Happy New Year! I was thinking it would be tough to push through the reviews during the holidays, and I was right. Still, I was able to do some work and am happy to announce the completed reviews for Birthright, Part II and Starship Mine.
The second half of Birthright is pretty good. All of the stuff with Data in part I is gone, and we only focus on Worf and his POW camp experience. Worf learns the Klingons there were knocked unconscious and not allowed to die, and that their children have no idea they are a warrior race. Worf is not allowed to leave and spread word of the camp, so he decides to teach the adolescents what it means to be Klingons, which destabilizes everything.
As I said part II is fine, but to me it just feels like a regular episode, not as though this is the ‘exciting conclusion’ to a special two-part episode. What happened to James Cromwell, who played the alien who got him involved in all this stuff in the first place? Turns out they had to reduce the part dramatically because he broke his leg between filming the two parts! Check out my full review if you’d like to know more.
Starship Mine is a pretty enjoyable episode by comparison. The Enterprise needs to get rid of its beryon radiation, so the ship is evacuated as the scan to remove it is lethal. Picard goes back to the ship to get his saddle and stumbles into the plot of Die Hard! It’s the captain of the flagship against a cadre of thieves against the backdrop of a lethal beam that is is slowly sweeping the ship.
The behind-the-scenes fact that practically everyone knows is that Tim Russ, who plays one of the thieves in this episode, will go on to play Tuvok in Voyager. The fact that Picard essentially gives him the Vulcan nerve pinch is something I love. You may not know that he will play another character in DS9 before Voyager starts. Which one? Check out my full review to find out. You may also spot an actress that will go on to play a major character in Babylon 5 as well!
Next time it’s the vomit-worthy Lessons and the only slightly better The Chase.