Trollheart

No.

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Episode title: “Angel One”
Season: 1
Basic plot: Riker ends up on a planet run by women. It's not as great as it sounds. Oh no wait, it is. Kind of.
Importance: 0
Crisis point(s) if any: Sort of none other than the trouble out Neutral Zone way
Original transmission date: January 25 1988
Writer(s): Patrick Barry
Director: Michael Ray Rhodes
Stardate:* 41636.9
Destination: Angel One
Mission (if any): Track down any survivors from the freighter Odin
Main character(s) in Plot: Riker
Main character(s) in Subplot (if any):
Not appearing: O’Brien
Villain/Monster (if any): None
Deaths: 0
Lives saved (episode): 14
Lives saved (cumulative): 24
Locations:
Shipboard:
Bridge
Sickbay
Holodeck

Space:

Other:
Angel One


Ships/vessels (encountered): 0
Ships/vessels (mentioned only): Freighter Odin, USS Berlin, Romulan Warbirds
Space battles: 0
Bodycount

Historical
0
Incidental
0
Direct
0
Total: 0
Running total: 86

Make it so: 0
Engage! 1
Combat factor: 0
Planets visited: Angel One
Planets mentioned:
Aliens: The Angel One-ians
Mysteries: None
Patients in sickbay: over 100 (“More patients than beds”, according to Bev)
Data v Humanity: n/a
Data 3 - Humanity 6
Character scores:
Picard 10
Riker 175
Data 15
Geordi 10
Troi 15
Bev 20
Wesley 30
Worf 10
Yar 15
O’Brien 0

Earl Grey: 0
Shuttlecraft: 0
Admirals: 0
Starbases: 0
First contact: 0
Humour: 4
Episode rating: 1/10
Episode score: 65

Oh god this is the one about the planet of women isn’t it? And not in a “Space Bikini Girls on the Moon” sort of way, or anything. This is a matriarchy, where Riker has to dress in an embarrassingly revealing… oh no. My dinner! It’s rather typical that in a story where the women are in power (written, I should note with some asperity, by a man) there has to be rebellion fomenting. Like male equivalents of the Suffragettes, the men who have survived from the Odin are now leading a rebellion, helped by women who don’t enjoy the status quo. Sort of a reversal of the movement here, where certain women went against the idea of suffrage. But the underlying sentiment, though it’s cleverly presented as “no one gender should have power over another” is really “women should not be in power and the natural order of things is that men should be in charge.” To illustrate this, the arrival of the manly men - as opposed to the somewhat vain and effeminate native ones - has sparked feelings long suppressed in some of the native women, who just want the men to take over and rule them as they feel should be how things are.


"Ah yes! At last, the power is mine!"

It doesn’t help that the central figure of this matriarchy, the authority, Beata, is presented as gruff, masculine, butch and uncompromising, unfriendly and not exactly all that pretty. You are, as a man (or I am anyway) more or less immediately annoyed by and turned off by her, and your sympathies quickly lie with the “rebels”. It is interesting that, when they’re located, and refuse to leave, because they’re civilians they can’t be forced to go. This episode does give the two main men the chance to bare their manly chests, if you’re into such a thing, and also for a sort of reflection of the planet below to occur on the ship, as Beverly is the one running things, since somehow she hasn’t got sick. The ending is very poe-faced I feel: Riker basically talks Beata into letting the captives live. It’s very ****ing Star Trek, isn’t it?

A few seasons later, they might have been executed and we’d be left with an uncomfortable reminder that sometimes you just can’t and shouldn’t interfere with internal planetary politics. Still, you’d wonder, given that Ramsay and his men are all Federation citizens, if Angel One is risking a diplomatic incident by attempting to execute them? And why Riker - or Data - doesn’t point this out in an attempt to change yer wan’s mind? Seems like with a race that prides themselves on strength so much, an open threat might be more respected than a plea.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

Quite a phenomenon this episode. Not a single move up or down. Not one.

Despite Riker's strong performance, and subsequent high point tally, you can't go higher than number one, so he remains where he is, though he puts clear daylight between him and Tasha (and she hasn't much time to catch him either) as he becomes the first character to break the 800-point barrier. Not much else to report. Data becomes the third to gain 400 points, but there's no movement, so nothing more to discuss. Not that surprising, since the lion's share of the episode was Riker's.

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Trollheart

I have to re-evaluate my episode scores. The way I’ve set the system up, I’m noticing that some really good episodes are scoring quite low, so I want to try something else. In addition to the scores already used, I’m now going to score them under these criteria:

Action: simple enough. Was this an episode filled with aliens, space battles, races against time, planetary searches, combat etc? Was it slow or did it move and flow well?

