Re:Engage TNG

Barclay is back, and he's bitchier than ever! The return of Lt. Reginald Barclay is a deep and often dark commentary on each actors' trials and tribulations concerning wigs and prosthetics. Well, not really. Instead, we get a super-smaht brainiac who takes over the Enterprise's computer all in the name of efficiency due to Reg being infected with a mind virus. I won't ruin the ending of this float...

There's a metaphor in the Mummenschanz ! Erik Curry returns to host this very special episode of Re:Engage where we witness Geordi LaForge transform from a creeper into a little brother to a purple vein monster and back again. Lieutenant Commander Leijten (pronounced as in "Lighten up, Francis") has found some footage of an away team she and Geordi were on five years ago. The rest of the team have...

Let's get horror up in our Star Treks! We really need to take more naps, you know, as a society, and that is proven true here in this episode as the Enterprise is stuck in a Tyken's Rift along with a ship of death. The starfleet officers went all murderous on each other on the USS Brittain, gruesomely so, except for a catatonic Betazed. Troi's dreams start to get as funky as her nightclothing, whi...

Hoo boy, this one's a doozy. Kate keeps us laughing and loathing nearly everything Geordi LaForge does and says in this episode. Dr. Leah Brahms returns as her not-holodeck self and Geordi tries to date her at every turn. The problem is not that Dr. Brahms is married, which takes a Jeffries tube conversation to get that factoid out there, but that Geordi violates nearly every privacy law we have....

There's something funny about this one. Star Trek always focuses on the bridge crew of the Enterprise, according to Mean Gene Roddenberry, but the producers successfully switched up the POV to the Malkorians. The cultural bridge crew of Re:Engage also gets some new POVs as Geoffrey Zatkin ( @GeoffreyZatkin on Twitte r) and Matthew Krol ( @EmperorMSK on Twitter ) from the YouTube channels Extra Cre...

If it wasn't for that dang moss, those Paxans would have gotten away with it! So Picard asks for the chance to do it once more, with feeling. Special Guest Shareef Jackson returns to talk about this unique Star Trek episode, and as a new father, he's also never sure if he was unconscious for 30 seconds or much longer. Whoopi Goldberg is woefully misused in the Dixon Hill re-visit, but we're glad t...

Is this real life? Or is this just fantasy? We go down to Georgia, er, Ventax II to visit with Ardra, who's apparently a devil-like figure that's come to collect on a thousand-year-old debt. She's got earthquakes, she's got riots, and she's got camp bleeding out of her eyeballs! Picard wants nothing to do with her flim-flam show, and he assembles a crack team of investigators to try Ardra in the c...

Meet the Cardassians! We welcome a very special guest to Re:Engage with his own performance introducing this culture to the Star Trek canon. It's incredible how much impact one drink of danar in 10 Forward with O'Brien has on the franchise. The accomplished actor Time Winters joins and delights with stories from the set filming "The Wounded," an extremely on-the-nose episode investigating Captain...

This episode inspired both the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life" and the entire run of the sitcom of the 90s "Seinfeld." And that's canon! Data's voiceover diary entries written to Dr. Bruce Maddox are the wrapper of the slice of life episode, the first of its kind for the franchise. But this nothingburger day is nothing but - so many things happen! Including the wedding of O'Brien to Keiko Ishika...

Marina Sirtis pulled the short straw on this script. What should have been a great vehicle for her to show her chops ends up falling a little flat. GET IT!? The Enterprise is pulled along in the wake of what the bridge crew discover to be two-dimensional beings. At the same time, Counselor Troi loses the ability to feel others' feelings and to have any rational response to those things happening a...

Let's all sing "Say Goodbye to Wes Crusher" to the tune "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" by Billy Joel. Or not. The meter doesn't really match up, kinda like how this episode's plot doesn't match the gravitas of Wesley's final episode. Picard wants Wesley to come with him on some cockamamie miner's quarrel mission right before the boy is to ship out to Starfleet Academy. They've been dangling this for y...

Riker will have to grow old eventually people, let's get it over with. Here the crew jumps 16 years into the future but Riker's son recreates the Enterprise slightly imperfectly. Peace with the Romulans? Ferengi ensigns? Marrying a simulation? Well, in sci-fi, anything is possible. The writing here goes out of its way to feel original, and the performances by Frakes and guest kid Chris Demetral as...

