NEW NONFICTION: MIRROR TV GUIDE LISTINGS, TNG, SEASON 4 (04/07) AKA Through a Sunbeam Darkly Author: The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam Code: TNG Rating: R for Language and Suggestive Situations.

74. The Best of Both Worlds II. Fortunately Riker doesn't kill Jean-Luc, so the Borgs get to show some muscle until Borg Jean- Luc is captured by us and put in a sort of vending machine-type deal wearing only his Speedos. Why aren't these vending machines everywhere! Happy ending. SirKingWonderStewartPatrick acts his Speedos off!

75. Family. Jean-Luc goes back to "France" to see the family. Cool thing: his sister-in-law is Samantha Eggar! Remember her in "The Collector" where Terence Stamp kidnaped her and kept her in the basement and wanted to sleep with her but never did? That movie was the ultimate in sexiness ‘cause, man, she died before they could do it! Wow! And another cool thing: there's a teeny little visual quote from Maxfield Parrish at the end of this episode. Ultimately, Jean-Luc has to tearfully confess to his mean older brother Robert what the Borg did to him. (Mean older brothers are a Star Trek staple.) Seems the Borg held him down and one Borg after another had its evil metallic will with his flesh and after a while he got to love it and now periodically he craves semi-metal flesh penetrating his most secret self, etc. And, since we were there with J-L, we know what he's saying.

76. Brothers. Brent Spiner, Master Thespian! He acts and acts and acts here! In three distinctly different roles, so it is pretty damn amazing. He plays himself, and his mean older brother, AND his father. He's fun as dad Noonian (although Noonian seems to have visited the same makeup counter as Jar Jar Binks), and, of course, everybody loves mean older brother Lore, that scary scary Lore. Subplot about (can you dig it) mean older brothers - gee, that's different!

77. Suddenly Human. "Death in Venice" for Cap. Some boy (he's one hot-looking Tadzio) with his pick of inter-galactic sugar daddies keeps nuzzling Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc is tempted, but, when the boy stabs him, he wusses out and sends the boy back to his prior Sugar Daddy. Rats. Best moment: Jean-Luc telling Tadzio to turn his stereo down!

78. Remember Me. Wes is screwing around with Time and Space down in the boiler room and makes his mom's universe disappear. Actually, this is a most disturbing ep: Bev's alleged universe keep getting [Pee-Wee Herman voice] smaller and smaller and smaller until just about everything disappears. She tries to take advantage of it to make a pass at JLP, but even HE disappears mid-pass. Hey, thanks, Wes! It takes annelidan pederast Traveler to straighten everything out. And Bev doesn't even ground Wes!

79. Legacy. Suppose there was an episode that featured Live Underwater Nude Wrestling with Jean-Luc Picard! Don't you suppose the ratings would just GO. THROUGH. THE. ROOF. Paramount's timidity is so baffling. (The only thing better would be Live Underwater Nude Wrestling with Jean-Luc Picard: The Sweepstakes! YOU Could Be a Winner!) This episode, alas, does not feature live underwater nude wrestling with anybody, not even live underwater nude paramecium. It does have Tasha's Live Clothed sister and she does betray Data, but that's pretty colorless compared to Live Underwater Nude Wrestling with Jean-Luc Picard.

80. Reunion: Is this the one about Worf's baby brother, Kurn? Kurn. [smile] Kurn. Somebody was having fun at Paramount that day. Well, anyway, Jean-Luc replicates a roast turkey for Kurn and Kurn (naturally) takes this as the most grievous Klingon insult imaginable. What was Jean-Luc thinking of! Et, apres le turkey, things happen.

81. Future Imperfect. Riker goes into the future! He has a son named Jean-Luc (Riker is a desperately sick man!). He's married to a hologram! Deanna gets a little gray in her hair! (Betazoid Formula would clear that right up.) Jean-Luc (I guess now he's PawPaw Jean-Luc) wears the same kind of beard that the Mayor of MunchkinLand wears! Turns out none of this happened; another ep with no reason to live!

82. Final Mission - Deranged loser takes Jean-Luc and Wes for a ride in his Outer Space 1975 Orange Pinto! They crash (natch!) in a desert, but Jean-Luc the Fabulous sets about conquering the elements pronto. You must see Jean-Luc in his improvised French Foreign Legion hat. Ooooooooooooooooooohh, he looks wonderful. Too bad he nearly dies and only Wes is there to save him. Doesn't matter. The main thing here is Jean-Luc in his improvised French Foreign Legion hat. Too beautiful for words. Sleek as a cat. Hot as a coal. Meaningful as a promise.

