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Star Trek TNG: 116-118

🕑 Added 2025-07-30 12:00:06 +0000 UTC

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SpankTheMonk

So I forgot to mention this but the subtle mention of dolphins on the planet that kidnapped the kids one of the theft parents mentions they have them on their planet too. I believe this is a clever reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide by one of the writers.

Guts

2 good epsiodes and the last one was a banger. Is it me or does season 1 at its best have something that we don't get anymore after season 2? It's like a different less refined flavor than later seasons if you will. I love it.

Guts

Tried to remember where the heck I knew Radu from. The answer is X-Files.

RogueRN

I’m sure someone else has posted/requested this but just in case: if we don’t get a ‘super cut’ of all of Simone’s attempts to say the opening lines of these TNG episodes, I’m going to be very, very disappointed. ;)

Graham Mills

"Ring around the rosie" was (at least as far back as the '70s in the UK - When I were a lad) originally "Ring, a ring of roses" meaning the same as above. "Ashes, ashes" was "Atishoo, atishoo" - onomatopoeia of sneezing.

I Will Not Be Complicit In The Illicit Use Of Ill-Gotten Booty

It may be apocryphal, but it's popularly believed that "Ring Around the Rosie" refers to the Black Plague. "Ring around the rosie" is a reference to the red welts or "buboes" (hence bubonic plague) that would then form black rings of necrotic tissue. They knew nothing back then, of course, about bacteria and viruses; it was believed that diseases were caused by bad smells ("malaria" simply means "bad air"), hence "A pocketful of posies" was one of the ways used to ward off odors. "Ashes, ashes" supposedly refers to the burning of bodies because there were too many dead to be buried properly. Ending, of course, with "We all fall down." ...Sweet dreams, everybody.

LazyBoy Stays Up Late Watchin Video Tapes

118 - so hilarious, George FTW!

JoeNotCharles

I just realized that the negotiator in Too Short a Season is pretty much Kirk: giving weapons to both sides and then leaving is almost exactly what Kirk did in "A Taste of Armageddon", when he wrecked the computers that were simulating wars, and he feels like "half a man" until he can be in command of a starship again. (Plus he really, really wants to beam down and lead his own away team.)

Pearl Jam

And one of the girls that never spoke is his younger sister.

Basilisk

There's a reason that I say that Star Trek is science fiction, and Star Wars is science fantasy lol

MacGuffinStuff

This is what is so great about my Wednesdays now, Star Trek Day. It's a thing. I don't think I'd ever seen any of these 3 episodes before, I've only watched the show, all the shows, usually just random rerun episodes when I happened to still be awake. But these episodes, I'm just gonna be rewatching this show for the rest of my life, not all the time, but often 😂

SpankTheMonk

As I mentioned below- Star Trek (especially TNG) is hard science done well - and as Simone says the morals of Starfleet are a great guidepost too. It hits its stride in all levels/parts of television in subsequent seasons. No Simone and George you are beautiful bags of mostly water. I think it is funny they reused Q’s Warf microbrain insult. From ToS to TnG there must be a slew of planets with no go cones around them.

SpankTheMonk

The button to the laser redrum room had, “LCARS” on the label, neat! Data is a natural Sherlock. There is a great meme showing the engineer sad over Data smashing his drill.Geordi doesn’t see in pure visual spectrum, so his not seeing the damage as clearly as we do hence the next scene of him using those powers in the tunnel. Fire closely meets the requisite definition parameters for life. Again episodes like “Home Soil” is why I still like the early seasons. Great science fiction ideas handled maturely - most of the idea and essence of Star Trek as mentioned in the opening that Simone is hoping to sync with. I understand that the dynamics outside of this may not make must see tv, but this what makes Star Trek not another sci-fi show. When they combine all of this in the later seasons- magic. I think it is hilarious that Riker is a back Kirk, incase the diplomatic captain doesn’t work-

SpankTheMonk

In addition i believe Deanna’s ability isn’t always clearly defined so to adapt it for the story.

James Wilson

When TNG is over, I expect a full montage of every time Simone attempted to time "Space." Make it so!

