Review The Neutral Zone

[Hux]

As much as I enjoy this one, it's also the episode where Roddenberry really started to push his whole "humans have evolved into magical beings that never get angry or poo" nonsense. The speech Picard gives about humanity moving on is so unbearably patronising. None of this crap was in the original series.

I also never liked the way they all act like finding 20th century humans is not a big deal. You've just discovered people from the past. Isn't that as exciting, if not more so, than meeting new aliens? But they just shove them in a room and say "we'll get back to you."

 

[Doctor Omega]

It also has a sneaky Doctor Who in-joke.

When Deanna is looking up the information of the lady's possible surviving descendants, it turns out, according to the computer screen, that she was related to William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter "Davidson" (mis-spelled), and Colin Baker,

I do like this episode. In fact, I like a lot of the crazy first season, where people were experimenting and finding their feet, leading to some episodes of great oddness, but other episodes of great daring, before the show - and, indeed, the franchise - eventually settled down and found (more or less) a Macdonald's type formula of episode production. I missed the craziness!

 

[johnnybear]

Mark Richman, a staple of sci-fi actors from the sixties makes his only appearance in Trek here in this episode! I find it really strange that he was never in the original series as another Captain or alien leader!
JB