NEW NONFICTION: MIRROR TV GUIDE LISTINGS, TNG, SEASON 7 (07/07) AKA Through a Sunbeam Darkly Author: The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam Code: TNG Rating: R for Language and Suggestive Situations.

152. Descent II. The second half isn't so cool. Crosis has no lines. Data doesn't kill Geordi. And it's all just a subspace thingamabob. Lore doesn't even get to get it on with Deanna as he does in the overprized bookitization, and overall it's a very languid revolutionary takeover. Still: in retrospect, it had its hot moments.

153. Liaisons. Okay, see, there are these guys and they're Iyaarans and there's three of them and they come on board the Enterprise and one is mean and one is stupid and one is weird and the weird one and Jean-Luc go off in a little rocket and wreck on a little planet and the weird one "dies" and Jean-Luc is captured by a woman who also wrecked on the little planet ten years ago and hasn't seen anybody since and Jean-Luc is the first man she's seen in ages. Then she falls in love with JLP! (Surprise surprise.) But he's not in love with her, even though he's stuck there and she's nice if a little unsophisticated and she throws herself at him repeatedly and kisses him but JLP is just ever so funny about it, and anyway after about twenty minutes of pure plot, it turns out that she is really the weird Iyaaran in disguise and he's pretending to be her so he can find out what love is. Huh? The stupid one meanwhile is learning about pleasure from Deanna and the mean one is learning about manners from Worf. See, that's their thing! What great neighbors! Oh, notice how, when Jean-Luc says goodbye to "his" Iyaaran, he is pink-cheeked with the oddest exhilaration. Dude! Only PS could turn in this twisty performance.

154. Interface. You know how I got turned on to Star Trek? See, I used to think I was too damn good for television, but one day I was idly getting ready for class and I was talking to this woman I work with and I told her I was getting ready to show one of our audiovisuals and she said which one and I said "Oedipus Rex" and she said "did you know that the actor who played Oedipus was just elected Most Bodacious Actor in the World by TV Guide and his name is Yahweh Stewartness." I said, "you mean Oedipus lives Outside of the AV Department?" From that moment on, I was a sucker for JLP's brand of love. Well, this is another AV moment: in our Richard Wright story AV "Almos'a Man" LeVar plays the lead and his momma is Madge Sinclair! As in this ep! Cool! See, I'm not REALLY watching teevee! I'm doin' research!

155 & 156. Gambit I & II. Okay, everybody thinks Jean-Luc is dead, but he isn't really; he's just wearing a low-cut jerkin and a weird neck implant aboard a pirate spaceship led by leonine sodomite Arctus Baran. Then the pirates also get Riker and Riker is relieved to see Jean-Luc in a really slashy way to see Jean- Luc and Jean-Luc says "ditto moi" and there's lots of pseudo-butch seething between Jean-Luc and Arctus over Riker's charms and there's also some sort of subplot involving the Los Angeles Lakers and Klingon hygiene tours and also there's a weapon and a Romulan gal and finally Data and Jean-Luc slashily accompany Riker to the brig in the last scene. I must observe that, even though they find out Jean-Luc is "dead" in the first scene, Bev is strangely chipper for the longest time.

157. Phantasms. Data is dreaming: Crusher takes a straw and sucks Riker's brains! Deanna is made into a cake and Worf eats it/her! Astonishing oral quality to Data's nightmares. Hey, that Freud on the holodeck sure doesn't seem very Freudian to me. Bottom line: it's body lice from outer space! Oh, yes, Data gets a knife and attacks Deanna in a turbolift. And yet nothing seems to happen!

158. Dark Page - Well, this is weird. Okay, Kristen Dunst is in it. That's one thing. Lwaxana drowns her older daughter in the holodeck. That's another. Kristen Dunst's father is played by actor Norman Large. Hey, did you all see "The Big Lebowski". It is something of a cliche to like Coen Brothers movies, but they are awfully good. In "The Big Lebowski", there's a porn movie within a movie, and the porn flick's name is "Log Jammin" starring the (fictive) porn actor Karl Hungus. Karl Hungus! Fabulous porn name! Well, I think Norman Large is a fab porn star name too! Norm Large! It can't get any better: Hot Norm Large Action!

