From: jal41820@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Smiley)
Subject: Smiley's spoiler review: Fistfull of Datas
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 19:13:18 GMT


Well, now that I've set up everything how I want to to make everything
time managable, I'm going to start my reviews that I haven't done in
a little less than a year. As I did last year, before the first
ctrl-L is nothing of spoilers, after the first is my rating on a scale
of 10, and then comments. If I have comments based on the preview for
next week, there will be another ctrl-L before those.

Oh... and as far as my puns and comments and such, you'll only be able
to see them on articles regarding the episode of the current week, as
those articles are all I have time for reading.  :)

So, on with the rating:

   7

And now for comments...



First, the thing that stuck out in my mind is that this episode SHOULD be
like by most readers. I say this because it satisfies almost ALL of the
major complaints everyone here has, namely:

Continuity: We see Picard playing his flute, and Crusher still working
on plays.

Data's abilities: People were talking about why Data wasn't used as a 
measure to control the ship in times of emergencies. Well, now they try
it.

Problem to overcome: Very little technobable, and extremely believable.
Data happened to mess with some library records during the interface. A
very simple problem, and simple to explain to the audience.

Holodeck problems: It wasn't really a holodeck problem, it was a Data
problem, and a very beliveable one.

Alexander: He really wasn't that annoying here. I actually enjoyed him
this time, trying to get his father to "play" with him, which is really
something kids want to do.

Humor: It was done subtly, and done pretty well.

and finally...

WORF HIT A TARGET!!!   :)

As for the episode itself, I think it was done very well. Everything was
very smooth; Geordi simply asks Picard if he can work on something, and
the episode doesn't even draw attention to it right away. Eventually,
the realized there's a problem, and they don't even think it that serious,
which it's not. Someone watching the episode with me mentioned something
about no one noticing Worf and Troi gone, and I just said "Why would they?
They're in the holodeck. They shouldn't THINK anything is wrong." I also
like the fact that Troi didn't panic, but instead figured just let the
program end, and we'll be out of here. Kind of like in "The Royale" where
they realized they had to "finish the book" (although, that was about
the ONLY good thing in that episode. :).

I was surprised at seeing Troi being interested in the Old West, but it's
also nice to see them still developing the characters some more.

Everything seemed believeable and acceptable this time.

Riker spurting out Data's poetry was a riot. And the perfect character
to have doing it, too.  :)

I liked the reference to Barclay even though he didn't show up. Makes it
seem less like the characters disappear when they're not on their once
a season show.  :)

I'm not sure I understood *why* all the characters in the holodeck program
started to look like Data, but it was an interesting twist. That was my
only real problem with the episode, and it didn't even really bug me
that much.

When the showdown was over, I had a pretty good idea that something would
have to happen with the bar maid before the program ended. I was NOT
expecting her to be another Data mock-up.  :)

Credit to Brent Spiner for playing 6 different roles in the same episode,
and playing them all very well. Especially playing his typical android
self, maintaining his usual speech pattern and throwing in a random
western word every once in a while. I imagine he had a lot of fun
making this episode.  :)

Finally, I'm really glad that this episode didn't turn out nearly as
bad as the previews made it out to be.

Well, that's all for this week... I do have a comment about next week's
episode based on the previews, so another ctrl-L...

I'm not sure I understand why Data is disobeying commanding officers'
orders, and what the machine possibly being alive has to do with it,
but I guess I'll wait 'till next week to see...


-- 
        Josh Laff              #     #      
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