Re:Engage TNG

Worf shines in this episode by teaching the town to dance, to hunt, and to sing. Michael Dorn is a true triple threat! The younger generation of prisoners don't even know they are in prison. The much younger lady he saw washing in the previous episode shows Worf the artifacts of an ancient time. The Romulan leader Tokath is generally nice - he even married one of his Klingon prisoners! - but he's...

B. Dave Walters returns! We jump into a banger of a two-parter as Deep Space 9 takes center stage. Kind of. On the Promenade, Worf meets Mr. James Cameron, er, Cromwell, dressed up like a naked mole rat named Shrek (no, really) who says Worf's father is still alive. Mogh would be proud of his son breaking a glass table before donning a black caper suit and heading to the jungle to beat up some old...

We've come to see the tapestries! Q returns in an episode that doesn't have Q in the title, and we are pissed about that. Good thing, Erik has got us covered in that department. We start in the media-est of res-es, with Picard injured and rushed into sick bay. He goes into the light and a washed out Q tells him what's up. He's dead, because of the fight he had with the Nausicaans when he was a sli...

Counselor Troi wakes up as a Romulan and must immediately become badass or die. You see, she's been benevolently kidnapped by a Romulan friend of Spock's ... kind of. Meanwhile on the Enterprise, a traitor of the Federation who had defected to Romulus, comes back to deliver a message. They've got to go to some coordinates for a very important delivery. Troi verbally duels with Commander Toreth of...

The collective sigh of rut roh when Geordi sees Acquiel for the first time ... in that WIG! It's a murder mystery unlike you've ever seen before with a shape-shifting body-snatching thing eating dogs and taking names. The Klingons are here and Gowron's name gets thrown around, which is a nice touch. Levar Burton has to wrestle with a tough script and go to extremes while the guest star has a hard...

We go where no one has gone before --- into a cube! Bonnie Gordon joins the gang to discuss the Star Trek episode that launched a thousand holodeck programs. Moriarty returns from the clutches of Dr. Pulaski to demand Barclay take him to the Captain. You see, the fictional foil to Sherlock was locked in limbo for nary four seasons. Flimflammery and tomfoolery abound as left-handed people ruin all...

Hey, got a light? To be continued leads us right into Picard singing like a songbird, as Kate says. He's in the well-lit torture room with David Warner as Gul Madred. Then we move to Cardassians showing their ipads and threatening Picard's life to our crack negotiating team. Riker's pissed Jellyroll won't admit Picard was acting for the Federation, and Jericho relieves him of duty. No really! Pica...

It's a mid-season two-parter! Let's jump into an extremely important episode full of editing choices and amazing performances around the horn. Captain Jericho is a real sociopath, and he takes over the Enterprise as Picard, Worf, and Crusher train in secret for the secret mission involving Cardashians. Riker's beard is bristling, Geordi is flabbergasted at Jellico's changes, and Crusher is gassed...

Those little robots are so dang cute! Geordi meets with Dr. Firalalalon... who has a new mining technique she's perfecting on a new planet. The good doctor also made these cool little floating tools with self-replicating circuitry. One of them saves itself from destruction in a mining accident and Data pauses on that bit for a moment. Then he figures out there is life behind their oval-shaped exte...

Wagon Train to the stars, INDEED! Worf gets cajoled into playing cowboy with Alexander in the holodeck program he wrote with Barclay (who's mentioned but doesn't appear.) Troi gets in on the fun as the mysterious stranger, but then it all goes wonky when Datas start breaking the computer systems all over the ship. Crusher's play gets corrupted by Data's poem, Picard's flute music sucks, and cat fo...

The kids are on the prowl and this ain't no Space Camp situation! An accident puts a unique combination of characters into crisis mode as Ensign Ro, Keiko O'Brien, Captain Picard and Guinan all turn twelve to seven years old. Guinan and Ro learn to love jumping on beds while Keiko can't console Miles or her daughter. Picard's young self doesn't get the respect he deserves either, and the Ferengi t...

The return of Lohn JeDancie as the inimitable Q! This time, he's here to test an intern, but not like that. Well, kinda like that actually in that one scene. Olivia D'Abo, the older sister from Wonder Years fame, does a bangup job as a Q spawn left orphaned on Earth after a freak tornado accident in 24th Century Topeka. It seems the Q Continuum didn't like it when her parents quit the firm and our...

