Star Trek: The Next Generation Reviews T

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Final Mission” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“The Loss” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.

“Data’s Day” See this for a plot summary.

Something kind of political is a mention of the Hindu Festival of Lights being celebrated on the Enterprise, a sign that there are some in Starfleet who still believe in “Old Earth” religions

“The Wounded” See this for a plot summary.

This episode has some interesting stuff about war, and also about one of my favorite characters, Miles O’Brien.

1. Although later in TNG and DS9 we see O’Brien’s intermittent hostility (which could be called bigotry) towards the Cardassians, there’s one moment where he talks as if he has no problem with the Cardassians. His wife Keiko has to explain to him that there are people in the Federation who don’t like the Cardassians.

2. In the ship’s bar O’Brien talks with one of the Cardassians. He apologizes for a minor incident earlier. The Cardassian says that a massacre of civilians they carried out was a “terrible mistake,” and that they’d been told it was a military target.

O’Brien talks about an incident when he incinerated a Cardassian soldier with a phaser and how that was the first time he killed anything. He says “it’s not you I hate, Cardassian- I hate what I became, because of you.”

I give it two stars out of five.