next generation

Star Trek Top 50 #47: “I Borg” (TNG)

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“Let me tell you something, when this “kid’s” big brothers come looking for him, they’re not gonna stop until they find him. And they’ll come looking for us, and they will destroy us. And they will not do any of the soul-searching that you’re doing now.”

LCARS-47

Logo-TNG“I BORG”
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Written by René Echevarria
Directed by Robert Lederman
Original Air Date May 11, 1992

One of the things that Star Trek did better than almost any other science fiction television show is it took moral quandaries and explored them from every angle — or at least as many angles as was possible in a 45-minute episode without losing the sense of action and tension and grinding the episode to a talky, preachy bore (okay, it did occasionally commit that crime). It was also great at exploring the value of life and what it meant to be human. The Next Generation did this better than any of the other Trek shows. And “I Borg” is one of the finest examples.

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ST50 #50: “Remember Me” (TNG)

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“If there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!” LCARS-50

Logo-TNG“REMEMBER ME”
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Written by Lee Sheldon
Directed by Cliff Bole
Original Air Date October 22, 1990
Guest Stars: Erik Menyuk (The Traveler)

Dr. Beverly Crusher’s world is collapsing in on her. Quite literally. People she knows and loves are disappearing, and the remaining ones have no memory of their ever existing. As the crisis increases, and the entire ship’s complement is down to just her and Picard, she goes from worried to panicky to desperately and aggressively analytical. Gates McFadden gives a fantastic performance as a woman who is losing everything around her. This story was originally conceived as the B-plot to the episode “Family” (the one in which Picard returns to Earth after his ordeal as Locutus), but it was felt that a single episode would not accommodate both storylines, so this subplot was spun out as “Remember Me” and made into the fifth episode of the season. McFadden performed all her own stunts, discovering only shortly afterward that she was pregnant.

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