I understand that SciFi Channel has just finished serving up a special kind of Justice.
From our first season on TNG, it’s full of growing pains, but it remains one of the most unintentionally hilarious we ever did, and if ever there was an episode worthy of a Riff Track, well, I think this one should get it. Hell, maybe I’ll do it myself.
Anyway, if you’ve just seen it for the first time in recent years or ever, I think you’ll get a kick out of the review/recap that I did for TV Squad:
After dropping some human colonists off in the Strnad solar system, the Enterprise notices a rather nice Class M planet in the nearby Rubicun system, called Rubicun III. Picard sends an away team down to the surface to find out if it’s a good place for some shore leave, and they return with some very good news: it’s clean, it’s beautiful, it’s populated with friendly humanoids . . . and they really like to do the nasty.
“At the drop of a hat,” according to Geordi.
“Any hat,” Tasha says, knowingly.
Picard sends a second, larger team down to the planet to see exactly how many hats they’re going to need. Because every responsible Starfleet parent would want to send their children down to the galaxy’s longest running planetary orgy, he orders Wesley Crusher to see if the planet is a good place for kids to hang out.
[…]
Down on the planet, Wesley is jogging around with his new friends. Unlike the adults, who are busy getting their freak on in Plato’s Retreat, the kids are busy showing off their gymnastic skills. One of the Edo boys walks on his hands! Oh! Wesley got served! But wait! Wesley serves back with some cartwheels and a roundoff, and IT’S ON!
In fact, it’s so on, the girl (who was played by a really sweet girl named Judith Jones, who played my girlfriend on an after school special called My Dad Can’t Be Crazy, Can He?) gets so hot for Wesley, she asks him if he’ll “teach her” how to “play ball.”
Oh, you bet, baby. Uncle Wesley will teach you how to play ball. Why don’t you just slip into this latex bodysuit and put on this wig first, and then we’ll play all sorts of ball, you dirty little bitch.
Uh. What just happened? Sorry about that.
Wesley tells them to get a bat. When they don’t know what it is, he describes Worf’s penis. It’s not awkward at all.
[…]
After extracting a promise that the Edo won’t kill Wesley before sundown, Picard takes Rivan with him back to the Enterprise. Once there, he shows her “god” (this is, quite honestly, a nice little homage to the original series. Whenever Captain Kirk took a hot babe back to the space ship, he showed her god, too. Sometimes, he showed her an entire pantheon of gods. And he never called her back, baby, because that’s just how he rolled, leaving broken hearts all over the galaxy. Awww yeah.) The problem is, god is pissed, and shakes the ship until Picard beams Rivan back down to the planet. Poor Picard, he brought her all the way home, and he didn’t get to drop a single hat.
This review will be in my forthcoming collection of first season reviews, Memories of the Future.
Bonus! If you want to listen to me perform this review, you can enjoy to this audio from the 2008 Phoenix Comicon. Double bonus: you can also hear me read Blue Light Special, from Happiest Days of Our Lives.
Shameless plug: You totally want the Happiest Days of Our Lives audiobook.
Man, that turned into a shameless plug really quick, didn’t it? I mean, it really got out of hand! Brick killed a guy.
“I stabbed a man in the heart with a trident.”
“I saw that!”
Um. Kids, when you start quoting Anchorman and then talk about it in Bob Saget’s voice, it’s time to end the blog entry and just hit publish.
One of the few good things about that episode (besides the hot women) was Judith Jones’ reaction when Wesley accidentally violates planetary law. She obviously knows what’s going to happen to him, she just met and really likes him, and it FUCKING HURTS. All of that comes through in her reaction. Really good scene.
I’d like to reserve my copy now, please! I can’t wait to watch those TNG episodes through new eyes 😀
Wil – you may not have seen the #badmovieclub phenomenon that hit the UK last Friday: It struck me that it would be fun to do the same with some of the more cheesy TNG episodes!