In the eighteenth episode of the first season of\u00c2\u00a0The Next Generation<\/i>, the crew visit a planet that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being terraformed, and then SCIENCE. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Well, this was an interesting episode! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>really<\/i> heavy on the science for the first third, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy that the show decided to address something as ambitious as the concept of inorganic life. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cool! AND SO WEIRD!<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk.<\/p>\n Kurt Mandl<\/b><\/p>\n Lord, what an asshole. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually intrigued that he seems like such a huge jerk at the start of this episode, but by the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home Soil,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I just felt\u00c2\u00a0bad<\/i> for these people. Truthfully, no one here deliberately tried to extinguish the life hiding under the surface of Velara III, so I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be comfortable calling Mandl\u00c2\u00a0the<\/i> antagonist. Like a number of episodes in this show so far, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a real villain. Of course, as I picked up on during this, we were clearly\u00c2\u00a0meant<\/i> to suspect that Mandl was behind all of this. RED HERRING! He behaved suspiciously when the\u00c2\u00a0Enterprise<\/i> hailed him; he treated the other employees rudely;\u00c2\u00a0he was obviously hiding something<\/i>.<\/p>\n Except, no? By the end of this episode, it feels like this can easily be explained away by the stress of the job. No one actually thought there was life on Velara, and the team\u00c2\u00a0was<\/i> about to begin a critical phase in the terraforming of the planet. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only after the\u00c2\u00a0Enterprise<\/i> produces proof of the lifeform that they surviving scientists are able to connect the dots. Could you imagine what this experience was like for them, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all??? They just spent years working on Velara, and in the span of a couple days, their friend is murdered by a sentient, inorganic life form, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all taken home because they have no jobs anymore.<\/p>\n WOW. Can I be best friends with Luisa Kim? She seemed like a lot of fun.<\/p>\n Discovery<\/b><\/p>\n The main plot of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home Soil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about any specific character, and thus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a whole lot of character growth. This is about the team\u00c2\u00a0reacting<\/i> to the mystery of the inorganic life that Data found at the bottom of one of the bore holes. It seems impossible, and yet, there it is. As they try to figure out what this thing is, the lifeform begins to grow. It is an understandably frustrating and frightening situation because these characters don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite get what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening. They suspect that it basically lashed out in self-defense, and Malencon was the unfortunate victim of that. As Picard describes it, they more or less declared war on\u00c2\u00a0invaders<\/i>, you know? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like this lifeform is a bunch of serial killers by nature; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just trying to survive!<\/p>\n So I admit that this was a fun experience. It was thrilling and confusing in the best way possible, particularly since it was so hard to wrap my mind around the concept. Inorganic life! And yet, in hindsight, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find that this will be one of the more memorable episodes in the series. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t delve into the lives of Kim, Mandl, or Bensen, and their stories are given no closure by the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home Soil.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d While I appreciate that the writers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to give us too much information about the inorganic lifeform, that still means that this story is reactionary in nature. An unexplained being messes up the\u00c2\u00a0Enterprise<\/i>, they return it to the planet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surface, and everything continues as usual. Of course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exciting to know that the crew made a scientific discovery that will change the universe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understanding of life! That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fantastic. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how this might affect any future storylines, at least not if this is the first and last time we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see these things.<\/p>\n That being said? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be forgetting \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ugly giant bags of mostly water\u00e2\u20ac\u009d any time soon. I mean, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0exactly<\/i> what we are, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. TRULY.<\/p>\n The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home Soil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – The Mark Does Stuff Tour 2015 is now live and includes dates across the U.S., Canada, Europe, the U.K., and Ireland. Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a> In the eighteenth episode of the first season of\u00c2\u00a0The Next Generation, the crew visit a planet that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being terraformed, and then SCIENCE. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[614,632],"tags":[615],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek","category-the-next-generation","tag-mark-watches-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches will be the remainder of\u00c2\u00a0The Legend of Korra<\/i>, series 8 of\u00c2\u00a0Doctor Who<\/i>, and Kings<\/i>. On Mark Reads, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards<\/i> series will replace the Emelan books.
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!
\n– If you would like to support this website and keep Mark Does Stuff running,\u00c2\u00a0I’ve put up a detailed post explaining how you can!
\n<\/a>– Please check out the\u00c2\u00a0MarkDoesStuff.com<\/a>. All Mark Watches videos for past shows\/season are now archived there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"