Liebkartoffel's 5th Biennial TNG Watch Through.

They re-use a lot of models, and a lot of the time they'll turn them upside down or rubber-cement something to them to try and disguise it. I'm pretty sure that model was used more than once, but not sure if that was the first time since TWOK.

It's not great, but "The Emissary" is still better than most of Season 2 imo, and while I haven't seen Worf's entire Klingon Empire arc, even I realize that it's at least a fairly essential episode.

I just passed "The First Duty" on my own rewatch, and I was thinking of square, eagle-scout Wesley when Picard is giving his big speech about Starfleet's duty to the truth. Jean-Luc should've just said "We're from Starfleet, we don't lie, remember?!"*. Best part about the Riker and Guinan bit is how Guinan gets into it and when Wesley tries to interject, she just gives him a dismissive "Shut up, kid".

"The Royale" was memorable, and I am occasionally concerned that aliens will force me to live out my life in a recreation of whatever book I have on me at the time they pull me from the wreckage. Amused that Fermat's Last Theorem, Picard's analogy for unresolved mysteries, was actually proven five years after the episode aired- this earned Andrew Wiles a number of honors from the mathematics community and a shout-out from Jadzia Dax on a subsequent Star Trek episode. Unlike archeology, Picard's interest in mathematics never came up again.

While "Samaritan Snare" is kind of low down on my list, just for how obnoxious those Pakleds are, I do appreciate that they pay off Picard's story about the Nausicaans years later in "Tapestry".

* I think this was from "Justice". Probably the most cringe-worthy Wesley line, which is saying something.

Excellent pedantry - top marks and I bow to your accuracy!

One of the alien destinations in Contagion is actually Toronto City Hall:

Xena: Warrior Lesbian Princess suggests not, but still...

S03E01 "Evolution": Ah, season 3. Wool uniforms! Finally! Dr. Crusher's back!...In a starship sickbay, after serving as Head of Starfleet Medical. Which, wouldn't that be an Admiral-level position? And she leaves, and takes (I'm assuming) a significant demotion after just a year? You'd think there'd be a story there, but they put it to bed with a line or two, and maybe that's for the best. Anyway, she's back, and with a more flattering haircut. Everything looks better, honestly. Did they get new cameras? So, plot: Dr. Kelso from Scrubs shows up and he wants to do a science thing, but Wesley fell asleep and accidentally created an entire race of sentient nanites that then take over the ship, preventing Kelso from doing the science thing, rendering him peevish and murdery. After Wesley admits his mistake--mistake being creating an entire race of sentient beings--he weirdly disappears from the episode. Dr. Kelso is an asshole and irritates everyone with his constant recitation of baseball statistics. Eventually everything is solved with the power of soft power--the most powerful power of all. Moderately entertaining episode, but not a significant increase in quality as the long-awaited arrival of the Good Trek era--wool uniforms!--would seem to imply. Eh.

S03E02 "The Ensigns of Command": Based off the title I'd assumed this was, you know, that other episode from a later season, about, specifically, a bunch of ensigns. of command. But nope, ensigns play about as much a role, if not less, in this episode than they do in any given episode. I feel like they just pick these titles out of a hat sometimes. To make things more confusing, the plot of this episode is markedly similar to another latter-season episode where Data gets stuck alone on a Ren Faire planet. This time, however, Data's trying to get a bunch of colonists to leave a planet before some colonial oppressors arrive to take over the world. You know, like that one episode with the Native Americans and the Cardassians...man, this episode's going to be impossible to remember down the line, isn't it? I liked this one all right, though, and there's some good comedy where Picard outwits the aforementioned colonial oppressors through the subtle art of treaty loopholery. Oh, also yet another woman falls in love with Data. What's his secret? Eh.

S03E03 "The Survivors": The gang meets a couple of Space Quakers who have mysteriously survived the destruction of their entire planet...but are things truly as they seem? (No.) An interesting play on the typical Omnipotent Godlike Being plot, where the this time the Godlike Being just kind of wants be left alone and the Enterprise crew are the ones who keep pestering It. It's like a reverse-Q story. I've always loved this episode and I'm glad it holds up. Yeah.

