I’m doing my best to stay on pace, so far so good! This time we have episodes three and four of season seven, the lamentable Interface and the mediocre Gambit, Part I.
Interface is all about Geordi and his mommy. Geordi has developed a neural interface, putting him in control of a probe with his thoughts. He can use its sensors to see and touch through it directly, etc, because of his VISOR connectors. Geordi finds out that his mother, a starship captain, has disappeared along with her whole ship, which he doesn’t really deal with. A ship went down in the atmosphere of a gas giant, and Geordi uses his probe to descend and search the ship for survivors. They all died, but then mama appears. The rest if him being obsessed with the idea she is alive, but she isn’t. As Obi-Wan would say, it’s ‘another pathetic life form.’
You may not know that the two guest stars, Ben Vereen and Madge Sinclair, were both costars in the mini-series and role that made LeVar Burton famous: he was Kunta Kinte on Roots. You may also not be aware that The scene where Riker consoles La Forge of his loss was written by Jeri Taylor when it was discovered the show was running short on time. The scene was not filmed until after Phantasms, three episodes later! Click the link to check out more stuff along with my full review.
Next up is Gambit, Part I. I guess they weren’t even trying to surprise us with a two-parter, though I do respect that. Don’t you hate when you’re watching a show, there’s five minutes left and you start thinking “they’re not going to be able to tie this up!” This episode starts with the crew investigating a dive bar to discover that Picard was killed here. Yeah right. Everyone accepts that he’s dead but Riker gets permission to find out who killed him. He gets kidnapped during a phaser fight only to find himself on a pirate ship, and who’s also on it? Picard! After he pulls some shenanigans to keep Riker alive he fills him in, in private: these guys are up to no good, they’re stealing Romulan artifacts. We can’t let ’em do that, it’s just not cricket! The Enterprise shows up ready to kick some tail, but Riker orders them to stand down and then fires on them.
There are quite a few things going on behind the scenes to know about. For example, did you know Sondra from The Cosby Show is in it? How about that the actress who plays the Vulcan also played Saavik in Star Trek III and IV? Do you know why Gene Roddenberry would’ve hated and vetoed this episode? Check out the detail sin my full review.
The next two episodes up for review are (unsurprisingly) Gambit, Part II and Phantasms. Look for another post in a month, and another review completed in the next couple of weeks.