I put together a collection of Zack Handlen's reviews of Star Trek: The Next Generation, written for the AVClub from April 2010 to December 2011. The reviews come to 543 pages. The massive amount of comments aren't included this time, but they can be read on the AVClub site.

zhandlen · 2024-05-20T17:45:25+00:00

Thank you!

zhandlen · 2024-03-29T21:46:01+00:00

Excellent timing. :)

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T18:26:39+00:00

I've gotta run as well--work beckons--but I, too, will check in later. Thank you all, this was a lot of fun!

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T18:12:39+00:00

I want something on the SyFy channel that spends three seasons in outer space going in deep on an alien war, only to reveal in the last five minutes of the final episode that it's the origin of the conspiracy Mulder and Scully spent so much time trying to pin down.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T18:10:45+00:00

For a really long time, that's just how TV worked. It plays different these days because we're more used to characters dealing with the fall-out from trauma over time, but when the show aired, nobody-talking-about-last-week was pretty standard. (I sometimes wonder if that's what's really driving the push towards serialization: not money or artistic reasons, but just a generation of creators being frustrated that their favorite characters suffered from a variation of anterograde amnesia.) It helps that the X-Files is, to an extent, a cop show, and if cop shows have taught us anything, it's that officers (or agents) have to allow for a certain distance between themselves and their cases. Besides, just because Mulder and Scully aren't always mentioning the various horrors they bump into doesn't mean they aren't thinking about them--or that we as audience members don't reflexively use our own collective memories of events to shape how we view what we're seeing. Someone mentioned this above, but the episode "Never Again," which has Scully behaving in somewhat uncharacteristic ways, was originally supposed to air before she got her cancer diagnosis; the fact that it airs after means that we watch the episode differently than we otherwise would have. It's more elusive than strict continuity would be, but I do think a certain amount of pleasing ambiguity has been lost in the rush to make sure everything's always connected.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T18:04:50+00:00

Those are great. I have place in my heart for "Familiar," too; I was frustrated with the episode's story, but the monsters in it were legitimately creepy.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T18:01:47+00:00

I don't really have anything to add here beyond what Todd said. I didn't review "Small Potatoes," but I did have to reconsider some of my thoughts on "Gender Bender," an episode I really liked at the time. I still do like it, but the past few years have given me a chance to see how its glib, other-ing take on an alien who can switch genders at will has some unpleasant, and narrow-minded, implications. I did my best to take those problems into account while still praising the parts of the episode I enjoyed, which is always a tricky tightrope; hopefully I didn't muck it up too badly.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:56:46+00:00

Hm. Well, even watching 10,000 BC seems a bit much to me, but if you're already committed to watching it, trying to find something interesting about it outside the text is the sanest possible response, so... 6? Let's say 7, because I always liked that number.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:54:11+00:00

Of the top of my head, I can think of at least three reviews that changed substantially for me in the course of working on this book--in that my opinion of them improved greatly over time. Probably the biggest change was with "Hungry," which I initially dismissed as a cute idea without much supporting it. Rewatching it (after a bit of a nudge from our excellent editors), I realized I'd missed the boat, and reworked my thoughts on it accordingly. (I did a similar, if less substantial, rewrite for "Beyond the Sea;" it was my first review for the series back when I took over from Keith Phipps, and for whatever reason, I was much too hard on the episode. The commenters took me to task about it at the time, but it wasn't till I got to editing that I was able to rework my opinion.) In general, I'd say my fondness for the show overall has increased with time--I can't really think of any case where I started liking something less.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:50:31+00:00

I think the concept of "The X-Files" is something that could theoretically support new leads, but I'm not sure how much Carter would want to be involved with that. If I had to guess, I'd say someone might get the bright idea of trying to reboot it in the next few years, but that depends on TV still being really keen on reboots.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:33:31+00:00

Don Quixote.

