term mission that would involve killing all the members of the opposing group. When she had murdered everyone on her planet, she gets an in with the sovereign, increasing her chances of getting off world and coming in contact with the last few members of the murderous other group.

So essentially, the majority of her life has been spent hunting down people to kill. So she’s a little… psychologically impaired. But still a sweet person. Very sad.

Oh yea, and then it turns out that the leader of the gatherers is the very last person she has to kill. Riker and Crusher determine this on the Enterprise while Picard is heading up negotiations between the two groups. Riker rushes over and tells everyone that the servant girl is going to kill the gatherers’ leader. She explains that she can’t just not kill him. Riker stuns her twice, but she keeps going for him. You’d think they could transport her back to the Enterprise or something, but no. Riker kills her and she evaporates into the wind, a result of phaser fire.

I don’t know what is more offensive: that Picard didn’t seemed distressed by his first officers unimaginative and merciless action or that Riker made out with a total cougar.

It’s one of those episodes! Where the writers got lazy and want to do a lot of retrospective clips showing what the Enterprise has gone through in the last two seasons! Yes, if you were somewhat aroused by the title, don’t be: this episode is boring.

The vehicle for this episodes blase plot is Riker. While down on a planet doing a routine planetary investigation with Geordi, he gets bitten by a vine. The vine, as it turns out, has infected him with microbes that swarm his nervous system.

William Thomas Riker could die! OH NO!

But the Dr. Pulaski and Troi discover that by making Riker feel sad and angry emotions via the neural wave emitter, they can slow and possibly stop the infection from taking over Riker’s CNS. 

We thus spend the rest of the episode watching/reliving Riker’s most pertinent memories. Personal favorite? Minniaturette, the program from the episode “10011100,” makes a return, and the love Riker has for her is almost too real. It breaks my heart, actually, which is weird, because I could care less about Riker. 

Which is why this episode sucks! Although, in a strange way, I guess I kind of like Riker. But what I really miss is the way he looked in Season 1. GAH. Stupid Beard.

The Enterprise receives a distress call from a Starfleet vessel. When they get to the scene, however, they find everyone has died of old age. 

They then discover that a nearby research facility (that has been working on perfecting humans) had come in contact with the Starfleet vessel and are now dying from the strange disease. Dr. Pulaski fights with Picard to be allowed to help them and their genetically engineered children. She eventually wins the right, but in the process, catches the disease.

THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE OF SEASON 1!!!

HUMANOID 1: “We have no other industry.”
PICARD: “None at all?”
HUMANOID 2: “We don’t need any. The Onarans provide us with everything we need in exchange for this.”
DATA: “Fascinating. Your society, dedicated exclusively to the production of a single product.
PICARD: “A product for which you have no use but which the Onarans can’t live without.”

HUMANOID 2: “The Onarans provide us with the necessities of life, and we provide them with the necessities of living. It is a fair exchange.”

THAT’S ALL I’M GOING TO SAY. YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS EPISODE. 

CRUSHER AND PICARD WANT YOU TO WATCH THIS EPISODE.

…and when the bough breaks the cradle will fall
and down will fall baby, cradle and all.

You guessed it! Kidnapping! Responding to a distress signal, the Enterprise attempts to give medical help to a group of people who have lost the ability to reproduce. Their youngest child is now in her late 20s/early 30s, and people are freaking out. Also of note, the planet was able to shield itself with a ginormous cloaking device made about a millennia ago. Because they had no reason to fear outside disruptions, the populace left sciences to pursue various types of art. 

But the people are really upset that they can’t have children. So they kidnap, LITERALLY kidnap, several children from the Enterprise. Including Wesley. And refuse to give them back. I should say that they promise to be very kind to the children, and in fact, all the children are adopted into homes and are taught, in an apprenticeship fashion, art skills from painting, to music, to whittling. Beverly Crusher freaks out appropriately. Meanwhile, Wesley leads a silent protest of being kidnapped, which is amusing, because he’s like KING of the CHILDREN. 