SbE

Yup, George, definitely looking forward to that movie, too

Jen

I've always rationalised that Troi wouldn't be able to sense across large distance, but through viewscreen her abiltity to read people would still exceed the average person's ability as she has experienced emotions and facial expressions in tandem, so while you can sense someone might be deceiving you but it's a guess in any situation, she has a history of knowing exactly when someone's face is deceptive even absent their mental impression because of distance. It's almost like watching with Closed Captioning vs Subtitles, there's just slightly more information and it tends to be explicitly stated for her.

WastedPo

It's almost revelatory watching these TNG season 1 episodes. I spent my life actively avoiding rewatching the first season as I was pretty sure it was all terrible. And while some of the episodes do fit that description, on the whole, the writing and execution of this season is way better than I remembered.

SpankTheMonk

Hmmm might be spoiler here

SpankTheMonk

💧 👜

SpankTheMonk

🐹

Michael Kemmet

SIMONE: At the beginning of the intro, there's a continuous pitch. After a few seconds, the melody from the original series starts as single, long notes The first note happens just after the moon eclipses the Earth. "Space..." begins just after the start of the 6th note.

SpankTheMonk

You are going to grow grapes in Canada soon 😢. I always remember that kid and the calculus bit. When I saw it younger than that kid or on repeats I thought, dang the future is going to be hard. Rashella was the captain of the main ship in Starship Troopers! A little annoying that Wesley is used as a Macguffin a bit much in the early seasons.Children and families on the Enterprise was an interesting choice and I feel helps the writers, but aside from some historical examples not sure it is great decision for Starfleet/Federation. Makes more sense in other ways in Star Trek universe aspects. Is that kid chewing on a Tribble? I like that there are other alien civilizations depicted where the people have had ai and tech support so sophisticated that they have lost ability to fix or maintain. I know it is probably a common sci-fi trope but what stands out for me growing up was the opposite side of that, Idiocracy. They probably wanted babies but they wouldn’t know how to operate them. That line from Alexandra actor “Why…” “Thank You” is paying her residuals till this day.

The Real Andrew Kim

I'm gonna guess the movie George hints at at the end is Project Hail Mary. I was at the comic con Hall H panel for that last week and its one of the movies I am most looking forward to next year!

Thall

I can't wait for you to get further in. So many actors you now know from Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul alone!

Spacedone

When you look into fairy tales and nursery rhymes and their origins, they're pretty much all about some dark and weird subjects if they existed before the 20th Century. It's also surprising how old some of them are.

Thomas Larsen

If youre happy and you know it count 1 - 2 -3 *clap* 🎶 😖

Nick

“Ring Around the Rosie” is not about a plague, it’s about the plague (as in, the Black Death…bubonic plague). Ring around the rosie refers to a symptom of the plague (body rashes), pocket full of posies to the posies (small bouquets) of herbs carried to ward off the smell of death/rotting, and ashes ashes we all fall down is about dying).

The Real Andrew Kim

As for the engineer role that George asked about, the only hint I'll give is you have already met them and they are in almost every episode.

FranciscoGios

I consider myself a FULL bag of water not half or nearly empty but a FULL nasty bag of water.

Zero Cochrane

George, with that 40K reference. Nice 👍

REDR58

When The Bough Breaks: Speaking of ships losing their bows, that has happened in war (and peacetime) quite a bit, but may not be disastrous as you might expect! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H6r-0r4sS8 Jerry Hardin who plays "Radue" is probably most famous to fans of "The X-Files" but you will also see him in TNG again down the line in a different role portraying a real life person! But more about that when we get there... You also saw him in "Big Trouble in Little China." My biggest question about transporter technologies is how do they get people from a seated position to a standing one as we see happen in this episode? The older brunette girl looks like my niece! You saw Brenda Strong before in "Spaceballs" as "Nurse Gretchen" and in "Starship troopers" as "Captain Deladier" who goes down with her ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWd2N9snavk The last shot of the mysterious power core/computer thing looked pretty cool. George, I will not stand for this continuing denigration and insults directed at the Ferengi! Home Soil: I don’t understand how the director can refuse people from the Federation to have access in any way, as he seems to be employed by them. Speaking of whom, you are going to see the actor Walter Gotell again in some James Bond movies! Fun reactions!

REDR58

That is Brenda Strong!

KnittingHaven

I always thought London Bridge is falling down and Jack and Jill were a bit dark, too, even as a child. But then, you know, the original version of fairy tales are all pretty horrific. I've read psychology stuff about that, like how horror stories like that help children learn to deal with scary reality or something like that. Also, the third boy in the group that was kidnapped, who never spoke, is Wil Wheaton's younger brother.

