Next Generation, season 6

FOUR-STAR EPISODES: 4
AVERAGE EPISODE RATING: 2.8
-Time's Arrow, pt. 2 ***
The crew arrive in 19th-century San Francisco, to help data and guinan thwart predatory aliens. A very nosy mark twain gets tossed into the 24th century, until he volunteers for a one-way trip that will restore he and picard to their proper times. Wonderful elements of action and comedy, but not quite perfectly assembled...twain's interactions feel a bit two-dimensional. VOYAGER's alexander enberg plays an eager journalist.
-Realm of Fear ***
Investigating a starship disaster, it's discovered that barclay is transporter-phobic. He finally agrees to be transported, then swears he saw something in there with him. As paranoia overwhelms him, he's relieved of duty...but he disobeys orders, and discovers that the being was real - a survivor of the disaster, trapped in the transporter buffer. Another de-wightful TREK.
-Man of the People **
Enterprise escorts an ambassador (charles lucia - ROOTS: THE NEXT GENERATIONS, PEARL) to a critical negotiation. His mother dies, and troi begins acting wanton and disturbed, then aging at a hyper-accelerated rate. The negotiator is an empath who uses his victims as a receptacle for all his negative emotions. Why do so many troi episodes involve her being "invaded"? The writing is simplistic, and the plot holes plentiful. It's deanna's sexiest hour, at least. A disturbing performance by the "mother" (susan french - SOMEWHERE IN TIME, JAWS 2).
-Relics ****
-written by ronald d. moore
-directed by alexander singer
Enterprise is pulled into the gravity well of a dyson sphere. They find a crashed starship, wherein the sole survivor has locked himself inside a recycling transporter buffer for 75 years. And it's...scotty!! Does this one earn its four stars the old-fashioned way? Maybe not quite. But the story really is touching, as scotty struggles to find relevance. The resonance is fantastic, including a picard/scotty scene on a holo-recreation of the old Enterprise. An accident pulls the new Enterprise into the abandoned sphere, and it's up to two chief engineers in an ancient wreck to save them. In 79 episodes and seven feature films, doohan never had such a chance to shine.
-Schisms ***
Riker has nightmare visions, but a disturbing lack of dreams. Crew members realize they're being taken from the ship while asleep, by malignant subspace aliens. It's eerie, but the narrative thrust peters out, as though they decided to not do part 2 of the episode. You can get away with that if the sense of ominousness is pervasive, but some piece of chemistry is missing.
-True Q ***
An Academy-bound prodigy (olivia d'abo - CONAN THE DESTROYER, THE LAST GOOD TIME) interning aboard Enterprise displays super-human powers, prompting a visit from q, who reveals that her parents were q too. Q doesn't mention that he's here to judge and perhaps kill her. She crushes on riker. Olivia's performance is capable and adorable.
-Rascals *
Wow. That's just...wow. Picard, guinan, ro, and keiko get zapped in a shuttle accident, and become child versions of themselves. Ferengi capture the Enterprise, and send all the adults to work in a mine, leaving the "children" to re-take the ship. Picard (david birkin - LES MISERABLES, SYLVIA, who also played jean-luc's nephew in "Family") pretends to be will's son. It almost works, but the female child actors (especially guinan) don't quite nail the grownup acting. Some of that's on the writers - they needed to be extra sharp, and they weren't. This would go well with "Sub Rosa", if both episodes had gone unaired until twenty years later, as a convention "treat" for fans. They're so surreal, it would be a classic Spinal Tap "Is this a joke?" moment.
-A Fistful of Datas *
Red alert! Red alert! Someone's driving NEXT GEN into the ditch...er, i mean, someone's piloting NEXT GEN into a gas giant! An accident occurs while data is interfaced with the ship's computer. Worf and alexander are trapped on the holodeck while running an old west program, which malfunctions and may kill them with different evil incarnations of data. I almost gave this a pass on the strength of the lovely spiner performances (all six of them), but alexander plus forced cutesiness and an end-of-show grin that one shouldn't watch with a weak stomach...
