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Jammer’s Reviews: TNG Season 7, Episodes 1-6


Lore makes his final appearance in the less-than-thrilling “Descent, Part II.”

Welcome to the Fall of Season Seven. With any luck, our trip down TNG memory lane will be finished before 2012 is, and with it will be the end of an artificially prolonged journey that started way back in 2005.

As an introduction to my first five reviews of the season (of six episodes), I should tell a story that I was reminded of from a comment left a short time ago in the last blog post at the end of season six.

This is actually not the first time I have reviewed the seventh season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is evidenced by my postings on the SOS ranking website, which I must say I am happy still exists after all these years. It’s been out here even longer than I have.

For the record, I disavow all of the ratings for TNG season seven that are on that site. I had forgotten that I had even posted them. While some of the ratings will probably match up with the reviews I am now writing, others likely will not. (To prevent bias from my past self, I am not even going to go look at them now.)

Those ratings, I am pretty sure, were based on reviews I wrote for TNG season seven the summer after it originally finished airing, which were actually the very first Trek reviews (along with DS9 season two that same summer) that I ever wrote. This was the summer before I went to college and first had access to something called “the Internet.”

Those reviews (as well as the DS9 ones, which I rewrote later) were never posted online. I actually compiled them into paper books and put them on consignment at a local comic book store in 1994. While I still have them on my hard drive to this day (and even have some of the actual books, somewhere), I probably haven’t looked at them in well over a decade, mostly because it’s too embarrassing to read them.

It makes me honestly amazed that I’ve been doing this so long. And, of course, makes me feel old, yadda, yadda, etc.

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3 comments on this post

Good luck! Will you make a retroactive mention of “These Are the Voyages” in “The Pegasus” review? I know the commenters will.

I’m really looking forward to your review of “Firstborn”. I think it’s a highly underrated episode that involves time travel without getting bogged down in technobabble. Not even the series finale can claim that!

Your original ratings on the Joe Reiss site have indeed changed a little in some places–and they haven’t in others. You assigned 6/10 for both Gambit I and Phantasms but in Jammers Reviews, you give Gambit I 2.5 stars out of 4 (about the same) but 3 stars out of 4 for Phantasms which is 75%. (a better rating) So, as you say your Reiss ratings are dated in some places and not so dated in others.

You also gave 9.5/10 for Parellels, 5/10 for Force of Nature (which I consider to be a generally weak TNG episode) and a 10/10 for Lower Decks in 1994 on the Joe Reiss site. I’m sure your ratings today will change a little (or a lot) since everyone’s perspective alters with time. I look forward to your review of Pre-emptive Strike which was directed and acted so powerfully by Patrick Stewart himself–and The Pegasus. Best Wishes, Fabian

@Jammer
Do you think the special effects budget of TNG season 7 looks drastically reduced? Things in this season look really cheap, and lots of old effects are recycled more than usual. “Parallels” is a good example. “All Good Things…” is sadly another offender. (They just reused all the model shots from “Family”!) It’s weird, DS9 season 2 (which ran concurrently as we know) had lots of top notch movie-level special effects through-out.

Could it be because of the massive glut of Trek at the time with the prepping of Generations and Star Trek Voyager?

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