S03E04 "Who Watches the Watchers": Okay, it's Yet Another Prime Directive Episode, but it's among the best Prime Directive episodes ever done. Some anthropologists inadvertently reveal themselves to a bunch of bronze age "Proto-Vulcans" (wait...what?) living in the middle of the California desert. Chaos (religion) ensues when the Enterprise crew intervenes to save the life of Proto-Vulcan Ray Wise. You know that Orville episode where Kelly inadvertently starts being worshiped as a god by some primitive aliens? This is the Trek episode that Orville was ripping off. Except "Who Watches" is smarter, more nuanced, and (slightly) better at toning down the strident "religion=irrational mumbo jumo" message. Like, college student-level atheism as opposed to middle school-level atheism. But enough about how the Orville is, at its best, just a dumber, shallower, inferior version of TNG...This ep is a good demonstration of why the Prime Directive is kind of bullshit, and works better as a set of ethical guidelines than The Law. If you're seriously debating whether or not to save the life of someone you're directly responsible for injuring out of some abstract fear of "contamination," you're shitty at morality. You're also pretty shitty if your solution to the "contamination" problem is to A) wipe everyone's memories, and failing that, B) infiltrate the primitive society and gaslight them into thinking it was all a dream. Picard's belated attempts to convince everyone that he's just man are some good drama. Yeah.

S03E05 "The Bonding": A red (well, blue) shirt under Worf's command dies while on a routine away mission and the entire Enterprise crew puts aside their important duties to play babysitter to her orphaned son. (To be fair, an Omnipotent Godlike Being is in the mix as well). Picard again brings up the extremely valid point of...why the hell are there children living on his starship? Like, really? Even if you do accept Starfleet's line that it's an exploratory rather than military organization (bullshit), the ship finds itself in just as much danger on its "exploratory missions" (such as this one) than in any military engagements. Wil Wheaton attempts some ACTING, to predictable results, and Worf formally adopts Suspiciously Beaver Cleaver-Looking Orphan into his family. Naturally, he is never heard from again. Eh.

S03E06 "Booby Trap": Geordi La Forge is great at understanding machines, but can he understand the most mysterious machine at all...the human woman? (No.) We open with Geordi La Forge creepily hitting on some poor ensign on a sandy beach while a "Gypsy violinist" serenades them. We end with Geordi La Forge creepily hitting on the holographic reconstruction of the engineer who designed the Enterprise. This is, sadly, progress. Honestly, if this were the beginning of Geordi's romantic arc it would be fine--like, if Geordi gained enough confidence from his interactions with Holo-Brahms to successfully navigate subsequent relationships like a human person, that's great. Sadly, the writers seem intent on keeping Geordi an awkward creepy dork for the duration of the series. Really, though, an otherwise tense, compelling episode, where the only way out of an ancient alien booby trap is to cut the engines and navigate on inertia alone. Yeah.

S03E07 "The Enemy": Geordi gets trapped on a hostile planet with a Romulan, who spends most of his time leering and hissing like a cartoon supervillain. Meanwhile the Enterprise has beamed up a second, severely wounded Romulan. Worf has some genetic...thingies that could keep the Romulan alive, but he refuses to donate, and the second Romulan dies. Wouldn't that be a court martial-able offense? I mean, sure the Romulans killed his parents, but Worf is risking a devastating war with untold casualties due purely to his personal prejudices, justified or not. Picard shoulders some of the blame for explicitly not ordering Worf to save the Romulan, even when he said he would under those conditions. I suppose it's the equivalent of ordering a Jehova's Witness to donate blood, but you don't see many of them in the military in the first place. Anyway, Geordi and Centurion Bochra work together, get beamed aboard the Enterprise just in time to avoid an international incident, and eventually become BFFs, I'm sure. Yeah.

