After a short hiatus, we're back with more Next Gen reviews...
- If "The Vengeance Factor" wasn't about alien warring clans, it could be a police procedural. A girl can kill specific people by touch, based on their DNA. Crusher figures it out, but Riker has fallen on love with her by that point.
- There's some powerful overacting in "The Detector", mostly by James Sloyan as the titular Romulan. He played several alien roles on various Trek series, and was the voice of the Lexus commercials until 2009. He now does commercials for Mitsubishi.
- There's a bit of star power in "The Hunted", a story of military experiments and post-traumatic stress syndrome. James Cromwell plays the prime minister. He is a prolific actor going back to the 1970s, played Zephram Cochran on Tren film and television, and recently played the butler to the lead in the Academy Award winning The Artist. Jeff McCarthy plays the soldier--he had multiple Trek roles as well as those on Broadway, including a title role in Beauty and the Beast and the musical Chicago.
- Message coming in--TNG tackles terrorism in "The High Ground". Crusher is abducted by alien separatists, who turn out to need her help to cure the side effects of a transporter variant. Their leader is played by Marc Buckland--he only had a few onscreen roles before he moved behind the camera as an executive producer.
- It's "Deja Q"--except this time he has no powers. He's been kicked out of the continuum. He needs the Enterprise's help to survive, and they need him--they've got a planet to save from a rogue moon. John De Lancie is both wacky and emotive in the role of Q. We also meet another Q, played by Corbin Bernsen. He's now on Psych.
- It's Rashomon meets holodeck in "A Matter of Perspective". Riker is accused of murder, so they generate little "plays" with different views of what happened. Take the sci-fi elements out of it, and this could be any crime series. The episode also features Picard enjoying one of his hundreds of hobbies--in this case, painting.
The show is about to ramp up big time--some of the best episodes are coming. Star Trek: The Next Generation is available on Netflix--more to come!