Drama : Was there drama in the episode?

Performance of lead character(s): Given who the episode was based around, did they use their role well, or did the story just revolve around them without them doing much?

Plot: Self-explanatory

Arc: Not so self-explanatory. Did the story add to or refer to elements which either occur later or have already occurred, in other words is this a thread that fits in to the overall pattern of the tapestry, is it a loose thread or is it not even in the sewing room?

Personal enjoyment: I surely need not explain this.

All the above criteria will be rated at from 10 to 100, 10 being the lowest and 100 the highest. So potentially an episode can score an additional 600, down to a lousy extra 60. These scores will then be added to the main scores to come up with a total score, and because this will obviously give episodes from here on in a clear advantage, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I’ll be going back and rescoring all the previous episodes, which means that chart I posted will be useless now, and will be redone and reposted.

In this way I feel that an episode that is excellent but for some reason doesn’t score that high on the original criteria has a better chance of scoring high on these, plus my own personal approval, or not, of the episode will also be a factor, which will allow those I really like to have a better chance of being right up there.

Episode title: “11001001”
Season: 1
Basic plot: The Enterprise is upgraded but all is not as it seems duh
Importance: 4 (First use of self-destruct code)
Crisis point(s) if any: Ship taken by Bynars
Original transmission date: February 1 1988
Writer(s): Maurice Hurley, Robert Lewin
Director: Paul Lynch
Stardate:* 41365.9
Destination: Starbase 74, Tarsis III
Mission (if any): Maintenance and upgrades
Main character(s) in Plot: Picard, Riker
Main character(s) in Subplot (if any):
Not appearing: Troi, O’Brien
Villain/Monster (if any): Bynars
Deaths: 0
Lives saved (episode): 0 ( I mean, the whole Bynar planet, but I said I wouldn’t count populations, as there’s no way to be sure of a count)
Lives saved (cumulative): 24
Locations:

Shipboard:
Bridge
Gangway I guess, as they’re getting off
Holodeck

Space:

Other:
Starbase 74

Ships/vessels (encountered): 0
Ships/vessels (mentioned only): USS Wellington, USS Trieste, USS Melbourne
Space battles: 0
Bodycount

Historical
0
Incidental
0
Direct
0
Total: 0
Running total: 86

Make it so: 0
Engage! 1
Combat factor: 0
Planets visited: Bynus
Planets mentioned: Omicron Pascal , Pelius V, Bynus
Aliens: Bynars
Mysteries: Why the Bynars have stolen the Enterprise
Patients in sickbay: 0
Meetings: 0
Data v humanity:
N/A; which is odd, given that this one revolves around what are essentially computers on legs, but there you go.
Data 3 - Humanity 6
Character scores:
Picard 570
RIker 700
Data 40
Troi 0
Bev 10
Geordi 10
Wesley 20
Worf 20
Yar 20
O’Brien 0

Earl Grey: 0
Shuttlecraft: 0
Admirals: 0
Starbases: 1 (Starbase 74)
First contact: 0
Humour: 0
Episode rating: 6/10
Episode score: 625 (Note: this is under the new system, as all future episodes will be)

Another mostly holodeck-centred episode, and again built more or less around Riker, as the previous one was, which might seem a little unbalanced, especially as this appears to be yet another Troiless one: she must have been worried every episode she wasn’t in. The Bynars are interesting creatures, but when Wesley says that there must be tremendous advantages to a race being so intermixed with computers, well, he hasn’t met the Borg yet has he? Bloody typical that the music has to be jazz though. Why is it always ****ing jazz? Damn oldies who write these things. And what is it with blondes and jazz don’t mix? Given that she’s only a hologram, it’s funny how pissed off Riker looks when Minuet invites Picard to join them. Reminds me of Homer: “But I was going to get lucky!” and Marge “No you weren’t.”


The Picard family reunions don't tend to be very lively affairs

I do find it hard to credit that Data says they have just over four minutes to evacuate the ship, and in that time all those people get off it? Apart from the fact that they’re, perhaps rather stupidly if by the book, not running but walking fast, the transporter can only take a few people at a time. Can the entire remaining complement be beamed off, and the ship get away from the Starbase to a safe distance in two hundred and forty seconds? Of course, I know and you know it’s a ruse, but they don’t, and if it’s real, can they expect any chance of everyone surviving? Would they not have been better to get the ship away and then start transports? And how come they never checked the holodeck? Wesley knew they were there; why doesn’t he speak up?

Pretty good idea really; using the Enterprise as a huge mobile hard disk to back their civilisation up and then download themselves back down to the planet when the danger had passed. But who has the password? Better hope there’s no virus in the system!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

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