Henchmen21

Not just Gene though. Go look back at tv from the 50s/60s/70s. It's just how it was done. Finally we started to see pushback on that by the 80s and by the 90s it had stopped.

p0sthum4n

Lmao knew I recognized her. The chick from Aldea is Sou Ellen Mishky from Seinfeld.

Jpsynergy

Three chances to get the Space timing right this week. I believe in you Simone. edit: You got this, next week. Good job George lol

Gary Fixler

Hello, fellow ugly bags of mostly water. I had forgotten about that one.

Pearl Jam

Home Soil makes me think of the reverse of the crystal entity attacking Data’s home planet in Datalore.

PIG

The two that George enjoyed are some of my favorite S1 episodes. When talking to students, I bring up "When the Bough Breaks" every time I talk about AI growing and taking over, why they need to still go to school and keep trying. I also mention "ugly bags of mostly water" when talking about animals and humans in the bio sections of class, how we view life at the most basic levels. I also felt pushback and scoffing from other Trek fans when mentioning the two episodes. It's like different worlds, and I really like that you brought it up!

Henchmen21

Well, it's simply training. Without going too spoilery it is shown that all officers no matter what field their in undergo at least minimal firearm (or would that be phaserarm in this case lol) training with those going into the security side getting more extensive training

Dan

I don't think the writers did though :)

Henchmen21

It's interesting to see George's takes on these considering he's liked ones that the general fandom has considered weak or mid tier at best. It's going to be fun seeing his top 5 for season 1

REDR58

Simone and George (and everyone else!) I’m sitting here waiting for Fantastic Four to start at my local IMAX theater and there was just an ad for the 30th Anniversary re-release of Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks in IMAX format this coming September. I have no idea if or when it will be re-released in Canada in this format but if it is I *highly* recommend you try to see it. I never saw Apollo 13 in the theaters back when it was first released but I’ll definitely be seeing it this way in September. The IMAX trailer looked amazing. https://www.imax.com/news/apollo-13-30th-anniversary-re-release-in-imax

Robert Cooper

Re tone at the end of episodes, "Close with smile-on-the-bridge" was part of Gene's episode structure bible going back to TOS. It doesn't always work, and it goes away after season 1.

Piep

Damn George you nailed that "space" on the third episode,not sure if there was any editing magic but if not i can´t see Simone do a better one. I hope she didn´t noticed that one or her heart will be broken

Dan

1:51:51 Now that's the time to attack the Enterprise - Data and La Forge both push their consoles away and get up at the same time, while the tactical and other officers at the back of the bridge are also swapping over. Got to be worth a free shot or two.

Thomas Yanez

Guinea pigs don't eat their own babies. You're thinking of hamsters. Hamsters will go to town on their whole progeny at the drop of a hat. Stress is a bitch for hamsters.

Alan Kobb

You commented that Too Short A Season was about "just another cold war episode about arming both sides". Actually, this episode came out in 1988 as the Iran-Contra scandal became public. In this scandal, at a time when Iraq was still friendly of the US, in an attempt to buy freedom for terrorist hostages, members of the Reagan administration in the US secretly sold arms to Iran, which was at war with Iraq. Hardly shockingly, the terrorists kept on going back on their promises to return the hostages, and Reagan;s people kept on shipping more arms, hoping that eventually they would get the hostages back, and once this all became public, Iraq started acting against the US's interests and eventually we went to war against Iraq. In the end, both countries were still angry at each other, but faound peace over their common enemy, the country that armed them against each-other. The similarity to this episode was certainly intended.

Jomero

I don't know why in the Federation that the second you are promoted to the rank of "Admiral" you become a selfish, stubborn, intolerant, ignorant, impatient, asshole. It's a recurring theme in all of Trekdom, over and over.

Robert Cooper

So, theoretically they won't fuse into the chair because on TNG the transporters have safeguards for that and would beam them back. There is an incident like this on Enterprise with the older transporters where someone gets beamed during a windstorm and ends up with leaves and twigs embedded in them.

TomGas2025

The planetname Aldea sounds almost like the.portugues Word for Village = Aldeia.

