TOS - Miri

Miri is an interesting and certainly unique episode of Star Trek. It is also, at times, quite annoying. In this episode, Kirk, Spock and McCoy, beam down to an exact replica of earth, most likely constructed by the preservers. The captain’s yeoman also comes along for some reason that I will never understand, and encounters a dirty bunch of incredibly annoying stereotypical 1960’s children, which Kirk has to convince to help him in order to save the lives of his landing party. The element of Miri and the other children makes the episode stand out from many others in which the senior staff of the Enterprise is forced to combat a disease. In this way this plot element is beneficial to the episode, however it also makes the episode almost painful to watch at times, simply because the children are so obnoxiously stereotypical. The writers could have made the point that they were children who had developed their own “culture”, while allowing the children to seem a bit more real. Other than that, the uniqueness of the episode worked purely in its favor, making most of it interesting to watch.

TNG - Relics

This episode is great. The crew of the Enterprise–D rescues Scotty from a transporter buffer. Scotty then tries to adjust to life in the 24th century and is forced to deal with such problems as what he perceives to be his own uselessness. While the episode is quite good overall, it also produced some absolutely amazing “trek moments” such as Picard and Scotty sharing a drink on the bridge of the old constitution class Enterprise and Data’s use of rather familiar phrasing to describe a nameless beverage. While the episode itself was great, it produced two rather large continuity errors. First the Jenolins transporter beam resembles that used on the Enterprise (1701) before its refit, at least 25 or 30 years before Scotty departed for Norpin V on the Jenolin. It is possible that as a transport ship the Jenolin did not receive the same upgrades, but that more important vessels did. Even worse, when brought out of the transporter Scotty states that Captain Kirk must have come looking for him. However, Scotty knows that captain Kirk is dead! Scotty must have been very disoriented when first brought out of the transporter in order to say something that implies that Kirk was alive. Other than these two minor errors, this episode it thoroughly enjoyable to watch.