Season 4 rolls on...
- Has Dr. Crusher goes cuckoo? Her old mentor comes on the ship, then mysteriously disappears. Then, more and more crew members are gone--but the remaining members and the ship's computers say everything is fine. It's all because of a warp experiment Wesley is running (stupid Wesley!). Eventually, it's down to Dr. Crusher and Picard--and then he's gone. Beverly figures out she's inside a warp bubble--and it's shrinking to the point the "universe" is smaller than the ship! Meanwhile, in the real universe, Wesley contacts "The Traveler" from an earlier episode, and together they use magic and gobbledygook to create a doorway between the worlds in "Remember Me". Gates McFadden does a great job as paranoid, then fearful, then resolute.
- A Federation ship crashes on Tasha Yar's home planet in "Legacy", so it's the Enterprise to the rescue. The planet is in shambles after a long war. They happen to run into Ishara Yar, Tasha's sister (played by Beth Toussaint). She supposedly wants to help them, but of course she's really working for her old Cadre. She also gets a chance to demo Seven of Nine's catsuit fashion. This episode is significant in that once it aired, TNG surpassed TOS in terms of longevity. There's a reference in the show to "Camus II", which was the planet in the final TOS episode "Turnabout Intruder".
- K'Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson) is back with her--and Worf's--son (Jon Paul Steuer) in "Reunion". She's there to meet with Picard--the Klingons are near civil war, and the current Chancellor (played by Charles Cooper) is hear death. He's been poisoned, and wants Picard to determine who will succeed him--and to find out who killed him. The bad guy Duras (Patrick Massett) is one of the candidates, and the other is the Barney Google-eyed Gowron (Robert O'Reilly). There's the normal Klingon ceremony and an assassination attempt. K'Ehleyr is also snooping around to find out why Worf was officially shunned by the Empire (as seen in a previous episode), since Worf is using that as a reason to refuse to perform the mating ritual with her. For her efforts, she is killed by Duras. Worf retaliates, killing Duras with his bat'leth. With no other candidate, Gowron becomes Chancellor. Worf sends his son to live with his adopted parents.
- In "Future Imperfect", Riker gets pulled away with from a birthday party to lead an away team to a planet's cavern--a possible old Romulan base. The team is quickly overcome with fumes, and Riker awakens to realize that 16 years has passed--he's now the captain. Crusher gives him some medical doubletalk about a weird virus that makes him lose his memory. Admiral Picard shows up and tells him that a Romulan - Federation peace treaty is imminent, with Riker needing to be front and center. He also meets his son (Chris Demetral), playing the trombone. Of course, it's all a ruse--he's on a Romulan holodeck. They wanted to get info on a secret base. Riker figures it out when he sees his old holodeck girlfriend as his now dead wife, and Data uses a contraction. Then he realizes he's in yet another fantasy--by an alien child who just wanted him to stick around. There's a lot of grey hair and different hairstyles in the episode, along with slightly different uniforms.
- It's Wesley's "Final Mission" (YAY!). He's been accepted at the Academy, but first he's going with Picard on a mission. The Enterprise has to go on a rescue mission, so they are forced to use an alien shuttle (why not use an Enterprise shuttle?), which ends up crashing on a desert planet. They make it to a cave, but Picard is injured while saving Wesley from a cave-in caused by bizarre energy. Wesley manages to get the water they need, but not before Stewart and Wheaton give their audition monologues. Also, the planet shots on this episode look particularly cheap--like beach balls.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is available on Netflix--more to come!