#TNG S02E13, "Time Squared". Riker tries scat, then makes a hash of an omelette. Dr Pulaski mixes uppers and downers. The Enterprise is destroyed, which becomes an annual tradition. Picard murders another captain in cold blood.

#TNG S02E14, "The Icarus Factor". Riker's ex-Daddy rolls up, and makes things weirdly horny for lots of people. Geordi, Data, and Wesley arrange an electro scene for Commander Worf.

#TNG S02E15, "Pen Pals". I imagine Betazoids struggle with holodecks in the same way that dogs can get stressed out by statues. Sure, it *looks* like they're real, but they don't smell right.

Speaking of, Data abducts a child from her home, then wipes her memory.

#TNG S02E16, "Q Who". John De Lancie is allowed to consume every set in a thirty kilometer radius, and I for one approve.

Geordi is a good egg.

OG Borg feel positively cute compared to the Voyager-era terrors I remember.

#TNG S02E17, "Samaritan Snare". The Enterprise encounters a himbo bear polycule. Wesley has a huge crush on Picard and will not shut up about it.

#TNG S02E18, "Up the Long Ladder". Riker hooks up with a tradwife, then kills himself.

#TNG S02E19, "Manhunt". Auntie Mame is politically and sexually unstoppable.

#TNG S02E20, "The Emissary". Suzie Plakson singlehandedly invents drag.

Alt...

K'Ehleyr, a Klingon-human hybrid, looking extremely fierce

#TNG S02E21, "Peak Performance". Commander Data, who loses at poker weekly to his crewmates, loses a game of strategema to a galaxy-renowned champion and spirals into depression.

#TNG S02E22, "Shades of Grey". Dr. Pulaski lays the groundwork for S06E21, "Frame of Mind".

#TNG S03E01, "Evolution". A new Starfleet technology, inertial intensifiers, is deployed to the fleet. This technology works like a mass damper, throwing the ship's crew and contents about in order to stabilize the hull.

#TNG S03E02, "The Ensigns of Command". When logic fails, Lieutenant Commander Data shoots three civilians and blows up a colony's water supply.

#TNG S03E03, "The Survivors". Lieutenant Commander Troi hears Padam Padam for the first time.

#TNG S03E04, "Who watches the watchers". This is good Star Trek. Characters wrestling with a moral dilemma and doing their best to act with integrity.

#TNG S03E05, "The Bonding". One of the things I really appreciate about revisiting Next Gen is that the show is willing to talk about grief and loss with an earnest heart.

#TNG S03E06, "Booby Trap". Lieutenant Commander La Forge makes out with a deepfake of the Enterprise's propulsion designer.

#TNG S03E07, "The Enemy". Romulans are dicks.

#TNG S03E08, "The Price". Everyone wants the Barzan's hole, but the hole plays hard to get. Riker is a model of poly ethics.

#TNG S03E09, "The Vengeance Factor". Riker hooks up with a submissive bioweapon.

#TNG S03E10, "The Defector". Possibly the coolest VFX sequence so far, with the D'deridexen looking positively nimble in motion.

#TNG S03E11, "The Hunted". Lieutenant Commander Data loses a game of peek-a-boo.

#TNG S03E12, "The High Ground". For a spacefaring civilization, Starfleet officers spend a lot of time in caves.

#TNG S03E13, "Deja Q". I refuse to believe that Q is heterosexual.

#TNG S03E14, "A Matter of Perspective". Data leaves a series of devastating comments on Picard's DeviantArt portfolio. The crew participate in a retelling of Rashomon, staged at The Sharper Image.

#TNG S03E15, "Yesterday's Enterprise". The Enterprise is taken over by rogue lighting designers. Tasha Yar reappears with an unstoppably powerful haircut.

#TNG S03E16. Data and Troi team up to enforce the gender binary.

#TNG S03E17, "Sins of the Father". Worf unexpectedly falls prey to Daddy Issues.

#TNG S03E18, "Allegiance". The Enterprise fantasy committee delivers on Jean-Luc's perennial requests for kidnapping *and* brainwashing scenes. For efficiency they opt to combine the two, causing the crew to--once again--relieve him of duty. He gets revenge by gaslighting Riker.

#TNG S03E19, "Captain's Holiday". Jean-Luc uses the mysterious Front Turbolift. I have questions about the post-scarcity service economy of Risan resorts.

#TNG S03E20, "Tin Man". Starfleet arranges a codependent marriage between a telepath with boundary issues and a depressed starship of incredible destructive power.

#TNG S03E21, "Hollow Pursuits". God this is a good episode. Troi, Guinan, and Crusher all get *incredible* gowns. Barclay turns on the holodeck cheat codes and plays Saints Row: Enterprise and The Princess Bride. The ship goes Too Fast, Again (TM). We meet Short Riker. Everyone gets to ham it up.

People clearly have sex in the holodeck, but somehow Starfleet has never established a cultural norm of knocking before entering.

#TNG S03E22, "The Most Toys". This episode can--and does--say "faggot".

#TNG S03E23, "Sarek". Oof. That concert sequence...

#TNG S03E24, "Ménage à Troi". Slamming from serious drama to high camp--Lwaxana will not stop hitting on Jean-Luc. Picard, for his part, continues to lie to Lwaxana Troi in order to get away. He knows full well she's telepathic, but insists on lying aloud out of inescapable British politeness. She thinks he's playing hard to get.

#TNG S03E25, "Transfigurations". Sometimes Will brings back little gizmos from his away missions for the captain to hold, as a treat.

#TNG S03E26, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1". Jean-Luc is *once again* mind-controlled by an alien power.

This is a banger episode. Firing on all cylinders.

#TNG S04E01, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2". The Borg can not, in fact, have little a nap, as a treat.

#TNG S04E02, "Brothers". After years of struggle, England finally conquered France in 2138. The territory persisted in name, but the French language and accent were systematically purged. From the early-2200s on, every "French" person--vis. Jean-Luc Picard and his entire family--was a proper English gentleperson.

I've said it in the past, but the final stage of #AI is not #Data from #StarTrek. It's the ship's computer.

What made the ship's computer not feel like a threat, and what made everyone pursing art as leisure, was that people in #TNG were not subject to the #capitalist treadmill.

The reason AI feels like a threat is because you're already starving and the people who are pushing it are the ones trampling over you.

The solution is not to point the fingers at the #tech which (in spite of the hype) fundamentally lacks agency.

Take the fucking tools for yourself and as best you can use it to beat the shit out of the #rich #billionaire fuckwads.

/END (probably)