83. The Loss: Does Deanna really have a job description, or is she just the Captain's exotic arm candy? Maybe she's part of some lend-lease thing with the Betazoid government. Well, anyway, in this ep, something happens and she loses what little ability she has. "I can't read minds anymore, CAPTAN," she says, but she seems to get her "powers" back at the end. Rilly.

84. Data's Day - a fluffy widdle episode about Data's day! Just like a child's book where everybody is perfectly cute and well- behaved (except for a naughty-faced Romulan girl subplot). The main point is Miles and Keiko's wedding; you can tell their marriage will end with them clawing at each other eight years later. Tonight, Keiko points out she must be Irish too; after all, she's sharing her bed with a pig.

85. The Wounded. Tonight's Special Guests; Those Wacky Cardassians. Although many fans have commented on TPTB's obsession with humanoid-looking aliens, these consistently humanoid aliens don't particularly bother me. Except for the eyebrows: aliens always seem to have rococo and byzantine eyebrows. Hey, what makes eyebrows an universal constant? "Breathes there a race with souls so dead they don't have eyebrows coming out of their head?" I mean, we humans probably have more in common with ducks than with, say, Klingons, but ducks don't have eyebrows. Or do they? Well, anyhow, leaving eyebrows out of it, the thing I want to know is how come aliens are always so proud! And sneering! I0 mean once in a while you see craven aliens scurrying about, but those two extremes are it: proud or craven, no in-between. Never a pleasant game of cards; never aliens going to buy alien patio furniture. No middle ground for the aliens, nosireebob! So tonight, Colm Meaney is cool, but mainly the Cardassians get haughty on Starfleet's ass.

86. Devil's Due. A good ep!!!!! See, okay (deepbreath) there's this sad little planet and they're all reading copies of *Intergalactic Left Behind* and they just know the end times are at hand and a hot babe shows up and says, "that's right, it's the end times and I'm God!" And the saps buy it! (Losers!!!!!) Ergo, Jean-Luc and them have to persuade A WHOLE PLANET that she's not God. Ooh, one night, the God gal sneaks into Jean-Luc's bedroom and we get to see him strut his stuff magnificently in his jammies! MMMmmmm. A nice hot moment when she says *I know the nookie you need* and turns into Deanna!!!!!!!!!! Awyeah!!! For those of us into Klingon trivia, Feklh'r the Klingon Satan turns up and growls at the cameraman!

87. Clues. Tonight there's a lot of clues! I actually find this ep sort of irritating. Everybody seems a little out of character. *sigh* Why are there no TNG's about, you know, Moonies!? Or flubber! But no, we get this. Things happen. Hey, wouldn't a website devoted to weird symptoms be a great thing? It could be like "Do You Have Leprosy! Take This Test and See! Maybe It's the Bubonic Plague! Or Rabies! Or Lockjaw! You Never Know What Those Strange Symptoms Could Mean! Find Out Now!" Just think of the billions in advertising this site would make! I know I'd go there EVERY DAY! Just to be sure! I seem to be drifting off-topic.

88. First Contact. Not the movie with James "Babe of Babes" Cromwell, but the episode with Caroline Seymour (spending too much time on the intergalactic treadmill, but still cool) who believes in aliens! Turn out she's right! They exist! And . . . they're us!!! Us, I mean, we, decide to postpone coming out of the alien closet on this planet til the planet can handle it, but we get a lovely parting gift in the personage of Caroline Seymour herself! George Hearn (played a great "Sweeney Todd" on HBO years ago) is a doctor who tries to help disguised-alien Riker. (And, for us guttersnipes, there's a risque interlude with one of those porn staples, a white-stockinged and sultry nurse; seems she wants a taste of Riker's alien love-tool.)

89. Galaxy's Child. Star Trek's answer to Bambi! They kill a gigantic space creature's momma and the space creature begins to nurse the Enterprise and steal its energy, and Geordi conjures up the spirit of Leah Brahms (I think) and there's a happy ending. Still, hurt-animal stories do a number on me.

90. Night Terrors. Nobody's getting the sleep they need and everybody is tired and cranky and Bev is too tight-assed to give them the Valiums and Percodans and Hycodan they so obviously need, so the night-terror monsters come to life (rather spookily) in sickbay to get Bev for being just plain mean and unreasonable. Oh, and Deanna pulls her weight for once and solves things.

