TNG S07E07 & S07E08

In this installment:
(viewed Friday & Saturday, April 25th-26th)

Star Trek:  The Next Generation, S07E07 - "Dark Page"
Star Trek:  The Next Generation, S07E08 - "Attached"

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"Dark Page"

• "Don't worry, the Cairn couldn't read your thoughts if you wanted to.  Your brain isn't sophisticated enough."
• No, I don't believe this episode was exclusively intended to cause me psychological harm through the infliction of Lwaxana Troi.  But I do think it was the writers going "You know what?  Let's do one more episode in which we demonstrate how truly horrific and dangerous telepathy is!"
• Giving Majel Barrett-Roddenberry a chance to yell at Jonathan Frakes is fun, though :)
• Metaconscious?
  
  Sounds legit.
• Yeah, and this is where this episode goes completely off the rails for me.  Counselor Troi, crawling inside her mother's head with help from a creepy telepath? 
  
  I don't fault the writers or the production staff here, and certainly not the actors (I have mad respect and love for both Majel Barrett and Marina Sirtis)...but this is a great example of the kind of TNG episode that I personally find boring, bordering on unwatchable.
• Also, I would like to take this opportunity to say how dumb I think it is when grown human beings call their parents "daddy" and "mommy".
• But again!  Scream-o Lwaxanna is kind of fun :D
• As Counselor Troi and Captain Picard go through Lwaxana's journals, trying to find a source for her apparently psychic trauma, I thought to myself "See, in the real 21st Century you could tell just by examining the tone of or gaps in someone's social media posts."
• "Captain, I have to go back inside my mother's mind.  It's the only way we're going to get any answers."
  
  "Are we sure?  There's nothing else we could do here--anything more...interesting, perhaps?"
• During the viewing of this episode, I thought "You know, this is sort of like Counselor Troi's very own 'Sub Rosa'...but not quite as bad."
  
  And then I realized that "Sub Rosa" still lies ahead of me, and became immediately depressed :(
• Well, I had to sound cruel here--but I'd consider it a net positive that Kestra Troi died as a child.  Can you imagine a Trek universe with three Trois? :P
• Also?  I just now realized that the actress who plays Hedril/Kestra is a young Kirsten Dunst.  Although apparently another, less-familiar, actress plays Kestra in some of the dream sequences...although I couldn't pick out which ones.  Apparently little blonde kids all look alike to me.

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"Attached"

• This is the penultimate installment of the tedious "Will they or won't they?" story that is the relationship between Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher.  Of course, we find out in "All Good Things..." that--at least in one version of reality--they ultimately "did".
• We learn in this episode that--at least up to this point in history--every civilization to join the Federation had done so as a unified world, having overcome any geopolitical fractures on their home planet.  Kesprytt III is the first planet where the opposite possibility is being considered.
• We also learn that Earth's "world government" was formed in 2150, a mere five years before the Coalition of Planets and only eleven years before the founding of the Federation itself. 
  
  This means that the titular starship of ENT was launched only one year after the establishment of the one-world government.
  
  
  (the seal of the United Earth government)
  
  However, other canon sources indicate that the United Earth government may have come into existence fairly shortly after First Contact in 2063, and that 2150 is the year that the last hold-out nations (including Australia, according to Dr. Crusher in this episode) joined.
• You mean transporting your captain and CMO to a politically-fractured planet, alone and without a security escort, didn't go off without a hitch?  I'M SHOCKED.
• Mauric's (the Kes ambassador) paranoia is very clearly meant as an ironic display, given the accusations of paranoia and xenophobia leveled against the Prytt.
• Psi-waves.  A-yep.
• Dr. Crusher and I have at least one thing in common--acrophobia.
• Every alien lab or installation portrayed in Star Trek seems to do its shopping at Spencer's Gifts.
• "You don't actually know which way to go.  You're only guessing.  Do you do this all the time?"
  
  "No.  But there are times when it is necessary for a captain to give the appearance of confidence."
• "Is that a beard, or is your face dirty?"
  
  Ha!  Stealing it.
• The Kes and the Prytt?  Turns out their both a**holes.
• "When I said 'Jack and I', I felt this sudden wave of...something.  I didn't know you felt that way."
  
  "Didn't you?"
  
  Yeah, didn't you?  Because the rest of us did.
• "And then, little by little, I realized that I didn't have those feelings anymore."
  
  WOMP WOMP.
• "Now that we know how each of us feels, perhaps we should not be afraid to explore those feelings."
  
  "Or perhaps we should be afraid...I think I should be going."
  
  That has got to be the longest, slowest trip to the friend zone in galactic history.