June 8, 2016

Underrated Trek:Too Short a Season (TNG)

Welcome back to Underrated Trek, where I take a special look at Star Trek episodes that I love…which may not be the most popular or even liked by most. Season 1 TNG was awful. So awful that even an idea that had a real good concept still was bogged down with silliness and while it’s not the worst it is hardly great. The episode is mostly overlooked. This is….


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So it isn’t awful and it isn’t great, what is it? Let’s take a look….




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Plot Synopsis:


When hostages are taken on a planet, Picard is assigned to transport the elderly Admiral Mark Jameson to the planet to negotiate a peace. It was Jameson who had negotiated the previous peace 40 years ago. It was those talks that ended up starting a war.


Along the way to the planet the crew notice that the frail and elderly admiral is suddenly able to walk again under his own power, and looks younger. He finally reveals that he took an anti-aging drug to make him younger so he could handle the negotiations. However the anti aging drug is also slowly killing him. Jameson also realizes that the reason the hostages were taken was because the governor wants revenge. It was Jameson who lit the match that started that long war.


Jameson tries to lead a raid to free the hostages which is botched miserably. Suffering from severe pain, the governor of the planet named Karnas demands Jameson or else he will kill the hostages. As Jameson lies near death Picard beams him down, now appearing to be a very young man, to meet with  Karnas. Karnas has blamed Jameson for the 40 year war and wants revenge. But the effects of the aging pills kill Jameson, and Karnas frees the hostages.






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Guest Star:

Clayton Rohner, is just plain miscast here. He tries, but fails.




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What I Hated:


First of all, that old age make-up for Jameson is just awful. The really odd thing the make-up looks even worst as he de-ages. It’s clear that the make-up creators hadn’t quite figured out how to do that just right. So yeah, the core of the story is that the admiral is de-aging. And as always when this kind of thing appears in sci-fi, it’s just stupid. Ok it isn’t as bad as when an entire species announces they start as adults and become children. And I will give the episode credit that the experience seems very painful and in fact kills the admiral. It isn’t like it’s magic or something. But still, it’s a little to hard to swallow especially when it restores his skin and hair color.

A lot of people complain the focus is on Jameson and the crew of the Enterprise become background characters. That wouldn’t be a problem, except we don’t want to spend time with Jameson. Once he is young again he comes off a cocky jerk who is pretty unlikable. He shows no real remorse for what he did (more on that below). Oh sure he says he felt guilty but it doesn’t come across. Then he botches the mission to save the hostages by being overconfident. Finally he just dies, and that’s the episode. What was the point of following this character? Oh and what happened with the hostages? Don’t worry they are a plot device and nothing more.


How exactly did they get that ridiculously large wheelchair off the transporter pad? Or onto the main Bridge? And this episode also suffers from the same corniness that permeated TNG in the early days. The final scene is Picard and Riker beating the moral of the story in, before setting course for their next job. This kind of thing worked in the old days with Kirk and Spock because the chemistry was right. Here it just feels, goofy. Thankfully as time went on this was dropped and episodes would just, well, end!

Finally, you gotta love season 1 TNG where not only is Troi given things to do and made to be the brains on the ship, but her word is even more valuable than Crusher’s! My how things changed.


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What I liked:

Ok, so after that being said what did I like? Here is the concept once you get past the idiotic de-aging thing. The admiral is pushing himself to be ready and able to free the hostages once the Enterprise arrives at the planet. In fact the aging pill he took was meant to be taken slowly, but he took the whole dosage as well as the second he aquired for his wife. Why is he so driven? Forty years earlier Karnas had hostages and Jameson was sent to free them. His solution was to give the weapons Karnas wanted to defeat his enemies, while giving those enemies the same amount of weapons. He calls it his interpretation of the prime directive. This act ignited a war that lasted 40 years. So it’s guilt that is driving him to do this, and possibly  the chance to redeem his mistake. That’s a good, if simple, premise for a strong character episode! To bad the silliness trumps the coolness. Maybe if they had dumped the aging nonsense and just made it a character piece. Instead we get a pretty dull episode where the “mystery” of the admiral turning younger takes up time. Though the scene where Jameson reveals the truth to Picard in the briefing room was a pretty good one.



The action scene, which was forced onto the script because the creators felt it was boring, isn’t that bad as far as action scenes go. This is also one of the first times Picard goes along on the away mission, which I always liked to see. Besides it gives the characters who had hardly had two lines in the episode something to do! By the way the ending was rewritten at first Jameson lived and worked out a deal with Karnas. The ending we get is kind of anticlimactic to be honest.



Karnas is played by Michael Pataki who also played the obnoxious Klingon Korax in the classic “Trouble with Tribbles” episode. Marsha Hunt played the wife  and she out acts Rohner 100% in every scene. Wesley does not appear in the episode (That’s always a positive).


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Fast Forward Moment:


The whole episode pretty much drags, probably because they take exposition that could have been handled in one scene and spread it over three whole acts! By the time we get to that final “reveal” of Jameson young I’m like “Yeah Yeah, move on already!”.




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Final Thoughts-I’m pretty sure I missed this when it first aired because I first came aware of it on the blooper reel for season one. It’s one of those episode that if more focused may have been a good character piece. As it is, it’s just one of those things that has potential but didn’t live up to it. But compared to some other outings in Season 1, it could certainly be a lot worst!!


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