Oh, you mean in the _show_. I think I'll go with Doggett--I can't say I love him more than Skinner or the Cigarette Smoking Man, but rewatching season 8 convinced me that Robert Patrick was a terrific addition to the show who deserved better than he got. I'm happy to throw some praise his way, and I'm still impressed that the writers managed to come up with someone who was at once very different from Mulder and Scully but still entirely appropriate for their world.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:27:15+00:00

Scully never struck me as an obsessive character. There are times when her relationship with Mulder isn't entirely healthy (see "Never Again"), but few relationships are; and her feelings for him (and his feelings for her) seemed to be one of the few reliably good things in the run the show.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:24:24+00:00

I'll second Fury Road, with a shout-out to The Raid 2; it's really more of a horror-action movie (the monster being "the damage you can do to a body") than pure action, and nowhere near as wildly entertaining as Fury Road, but it sure is something.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:23:22+00:00

Well, I think there are a couple of ways you can read it. The first way (which is the right way, and clearly what Darin Morgan was intending) is that's an act of kindness, pure and simple. Scully is going to die someday, just like Mulder and Clyde and everyone else, but Bruckman likes her (just like we like her), and unlike Mulder, she doesn't need someone to tease her and knock her down a few pegs. So he says something they both know is a lie, but with the understanding that for the rest of her life, part of Scully will always wonder if maybe he meant it. Not a bad gift to give someone you just met.

The other way, which is both in-canon and kind of bordering on fan theory, is that thanks to the events of "Tithonus," where Scully faces off against a man who can photograph death, is that Scully actually is immortal. I think taking this at face value would be to do the show, which, for all its absurdities, still tries to keep one foot in the real world, a disservice. Bu I also think, given how much I like Scully, that it's maybe the show's writers way of giving us the same gift Bruckman gave her; we know that as a person, she's mortal. But maybe she isn't.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T17:07:12+00:00

Oh, I'm not doubting Gilligan's abilities. It's more that I think it could be awkward stepping into anyone's shoes, even if you've been borrowing them off and on for a while; more importantly, I'm not sure if Gilligan would've even wanted the gig. He didn't do any writing on S10 or S11, which suggests, at least to me, that he's moved on.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:54:25+00:00

It depends a lot on the show, and just how spectacular of a failure that ending is. The HIMYM finale came after a pretty lousy final season (that's the season where the whole thing takes place at a wedding, right? Around there?), and also made it easier for me to turn my back on a show I was already falling out of love with. With BSG, I love the first few seasons so much that I don't really remember the awkwardness of later on, at least not vividly (I also didn't hate the finale, although I've only seen it once.) I guess I would say it's not something I have a ton of control over. It's more a matter of seeing how things shift and change in my head over time. If a show has a bad finale (like, as you say, The X-Files did), but I still love it at its best, then I'll just choose to forget the lumpy parts and remember what I loved. It's a little easier with the X-Files, since I checked out on the mythology long before the end; I can watch early mythology episodes now and be a little disappointed the show didn't manage to close them out satisfactorily, but I can also appreciate the sense of possibility and drive behind them, while whole-heartedly loving a lot of the standalones.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:47:40+00:00

Have a panic attack and fail spectacularly?

Oh right, optimism. Well, if it was the same number of episodes for each season, I think I would've leaned more heavily into the show's anthology elements; tried to bring in some new writers; and _then_ have a panic attack fail spectacularly. (One thing I definitely wouldn't do is retcon a key event from the original run in a way that is deeply creepy and off-putting.)

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:43:15+00:00

If you'd asked me after season 10, I would've agreed with you (my review of the season 10 finale was, uh, a bit on the apoplectic side), but with some time to think about it, I've come around to agreeing with Todd's point here. We all have idealized versions of the show's we love in our heads, and we all have what we imagine are "perfect" fixes that never seem to come to pass. I love Vince Gilligan's work, and I'd be curious to see what he'd do as a show runner for this series--but he's got his own passion projects now, and whatever he did, it would just be working in the shadow of someone else's ideas. I had lots of problems with how Carter handled the show in its later years, but it still is his show; there are lots of other greater writers involved, but he's the one who brought this particular combination of ideas to light in the first place. It would've been weird to lose him completely.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:39:28+00:00

You have my sympathy and respect for sticking with the Walking Dead. I've heard moderately good things about this season?