S03E08 "The Price": Some aliens have (what they think is) a stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant--hey, sounds familiar--and they invite the local powers to bid for exclusive access rights. Seinfeld's Lloyd Braun, the negotiator for...I don't know some alien or something, seduces Troi--to stomach churning results. We have to watch him rub her feet (yeugh). Also features the (in)famous scene in which Troi and Dr. Crusher do some stretches in skimpy leotards, gabbing about boys. I've never been comfortable with how the show treats Troi, but this rewatch is really pounding home just how much they've botched everything about her.  Every Troi story thus far has zeroed in on Troi's femininity and absolutely nothing else: she's there for men to hit on, to be tortured/impregnated by aliens, to be embarrassed by her mother, and to stuff her face with chocolate (chocolate! chocolate! ack!). Crusher at least gets to do doctor things, mostly, give or take a Scottish sex ghost. This episode also completes the Ferengis' transformation from legitimate threat to chaotic neutral comic relief. They scheme, they say hu-mahn, they get trapped in the Delta Quadrant, etc. Ultimately an inessential episode that gets downgraded due to foot-rubbing ickiness. Skip

S03E09 "The Vengeance Factor": The gang meets a cast of extras from Mad Max. The Enterprise has to negotiate an amnesty between the peaceful Acamarians and their space pirate cousins, who split off and took to thievery over a century ago. But old feuds die hard, and space pirates keep falling victim to a mysterious assassin (act break ending stinger music). Could this mysterious assassin really be Riker's new, young, blonde, innocent-seeming, Acamarian love interest? (Yes). I remember this being pretty boring, and I can confirm that it is, in fact, boring. Notable, however, for Riker straight up murdering blonde love interest when he easily could have avoided it. She keeps trying to do her assassin thing, and he keeps shooting her with a stun beam until he basically just shrugs and switches over to "kill." Nobody thought to tackle her, or knock her unconscious, or...? Eh

S03E10 "The Defector": One of the all-time greatest Trek episodes, and probably in my personal top five. A Romulan defects to the Federation, and the crew has to figure out whether he's the real deal or just part of some tricky Romulan ploy (spoilers: it's somewhere in between). Smart, tense, and fucking dark--and not in the cheesy, melodramatic way of previous "dark" TNG episodes. The Henry V cold opening is one of the best uses of the holodeck, and it's nice to see Patrick Stewart return to his Shakespearean roots. Apparently this was Ronald Moore's second episode, and the one that got him a full time gig on the writing staff. It's easy to see a lot DS9 and Battlestar Galactica DNA in this. Must Watch

S03E11 "The Hunted": A hamfisted parable about PTSD and integrating soldiers back into civilian society. Features James Cromwell in a mustache, and some of the most hilariously terrible stunt work this side of TOS as an escaped "Super"-soldier takes on a horde of Enterprise security mooks (telegraphed clothes-lining and a bunch of ineffectual rolling around ensues). Not the must gripping stuff, but smart enough. Yeah

S03E12 "The High Ground": A hamfisted parable about terrorism and the horrors of sectarian violence. Dr. Crusher is kidnapped by some terrorists led by a charismatic freedom fighter who says inspiring, laughably vague things like "for too long has the Eastern Continent ignored our demands." Suffers a bit from coming right after the thematically similar "Hunted," to the extent that they're already starting to run together in my head. I couldn't really say which of the two is better, but "Hunted" has stuck with me more. Eh

S03E13 "Deja Q": Probably the best of the Q stories, where Q is stripped of his powers and forced to live on the Enterprise, grousing all the way about back pain and "losing consciousness" (falling asleep). Corbin Bernsen shows up briefly for a competitive ham-off with John De Lancie. He gives his best, but c'mon. Funny and entertaining if you enjoy Q's schtick--I do--but I imagine "Deja Q" is pretty unbearable if you don't. Yeah

S03E14 "A Matter of Perspective": The gang meets Rashomon. Riker is accused of murdering a scientist, and all of the witness's accounts are recreated on the holodeck. Interesting enough story that gets bogged down a bit in typical Trekian technobabble--something, something Krieger waves. The premise is a bit shaky as well. The investigator wants to haul in Riker on the grounds that the accused are "guilty until proven innocent" in Tanugan society--I'd think Picard would automatically deny extradition due to the violation of Riker's due process rights. Also what was going on with that woman who claimed--apparently truthfully, from her perspective--that Riker raped her?  Eh

