OTNGEG - The Child

[DaveJB]

http://sfdebris.blip.tv/file/5143864/

Sadly, the inevitable has happened - CBS forced Chuck to remove his Star Trek-related videos from YouTube, and all of his future reviews will be posted solely on Blip.tv.

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, I remember this episode.

Mostly I think they meant Pulaski to be a female version of Mccoy: short, gruff, and occasionally extremely rude, but ultimately a caring and compassionate figure. They failed rather badly. At least outside this episode she mostly limited her bitchiness to Data.

EDIT: shame, blip always takes forever to load.

[tim31]

Sadly, the inevitable has happened - CBS forced Chuck to remove his Star Trek-related videos from YouTube, and all of his future reviews will be posted solely on Blip.tv.

At least he can now use 99 Red Balloons YAY PARTY!

[Patrick Degan]

The first of TNG's reheated Star Trek: Phase II scripts; the original, of course, involving Ilia.

The season one Space: 1999 episode "Alpha Child" has a superficial resemblance to "The Child" but took the theme in a more horrific direction, ala John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos.

[Patrick Degan]

Just got finished watching Chuck's review. It's been years since viewing the actual episode but I can still remember how facile the whole conflict felt. The confusion of three plot threads that were barely related to one another —with at least one of the plots (in this one the Wesley plot) being a complete waste of time— continued the pattern from season one and was no less irritating.

There were some elements which looked promising at first: the realignment of personnel, the new musical styling, the introduction of the Ten-Forward set. Things had moved a bit forward aboard the Enterprise and seemingly for the series. There seemed to be a bit more of a professional gloss on the production. Then, of course, we get gobsmacked by the new doctor character, Pulaski, coming off as both arrogant and a bigot, the whole creepy 50s throwback theme of the knocked-up virgin who dared to get herself raped in the first place, and the idiotic plot of the Enterprise doing a mission best left to some transport ship with a minimal crew and a dead-man's switch on the self-detonation charges rather than a ship of the line with civilians on board, which is insane by any standard. Worse that the deadly bioagents are being kept behind perfectly fail-ready forcefields instead of in sealed casks, which strangely enough still tend to work when the power gets shut off. Very clumsy and obvious McGuffin as well as a redundant one: the weird radiation emitting from Ian in and of itself could have presented the danger element to the ship and crew. Had Maurice Hurley simply thought of that, the whole B plot involving the transport of the super-ebola samples could have been dropped. Lose the "Wesley Has To Go With Mommy" plot as well and you've got lots of screen time to more fully develop the main plot and the relationship between Troi and her "son".

But then, this was the year of the writers' strike and Maurice Hurley really is a bit of a hack, so they had to do a pot-luck from the formula plot bin.

Then as part of the totally useless Wesley theme, the episode introduces Guinan, Picard's witch-woman. The thing here is that Whoopi Goldberg does project the gravitas to sell the character to the audience and make them believe in her as a source of sage wisdom and advice for Picard far more so than Counsellor Bunny-Suit. Guinan presents a problem in that her character really renders Deanna Troi completely redundant, yet it's Marina Sirtis who's got the long-term contract and it's not her that's going to get marginalised to an occasional appearance every few episodes and in later years maybe three or four times a season if that. So we get stuck with Counsellor Bunny-Suit while half the time wondering where Guinan is, and the other half wondering what she's doing on the Enterprise in the first place. Being that she's not family of any of the crew, and not a serving officer, it makes the ship seem even more like The Love Boat than it already did do, having a hired bartender —a role any one or three of the actual civilian contingent could have filled, which renders Guinan redundant in that regard.

The final scene on the bridge with the officers all offering to fill various aspects of the surrogate parent role for Wesley the Golden Child is simply cringe-worthy for the amount of pap it tries to force the audience to swallow. Combined with putting him in the grey pajama outfit and you only wind up having further reasons to hate Wesley Crusher —not the least of which being that the audience got subjected to this idiotic closing scene supposedly designed to make us really like the brat. Only it served to help bring about exactly the opposite reaction.

To sum it all up: "The Child" has its offensive aspect, but overall, the episode is just simply dumb. What a way to start off season two.

[Darth Lucifer]

http://sfdebris.blip.tv/file/5143864/

Sadly, the inevitable has happened - CBS forced Chuck to remove his Star Trek-related videos from YouTube, and all of his future reviews will be posted solely on Blip.tv.

I'm not completely versed in copyright laws, but I thought OVEG and its spin-offs would fall under the "Fair Use" clause or something. I don't mind the move to blip.tv, it seems to run smoother on my computer anyway. I'm just a little tired of all the Sprite advertisements. Seriously, it's like Sprite has become the official soft drink of sfdebris and Blip.tv in general.

Thanks for another great review, Chuck.

[Darth Lucifer]

Ghetto edit: Never mind my copyright comment, I just saw the sfdebris thread in the Science Fiction area.

[Sela]

Zomg!!!

This is it - the first Opinionated review I can remember laughing out loud at in a long while! The analysis was usual - maybe even a bit above average. I always love how Chuck goes out of his way to discuss the background, author, and other out-of-show details that are applicable or just plain interesting.

I'll look back over the review afterwards and post the jokes I found hillarious. Mostly though it was the "blah blah X. <awkward pause> X like *THIS* not like *THAT*" style that really sung to me. Especially when the stem was interesting in and of itself. This desperately calls for examples... hang on:


"The baby will arrive in 36 hours if this continues. . . . . The odd growth rate I mean, not that she's gonna - give Troi booze so that she squirts the kid out early or something."