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Episode
242
Liaisons
The Enterprise crew is taking part in a cultural exchange. Two Iyaarans will visit the ship, while Picard visits their homeworld. The Iyaarans on the ship are tough to deal with, but Picard’s Iyaaran is worse – mostly because he dies on their trip. Thank goodness for Anna. She loves Picard! After knowing him for 15 minutes. Any chance Picard could hang out with the dead guy? Yes! Find out how when we put Liaisons in the Mission Log.
I usually can come up with something positive from even the worst of Star Trek, but this episode, nope. Nothing
I think for this season, I will just repeatedly type…”and the “Descent” continues…..” ugh…just thinking about the upcoming lemons really annoys me! Even though DS9 is my fave, I know the first 2 seasons are a bit rough too, but still most are wayyyyyy better than this dud. haahaha…oh well the discussions and critiques are still fun!
This is the period of TNG when I felt as though the producers were starting every meeting by asking, “What haven’t we done to the crew yet?” Things happen TO the crew, but the effect on the crew, the opportunity for growth, is minimal. It’s all plot points at this point. You have it right when you say, “A b-plot meets a b-plot.”
The show is definitely showing the strain of its 7 year run. There’s only a few high standard episodes left really.
When was the announcement made about ending after S7?
The curse of a show that has run over 5 seasons.
I envision the producers saying, “This is a Troi thing. We’ve established that Troi loves chocolate.” Wouldn’t it have been more fun if Data had been assigned to the fat guy?! Data: “I can simulate food consumtion.” Later, (looking down at his android bulging belly) “I will need time to purge this excess glucose-based nourishment from my heuristic subsystems.”
pretty much the “Why the hell not??” phase of TNG…yes DS9 is starting S2 at this time…..talent migrating from TNG to DS9….very clear now why the crappy episodes dominated S7. I think there are only 5/26 decent episodes…bummer
The *public* announcement that season 7 would be the last came in the summer before the season started. Internally at Paramount, it had been known for about a year earlier than that; the decision revolved around the number of episodes that could sell into strip syndication and a cost estimation of the “break even” point – the point at which, due to actors’ contractual wage increases and other rising production costs, the show would cease to turn a profit.
With regard to the Uplifting of Klingons… Read this answer from Stack exchange…
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/137301/what-exactly-were-the-klingon-gods
Basically everything points to the Klingons being uplifted…in fact most of the races of Star Trek seem to have been uplifted to some degree given their general idiocy with their inability to develop at a rapid pace… but nothing says absolutely they were uplifted.
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With regard to the “almost” sexism. You’re the one showing the sexism here. Ignoring that this is all an act and they not really sure how to act like a woman. You argument is that if this was not the case then it would be sexism. This is wrong and sexist in itself to think. If a type person acts a given way whether they are good, bad, stereotypical, whatever then it is perfectly legitimate to write characters like that. To say you can is to ask for special treatment… that is, you are asking someone to be sexist when you say a character can’t be that way. And even if it is a stereotype it is bound to be that some one or some group reflects those behaviors. That’s where the stereotype came from in the first place.
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Revelations was not written by “John the Apostle”. It is written by a John and it is his only work. Revelations is also widely not considered to be part of the cannon of the bible and accepted to be some sort of forgery. The only reason it is kept in most bibles is due to tradition and a very few sects ignore everything that is known about it.
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I think it would be interesting if they did something like a first contact thing again, but this time they had to learn how to cope with their culture because some cultures are more or less aggressive, have different courting behavior, etc…
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There is something in here that I’m surprised that noone picks up… Voval is essentially in the position of being transexual in this episode. And if you look at it like that…as well as how many rape claims are made under the “he lied to me” nonsense… This could be seen as an attempted rape of Picard at the extreme or at the less extreme it shows a pretty good outlook by Picard when he has an “I wasn’t expecting that” moment when a transexual reveals that they are transexual.
Yeah, if Picard had gone for it…yeeeesssh…what a different episode this could have been!!
If the Aggression Ambassador picked Worf so he could get a real experience with aggression, why didn’t the Love Ambassador reject Picard and choose Riker? Anna would have gotten boinked in five minutes. Mission Accomplished. Then Riker would kill him in a shuttle accident.
I’ve seen every episode 3-4 times and still couldn’t remember which episode this was based on the description. Pretty forgettable other than some funny Worf moments.
and the “Descent” continues…descent in quality, ideas, concepts, memorable events…yeah, this “college class” on Trek TNG is revealing to me that I truly disliked the last season…the VHS copies I recorded from tv of this time period sat on my shelf muuuuccch more than previous cassettes!!
This is pretty much late-stage TNG. Like Ken said, this would have been a decent S1 episode, but S7 is kinda embarassing.
Yeah, 3 b-plots and no a-plot. All of the Picard scenes just annoyed me.
uhhh-GREED!! darn this dip in quality….
Here’s a question that I have about this episode, that I just thought of:
If a species has developed without experiencing pleasure, wouldn’t that mean that they are incapable of feeling it? How would they be able to stimulate, or even develop, that part of the brain that deals with experiencing pleasure?
The whole thing is confusing. Are they emotionless, or just lack those emotions?? And then Picard’s response to being abducted and attempts at making him fall in love, (do they have no girls), is so lame.
Anyway, don’t really care.
It is a classic filler episode. Not terribly bad, but far, far from any good.