Spoiler Alert! Worf had a secret baby with K'Ehleyr and thought right before a tense moment of negotiation between the Klingon Empire and the Federation was the best time to lay it on him. Then she has the gall to be murdered for figuring out he was discommendated because of something Duras' father did. How rude! Picard is asked to pick the next leader of the Klingon Empire for some reason, and ev...

Remember Tasha Yar? And the failed colony she came from? Well it's gotten even worse now, and Tasha's sister is there to make sure it stays that way. A pair of Federation crewmen are held in captivity, and the Enterprise crew has to get them back by working with one of the factions. Ishara Yar lures them in with some fancy bluffing, action moves, and the smooching of Data's cheek. Then she shows h...

Quoth the raven, remember more! Dr. Crusher brings her acting chops to this episode as she welcomes on an old friend to the Enterprise before - bloop! - he straight up disappears. Worf ain't having it and neither is Picard, as they try to figure out the missing people problem. Turns out Wesley's to blame, sigh, again, as he created a rogue worp bubble in engineering. There's only one person who ca...

Suddenly Human, is in my head now! Kate sings us in on the dreamy blonde locks of our Tiger Beat Cover Boy for this episode. Adopted by the Talarians, a human teen is discovered to be the grandson of a Star Fleet admiral won in battle. Troi makes Picard adopt him, again, and the Odd Space Couple argue about everything from music, misogyny, the removing of one's gloves. Just when everything is abou...

Data has a wonderful family, doesn't he? There's something funky going on with the android commander and he silently commandeers the Enterprise to go to a nearly abandoned planet. While the crew tries to figure out how to get control of the ship back in order to save a little brother from some terrible prank, he beams himself down. That's where Brent Spiner meets Brent Spiner, before another Brent...

It takes a while to really figure out what this episode is about - oh wait, it's FAMILY. Largely considered a quieter part three to the previous two bombastic episodes around the Borg invasion, Picard goes back home to his family's vineyard in France to cope. He meets his brother's wife and their son Renee for the first time, and reconnects with an old friend who's attempting to raise Atlantis, or...

The culmination of the longest wait in TV (and Re:Engage) history! Dr. Erin MacDonald joins as our very special guest for this premiere of the fourth season that follows on directly after the events from the finale of season three. Dr. Erin makes the "Trek-no-babble" happen on modern Star Trek shows and she learns up our cultural bridge crew on deflector dishes, graviton particles and anti-matter...

This is it! This is the big one! For many Start Trek fans, this episode is what cemented our love of this series and this franchise. The terrifying enemy of the soulless Borg are back, and the top brass sends in the Shelby. The commander is introduced as an expert in Borg tactics and a foil to one Will Riker. They are at odds from the start, but they learn how to trust each other when the Enterpri...

Everyone love John Doe! Well, except for Worf's neck, but we'll get to that. Geordi hasn't figured out how to talk to women yet, but he gets a little yellow mojo from a mostly dead alien's brain. Dr. Crusher saves said alien, and falls for him like Florence Nightingale, but he doesn't remember who or what he is. Erik hosts this one and is non-plussed by the X-Men Jesus storyline plus the glowing y...

The hostage nobody wants is none other than Lwaxana Troi in Majel Barrett's triumphant return to the role her husband Gene described as the Auntie Mame of the Galaxy. The Ferengi don't put on too good a look here, with Damon Tog capturing mother and daughter Troi and chess club boy toy Riker before any nookie can occur. Lwaxana distracts with the Ferengi version of oral while Wesley Crusher trains...

Who's got worse daddy issues than an aging Vulcan? Sarek does! Mark Lenard returns to go toe-to-toe with Patrick Stewart and it's illogical (ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL!) to assume anything other than a throw-down master class in acting is about to occur. Ambassador Sarek is onboard with his wife to complete a 97-year diplomatic mission, but he's so old that he's psycho-actively making the crew of the En...

Perhaps the creepiest portrayal of an abusive relationship on Star Trek. Saul Rubinek gets called in to guest star with aplomb and embodies an evil that's all too real. Data gets captured by malicious trader Kivas Fahjo, and put on display in his collection of unique items. At least 50% of the artifacts are from Earth, except for the knock-off Salacious Crumb. Data pulls the trigger on his Chekhov...

One of the best portrayals of social anxiety before we even had a term for it. Lt. Barclay is, um, well, you see, one of the engineering crew of the Enterprise. Or IS HE? Special Guest Lucian Khan comes on to explain his insightful theory that this entire episode is on a holodeck WITHIN a holodeck, and honestly we're all kind of sold on the idea once you factor in some of Barclay's forthcoming app...