Quote:
Originally Posted by RealSNR
What the hell is wrong with you?
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I'm not saying it's a great episode or anything, but I don't think it's one of TNG's worst by a long shot.
Negatives:
- Picard looks stupid in a mask.
- One of the voices that Brent Spiner uses sounds silly.
Positives:
- I like the fact that after 7 seasons the show wasn't afraid to do something different and weird. They weren't just doing "hard headed aliens of the week" plots or rehashing stuff they had already done.
- I like the fact that the plot weaves together multiple aspects of Picard's personality: his interests in archeology ("Contagion"), mythology ("Darmok"), mysteries ("The Big Goodbye") and theater to help resolve the problem.
- Most of all I like the fact that the episode makes me
wonder.What is the artifact? Who built it?
Why would they build it? I like the alienness of the artifact and the fact that the mystery isn't wrapped up in 45 minutes. Outer space is vast, ancient, and unimaginably strange, but it doesn't always feel that way in sci-fi, particularly in Trek.
Imagine if...
The artifact originated on a sunbaked world. The artifact is similar to the probe from The Inner Light; the difference being that not only does it contain memories and cultural data it also has terraforming capabilities. What's more the artifact actually uses its designer's creation myth to carry out its terraforming operation.
Or, imagine if...
It's a version of our own Voyager probe but it's technology is so alien to us that it can't communicate its message to us properly. Imagine an alien species that is very different from our own but has holodeck type technology. Now imagine they discover Earth's Voyager probe. How would their technology interpret the sounds, images, and other information that we sent into space?
Or, imagine if...