Star Trek episode reviews: A Matter of Time and New Ground

A Matter of Time

My reviews are complete for episodes nine and ten of season five: A Matter of Time and New Ground. Life has gotten in the way a bit, but I’ve managed to barely keep things from going longer than a month between posts.

A Matter of Time is an episode I usually look forward to seeing when it’s on the air, or if I get a hankering to watch the whole series again. It’s a rare bright spot of levity and light in a very serious fifth season. A professor from nearly 300 years in the future appears and tells them he’s there to document them and ask some questions, while denying answering any questions of his own. His visit happens to coincide with a rescue mission to help colonists on a planet that have just had an asteroid crash onto it. Professor Rasmussen has a lot of fun teasing the crew with various comments peppered throughout the show, while things get more and more dire on the planet. Something seems off with the ‘professor’ and learning more about him and his true aims are enjoyable and the twist is one I didn’t see coming.

What you may not know is that Matt Frewer was a backup choice to play Rasmussen. Originally Robin Williams was set to play him! Unfortunately his commitment to play in the great masterpiece of a film Hook *rolls eyes* prevented him due to scheduling conflicts. Oh what might have been! Meanwhile Marina Sirtis used the bridge set to film a little promo of her own for a university. Learn more and watch a video of the promo on my full review.

While the previous TNG entry is a delight, New Ground is an episode I have to suffer through. The Enterprise is participating in the testing of a new kind of propulsion system, the soliton wave. While orbiting the planet starting the experiment, Worf’s mom pays a brief visit and drops off his son, Alexander, permanently! The focus of this episode is not on the ridiculous soliton wave–which promptly goes awry like just about every bit of new tech on TNG–but rather on a father and son learning how to relate to one another. This forgettable and uninteresting episode comes up short of its goal of entertainment, though it’s not outright terrible.

It’s hard not to notice that they’ve cast a new actor to play Alexander, Brian Bonsall. Anyone who watched Family Ties would recognize him as a Keaton kid. He does do a good job, even if we have to deal with the albatross that is Alexander taking up space on the show for six more episodes after this appearance. For those paying attention to continuity, however, Alexander should only be about three years old here, as he was born at approximately the time the Booby Trap episode takes place. For a full explanation of this mutant fast-growth strain of Klingon, as well as why he’d have been better utilized on DS9, click here to check out my full review.

Next time I’ll be summarizing my reviews of Hero Worship, a pretty good episode, and Violations, a virtual gang rape of an episode.