159. Attached: Scowllllllllllllll. Very unrealistic. I mean, suppose you were telepathically attached to your man? What would he be hearing? "Look at how that goon drives: John Milton could handle a car better! And those clothes! What is he thinking of! Is it Sadie Hawkins Day at work?" On the other hand, when Jean-Luc and Bev are telepathically attached (thanks to a race of cranky aliens and their weird machinations), it's "Jean-Luc, I didn't know you cared" and "Bev, how long have you felt this way", etc. etc. And they don't even shack up. Although they come THIS CLOSE. I must say, however, that JLP and Bev are much cuter than my man and me. And Jean-Luc deserves canonization; he carefully does not think of Wesley.

160. Force of Nature. Years have passed since this episode and people are still bored!!!! Its boringness is, even as we speak, being broadcast throughout all the solar systems so people on other planets can be bored! It does feature a couple of scientists who are brother and sister, and very close. I guess they're the Angeline Jolie and James Haven of outer space, but even they don't ignite this sleepy ep. Turns out warp speed is bad. Tralalala. Oh, this is the ep where Data and Geordi are poised sexily in the Jeffries tube and Data says (one of my favorite lines ever): "Geordi, I could not stun my cat." With all the meaning in the world. He is so ineffably precious at that moment that I can't think why Geordi doesn't grab him and paw at his Starfleet trousers until Ol' Fully Functional is naked from the waist down and then Geordi plunges into him again and again. See, that way this ep wouldn't be so boring!

161. Inheritance - Data's Mother. Fionnula Flanagan plays Data's flesh-mother, the consort of Dr. Noonian Soong. Turns out (Calling Rod Serling! Calling Rod Serling!) she's a robot too but she just doesn't know it! Fionnula Flanagan is a hot momma from way back; she was on off-Broadway as Molly Bloom and bared her bazooms in the soliloquy scene. Overbearingly cheerful as most professional hot mommas tend to be, Data's mom talks a lot about Data as a "child" and how he ran around naked. Seems like naked Data was an issue in "The Most Toys" too, along with naked Lwaxana (remember how we are always being threatened with Lwaxana stripping off her clothes.) That's an interesting reveal of the TPTB's anti-sex phobia; comic characters are always being given rococo sex lives or having their clothes torn off (ala Quark in DS9). As if only the lowly would be sexualized and The Good Guys are Too Good to Strip. Fucking Paramount Puritans.

162. Parallels Bunch of parallel universes converse all at once. AwRITE!!! Buncha different Worfs, especially. Some of whom are shacking up with Deanna, some of whom aren't. Something new: a diffident Klingon! Happy ending. And we get to see what would happen if Jean-Luc had stayed in his Locutus drag: Riker's beard goes all fuzzy. Odd, I expected more than that.

163. The Pegasus. This other bald guy who outranks our bald guy comes on board and hangs around Riker in a slashy dom way and making all kinds of insinuations. Listen, the guy also claims that he has a "wife". Oh, I'm so sure. Hey, did anybody see "Waiting for Guffman"? Remember Corky's "wife"? Ha Ha. Lots of pseudo-butch seething over Riker's harms and pulling rank ensues! Then they all get caught in a Styrofoam asteroid and have to use an illicit cloaking device to get out (see, all these years Riker had been in on the earliest Starfleet use of a cloaking device, but he didn't know it UNTIL HE READ THIS WEEK'S SCRIPT!!) and there's more butch seething and Jean-Luc and Riker hang around the brig again in a slashy manner. This ep takes its slash-worthy Mary-Renault-y title from the name of the starship the Other Bald Guy drove.

164. Homeward. This ep is pretty cool for several reasons: for one thing, Dorn has to wear much less makeup than usual and we can see the beeyoutiful Dornface: man, it's worth the wait! Also, there's a little guy who's kinda cute: he plays a villager, see, in the village that Worf's human adopted brother (played by Paul Sorvino) has colonized only the human adopted brother is feigning not being human. Whew. Little guy accidentally gets aboard the Enterprise (long story) and sees (against Prime Directive) that he's . . . oh shit who cares. Too Much Plot! Give us sex! Anyway, after a while, Bev waltzes on: "Oh, little cute guy, well, he, uh, committed suicide, that's right, he committed suicide! It was really sad. Just suicided right over." Ben Sisko's sweetie turns up, only here she's married to he adopted human brother. A listless ep, maybe because it was filmed during the time that Paul Sorvino's daughter Mira was dating Quentin Tarantino. A fact which would make me rather listlessly question the meaning of life.

