Going through my Next Generation re-watch, just got up to "Q Who" and man. What a line of demarcation.
This was the episode that really changed the course of the franchise. Here was Starfleet doing all the Starfleet things in the Starfleet way ... and unequivocally getting their asses kicked.
This was the episode that really changed the course of the franchise. Here was Starfleet doing all the Starfleet things in the Starfleet way ... and unequivocally getting their asses kicked.
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Also, this was only a very few years after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and I thought the parallel was clear.
Easily one of the best episode.
TNG didn't suggest that at all until the Borg showed up. There was a smugness there that needed deflating.
There's no previous episode of TNG or TOS like it.
Not "Q Who." They got beaten into the canvas. It was brutal.
It was an allegory for the Vietnam war, though it was heavy-handed.
But the Borg sent the Enterprise D home with their tails between their legs.
It seemed like TNG was slowly advancing on that course anyway, but "Q Who" was the point of no return.
It's so stark a change that it's remarkable.
I can't even wrap my head around how different it would have hit had the Borg not been a recognizable variant of humanity.
"Big space monsters" is one thing. "We turned our babies into cyborgs" is another entirely.
The Federation will not and maybe should not last forever. It could collapse l….or fall into such corruption there is a terrifying chance it resembles the Terran Dominion.
So in "Errand of Mercy" the Organians thwart Kirk (and lecture him), but only to bring about a better outcome than what Kirk was trying to do.
In "Where Silence Has Lease" self-destructing is a pure desperation play. They win only in that the alien relents.
"Q Who" also clearly lays a lot of personal emphasis on the smack down.
Whereas "Where Silence has Lease" lays in abstract existential angst.