-The Quality of Life **
Have mining outpost robots achieved sentience? Data disobeys orders on behalf of the exocomps...lovely elements that never quite take on three dimensions.
-Chain of Command 1&2 ****
-written by ronald d. moore, frank abetamarco
-directed by robert scheerer, les landau
Picard is replaced by captain jellicoe (ronny cox - DELIVERANCE, COP ROCK), a taskmaster who soon relieves will as well (and makes deanna wear a regulation uniform). Picard goes on an undercover mission and is captured by cardassians. He's tortured by gul madred (david warner - TIME BANDITS, STAR TREK VI). The idea that crusher and picard would be two thirds of a commando team is a stretch, but the stewart/warner/cox triangle towers. Will or deanna probably should have been given a line or two telling jellicoe they understand his overcompensation - as it is, they come off completely unsympathetic. And could the episode have been a shade grittier? Yes - but it's still the darkest NEXT GEN ever.
-Ship in a Bottle ***
The lovely daniel davis (THE PRACTICE, K-9) is back! Barclay unwittingly opens the moriarty holodeck file, and the professor is understandably miffed at the lack of progress on picard's promise of freedom. He fools picard, data, and barclay into thinking that he can now leave the holodeck, and insists that they find a way to give equal freedom to his hololove, the countess bartholomew (stephanie beacham - SEAQUEST 2032, BEVERLY HILLS 90210). They in turn pull the same charade on him, ultimately giving the happy couple a life of exploration in a universe they don't realize is "fake". Charming.
-Aquiel ***
A mystery unravels as geordi investigates a murder on a remote listening station, and falls for the presumed-victim-turned-prime-suspect (renee jones - KNOTS LANDING, L.A. LAW). Was it her missing, abusive superior? Was it the bullying klingon who patrolled the area? In a pleasing twist, the culprit turns out to be a coalescent impersonating said superior, and now her dog. The first non-trainwreck romance for geordi.
-Face of the Enemy **
Deanna wakes up as a surgically-altered romulan intelligence agent aboard a warbird. It turns out to be a resistance plot to get a defecting senator in stasis safely to the Federation. Does anyone have a line on whether marina is out of her depth here? Ah, the vagaries of assessing a performance within a performance. So many nice elements otherwise - a former Federation defector returned to Starfleet to face charges (with a message from spock), a suspicious romulan captain (carolyn seymour - SURVIVORS, QUANTUM LEAP), and a noble performance by troi's resistance captor (scott macdonald - ENTERPRISE, CARNIVALE).
-Tapestry ****
-written by ronald d. moore
-directed by les landau
Picard is grievously wounded, and q walks him through an "afterlife" where he can undo the parts of his life he regrets. In trying to fix the indiscreet behavior of his youth, the fabric of his personality unravels and he finds himself back on the Enterprise, as a middling lieutenant. Stewart and de lancie are never better - plus stout performances by ned vaughn (APOLLO 13, CHINA BEACH) and j.c. brandy (WOLF, HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS) as picard's Academy mates. Seamless - the only criticism i can scrape up is that the romance scenes are anachronistically uptight for the 24th century. But really, just joyously exquisite.
-Birthright 1&2 ***
While Enterprise is at DS9, data has dream visions of his father due to an accident while assisting dr. bashir. A stranger convinces worf that his father has been in a romulan prison for 23 years, and he finds a camp where survivors of Khitomer live in peace with their romulan captors. Their children have never learned what it means to be klingon. Worf has a touching romance with a half-breed (jennifer gatti - DOUBLE EXPOSURE, MOBSTERS), and takes a youth (sterling macer jr. - DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY, DOUBLE TAKE) on his first hunt. Worf restores racism to the village...yet also enables the younger generation to have the full freedom of the galaxy. Fine turns by james cromwell (SPACE COWBOYS, THE ARTIST), alan scarfe (SEVEN DAYS, ANDROMEDA) and richard herd (VOYAGER, SEINFELD).
