130 – Relics

Grade: B

Summary

The Enterprise finds a Dyson Sphere, which covers a star. On the surface of the sphere, they find a crashed ship, and Captain Montgomery Scott stranded inside the transporter.

Commentary

James Doohan finally gets to reprise his role from the Original Series on the Next Generation, and it’s a very welcome return. He seems to be exactly the same as he was the last time we saw him. So at least that part worked.

A great scene is when Scotty re-creates the Enterprise bridge on the Holodeck. I’m not sure why he didn’t create Engineering, but that’s really not a huge deal. Nevermind that the Animated Series already showed a Holodeck way back in the 1970s – this scene works great.

I also loved the line when Scotty is having a drink in Ten-Forward. Data pulls out a bottle with some kind of green liquid, and when Scotty asks what it is, Data struggles to find an answer. He finally says “it is green”, an obvious homage to the Original Series episode when Scotty says the same thing to one of the aliens trying to take over the ship. I also loved it when Scotty told LaForge that he was out saving the galaxy when his great grandfather was in diapers.

It’s a nice episode for many reasons – not the least of which is the obvious – Scotty’s return. But it’s also nice to see him be able to help out LaForge when they need to rescue the Enterprise.

Unfortunately, that’s about all there is to like about this episode. The Dyson Sphere is not fully explored, Commander Riker gets the Enterprise out of danger way too quickly and easily, and a lot of the episode seems contrived. Maybe I’m just being a little too harsh, but I was hoping for something a bit better. There really was a lot of potential there. And though I know James Doohan probably didn’t want to do more than just one episode, I can’t help but wonder how he’d fare in the lone shuttlecraft 75 years after he was supposed to have retired. It’s too bad this was never explored.

Well, it’s a good episode for the most part, and one that most Star Trek fans should be familiar with. It’s only too bad that it didn’t quite reach its potential.

Of Note

In the original Star Trek chronology, Captain Scott’s accident on the Dyson Sphere takes place about one year after the events of Star Trek Generations. That’s the film where Captain Kirk gets sucked into the Nexus. Scotty would have thought that Kirk had died. And yet from his point of view, he gets pulled out of the transporter just one year later and he can’t remember that Kirk is dead. Well, that’s what Star Trek.com says now.