S03E15 "Yesterday's Enterprise": Ooh, another good one. The long-lost Enterprise-C falls through a time...distortion...thingy and is thrown into the future, creating a branching timeline in which the the Federation has been at war with the Klingons for the past quarter century and Tasha Yar is still alive. Time Travel Moral Dilemma #4A ensues as the D-Crew has to convince the C-Crew to go back in time and face certain slaughter in exchange for restoring the "good" timeline. I love the alternate Enterprise D's new mood lighting--it's a war vessel in this timeline, you see, so they can't afford the luxury of seeing their own feet--and kicky white security sashes. Must Watch

Yeah I was just reading about that on Voyager's tvtropes page. I don't remember the Ferengi; I remember Q showing up a few times, though.

Re: "The Enemy", my reaction was to the Worf stuff was more "Oh come on, even by Star Trek standards it's tremendously dumb that Klingons would have the same blood type or whatever it was as Romulans" than "Couldn't Worf be court martialed for that?"  Probably mainly because I was impressed by the show's willingness to let a main character make such an unambiguously shitty and selfish decision that has such dire consequences as to cause another person's death.  Also, I think the character development for Worf over the course of Season 3 makes up for the kind of nonsensical lack of disciplinary action here.  Because in "The Wounded", Worf is the one who's ordered to escort the Romulan defector around, and so he has to interact with the guy who .  Then in "Yesterday's Enterprise" you see Alternate Universe Yar, who in "Real" Universe was the previous occupant of Worf's position on the Enterprise, selflessly sacrificing her life with the C-Crew and saving "Real" Universe Baby Worf in the process.  And all of this makes Worf's decision at the end of "Sins of the Father" considerably more poignant, imo.  It's questionable whether beginning-of-season-3 Worf would have made the choice he makes in "Sins of the Father" and this is probably by far the best example of character development on the show to this point.

Re: Troi's characterization, I guess at least there's "Face of the Enemy", which I just watched the other day, and is the first time in six seasons that there's been a remotely good Troi-centric episode.

Re:  "A Matter of Perspective", yeah that was really fucked up that we're supposed to believe that either a) that one character literally remembered a rape that didn't happen, or b) Riker actually attempted rape and ultimately faces no punishment.  It turned what was otherwise just a kind of dull episode of TNG into a pretty shitty one for me.

Yeah, I didn't do that scene justice. She's literally only a threat to her target. She doesn't have a weapon or anything. Anyone could have just stood up and pushed her out of the way. But Riker gave her two strikes already, so...

My recollection was that Worf's actions here were ameliorated somewhat by the fact that the Romulan who was dying didn't want his help- as if he was debating it with himself, and he went to sickbay to talk to the guy whose life he could save. "Hey, they say I got some kajiggers that could make you not die." "I'd rather die than accept your help." "Ok. Didn't really want to help you anyway. Good talk."

Oh, and may I just add...

Discovery: Disappointing fanwanks

I would love to say there is no character who's more shafted in TNG than Troi, but it's not true, Crusher gets treated even worse.  TNG has many things to recommend it, but as far as treatment of their regular female characters goes it has a big failing.  Troi gets... maybe three compelling stories in the whole of TNG?  Crusher weighs in at two.  This was thrown into very sharp relief when i was doing my Voyager reviews, because the contrast between the two is extremely stark - for all Voyager's (alleged) problems, it's an excellent show at putting its female character front and centre and actually doing interesting things (I'm thinking specifically of B'Elanna and Seven here, though not only).  Troi's character is treated pitifully during TNG's run, and it's a shame because post-Face Of The Enemy Sirtis shows how great she can deliver on the role (I've mentioned this before but she's the MVP of the TNG movies as well despite fuck all screen time, and the movies are equally feeble with the way they treat the female characters).