-Starship Mine **
Jean-luc gets all ramboed up, when he finds himself facing off against impostor spacedock technicians out to pillage the ship when all the crew are planetside, as a lethal baryon sweep makes its way from the aft to the bow. Do NOT get between him and his ship - he gets a crossbow from worf's cabin. He tries to not kill, but the body count stacks up. His first victim is VOYAGER's tim russ. Below, the command crew are held hostage. Is picard unrealistically brutal? The gag of data imitating a pompous commander's small talk is the closest spiner ever comes to not being able to make a script work. Plus a prominent thread of horse-riding...but the 24th century will hopefully not see humans enslaving other species as we do.
-Lessons ***
Jean-luc falls for one of his department heads (wendy hughes - PRINCESS CARABOO, WILD ORCHID 2), and steps past his sense of discipline to romance her. She's an accomplished pianist, and he tells her about learning the ressikan flute, when he lived another life. They make beautiful duets. He almost falls apart when she almost dies on an away mission. Tender and brilliant.
-The Chase **
Picard's archaeology mentor is killed, after attempting to enlist him in a project of galactic import. Suddenly, four bickering powers are on the professor's trail, trying to solve a mystery embedded four billion years ago in the DNA of twenty different worlds. The first episode to feature klingons, romulans, and cardassians. Captain nu'daq (john cothran - GET SHORTY, BLACK SNAKE MOAN) shines. Plus DS9's salome jens (GREEN LANTERN, MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN). This one is rife with judeo/christian/muslim hyper-arrogance, unjustifiably elevating humyns above all other life forms.
-Frame of Mind ***
A good ol'-fashioned psychological thriller...and rather excellent, at that. Riker finds himself in an alien mental hospital, accused of murder. That this falls shy of highest marks is no fault of frakes, who shoulders a towering acting challenge, playing a man slipping in and out of reality, to the Enterprise and back, not knowing which is which. A more unpredictable ending might made this a classic.
-Suspicions **
Crusher puts her career (and life) on the line to prove a colleague's discredited theory. Five eminent scientists (including a vulcan, klingon, and ferengi) are aboard, when beverly is confronted with a failed experiment and two deaths she believes were not accidental. Some fine guinan (in her last regular series appearance), but something's missing...which is perhaps a testament to how much it takes to elevate a crusher episode.
-Rightful Heir ***
Worf is given extended leave, when a crisis of faith begins affecting his work. At a klingon monastery, he beholds a vision of the greatest of all warriors, and it comes to life. Kahless (kevin conway - THE ELEPHANT MAN, GETTYSBURG) is ready to lead the empire out of the petty corruptions into which it's descended. Worf finally finds full devotion, but a suspicious gowron arrives to stir up questions which lead to the uncovering of a clone, and a clerical plot. The pawn is installed as a figurehead emperor, to be a moral beacon for the empire.
-Second Chances ****
-written by rene echevarria
-directed by levar burton
Frakes gives a wonderful dual performance as riker and a duplicate who has been trapped alone on a planet for eight years, as a result of a transporter accident. New riker clashes with the old, and picks up where he left off with deanna. A thoughtful meditation on coming face to face with oneself...one assumes that one would always get along with "you" from another time, but this episode gives that assumption a good shaking. Marina also shines, in some of the best dialogue and character development deanna has yet seen. 
-Timescape ***
Picard does impressions! Returning from a conference in a runabout, geordi, data, jean-luc, and deanna must figure out why the Enterprise has been frozen in time during an encounter with a romulan warbird. They discover aliens who live in a different time frame. It goes from tight and dangerous to something less, as though brannon couldn't figure out how to end it.
-Descent, pt. I ***
During an encounter with the borg, data experiences anger (and pleasure at killing). On the holodeck, he recreates the experience, trying to understand. A borg prisoner who shows individuality and a desire to kill rather than assimilate, influences data into stealing a shuttle. In pursuit, Enterprise discovers a colony - led by lore. One of the greatest teasers ever, as data plays holo-poker with einstein, newton (john neville - THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, THE FIFTH ELEMENT), and (the real) stephen hawking.