I’ve rarely had more pleasure reviewing episodes than I did as I reviewed Parallels and The Pegasus. What great episodes! So, I’ll dive right in.
Parallels is an episode where Worf gets essentially “unstuck” from his universe, to borrow the word from Kurt Vonnegut. Returning from a bat’leth tournament, things on the Enterprise start to change, and Worf is more and more confused and things he knows for facts are suddenly not. This episode is a wild ride all the way to the end.
This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. What you may not know is that the writers were laying groundwork for a Worf/Troi romance from as far back as season five! You also may not know that Roberto Orci, one of the two writers of the 2009 Star Trek film used the rationale from this episode to justify the continued existence of the alternate reality in that movie. Check out this and other cool stuff in my full review.
The Pegasus is all about Will Riker. It was the first ship he was assigned to, presumed destroyed. His former captain comes on board (an admiral now) and says the Romulans have found it, it has experimental tech, we need to get to it before they do. As this episode progresses we find out there is much more going on than a salvage operation, and it, too, rivets from beginning to end.
You may not know that the writer of this episode got the idea from a Clive Cussler novel, Raise the Titanic. This is the second and final episode directed by LeVar Burton as well. For the ENT fans, this episode is when that series’ final episode takes place. And did you know there is an ultra-rare double Picard Maneuver, and it happens twice? Check out my full review to learn this stuff and more.
That wraps it up for this time. My plan is to have another couple of episodes done in June, so look for more posts as I continue reviewing the final season of TNG.