Perhaps they have different sort of emotions than humans or just experience them differently and want to experience them the way humans do. Or perhaps they have evolved culturally to ignore certain emotions over time. I don’t know, it does seem a bit contrived.
Or perhaps the writer/s just did not give a great deal of thought into the species in question here. That happens when you do 26 hours of tv a season I surpose, especially this late in TNG run.
As the guys mentioned on the podcast, this IS a major issue.
best not to dwell on the weakness of this episode…ugh…
I see Picard’s statement at the end about it being nice to meet a culture that goes to extremes as simply a diplomatic gesture of goodwill vs. something Picard actually believes. He doesn’t want the cultural exchange to end on a sour note so he’s giving them a kind gesture to smooth it all over.
Totally not a realistic reaction.
right!?!?!? I’d be screaming my head off, what with SHUTTLE CRASH!!!! lightning bolts, injuries…faking death- I would have punched this guy in his gut.
Kirk sure would have
Yeah next time could you just beam something into my head or take me to a desolate planet somewhere?
Just for the record, I’m pretty sure some lady Klingons wear dresses. Or whatever those things are that Lursa and B’Etor wear, but they’re not just trousers. Maybe they are the dresses of a warrior.
Yes they do
Pants: the mark of a true warrior.
“LOVE ME!!” Was that the producers’ plea to the fanbase?
I’m sorry, dear, but I’ve been seeing a show about a space station on the side. It’s over.
There are actually a few good points to this episode:
1. It shows the effects of isolation. Anna could even speak because she spent 7 years in solitude. Thomas Riker spent 8 years and he was normal
2. We get to see a couple of Worf’s funny moments
Um, you do remember that Anna is not a real castaway right. But, ya, until you know that “she” does present what would happen pretty well. And yes, one of my major grips with Thomas Riker was his lack of issues after being alone for eight years.
i know but Anna was based off a real person who was actually stranded their. She must have recorded that part in her logs. I think I heard somewhere (not sure if its from here)that they might have wanted to have Thomas stored in the transporter buffer but they had already used that with Scotty.
Ya, this episode is a bit of a mess. Yes they do say that Anna is based off of a lady who crash landed.
The guy playing Anna does not understand humans, but plays one pretty well. Picard is fooled for most of the episode.
Agreed. She played the moods of sadness and disappointment when she sulked, happiness and hopefulness when she thought they were getting off the planet, and she deceived really well. Voval and his people understood all these emotions except love, antagonism and pleasure.
Yet Anna wanted to make Picard a meal to celebrate them being able to get them off the planet. So that means she understood food as pleasure which is exactly what Loquel was investigating.
I know it is nitpicking but its the only way to get fun out of some episodes.
Keep trying. it still is a bad episode
3. It’s not that obvious but during Worf’s fight scene, there is a really nice moment where the dessert ambassador taps Troi with a bowl of m-n-m’s or something and she doesn’t even look but just reaches back for a handful of whatever he wants her to eat now. I thought it was funny.
yea that was a great moment as well
Reminds of me, but actually watching a good episode of TNG
It is just utterly inconceivable to me that a star faring race would have no concept of basic emotions encountered by other species. This would have come out in first contact which Starfleet would handle most delicately. Picard’s group is not the first contact team for this event. The Enterprise should have been given detailed information on this species if they were about to LET THEIR CAPTAIN BOARD A SHUTTLE ALONE!!!?!? No security detail/concerns at all?? Ugh….really now…at least hint that this was part of the first contact process and maybe I could swallow the implausibility of it all… Worf really comes across as spineless (lol) in this episode. What was riding on this diplomatic meeting anyway? Mining/navigation rights? Territory? hmmmm nothing.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b182179f4cee64675d7fe92d4e23239146d86fcb92d46fa798644b8d17437ee.jpg
Barbara Williams “Anna”
Worf has no space pillows? Yeah, that’s a deleted scene that was deleted for a reason. Even *I* have space pillows (see below). Get with the program, Worfles. Space pillows are the mark of a TRUE warrior.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8b18d802d223943a12337c966a8ec947d386a66fff64c08b9f1c895ae5e065e.jpg
I don’t have the visceral dislike that a lot of fans seem to have for this one. There are a lot of cute and interesting moments that just don’t add up to a coherent whole. The scene where Loquel, while watching the Worf/Byleth fight go down, offers the bowl of chocolates to Troi, who sort of absently grabs one and eats it, cracks me up, as does Riker’s, um, dressing-down of Worf as he grumbles about dress uniform. Moments like that…maybe you have to have put in time on stage, but I really appreciate moments that show how well the cast has gelled, and they get to really show their craft in little carefully choreographed comedic moments, like Riker and Worf staring at Byleth as he happily leaves to go write up a report on how great it is to be beaten up by a Klingon. There are parts of this episode that make me laugh a lot.
The Picard strand of the story strikes me as the most extraneous, while the rest of it…the broad-strokes “heyyyyy, we’re aaaaalien!” depiction of the ambassadors is comfortable and familiar in a TOS kind of way.
It all adds up to something that’s really, at best, inconsequential. It just sort of sits there. The whole is not equal to the sum of its parts.
More chocolate? Try the space pillows, they’re exquisite.
A moral I got from this was “be willing to forgive those who have acted without malice, but caused harm anyway”.
Thank god it’s the last season.