Lonely Among Us

An energy life form stows away in the bodies of various crew members until merging with Picard and beaming out into space. Sherlock Data is on the case though so there isn't anything to worry about. Crusher wears an iHat to help with her medical diagnosis and Wesley gets too much screen time yet again. The writers even manage to throw in more Ferengi fear mongering.

We are six episodes in and we've already met three separate chief engineers. No telling what happened to McDoogle or the other guy, but Mr. Sing gets BTFO'd by the stowaway energy. After the stowaway beams Picard out into space, Picard manages to return to corporeal form via the Enterprise computer. The transporter is a truly remarkable piece of plot contrivance I mean technology.

On an unrelated note, some bipedal wolf-cat people are on board with their arch enemies the bipedal snake-man people. The only real take away from this subplot is that the federation is Vegan and that neither Riker nor Picard can be bothered with trivialities like diplomats cooking and eating one another. In their defense, Selay steaks are godd*mn delicious.

This episode is one of several reasons why Season 1 has the reputation that it does. The writers don't know what they want the show to be. The A plot is supposedly drama, and the B plot is supposedly comedy. But the A plot isn't tense, and the B plot isn't funny.

Verdict: Swing and a miss.

Fun Facts:

Chief Obrien is now in a gold uniform and he's lost his rank.

Heading 925 mark 37 instructs the helms men to complete two full circles before plotting his course. The format for heading is (Horizontal rotation) mark (vertical rotation). Its in the technical manual but you can google it.

P is for Picard.

Picard and the crew are overseeing the negotiations between to embittered rivals. There seems little chance that anything is going to get done. During this time a cloud is entered which alters the resolve of many significant crew members. Each of the principles seems to have a go at a new existence, acting strangely or putting forth dangerous actions and ideas. Somehow this cloud is responsible for this alteration. It is fortunate that there are those on the crew that are able to interpret things properly. Commander Data must act because for all his good intentions, Picard fall victim to the forces of the cloud. This type of dangerous entity is ongoing in many episodes. Also, it is up to someone other than Picard to come forth and deal with the issues. This is seldom done in these efforts. Good episode but somewhat derivative.

Indubitably...

This is actually a rather interesting episode although from the way we know that the transporter "technology" developed, The solution to this conundrum was probably not viable...

What makes this episode of note is that it is Mr. Data's discovery of Sherlock Holmes, The beginning of his lifelong interest in the character.

Plus he was actually, literally, smoking a pipe...

I thought the Anticans and Selay we're pretty interesting and funny with the Anticans preferred live game targets. Also, we have Miles Edward O'Brien walking the corridor is wearing a gold shirt, he started off wearing a red shirt.

After season one we never saw aliens of this type much, they pretty much stuck to humanoids with weird noses or foreheads, etc. I thought the Anticans rather hilarious, being totally disgusted with replicated meat- "Barbaric" as they called it...

Mr. Data used Holmesian detective techniques to figure out what was happening, and who/what was responsible.

If they had given just a little bit more details about the energy conundrum, it could have been a very interesting episode.

As it stands it is simply amusing, worth watching a few times.

Enterprise encounters a cloud of energy that has an unusual affect on some crew members.

This for me was a poor example of a Star Trek 'possession' story, that has a decent concept but is fairly tedious in its story telling.

First for the positives. I like how it's starts with a decent early exchange between Picard and Riker about Earth societies divided over God concepts and economic systems. The main sci-fi concept regarding the non-corporeal being is a good one. I also liked Picard being commanding and pushing his staff hard for answers. Also Data doing his Sherlock Holmes impression, although silly, is pretty funny.

What I struggled with was how slow and predictably the main plot unfolds. This is contrived storytelling at its most painful, to stretch out an episode and at the same time it makes characters look silly for failing to see what's going on.

As for the sub-plot, it again feels like padding and the terrible make-up and costumes seem worse when it is for the sake of something so uninspired.

The visuals are fairly good outside of the costumes, but the tendency to film everyone from low angles on the bridge continues to distract me.

Patrick Stewart gives a strong performance as always and Brent Spiner is great.

Writing in 2021, it is great to see that I am not the only person taking a retrospective look at Star Trek, the Next Generation. When this series was first released in 1987, a little less than twenty years after the end of the Original Series, many people thought that, without Captain Kirk and his crew, it couldn't really be Star Trek. However, original creator Gene Roddenberry, was fully invested in the casting, writing and overall look of the new series, so let's see how it shaped up:

In this episode we see the classic "two stories in parallel" motif with (a) an alien cloud-like entity hitching a ride and getting stuck in the Enterprise computers and (b) some comical aliens intent on eating one another rather than engaging in more conventional diplomacy. The presence of Dorothy Fontana on the writing team ensured that it kept up the pace and made sense, and the prosthetic team and guest actors excelled themselves.

Senior Trekker liked the character of Assistant Chief Engineer Singh, played so sympathetically by Kavi Raz and would much prefer to have seen him stick around than be so casually killed off. Otherwise, this was a sound establishing episode much appreciated by fans and toy-makers alike.

(Senior Trekker scores every episode with a 5)