91. Identity Crisis AKA Big Blue Geordi! He turns blue! He has turquoise veins all over his body. If you look close enough, you can see the perfect copper coins of his nipples! And the promising folds of his underarms! Pretty sexy, for something with that color scheme. See, some people who went on an away mission several years before are all turning into these critters. And thus our gang has to go over the records of that mission to figure out what went on so they can return Geordi to his original Geordiness. There's something slightly unsettling in the way they go over the records again and again, kinda like the Zapruder film in a weird way.

92. The Nth Degree. Barclay eps are generally pretty cute; this one is slightly less cute, but it does address the issue of Space Tedium!!! Yes, it can be tedious in outer space! That's okay, says Bev, we'll put on a little play! Yup, the cold wind of Borg breath is at our back, and we'll start a community theatre! And Barclay takes over the known universe until he doesn't anymore.

93. Qpid: despite the depressing presence of . . . VASH, she-who-rimes-with-trash, this is pretty hot. And probably as close to canon slash as TNG will get. Jean-Luc puts on his jammies and gets in bed and, in a sudden flash of light, Q appears on the bed with him. Q says, "she makes you . .. small" (fabulous significant emphasis). Q says, "I didn't know she'd have *that* sort of effect on you." Q says, "I wish I'd come to you as a woman." Then he has the effrontery to steal Vash from JLP and take her away. (Q really doesn't want her; if he turns his head, he can't remember her spiky features, but he doesn't want her to lure Jean-Luc into her fatuous traps any further.) Great costumes in the allegedly-comic Robin Hood subplot. Jean-Luc wears tights, and no one in the history of the world wears tights as well as he does (I'll give Vash this: Jean-Luc dresses hot when she's around). Q looks real sharp too as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and they are both so beautiful and alluring and they send so many melting glances towards each other. Why Does Vash Live? Why Does Vash Live At all? What Is God Thinking of?

94. The Drumhead. Another courtroom show. Notice how cheap they are: get some ham actors and some tables and a big bunch of script and go to town. This mess all begins with a guy with bat- like ears who says his grandmaw is a Vulcan but really she's a Romulan. His Royal Shakespeare Majesty PeeEss gets to act and act and act, but there's a little more script than there ought to be.

95. Half a Life features the guy with the popular designs on his head. How popular are these designs? Well, down where I am, all the hillbillies I know have these very same designs airbrushed on the hoods of their Pontiac Trans-Ams. This doesn't help tonight's guest star at all. Seems Lwaxana's in love with him and he commits suicide. Oh. (We get to see her call Worf Woof for the first time – Dorn coulda stopped that if he'd piddled on her leg just once).

96. The Host. The Trill ep. This is great but confused. Great because a woman comes on to Bev! Great because Bev does the wild thing with Riker (when he's possessed by the Trill)! Great because Riker nearly dies! Confused because the initial Trill Bev falls for, is, sigh, not an attractive piece of manflesh. Confused because the Trill inside the unattractive piece of manflesh is even less attractive -- it looks like a cow's stomach! Confused because Bev says to herself: I'll just put this cow stomach inside Riker and that way we can have sex! Somebody get this woman a "Good Vibrations" catalogue quick!

97. The Mind's Eye. Filmed in Fabulous GeordiVISION! All right, let's all leave aside the smut moment and live up to our i.q.'s for a moment and talk about BIG SMART STUFF. So why didn't Noonian Soong program Data with visual-filtering programs? I mean, Adobe can do it; they can take a picture of your cat Fluffy and make it contrasty or pencil-ly or water-color-y or sepia- toned or done in weird complementary Andy-Warhol-like colors and just overall make the Fluffmeister look too cool!!! So why can't Data adjust his vision to something a little out of the ordinary? (And his vision must be ordinary: think about his paintings.) Can you imagine watching TNG one night and *poof* there's a pointillist Worf! [BEAM!] Too great an idea!

98. In Theory. I wonder why there's not more fanfic about Jenna D'Sora. She's perky and blonde! And way hot to trot! (Hey, it's pretty clear she and Data do it that night on the sofa.) But, alas, Data understands love no better than any of us, and so Jenna is elected mayoress of Lonelytown once again. We also get far too much information about Miles' dirty socks.

99. Redemption. B'Etor (or is it Lursa) makes moves on Cap. Pretty steamy, if you ask me. "Let me reheat your Earl Grey," she breathes. "My goodness, what a huge teacup!" There's also a lot of Klingon rodomontade, Gowron gets to Gowron around, and, right after he hands in his commission, Worf is elected Homecoming King of the Enterprise Harvest Ball.

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