Mastervodo

"Ring around the Rosies" - rash connected with bubonic plague. "Pocket full of posies" - flowers people carried to ward off the smell of the disease. "Ashes, Ashes. We all fall down" - cremating bodies. Everybody dead. Plague. Fun times.

Mastervodo

One thing to note on "Home Soil". When Data is in the lab, the laser fires at Data and then he dodges. Which means, it is canon that Data can move faster than the speed of light.

Joe Stacey

It's not "ring around the rosie", it's "ring a ring o' roses"

Mike FromOz

...fuck! 😄

REDR58

One more thing about “Too Short a Season,” I’ve always wondered how the heck people aim those hand phasers. They don’t have any obvious sights and the Away Team just point generally in the direction of a target. Maybe it’s Auto Aim. 😄 Edit: and holy cow, Jameson in profile at the end when they beam down one last time looks like MacGyver! https://youtu.be/4hAgFxKIm7Y?si=0erAiHDuWCFYtODK

Chase Lonnergan

"When the Bough Breaks" is one of the most significantly frustrating episodes in TNG. The solution is so incredibly obvious right from the beginning, and NOBODY thinks of it. It annoys the absolute crap out of me every time I watch it.

REDR58

Given that the Enterprise is described as Starfleet’s “flagship” and naval flagships are used by naval admirals to command in the field, it is appropriate for Jameson to use the Enterprise to complete his mission. Again, in modern navies, admirals command *fleets* from a flagship but do not generally command the ship itself. Jameson even says he’s commanding the mission and away team as “Senior Mission Officer., but then immediately, “Of course, Captain, you command the ship.” Nothing unusual about that.

Doug

"I'm not even gonna try it this time" Meanwhile George nails it first try

REDR58

"Too Short a Season" sounds like a Terry Jacks' song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPcc1ftj8E "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun..."

GAB

While the usual consensus is that silicon-based life is not possible due to its more limited chemistry than carbon, experiments and theory do suggest that minerals such as the clay montmorillonite and iron pyrite (fool's gold) might have been essential for the development of life on Earth. We shouldn't rule out the possibility that life elsewhere is not carbon-based. The NASA definition of life is "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution". Even the phrase "chemical system" might be too limiting. Perhaps "pattern" might be a better choice if the substrate were not chemical.

A Red Mage Named Blue

If the Aldeans had simply offered to act as a form of orphanage, all of their problems could have been solved And the situation with Karnas is similar to a TOS episode, where Klingons gave a primitive tribe flintlocks, and Kirk ended up choosing to give the other tribes similar weaponry in order to uphold the Prime Directive as best he could.

David Szoke

The YT intakes are pretty funny

Andi Herr

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but you please react to the bloopers after each season?

GAB

The Federation obviously forgot about the silicon-based Horta on Janus VI (TOS: "Devil in the Dark").

Carlos Perez

I'm trying to catch up on the movie reactions and now you throw in TNG. No way I'm ever going to finish lol 🤓

Mastervodo

I am loving Ssssssp....fuck Wednesdays!

Deano 42

I've been waiting for him to figure that out ... missed opportunity on his part.

A Red Mage Named Blue

I fully recommend Googling images of Clayton Rohner, who played Admiral Jameson. He aged incredibly gracefully

Tall Paul

George, it is 1,2,3 engage on Star Trek day!

david 0490

I thought that was Hector Salamanca

david 0490

. . . . SPACE . . . .

BubblyRainbows

About the Itsy Bitsy Spider nursery rhyme. My Uncle used to sing two more verses of it, and the second and third, if I recall correctly, are about the spider biting and killing mom, and then killing the baby in the crib too.

Imthecatman

It's trash, for the most part..and I say that as a big fan of pre-discovery Trek

WayneC

"You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

Mike W

As much as I love TNG I do find this first season a bit weak. I would usually skip it on a rewatch. Nice to see other people's reaction to it though

Kane Is Able

I don't know how George spotted the old person makeup. He must be some sort of savant!

Ken Quick

Karnas in "Too Short A Season" was played by Michael Pataki, who we previously saw in "The Trouble with Tribbles" as the Klingon who provoked Scotty into starting the bar brawl.

JakeyShakeyBakeyBoy

Okay time of the week for another “sssfuck” haha. Jesting aside “Too Short A Season” was the first TNG episode I ever saw back in my pre-teen days so it’s a trip to check it out in this context all these years later ☺️