Beverly eventually discovers that the shield that kept the planet out of sight also increased the amount of radioactivity everyone was subjected to, leading to sterility. Womp womp. People do crazy things when they’re sterile (see: Children of Men). Beverly then treats people so that they are no longer sterile. Huzzah. End of Episode.

QUOTE
“I’m not going back. I hate that teacher and I hate calculus.” - Seven-year-old
“Everyone needs an understanding of basic calculus, whether they like it or not.” - Seven-year-old’s Father

“Angel One” Ep. 14 Season 1 TNG

Riker is deeply worried that he is a manslut.

The Enterprise arrives at the planet Angel One, which boasts a matriarchal society, looking for a human crew that may have crash landed on the planet. Eventually it is discovered that there are survivors, but they are dudes that have refrained from joining the society and are creating tensions in order to revolt against the female class. Actually they just want to live as equals. But the leading mistress wants to kill them all because they are fugitives for even suggesting that men should be equal to women. Onboard the Enterprise, Wesley brings aboard an illness which his mother has to find the cure for.

SUBTITLE
DAMN GOOD QUOTES

Harry Mudd is back! And he looks grosser than ever before. He managed to escape his android prison by stealing a spaceship. 

This time Mudd is selling a love drug that clearly has not been FDA approved. 

So Mudd exploits Nurse Chapel’s inherent interest in Spock to start peddling his drugs to the Enterprise crew persons. GODDAMN YOU CHRISTINE! I LOVE YOU! WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS? YOU’RE A SCIENTIST DAMMIT! 

“You are not just a beautiful woman. You are a scientist.” - Harry Mudd to Christine; if said by literally any other person, this would be quite a complement. I HATE YOU MUDD. 

To summarize, go to around minute ten and listen to the following conversation:

SPOCK: “Captain, um… Doctor… I wish to report… a number of very… um… emotions.”
McCOY: “What?”
KIRK: “What?”

You know what? Screw it. I’ll record it for you myself. 

“If the Enterprise had a heart, I’d save her, too.” - McCoy trying to pick up some rando

“I’ve got a hangover to shame all previous hangovers.” - Scotty

MUDD: “Think I’ll get rehabilitation treatment again?”
SPOCK: “I guarantee it.”

1) A cloud is consuming planets.

2) The cloud threatens to destroy a planet called “Mantilles.”

Wedge? Wedge Mantilles? It strikes me as a RIDICULOUS name.

3) I believe Captain Kirk only invokes the prime directive when it serves his own, selfish purposes.

4) While Captain Kirk is talking to a planet’s governor, he tells the governor that Katie will be alright. When McCoy asks “Who’s Katie?” Kirk says: “He’s daughter. She’s eleven.” WTF? How do you KNOW that? I barely even remember my middle name. And yet Kirk is just galavanting around with all the knowledge of his acquaintances’ children floating around in his head. WTF?

5) This episode is actually a fascinating examination of what people think antimatter is. And, two quick questions:

first, does antimatter explode if it touches ANY form of matter?

second, if that’s the case, air is matter, so wouldn’t antimatter explode if it was in something other then a vacuum? 

6)  At the end of the episode the Enterprise has to remove itself from an energy being which is pretty much organized like the human body. Spock informs the Captain that they can exit from a grit (?) at the top of the brain, saying that this is a place where sensory information is received. He must be talking about the cribiform plate! Thru which olfactory nerves pass. MEDICAL ANATOMY FTW.

Responding to a distress call (so I’ve noticed something, most of the time you respond to a distress call, something horrible happens), they beam down but find no one. All that they seem to notice, besides the uninhabited ruins of a once great city, is a faint, intermittent buzzing. While down on the planet, one of the redshirts disappears. That isn’t to say the redshirt dies in some horrific, classical way: he just… disappears. 

So they beam back to the Enterprise, but the buzzing persists. Also, a strange machine appears in one of the science laboratories. When Spock and Kirk attempt to disable it, they encounter a force field of some sort. Well, that’s annoying. Then things get weird.

