This is the penultimate post about Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wow, it feels a little surreal to write those words given how long I’ve been doing this. It’s true though, this time I’ve reviewed Emergency and Preemptive Strike, and there’s only one episode left after that. So, here we go:
Emergence. What a forgettable pile of crap. This is the episode where the Enterprise ‘gives birth’, and if you don’t remember a whole lot of what goes on, you’re not alone. There’s a train, the passengers are heading to “Vertiform City”, ultimately the ship reproduces and everything ends. It’s arguably the most forgettable of all the forgettable episodes this season. the only good thing I can think of to say about Emergence was that it aired on May 9th, which was my 19th birthday.
You may not know the whole reason this episode exists is one of the writers wanted to have one more holodeck episode before the series ended. The train looks pretty good because it was the same train used in Bram Stoker’s Dracula which had recently come out. Check out my full review if you want to read more, maybe I wrote something interesting in relation to an uninteresting episode!
Preemptive Strike is a more interesting episode, but most anything would be. This is the last Ensign Ro episode, though technically she is now lieutenant Ro. Becuase of the newly-formed demilitarized zone along the Federation/Cardassian border lots of Federation citizens are being picked on, and an extremist resistance cell, the Maquis, were formed as a result. They are jeopardizing the treaty, and Ro happens to be visiting, so Picard and an admiral recruit her to infiltrate a Maquis cell, and in the end she joins them.
This is the only episode I recommend watching a couple of DS9 episodes before viewing, otherwise you may feel a little left out in what is going on. I have instructions in my review. You may not know that at this point in the show the cast got pretty silly between takes, and Michael Dorn tells a really funny story about he and Brent Spiner in this episode. If you check out my full review I have a link to Michael telling the story, as well as why the producers did the Maquis in a TNG episode.
Only one more episode and one more post to go for all of TNG! It’s been ten years in he making in my case, so stay tuned–there’s no way I’ll do all this work and not review the series finale. See you then…