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douxreviews · 5 years

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Star Trek: The Next Generation - ‘Interface’ Review

Geordi: "Until I see some hard evidence, I'm not going to give up hope."

By nature I love brevity: A rather decent emotional story that was undercut by the final act. Strong performances, though, and some good material earlier on.

The first thing you notice about 'Interface' is its odd sci-fi premise: Geordi hooks himself up to a probe that feeds him sensory information so that he can perform missions too dangerous to risk an away team. This is somewhat interesting, sure, and the fact that it allows Geordi to receive visual information makes those sequences entertaining enough to keep me watching for the first few minutes. But it's not even close to some of the interesting premises that TNG comes up with, and it only really serves as a vehicle to present the emotion and character in the story.

The central premise of this half of 'Interface' revolves around the disappearance of the ship Geordi's mother captains. Everyone, including Geordi's other family members, has given up hope and has begun to mourn, but Geordi refuses to accept it without hard evidence. Unless he can see the wreckage, he will continue to believe his mother is still alive.

This is where 'Interface' begins to deliver its best work. Some well-acted scenes between Geordi and Riker, along with a touching effort by Data to comfort his friend, give it weight and impact with the audience. It becomes very clear very quickly that Geordi is just in denial, and that his friends need to help him accept that his mother is gone. That's when he encounters her on one of his trips with the probe.

The resulting sequences are heartbreaking to watch, as Geordi goes from denial to outright fantasy as his crewmates frantically try to keep him from hurting himself even more. He pushes the probe to its limits trying to save his mother, injuring himself over and over again. I think the episode could've used a little bit more variety here; it gets a little old seeing Geordi get injured in a very similar way, and then watching him get examined in the same corner of sickbay, as Doctor Crusher explains similar information to Captain Picard. Still, it does serve to show us Geordi's journey towards false hope. It helps as well that the episode makes it clear Geordi's theory is theoretically possible. As a result, we don't know when Geordi returns to the crashed ship whether his hopes will be vindicated or dashed.

This is where the episode takes a sudden turn, copping out and doing neither of those things. Geordi's vision of his mother turns out to be neither real nor a hallucination. It's an out-of-left-field alien species that's trying to manipulate him. Not only did I see this coming from the very beginning, I actively hoped the episode wouldn't use that twist. It dodges the consequences of the story and lets the writers have their cake and eat it too; now Geordi can be wrong about his mother but also not crazy for hallucinating her presence on the ship. To make matters worse, the reveal that she is an alien comes as a result of an action she takes that is completely inconsistent with her goals. Her plan was to lure Geordi into bringing the ship down to the surface of the planet so that she could get her people off of it. But instead of continuing the ruse, which was working, she puts her hands beside his head and does something to his brain. This immediately tells him that she isn't who she says she is, and also simultaneously prevents him from doing what she wanted him to do. The twist isn't even a unique one - TNG has done this reveal in other stories countless times before – and it's a shame it had to mess up the good story they had going for the first four acts.

Strange New Worlds:

The planet featured in this episode, Marijne VII, is a neptune-like gas giant whose unusual atmosphere causes subspace distortions.

New Life and New Civilizations:

The species of noncorporeal beings that imitated Geordi's mother are the latest in a long line of noncorporeal aliens in TNG. Their communication methods killed any humans that experienced them.

Pensees:

-What is the probe doing when Geordi bends down and checks people's pulses? Is it scanning them for life signs? How does it know what sensory information to give him?

-On the same note, how does moving his foot have anything to do with his height on the ladder? The probe seems to float in midair. For that matter, how is it ascending or descending with the ladder in the first place?

-Data is such a good friend. He knew Geordi needed this in order to have his closure, and he knew if he didn't help, Geordi would be in more danger. It both makes logical sense and is touching, just like Data's actions should be.

-Great performance by Jonathan Frakes when he told Geordi about his own mother.