165. Sub Rosa. Wherein Bev puts on her nightie and writhes around. A fairly hot ep, all things considered. See, there's a sex candle that her whole family is addicted to (it's a long story) and now she's addicted and she quits Starfleet and there's a scene in graveyard e and (a nice moment) Ptewrt Satrick rolls his eyes and is lightly ironic about her family (a very true moment, he's sarky in the way we're all sarky to the people we work with). That sex, is, by and large, pretty unbelievably graphic. (I HEART GATES! Notice how she handles her sexual frustration towards JLP versus how Majel handles it. Majel and Gates are the Goofus and Gallant, respectively, of JLP-related sexual frustration).

166. Lower Decks. Featuring characters who aren't on the senior staff. Including a very scary Bajoran Mary Sue. As a matter of fact, the whole ep focuses on these losers. Damn! Who cares! Where's the only character that matters: I want my JLP!!! Still, look at this way: four brand new pieces of sexflesh on the Enterprise. Notice the looks everybody gives everybody else. It's like a John Rechy story! Bev and nurse. Geordi and the slick little Vulcan. Flabby white guy and Riker. And the scary Bajoran Mary Sue with Picard and Worf! "I could eat you alive," the scary curve of her mouth seems to say.

167. Thine Own Self. Wherein Data wears tights. And, while wearing tights, he also gets buried alive! TPTB don't show him getting dug up! They don't show Jean-Luc and them opening up the coffin! They just kind of beam Data up off camera. What a rip off!!! And not only do they blow that teeny inexpensive moment, but they blow the whole ep basically: see, there's about forty seconds where Data is beamed down to a medievally kind of planet, but he has android-related amnesia and he doesn't know who he is and he staggers around and a little girl befriends him and then the other people on the planet think he's a mechanical man and its about five seconds away from turning in FRANKENSTEIN! Which would just be the coolest Star Trek episode ever but then they screw up horribly and the episode itself gets buried alive. *sigh*

168. Masks A much criticized ep that I, ole Sunbeam, like a lot: No sex, alas, or if there is . . . ( Data changes genders, but not much follows from that). Still there's this whole mythic sun and moon thing, and everybody wears ugly little masques and Data has split personalities, and it's all just the most wonderful Orson-Welles-Presents-The-Spirit-of-Man-Awards-With-Ugly-Little- Giacommeti-Sculptures-of-A-Man-Striding-As-The-Award thing imaginable. *Very* 1961.

169. Eye of the Beholder. Turns out EVEN THE ACTORS didn't know what was real and what was fantasy in this episode. Damn! I like the glassy-eyed murderer though; good casting. We ALL (including Dorn and Marina) shoulda figured out that something was wrong when Deanna wakes up after a night spent in passionate love with Worf and nothing's mussed, I mean NOTHING. She just stretches out on the perfectly groomed sheets like a gal in a fabric softener commercial and croons, "It's Klingon Fresh! [TM]"

170. Genesis. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Hey, this is a great episode: see, loser Barclay does something and this virus gets loose that causes you to de-evolve. Worf deevolves into a great horned beast and Riker (in an extremely amusing turn) becomes an ape and Deanna is a fish; oh, yeah, Barclay turns into a spider. So many great scenes! And, see, Jean-Luc and Data have been at the drive-in movies in a shuttlecraft (passionately necking, I like to think, although canon does not support this) but, when they get back, the Enterprise is all dark and full of jungle squeaks (fabulous moment!) As they walk around, Data, of course, doesn't get the virus, but Jean-Luc does and starts (brilliantly) to de-evolve into a LEMUR!!! Data is SO unsympathetic, but he does discover a cure (snoresnore). The only way to get the cure to everybody (this is slightly baffling) is to sidetrack Great Horned Beast Worf who's wandering around killing things, and so Data has to boil up some of Deanna's pheronomes and then he tells Jean-Luc to waft them about, thus sidetracking Worf who will hence want to mate with Deanna. Umm, wait a minute! If Jean-Luc the Lemur-to-be has the pheronomes, won't Great Horned Beast want to get busy with the one with the pheronomes, i.e. Jean-Luc himself? Since canon does not indicate otherwise, apparently so. And there is a most exciting scene where Hot-to-Trot GHB Worf chases Lemur JLP through the Jeffries tube. (Alas, TPTB fail to show where the Beast catches the Lemur and .. . it happens: love at first lunge! It's obvious both PatrickHimStewartShip the Great and Michael Dorn are in on the joke. His PS-ness - Yes, He Who was Shylock, He Who Portrayed Leontes – has to mime throwing invisible pheronomes into the air from an invisible basket. Pretty cute!) But still: Suppose you were watching this with your kiddies? "Mommy, Mommy, what's Worf want to do with ole Jean-Luc?" What COULD you say?