Data reads poetry, and Riker is sleepy as fuck! Clicking aliens, this episode is heavy on the horror side of genre. The fishmonks are assholes and have been stealing crewmembers of the Enterprise away from this dimension. We follow Riker's perspective, but it's happening to Geordi, Worf, and that other lady, too. To figure it all out, Troi takes them into the holodeck where they recreate from memo...

We need more development, Scotty! It's the return of Captain Montgomery Scott by way of James Doohan by way of a jury-rigged transporter buffer. The Enterprise encounters a Dyson sphere in the middle of space, and a Federation transport ship crashed on its massive surface. Geordi rescues Scotty from the transporter, but can't rescue him from feeling old. Like a relic from the past, if I may be so...

I gotta say, Troi sure knows how to pick 'em! But I blame the writers here. A diplomat comes in hot from an exploding transport ship but it's his mom that steals the show being angry at Troi's existence. Ambassador Alkar forms a bond with her, noting her empathic abilities, before his mom is found dead. Troi and Alkar touch crystals. Then she goes whackadoo: wearing revealing dresses, sleeping wit...

Lt. Barclay gets waylaid by a phobia of the transporter variety. He tries to shake it, the psychosis, but then he sees floating puppets eating his arm while he's in the matter stream. What if the phobias are true? His arm sure is blue! Geordi and Troi and O'Brien all bond with Barclay the clown before he goes from zero-to-hero miraculously fast. Get in touch with us on BlueSky @ReEngageTNG.bsky.so...

Going to California. The whole gang is here in San Francisco, Guinan, Jack London, and Mark Twain included. There are aliens stealing human mind energies and Beverly Crusher has been crushing it as a nurse in a cholera ward. If there was a way to hide murderous aliens by going back in time, our dear doctor tells us THIS would be the perfect crime. Except Riker the cop who totally respects the law....

As both Huey Lewis and his famous News have taught us, we gotta go back in time! It's 1889 S.F. this time around the sun but it takes the Enterprise crew a little while to get there. They find Data's head in a cave, contemplate death in Ten Forward, Guinan drops some plot bomb, and then bang, Data's in San Francisco at the stop of act three. There's some freaky aliens stealing human energies with...

Picard playing the flute will get me every damn time. So damn good. While investigating deep space, the Enterprise finds a random odd-shaped probe out there. Before they know it, Picard is knocked unconscious by a beam of energy and lays down on the Bridge thanks to Riker gentle hands. He wakes up in a rustic house, being cared for by a woman who says he's his wife. Picard has all the memories of...

There's to say about this phase of life. I mean, you get to watch people exercise, you get to push a nasty Romulan out of a ship, and ruin your own Dixieland funeral party. What's not to love? Ro Laren and Geordi Laforge get lost in the transporter beam while helping a Romulan science ship that's had a horrible accident in space. The Enterprise thinks the pair are dead, but they wake up, talk to e...

Hugh've got to be kidding me! We get back to the Borg and realize they aren't just the big implacable baddies the Enterprise made them out to be. Following up on a distress signal, Riker, Worf, and Crusher find an injured Borg on a random planet. Beverly wants to bring him on board, and Geordi devises a Borg jail after the Captain reluctantly agrees. Then they get the bright idea to poison this Th...

IFs can be creepy AF. The Enterprise welcomes Ensign Sutter and his daughter Clara on board while we welcome back Shareef Jackson to talk about this kid-centric episode. Checking out a nebula, Clara's imaginary friend she's created to deal with moving around from ship to ship comes to real life. Isabella is played by a fantastic young actor who brings breadth to the role of an alien learning about...

Jean Grey is an animorph, I think. Nope, wait she's an empathic megamind. In the triumphant return of the Ferengi, they bumble into birthing Famke Jenson's Kamala. She's the key to uniting two warring peoples, but she can't help but be attractive to every male on the Enterprise. Riker says no as graciously as he can. But Picard has to work with her one-on-one and he hasn't been this tempted since...

Lwaxana Troi invented Tinder. You heard it here first, kids! Alexander teaches us all a life lesson on whether to be nude at your weddings. Before that, Lwaxana teaches young Alexander about mud baths and creepy circus performers and the importance of laughing hour. Before that, Troi teaches Worf about the power of signing contracts with your children so that they perform chores like every good Kl...

Wesley Crusher returns! He's even more of a man, and is involved in a terrible scandal with Tom Paris, er, Nick Locarno and the rest of Nova Squadron while at Starfleet Academy. Picard reconnects with the gardener Boothby, who is a crotchety old man with a heart of gold or something like that. Nova Squardron was trying to make a galactic goatse when one of their number blows up his shuttle. Too ba...