Star Trek TNG 5x02 Full Reaction!
Added 2025-11-01 17:00:15 +0000 UTC
Comments
The emotional sails were very unfurled with this one.
Thomas Corp
2025-11-02 22:04:51 +0000 UTCThe Woodpecker, when the trees call. Jess, her ears closed. Picard, his eyes opened. Picard and Dathon fought the beast. Dathon, fell. His eyes found winter. Emotions, their sails unfurled. Jess, her tears drown the ocean.
Josef Schiltz
2025-11-02 21:42:12 +0000 UTCI recall you said that this one is one you’re rather fond of. The wait was well worth it. Great to see Jess love this one. Heard about the popularity of Dathon, and it is very sweet. Yeah, I discovered Tv Tropes around 2011, I think it was. With that in mind, it does help lead to the Rick Dalton point, though my brother and I very much favor the Khan point when he yells, “THERE she is!” Still takes a little while to fully ascertain the idea of what is going on, so, as you say, you settle in for the ride. Paul Winfield makes for a marvelous scene partner for Patrick. Them doing the Predator handshake would be magnificent. The Kyle Reese thing is interesting given the deleted scenes where he does ultimately believe Kyle. The remnants of it are him watching and actually listening to what he’s saying. And the look on his face seeming to say, “We’re saying he’s crazy about this Judgment Day future. What if he isn’t?” It all does lead to his goals here. Paul sells everything well, conveying the pure emotions. And yeah, he matches that famed reaction to Mac’s dance. Incidentally, the most recent season of that show also had a surprisingly moving final scene in the season finale that got me pretty good. Was not expecting it. Very much second about how becoming a story would be the highest honor for the Tamarians. The cast is, as you say, that well-oiled of a machine that the repeated confusion works well. We share loving the realistic thing of Darmok having the multiple meanings. And the Juliet analogy works well, like how saying something is common knowledge when you liken it to the revelation of Darth Vader being Luke’s father. Do like how the writers admit about this kind of language being impossible to develop in the first place. An instance where it’s all so good that you apply Bellasario’s maxim and let the emotion just hit you. Plus, as I wrote, the relating to this is strong when I do the Michael Keaton “I don’t even understand the reference.” gif. There have also been times when I have sounded like Tommy Lee Jones at work after hearing new slang/references, asking, “What does that mean?” and when it’s explained, I’ve said, “Well, why don’t you just say that then? That other thing, that has no meaning.” Or even here, a few times when highlighting stuff Jess says of a slang nature, I freely admit to not knowing exact meanings of some of it, and I sound like Landa asking if “That’s a Bingo.” is the way you say it. This is one of the best episodes to rewatch. It is fun when you hold the knowledge of what is being said. As I said, I did hear that there was continuation in Lower Decks, which that one is going to be a big draw whenever I ever actually see the show. This one is a damn good one. Maybe not one of my chapter-and-verse episodes, but definitely one of the best.
Thomas Corp
2025-11-02 04:31:47 +0000 UTCA huge favorite episode among the fans, to the point that Dathon is the only character outside the various main ones that you have a good chance of seeing on lists of the best Trek captains. No surprise you loved it this much, and waiting two weeks for just made that better. I had a bit of a disadvantage my first time watching, since by that time in the late 2000s TV Tropes had already become a major factor in people's vocabularies so Rick Dalton, pointing at his TV and I figured out almost immediately what the key to unlocking the language barrier was going to be. But the whole thing is still done so well that I quickly forgot about that and just settled in to enjoy it. As we've seen several times, the only thing that can make Patrick Stewart better is if he has another great actor to bounce off, and Paul Winfield very much provides a Dutch and Dillon, shaking hands for him. Clearly all the trouble he could have avoided if he just listened to Kyle Reese made an impression and now he's willing to establish communication at any cost. And that bitterness every time he says "Shaka, when the walls fell" hits hard even if you don't quite get what it means yet, as fully evidenced here. And we fully feel his joy when finally Frank Reynolds, he gets it. Even his death comes with the satisfaction that he accomplished his greatest goal, and I only regret he didn't get to see himself become a new story, clearly the greatest honor for these people. It would be easy for the scenes with the rest of the crew to feel like filler, but this cast is such a well-oiled machine by now that they make sure we're hanging on everything, even if it just amounts to saying over and over "What the hell is going on?" And I very much appreciate the acknowledgement that a word as relatively simple as Darmok is going to appear a bunch of places in all kinds of different contexts. The Juliet explanation works great for getting the point across for anyone who might not have quite gotten it from Picard's realization, even if it's also led to ridicule over this kind of language being impossible to develop in the first place. Which the writer said he was well aware of but thought this would be such a good story that he went ahead anyway. Plus, I think I've shown pretty well here how purely citing other examples can take over a language. I also recommend you watch the scenes with the Tamarians again, and see just how well you can now understand what they're saying even if you don't know every single word. It makes for a totally different viewing experience. Like so much else, these events were picked up by Lower Decks which confirmed that the Tamarians established good relations with the Federation and some are now in Starfleet, with one being a recurring character who's learning how to communicate more effectively. That just adds so much more to going back to this episode, which is one of those I've watched the most and still hasn't gotten old.
Ryan
2025-11-02 03:36:35 +0000 UTC
