Turning on BBC 2 in early 1996 and witnessing a pale android cutting a slice out of his crewmate who'd been turned into a cake was my first memorable taste of this series, but there are still some episodes from this final stretch that I don't think I ever bothered getting around to in the near 30 years since, on account of them sounding pretty rubbish.
Time to complete the voyage, I guess, with tired mediocrity now in HD!
Key:
Klingon episode
Ferengi episode
Cardassian episode
Romulan episode
Borg episode
Q episode
The most infamous episode this side of 'Shades of Gray' deserves the bad rap. Star Trek's a flexible format, but supernatural Gothic romance is a warp jump too far, and contriving bonnie Space Scotland in season seven is an embarrassment. Nana Palpatine might have pushed it across the so-bad-it's-good border if it wasn't for all the rape.
The Wrath of Bok. I like the symmetry of bringing back a season one villain, which is really a generous way of looking at them running out of ideas, and it helps to rehabilitate the Ferengi as credible villains before the end, but shame about the plot.
Belatedly resolving ignored character chemistry like 'Second Chances,' but without even a goofy gimmick this time, Picard and Crusher go camping while a paranoid ambassador inexplicably fills his quarters with plasma ball gadgets. I'm feeling the slump now.
Another candidate for the most forgettable episode of the whole run, it was a rare treat not having a clue what to expect, and the classic sci-fi twist almost made up for the road there being so tedious.
Another family-themed season looms with the possibly posthumous introduction of Geordi's mother. LeVar plays it oddly unexpressive, even when we can see his eyes for once. The probe roleplay is a good gimmick, but not for a whole episode.
An eco terrorist shakes the crew out of their humdrum complacency and posthumously achieves sweeping reform for several episodes before that restrictive narrative problem quietly fixes itself. It's a shame they made their biggest climate change allegory so avoidably obnoxious, but the Enterprise catching some space surf is fun, at least.
Troi investigates the lower decks of crime for more death and trauma in her final episode. It's fine, but only spared from being the most forgettable instalment of the whole series by showing us what the inside of the nacelle tubes looks like.
Deanna faces the final boss of Lwaxana Troi episodes inside her mother's traumatised mind. It's one of the better Lwaxana episodes, as all the more serious ones are, but quite the downer, pushed to annoying at times by the language barrier. Two dark psychological episodes back to back was strange scheduling too.
Like the one where they were turned into kids, I despaired at the de-evolving crew's animal antics until I gave in and started enjoying the tomfoolery. It's so dumb, but at least it's entertaining.
The completely unnecessary story of Data's "mother" feels like they're running out of ideas now, but it's nice to learn about Data's growing pains and also amusing that they feel it's necessary to justify Brent Spiner's real-time ageing even by this point.
Introducing Worf's foster brother is taking the piss now, and the Prime Directive moralising is confused and tedious, but there's a good 'First Contact'-style story underneath when you put yourself in the abducted villager's shoes. Maybe it's all been in the holodeck since 'Ship in a Bottle' anyway.
Now that Wesley's sorted out, it's time to remember that Worf has a son on board who hasn't been seen for a year and a half. Two mediocre halves with the usual Klingon shtick and a 'Unification'-style runaround are slightly sweetened by a late time travel twist and a gratuitous Quark cameo.
Like 'The Best of Both Worlds,' I grew up with this in TV movie format and I'm not used to considering it as separate halves. That's as far as that comparison goes, but this tepid action climax has a few memorable sequences, and the pair hold together better than 'Time's Arrow,' though that's not the highest bar.
Crazy straws make the Enterprise alive and the crew help it to give birth. Good ideas with rough execution, but trying to make it work might only have distracted their attention from the finale, so I'll happily take a half-baked phantasmagoria over another estranged family drama.
The crew plays Space Jumanji while Brent Spiner devours the scenery. Objectively quite a stupid episode, but in the right frame of mind it's some delightful nonsense that brings back the cosmic strangeness of the early years.
One of the more generic Jayden episodes, his extremely specific amnesia is a contrivance, but it's quite a nice little yarn. If this were the grim DS9 version, he would've killed them all. Rather than stretching it out, the welcome return of completely unrelated B-plots makes better use of the time we have left.
So it didn't really need to be a two-parter, but it was more entertaining than passing the time with another family outing. There's some tension in the undercover Vulcan seeing through Picard's gambit (oh, I just got the title), but we're generally on cruise control while the spin-off does more interesting things.
A fun no-stakes romp with Picard, Riker and the hair metal space pirates who don't stand a chance, but seeing them briefly hold the upper hand is an amusement. If I was going to treat it seriously, Number One displays a distressing decline since 'The Best of Both Worlds.'
For an episode primarily preoccupied with hurriedly wrapping up Wesley's arc and sowing seeds for the spin-offs, there's still some good diplomatic tension to enjoy. And as hokey as the Native American angle is, I'm a sucker for these kids rejecting the Starfleet conveyor belt and going their own way, so godspeed.
More like a Deep Space Nine episode, which suits me fine, Ro's fitting and emotional send-off puts Wesley's self-absorbed hippie shit in perspective. In a stronger season, there'd be about 10 episodes separating those, but there were still a few late classics to make it worthwhile.
Probably not the ideal introductory episode with all its surreal imagery, but I've always been very fond of it as a result. The demolition crew still give me the creeps, but that's offset by the chummy vibe of the waking world. Season seven is renowned for frequently being either boring or nuts, and this is one of the best of the latter.
"Captain, we're receiving 285,000 hails."
Worf gets quantumly displaced or something and we join him on a thrilling ride through increasingly divergent what-ifs. Wild Riker is an unintentional comedic high point of the series and the Wesley cameo was a very welcome surprise. Making it a Worf episode was a good call, it's always fun seeing him flustered.
This simple, instantly legendary premise is a welcome break from the status quo, especially considering some of the more desperate angles they've taken with the regulars this year. I wouldn't want a whole series of it though, that would seem to be missing the point.
The best Romulan episode surprisingly uncloaks near the end of the series and participates in Deep Space Nine's complicating of the utopia. Riker recounting gritty, unseen past exploits was a tease at the time, but now we have Battlestar Galactica when we want that kind of thing.
One of the first episodes I saw and probably the most frequently watched, revisiting this now-legendary finale after my own comparable time skip cemented it as my favourite of them all. The convoluted time puzzle is a cool sci-fi story, self-contradictory plot holes and all, and it would have been a spectacular send-off for the crew, but their story wasn't over yet.