171. Journey's End. Injuns and Cardassians, and Wesley runs off with Traveler yet again. For Bev it's grief, but to us it's really a big relief. Not one word of the script seems to have any connection to the next. Even Sir Pee Ess seems a little daunted by the rainbow phantasmagoria of syllables. Most suggestive moment: Wes looks eerily USED.

172. First Born. Wow! I didn't know Klingons had Renaissance Fairs! And yet they do. Worf even takes Alexander to one where a creepy older man picks Alex up! Then B'Etor, Lursa, and Quark put in an appearance! Curiouser and curiouser! This is one of those Character-From-the-Future stories, and Alexander's pick-up is not The Man From NAMBLA but actually the older Alexander himself. Then it gets more confusing. Might be a happy ending. Might not.

173. Bloodlines. AKA Jean-Luc's Partial Son. A Ferengi for Ferengi reasons conjures up a plausible youth to play Jean-Luc's son. His name is Jason Vigo and he isn't really (although quite cute with beautiful darkset eyes) but you have to sift through a great deal of plot before you get to that point. Most Interesting Fact: listen carefully – the actor playing Jason Vigo has a SOUTHERN accent. Weird! Also: another glimpse in Jean- Luc's past as Starfleet Manwhore, something Beverly, Q and I are most uncomfortable with.

174. Emergence: The Train One. Lotta people don't like this one, primarily because *nothing* happens. David Huddleston, the bad guy from *The Big Lebowski* (well, ONE of the bad guys from *The Big Lebowski*) is in it. A very abstract ep is all. Dadaesque, as if they'd cut up thirty two freelance scripts and then drawn random lines out of a hat and hoped for a plot. Nothing happens. Or I'm pretty sure nothing happens.

175. Preemptive Strike The beeyoutiful Michelle Forbes comes back one last time. Oh, listen, Riker has to disguise himself as a Bajoran. I want everybody to think about all of Riker's disguises: on the Angel One planet, as a Mintaken, as a Malcorian. Notice that these are the most inept "disguises" in Federation history. He'd do better just putting a sheet over his head and saying ‘boo!' Well, anyway, Michelle's fed up with Starfleet and is going to join the Maquis; she goes underground and Jean-Luc follows her. V. sexy scene where she pretends she's a prostitute and he pretends he's her customer: "Listen here, Ro, don't do me wrong; gimme that thing you're sitting on," he says, quoting Leon Redbone. ONE HOT SCENE. (Hey, wait a minute, what's JLP doing with his left hand all through that scene?)

176. All Good Things. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Bring ‘em back! Bring ‘em all back! Bring back the Pakleds and Kivas Fajo and Dr. Farralon and the Jaradan flea folk and Nick Dirgo and Admiral Chestcold and, and, and, the Romulan who looked like Soupy Sales! Everybody!! Don't leave us, TNG!!!!!! SOBBBBBB!!! Well, it was a great run and this was a great goodbye. Jean-Luc loses his mind in the future and starts wearing women's hats and then he slips into the present and runs barefoot around the Enterprise wearing nothing but a teeny weeny fuzzy bathrobe (thank you, Hafital, for pointing out his provocative garb) and then he goes back to the past with Q where everybody is tiny ugly amoebas and then it's back to the future and he's divorced from a mean-looking Bev and Deanna's dead and Worf (is this not so Worf? Is this not the Worfest?) is the only one who's grown in character and he misses Deanna and Riker has gray hair and he's turned into one of the innumerable horde of men who look like Kenny Rogers. Whew! Hey, Miles is there! So's Tasha! And . . .[breakdowncrycry] a life without TNG is NOT WORTH LIVING!!!

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