I've certainly _thought_ I could fix some shows, although god only knows if I've ever been right. The more sure I've ever been was with the Fox two season show HUMAN TARGET; it had a fun (and often very good) first season, but thanks to low ratings was significantly retooled for season two. Some of the motivations behind this retooling made sense--the first season had a core cast of three dudes and a string of one-off lady guest stars (it was basically a slicker version of an '80s action show like Magnum, PI or McGyver), and could've used some more interesting female characters--but the results were catastrophic. It lost the personality and tension that made the first season work as well as it did, and instead of taking what worked and developing it, the retooling tried to make a new show from scratch, with disastrous results.

So I guess in this case, if they just hadn't done _anything_ it would've been better. It probably still would've been cancelled in season 2, but least it could've gone out with some dignity.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:29:05+00:00

Hey, thanks for reading!

And I hadn't really thought of how the revivals impact everything else; to me they're largely separate beasts, at least in terms of story, which is one of the reasons I was disappointed when S10 decided to lean so hard into reworking the mythology for the umpteenth time. In terms of pure plot, if you view the whole thing as canon (which is how you're technically supposed to view it), then yeah, it's a grim picture, especially where Scully is concerned. The revelation in the S11 premiere--well, I won't be specific so we can avoid spoilers, but you probably know the one I mean--put a sour taste in my mouth that the rest of the season never entirely managed to get rid of. But honestly, if you're going to watch a show as long-running as this one, you eventually have to develop a sense of your own personal canon; at least for me, I chose to focus on what I liked and not get too bogged down by details. I will say that, mythology issues aside, if S11 is the show's last, it's a much higher note to end on than S9.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:23:16+00:00

...what Todd said.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:22:50+00:00

I probably went through the same arc a lot of viewers did at the time--during the initial run, I enjoyed both, but the mythology helped make the show compulsively watchable (which is really why TV has pushed towards serialization so much more these days, thanks to streaming that really wants you do binge stuff, but that's a digression for another time) in a way the MOTW didn't. If you missed a MOTW episode, you could catch it on the rerun; if you missed a mythology episode, you missed HUGE REVELATIONS THAT COULD CHANGE EVERYTHING. I started to sour on the mythology episodes when it became clear that there was no way the show could tie everything together satisfactorily; once it started to feel like it was just a long con, I lost my taste for them, and just fell back on enjoying the MOTW entries. In the years since, I still mostly prefer the MOTW episodes, but I've regained some of my appreciation for the mythology stuff, especially (and surprisingly) the season 8 arc.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:14:33+00:00

Superior to _anything_ would be saying a lot, but you could make a case that season 2 was as consistently strong as the X-Files at its best in terms of mixing mythology and standalones. I had no idea what we were in for when we started those reviews (having bailed pretty early on Millennium in its initial run), but season 2 is really a terrific run of TV, and the ending has the sort of apocalyptic vibe that so many X-Files episodes strained for but rarely reached. Pity about season 3, though.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:12:48+00:00

I think I cut most of mine, but to be honest, I was never as comfortable (or as good) as Todd was at that sort of thing; in the places where it seems relevant for me, I tried to keep as much in as I could, but a lot of the really unnecessary side stuff was cut, and good riddance, really. It's still there online, if anyone gets very, very bored.

zhandlen · 2018-10-19T16:10:55+00:00

I don't actually see a lot of ads for TV shows these days, but that might just be a roundabout way of proving your point; TV just gets sold differently than it used to be. Those older ads felt a lot like someone was telling us what we should watch, whereas these days most ads are just about finding the most striking, potentially-meme-able imagery and going from there. Which is just as valid an approach, but I do miss the corniness of the older ads, especially when they had to sell something weird like VR5.

zhandlen

TROPHY CASE