S7E17 Masks

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Jared Rascher
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S7E17 Masks

Post by Jared Rascher »

I . . . was not a fan of this episode.

To me, this almost felt like a season one episode, where a lot of the plots were "let's redo a TOS episode, but with a different resolution."

In this case, it felt almost like a Next Gen "Who Mourns for Adonis," except this time the story was about alien gods, and Picard got to anthropology his way out of the situation instead of the TOS resolution of blowing in an alien power source.

That said, it really feels like there are a lot of leaps of logic in this to get to so where Picard can get to his "act out the myth." Resolution. This ancient alien society has enough commonality with Earth cultures that he can reasonably predict everything that is going on. The Enterprise is so transformed that it's only got about an hour to continue existing, but life support and other aspects are already severely compromised.

Being able to transform power cables into actual, living snakes seems like it should be a much bigger deal that it is, but the culture that figured out how to do this didn't ascent to "energy being" status like a lot of species we've seen, but they also just kind of died out.

It just felt like there should have been a lot more, different questions being asked in the episode, but the episode really drove towards that "Picard applies Earth anthropology for the win" ending.

Also, I normally like the "Brent Spiner gets to stretch his acting wings" episodes, but this one just didn't do much for me.
dnaphil
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Re: S7E17 Masks

Post by dnaphil »

I selected this episode because its one of the more avant garde episodes that make up a lot of what was going on in Season 7. It's a Data/Brent episode.

I am glad that I am not the only one who does not get this episode.

For me, most of Season 7 is this wish-fulfillment of, "what can we do now that the series is about to end, that we could not do before".

This felt like one of those episodes where it was, let's have Brent act a bunch in some roles other than Data.
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GMGERRYMANDER
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Re: S7E17 Masks

Post by GMGERRYMANDER »

I liked the various roles that Brent did, but the plot was a bit wonky and lost my interest early.

It was neat to see Picard once again Athro his way through a crisis though.
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RobAbrazado
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Re: S7E17 Masks

Post by RobAbrazado »

GMGERRYMANDER wrote: Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:37 pm It was neat to see Picard once again Athro his way through a crisis though.
WELP now you got me thinking about Picard's pygmy marmoset fursona.

Wait, did we Watch Club that episode? Probably not.
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RobAbrazado
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Re: S7E17 Masks

Post by RobAbrazado »

RobAbrazado wrote: Mon Aug 17, 2020 10:46 am
GMGERRYMANDER wrote: Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:37 pm It was neat to see Picard once again Athro his way through a crisis though.
WELP now you got me thinking about Picard's pygmy marmoset fursona.

Wait, did we Watch Club that episode? Probably not.
Yeah, looks like not. Which is fine. For reference (if you really want it), people can check out S7E19 "Genesis," but I wouldn't really call it a "recommendation." ;)
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