Kirk’s just sitting in his captain’s chair, chilling out. He takes a sip of coffee, and then… everything slows down…

I knew I had seen that before. Anyway, Kirk’s been “sped up” by people who perpetually live at a much faster rate than other humanoids. The cause was abiotic, and now there are only a handful of people left. They are under control by a “queen” of sorts, oh, and FUN STUFF, the men are all sterile due to their affected metabolisms. So essentially, the few women left speed up whatever men come by in response to their distress call (it’s always a trap!) and then mate with them. AAAAAAW yea. Except now that they’ve gotten aboard the Enterprise, they’re planning to freeze it (that’s that machine with the force field I was telling you about), so that they can keep a much larger pool of men at their disposal. 

Basically, they’re bees.

Also, when people “speed up” the only thing that really happens is that the camera tilts like 35 degrees and people around them stop moving. Oh special effects! I love you!

This is the best classical science fiction plot in any episode I’ve seen thus far.

Main plot: There’s a giant asteroid hurtling through space, and it’s going to crash into a planet of several billion people in little over a year. The Enterprise begins to investigate… but surprise, it’s not an asteroid… it’s a self sustaining… ship of some sort. So Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down and start investigating… it looks like a planet almost… They are attacked by natives who rise up from out of the ground. But once assured that Starfleet isn’t evil, the natives take them underground and show them their civilization…. which is ruled over by an Oracle who instructs everyone on conduct. They have been on this ship for 10,000 years, except they’ve been told by the Oracle that it’s an actual planet. Oh yea, and they don’t know they’re going to crash into a planet, and oh yea… they’ve all been made obedient because they have implants in their neck which cause pain when they talk about things they shouldn’t talk about…

This becomes apparent when an old man begins conversing with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and talks about how surprised he is to see outsiders. He’s a curious old man, and he tells them about one time when he was walking around outside, even though it was forbidden, and he saw something unusual… he begins to describe it, but his neck implant begins to burn or something, and the stress is too much and he begins to die, but his last words are probably the most beautiful: “But things are not as they teach us. For the world is hollow and I have touched the sky.”

Subplot: Oh my god, it’s love at first sight! The high priestess, Natira, is literally in love with McCoy, and either she’s a great actress or I’m just glad that an alien woman falls in love with someone who’s not Kirk, but I completely bought it! Also adding to the drama, McCoy has an incurable disease and he’s literally going to die within the year (he has xenopolycythemia, which destroys a person’s immune system by destroying their white blood cells. that’s right, I think star trek predicted HIV/AIDS). Anyway, Gah! McCoy is literally the least sexed person on board the Enterprise, and although I’m sad he’s dying, I’m happy to see him spending his last year with someone who loves him unconditionally. Huzzah. Natira also has a strange grip on pronouns, so she keeps saying things like: “Does McCoy wish to stay with me?” Almost as endearing as: “I love you”//”I know.”

Blah, I won’t tell you what happens because I demand that you see it. But oh my god, if you like cheesy old science fiction movies, this episode is great. 

(fine, I’ll tell you that McCoy doesn’t end up dying in a year… he lives!)

FUTURAMA!!!! 

In one of the episodes of Futurama, the Planet Express crew gradually gets younger & younger. Leela offers to read them an assortment of children’s stories, including “Charlotte’s Tholian Web.”

Anyway, the Enterprise runs into the USS Defiant, floating dead in space. A group of people beam aboard to check it out. Everyone onboard killed each other, more or less. And then something odd happens, the USS Defiant begins to disappear!!! Unfortunately, Scotty can only beam back 3 people because space and time are acting weird… and there’s 4 over there! So Kirk stays behind. And then the USS Defiant disappears. And so does Kirk. 

Spock takes command and almost immediately damages the ship beyond repair. Tholians have engaged them, and now, after taking heavy fire and returning some,  they have incapacitated a Tholian ship but are now very low on power. And they are stuck. They don’t dare move because they’re trying to figure out when Kirk will phase back into existence, and they have to time it right.

Moving isn’t a problem though, because the Tholians begin building a giant, spherical web around the Enterprise made from highly energetic and dangerous material. 