-Robert Wiemer's direction is dynamic or subdued at the appropriate times. I appreciate it.

-It was during the production of this episode that Producer Ron Moore realized that TNG was running out of ideas and needed to end.

-Ben Vereen, who played Doctor LaForge in this episode, played the grandson of LeVar Burton's character in the show Roots. Madge Sinclair, who played Captain LaForge, was also on the show as the wife of the older version of LeVar Burton's character.

Quotes:

Data: "The ancient Doosadarians. Much of their poetry contained such 'lacunae' or empty spaces. Often these pauses measured several days in length, during which poet and audience were encouraged to fully acknowledge the emptiness of the experience." Geordi: "I can remember a few lectures from Starfleet Academy that seemed that way."

Data: "You may experience the emptiness with me if you wish."

Riker: "They told me it was important to accept the fact that my mother was dead and that she wasn't coming back and all the hoping in the world wouldn't make it so. In my mind, that was the day my mother actually died."

Geordi: "You know, we could both get in a lot of trouble for this." Data: "There is a high degree of probability that you are correct."

3 out of 6 lacunae.

CoramDeo doesn't mind; the thing that bothers him is that someone keeps moving his chair.

#Star Trek #Star Trek The Next Generation #TNG #Geordi La Forge #Star Trek Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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calliecat93 · 3 years

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ST: TNG S7 Watchthrough Episodes 2-5

Liasons: Picard crashes on a planet and is helped by a woman whow as stranded… and she’s just a little unhinged. This is essentially the ST version of Stephen King’s Misery. You know, the story where the obsessed fan kidnaps her favorite author after he getsinto an accident and nurses him bck to help, but turns out to be an utter psychopath? Yeah it doesn’t get quite as horrific, but the sentiment is there. So it was alright, at least for most of it. The Enterprise plot is alright, Worf dealing with an annoying alien and just wanting to strangle him is amusing. Not much to note otherwise. The Picard plot… along with the Misery parallel, it feels like All Our Yesterdays from TOS if Zarabeth had been faaar more unhinged and tried to force herelf on Spock instead of how it actually happened. There’s a plot twist with this one… and while I won’t give it away, it makes the entire thing utterly horrible. The concept is interesting, but the most I can say is that at least they emphasized that forcing yourself on someone is wrong, although the one responsible got off extremely light. But all I’m goign is ‘…why didn’t you just ask to know what you needed ot know instead of doing… this?!’. So yeah… not one I’m keen on looking at again. 2/5.

Interference: A Starship has gone missing along with its captain… who is Geordi’s mother. This happens just as they are testing a neural interface connected to a probe that makes Geordi feel as though he’s actually there. During one of the tests he encounters, to his shock, his mother. God, I feel so bad for Geordi in this. While everyone, including his father, assumes his mother is dead, because there’s no evidence of it Geordi refuses to believe it but it’s clear that this has hit him hard. He’s upset when a memorial service ges planned, keeps pressing with his job, and when Data offers comfort he tries to deny it until admitting that he does. It’s all very understandable and when he finds even a slimmer of hope, he takes it even when it means breaking regulations. But can we blame him? Honestly, it annoys me that everyone just assumes that Geordi is wrong because he’s upset. Several times they took these things seriously and at least looked into them, like in Remember Me and The Quality of Life. Aside from safety concerns with the interface, which is justified as it can cause legit harm to Geordi, the fact that they won’t even investigate the possibility just feels OOC. Still, it was a fine episode. Certainly one of Geordi’s better focuses episodes since there’s no forced love interest where he never learns. I won’t give away the ending but it is a bittersweet one. Also due to the interface, LeVar Burton gets to go without the VISOR and contacts for a while, so that must have been a relief for him XD

Gambit: Another two-parter alreadt? You’d think they’d wait at least more than two episodes, but whatever. Let’s see what we got.

