Ben Hufbauer

Excellent article! Many thanks for this informative exploration of this great pioneer.

Excellent article! Thanks for the many insights.++

Thanks Munjeera, for this insightful, witty, and well-written article. It might give me courage to go to the one multiplex in my city that plays Bollywood movies and watch one someday.

Thanks for your perceptive analysis of this unfortunately relevant book!

Impressive and detailed analysis!++

In case anyone is interested, here is a video version with more illustrations….

Michel: You make some great points here about both The Enemy Below as well as this episode. One thing to consider, however, is that a TV show has a lot of limitations in terms of what they can show and the shorthand they sometimes need to employ. For instance, as you know, on one level it might be silly that the Romulans aren’t speaking Romulan—although we could potentially say that the Universal Translator is working really well! But, on the other hand, the “foreigners speaking English” thing is used on so, so many programs, many of which are excellent. To give just one example, everyone in the BBC program “I, Claudius” from the 1970s speaks with a British accent rather than Latin with subtitles. Anyway, in terms of your bigger point of the problematic morals involved, I think you illuminate some important issues. I still think for a TV program from 1966 it’s thought-provoking, as well as dramatic, and has also stood the test of time pretty well.

skag: I love TNG as well, but even though they are both Trek for me it’s almost like comparing apples and oranges. For instance, the music which is so dramatic, memorable, and over-the-top on TOS becomes in TNG an often-bland wallpaper background. Picard and Kirk are obviously a study in contrasts in terms of age, looks, nationality, approach, etc. But both are equally great captains imho. There are more “good” episodes of TNG, but that’s largely because it lasted 7 years instead of the 3 that TOS got, etc. But then again I also love the best of DS9 and Voyager just as much.

In any case, there are definitely several episodes of TNG that might be worthy of the kind of in-depth exploration that I attempted here. Maybe you or someone else will be the one to write an article of your favorite TNG episodes?