Dismantling "The Masterpiece Society".
This one was just so boring. And I feel like there was a better story with Geordi and the scientist about his visor and being born blind vs. not existing on that colony to begin with. But the focus on Troi's love story just was not interesting enough compared to what we could have had.
A contrived situation, it feels like a cynical response to "Pen Pals" (which was too fairy tale at times, but still noble.)
That said, I'll step up to every single Geordi scene as those really make up for the contrivances, save the story from being Star Drek. Yikes, I have to concede that a story can't be perfect but the shortcomings can still lead to a stellar payoff...
Killing Cost of Living. I'd never seen this one until recently - now I wish I never had. Lwaxana and Alexander, what a combination! What could go wrong?
The sci-fi b-plot, with the ooze trying to dissolve the ship, was right out the Blake's 7 episode "Terminal", only half-baked and with easy outcome. It's not the first time that the show would take the easy way out. Or the last. B7 did it far better, but it was also intended as the series finale...
Taking out "Silicon Avatar".
I have to agree with Dr. Marr and Riker... the Crystalline Entity had to be stopped because it would just go on killing and destroying.
In the time it would take to figure out how to string together a 'NO KILL I' to it, the Entity could easily just keep going on a planet wide feeding frenzy.
The ending with Data saying what he did... I dudn't really like that. It too easily painted her as a villain.
Lore could communicate with it, in actual English no less. No wonder Data was asked if he knew. The goblet tapping shtick didn't hold up because of precedent. Marr's subplot, while intentionally meaningful, just loses it at the end and I can't buy into Data's claim that he knew Rennie better than she had. No way was Marr a villain but, in yet another season 5 trope, definitely goes out of its way to make her one. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Riker being angry over losing his 8675310th fling because she dared to save other colonists, even the "old man"... sheesh, this episode always was passive-aggressive ageist trash.
I liked Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar but not as Sela. In "Unification II" Sela mounts an invasion of a planet with...3 ships. With that level of acumen, it really makes you wonder how Sela got to be leading anything at all.
Spock was underused in it, and the whole thing feels like a cartoon. Sela deserved far better than the shtick given and it took fans to come up with cool ideas as headcanon, when TNG had enough depth even back then to still come up with appealing answers worthy of characters and not this increasingly soapbox live action cartoon.
The idea behind "The Outcast" was a worthy one but ended up dancing round the issues and appearing to support "conversion therapy".
At the time, it felt like "breeding vs test tube babies", a leftover from when test tube fertilization was talked about in the early-80s. Definitely not the intended allegory, and in other ways was ahead of its time.
Taking out "I, Borg," because as far as I'm concerned, Picard is responsible for everyone who died or was assimilated because he was too damn nice to make the hard choice. Yes, Hugh was cute. So were a lot of people who subsequently fell to the Borg.
^^this
The story also goes out of its way to make dime-turn rapid character changes to both Picard and Guinan, especially the latter and especially when Guinan was the one who made the most poignant point in the fencing match. I think the story was trying to show she was wrong, but it just doesn't land. I love the idea that they weren't going to have the Borg do navel-gazing at fractal art as means to wipe them out, instead giving deprogrammed Hugh back and hope something sticks. As we would discover, it stuck better than anyone might imagine, but also led to a sequel that dropped its potential faster than a potato on a hotplate. A shame, as a proper adventure piece surrounding this new Borg splinter, which is 100% Picard's fault based on his 5D chess playing personality (see the Shelliak and too many others for more), would have been far better than yet-another-and-increasingly-lame-DataLoreFest. But more on that next season...
I am debating between a couple of beloved episodes here, but I'm going to go ahead and remove "The Inner Light" for being another "Picard has something potentially life-altering and psychologically traumatizing happen to him and is back in the captain's chair like nothing happened" episode.
The means to get Picard to experience this other species are so poorly contrived that I couldn't buy into it, and to buy into the how is crucial to go with the forced lifetime being shoved into his head. This would have worked better as a Sisko story with the Prophets for suspension of disbelief to work, not a one-time-use technological technobabble probe that shuts off after dialogue states hard that it's meant to seek out one person (who thankfully has a compatible brain, that probe wouldn't serve Fluffy, Fido, or Dermatophagoides too well, either for uploading the content or not turning the destination host into brainmush.
Episodes with several story lines can be good or can be a bit of a mess. I like Troi being in command and Worf's "You may now give birth" but there's a further "attack of the annoying kids" (thank you, Seven of Five). Star Trek does not do children well.
"Disaster" by name: disaster by nature.
Each of the subplots has a major problem, but when season 5 can't keep the simplest continuity that was there consistently since season 1, there's a problem. Geordi would have seen the bulkhead problem long before Crusher felt it up. Crusher is telling Geordi to take a deep breath and hold it in while explosive decompression is going on around them, which is the absolute opposite of what you should be doing as it'd be less painful as that air being withheld really wants to go out with it and you'll still want to breathe again afterward either way. Not to mention those teensy little issues like blood vessel ruptures all over the place in the lungs because Dr Dumbdumb there said to hold your breath instead of deeply EXHALING,
before releasing the air/pressure in the cargo bay. Honestly, WTFF (As in "What the Flying Farfegnugen") happened in this season as Crusher is almost consistently given the dumbest dialogue ever. "Ethics" is another soapbox episode where the guest character is turned increasingly into a cartoon villain for the sake of plot before the main cast member gets to have the only point that allegedly matters. Both had valid points, but the episode was designed to try to make Crusher look better at the expense of everyone else. Again. She's also written poorly in "I, Borg" and others...
The weirdest part is, it's easier to justify some lapses or issues, especially when other ideas really compensate, or there's enough room for suspension of disbelief, but there's nothing in this episode that allows it that thanks to basic known precedent, especially when previous episodes already setup character traits and limitations and, too often for season, are being outright ignored for the sake of "murh drummah".
