Instead he seemed like too much of a parasite. If Ronin had been a little more morally ambiguous, with more good and bad, that may have helped. In addition, this seemed like a pretty obvious re-use of the story idea from TOS "Wolf in the Fold." So, although I think there is a decent sci-fi plot to be found here, it doesn't get developed in any interesting ways. There really was not much mystery over whether Ronin was A. Matthew: Overall, I feel like the punchline of the story was a bit too obvious. And after the century mark, does it become a May-January romance? So many unanswered questions. Who did not catch this? Between a writers' meeting, a table read, a rehearsal, a filming, and an editing process, who did not realize that Beverly getting off on her grandmother's May-December romance was really, really, really wrong. I could just stretch my imagination enough to consider the possibility that in the future, where sex is no longer shameful, the thought of our relatives being sexual beings is not horrifying, but even that leap does not get us to grandma's sexcapades fueling our wet dreams. Kevin: I am still traumatized by Troi and Crusher having girl talk over her grandmother's journals. They just would have been better utilized in service of a more interesting story. The flowers on the gravesite and in the apartment, the reanimated corpse, Ronin in the mirror, the murder mystery, these are things that the Trek format can handle. The actual horror elements were pretty good. It also precipitates some orgasmic acting that I probably could have done without seeing. You just have to wonder why this portion was put in the story. A granddaughter reading her centenarian grandmother's erotic journals and getting turned on by them? Creepy in a very uncomfortable way. A psychic ghost haunting the women in one family line? Creepy in a good way. Had they found a way to incorporate those details into the main story, it would have been a lot more interesting. Given the number of alien cultures that reproduced Earth culture, I have no problem with humans wishing to do so, and given the number of humans to find meaning in alien philosophies, I have no issue with the governor finding the reverse, per se. Matt, I agree that the details they did add seemed odd, but even they coulod have been sculpted to make a more complete story.
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Other genre breaks were categorized by an interesting use of the genre in science fiction, or as a straight humor episode. All that's missing is Beverly clinging seductively to a shirtless Ronin on the cover. But for the Enteprise in orbit, this could be a pretty straightforward romance novel with fantasy elements.
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I think the basic structural problem can be reduced to the fact that they don't really do anything with the genre. Star Trek has done other genres before with skill and the results have been among the best of the franchise. Kevin: Based on some statements of Jeri Taylor, among other higher-ups at TNG at the time, this was TNG's attempt at a gothic romance novel, which in and of itself, I am not opposed to. Which means the plot itself has that much more weight to carry in the episode. Crusher's heritage Scottish? So what if the governor is an alien? What the hell was going on with the fog on the bridge? It's sort of the reverse of "Chekov's gun." Nothing in the backdrop really sticks. Many of the aforementioned details stick out precisely because they don't really impact the story meaningfully.
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But what we get from the episode tends to be somewhat strange, a little bit uncomfortable, and not terribly rewarding. We have a funeral ritual, that gives us an interesting secular twist on a Christian funeral mass - we get ashes to ashes, but instead of certain hope of the life to come, instead it is "that she will be kept alive in all our memories." Then we learn that we are on a terraformed version of Scotland, with an alien governor. Matthew: So, the way this episode starts out gives you the immediate knowledge that this will be a change of pace.