Suffice to say, people onboard begin to go crazy, a side effect of “interphasing.” McCoy also begins attacking Spock personally, blaming him for the captain’s death… which is a little harsh, since Kirk and Spock are clearly in love. McCoy… you BASTARD. Spock has to give a eulogy for Captain Kirk and it’s an incredibly painful thing to watch. Good thing Kirk’s last will and testament orders both of them to get along! But then Kirk keeps reappearing briefly to everyone on the ship, and it is weird…. Anyway, suffice to say math, biophysics, and luck allows them to rescue the captain, create a cure for interphasing madness (which is a type of Klingon liquor!), and escape the Tholian web. HURRAY SCIENCE!

also, tholians look like a cross between spiders and viruses. they also have highly synthesized voices, combining female and male voices and overlaying them. it’s WEIRD.

FINAL SEASON. 

a woman beams aboard the Enterprise, knocks everyone unconscious, and steals Spock’s brain. Don’t worry, they can put him on life support. actually, even cooler than that, THEY MAKE SPOCK INTO A ROBOT. Did not know that was an option. 

So Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty go to figure out where Spock’s brain is. Turns out he’s being used as a computer, because clearly using a vulcan brain to control stuff makes sooooo much sense. I’m sorry. Brains are amazing, but computers are traditionally superior. The society they find is actually really dumb… they have minds like children. And they also separate themselves by gender, which is hilarious when the men are like, “the imorg give us much pleasure and pain.” yep.

eventually mccoy does surgery and spock returns to normal. huzzah.

SUBTITLE
Silver Foxes & one Sexy Endocrinologist.

QUOTES
McCOY: Oh, anytime you’re ready Mr. Spock.
SPOCK: I am quite ready now doctor.
McCOY: Because of your Vulcan physique I’ve prepared an extremely potent shot for you. However I thought you’d like to know that I’ve removed all the breakables from sick bay.
SPOCK: That is very considerate of you doctor. 

PLOT
Five members of the Enterprise begin to age rapidly after beaming down to a science colony devastated by a similar affliction. Except for Chekov. Chekov doesn’t age. Because in Russia… you age space radiation!

The episode bothers me because they bring in an endocrinologist who literally talks with the same breathy effervescence as marilyn monroe. Listen, I’m all for women being whatever they want to be, whether it’s being sexy, an endocrinologist, or both. But if you talk like that, I’m not going to believe you made it through how many years of space graduate school you needed to complete. (It’s like when I hear men talk with a Long Island/New Jersey accent, I assume they are incapable of having class or intelligence). So yes, that’s annoying. Also, turns out sexy endocrinologist likes older men, so as Kirk gets older she becomes more attracted to him (they had a relationship in the past, just like pretty much every woman scientist on board the Enterprise). AWKWARD. WOMANIZER.

Anyway, Spock determines that they were exposed to a weird type of radiation, probably from a comet that passed through the galaxy a little while back. They also discover that Chekov isn’t aging because he had a rush of adrenaline on the planet after seeing a dead body. Then McCoy, who has been talking with a southern accent this entire episode, remembers that in the 1960s, during the nuclear age, they used adrenaline to fight radiation poisoning, not hyronalin, which is what everyone uses nowadays. They’re cured.

Subplot? A commodore is on the ship, and watching both Kirk and Spock become afflicted by illness, he takes control of the ship, assuming that both are unfit for command (they kinda are). But he orders the ship INTO NEUTRAL SPACE to get to a starbase faster. And immediately the Enterprise is attacked by Romulans. IDIOT! Kirk is cured just in time to come back to the bridge. Actually having captained many space ships in the past (this commodore has only been in charge of starfleet’s bases and what not), Kirk is able to escape from the romulans. The trick? Romulan ships are much, much slower than starfleets. Day is saved! End of episode. 

OBSERVATIONS
I tried to figure out if people actually use adrenaline for radiation poisoning, but the only sites I got sent to were Memory Alpha (Star Trek’s wiki) and the House wiki, so who really knows.