Part One: Picard is dead… okay yeah no he’s not, but the crew presume him dead after investigating. Riker is Hellbent on making the ones who caused his captain’s ‘death’. Yeah it kinda loses some dramatic impact since unless your name is Tasha Yar, you know that they ain’t gonna kill one of the leads so anyone watching this can already figure out that Picard’s alive. Fortunateley they seemed to know that and don’t play it out for very long. I question Riker’s more vengeful reaction, but it’s moot as he gets kidnapped by mercenaries. Thus Data is left in command of the Enterprise while Riker is forced to work on-board the bad guys ship… and finds Picard also working for them. The mercenaries are after some Romulan artifacts, so we have Picard and Riker infiltrating the ranks (Picard having created a whole new identity/persona for himself while solo) while the rest follow suit. It was an alright eppisode, it does it’s job welle nough. it feels like we had some good potential with a psyche out death from Picard and Rike wanting to avenge him. Even with The Best of Both Worlds at least the posisbility they could save Picard was there. But the way they did go works and we have a mystery with the artifacts. Solid first part, but we’ll see in Part 2 can uphold it. 3/5.

Part Two: So those Romulan artifacts? As it turns out… they’re Vulcan. The artifacts can form a weapon known as the Stone of Gol, which was created pre-Surak and can let Vulans use their telepathy to kill those with violent thoughts. Yeah… you can probably tell why the current logical Vulcans wouldn’t want that used. I would say they probably should have destroyed them since that seems the most logical option, but I guess this works too… anyways! It seems like Picard and Riker may have some help as one of the mercinaries is a Vulcan woman named T’Paal posing as a Romulan who is investigating due to a group of Vulcan extremists seeking it. Holy crap, a Vulcan extremist movement? That is an awesome plot point! We don’t get much unfortunateley cause plot, but the closest we ever got to this was with Sybok in The Final Frontier so I’m still glad to have it included! As far as the episode goes… it’s fine. It really gets good enar the end when the mercenaries get on the Enterprise, get the artifact, Picard fakes Riker’s death to get him back witht he crew, and Picard provokes a mutiney against the mercenary leader whose been forcing the rest to work for him. But there is one more twist. As per usual I won’t give it away, but lt’s just say that the’s one other Big Bad within the ranks. The fiirst half was kind of meh, though I liked Data being in command with Worf as his Number One and the two having to work the dynamic out. But once we get the artifacts all together? That’s when things got exciting. Lke I said I wisht here had been more with this Vulcan extremist movement, but still pretty good all in all. The final scene got a good giggle out of me XD 3.5/5.

Overall: It was a decent two-parter. Like I said, I think they should have waited a bit before doing another two-parter, but still fine. The infiltration plot is fun and Picard was at his absolute best. It was fun to have a villainos Vulcan as well, especially apparently she was played by the second actress for Saavik. That’s an effective way to use a returning actor haha! There were a good few parts where it dragged and it feels like with some tweaking they could have made this a regular hour episode. Also the Stone of Gol, while it has an interesitng cocnept… doesn’t really do much damage since Picard figured out the weakness quickly. It’s pobably the weakest two-parter in the series just because it’ nowhere near as exciting, provoking, or even as entertaining as some of the others were and did pretty much nothing on a character development front. It’s still fun and the plot works, it just both feels stretched and like it wasted some really cool opprotunities. Like rewrite it so that the Enterprise works with a Vulcan to find these artifacts and lies thaty they’re Romulan, the Vulcan turns out to be an extremist, use it to do some more exploration on Vulcan culture and the ramifications of the logic-based society that The Final Frontier kind of brought up (maybe this movements was even inspired by Sybok if we go the ‘emotions over logic’ route), and Picard has to piece it all together while implying a potenial major Vulcan conspiracy going on. The mercenaries are ultimateley irrelevant at the end of the day, so you can easily write them out. Still, it was fine. it’s at least watchable and had some fun moments. 3.5/5.

#st watchthrough

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