darksaviourDXP

Hi, folks! It's been a while since we just sat and chatted, so while I'm in between various real world activities I though I'd take a couple of minutes and do just that. First, the bad news. I've finally hit the end of my big pile of ported model starships and other sci-fi stuff from which I've been porting pictures the past few months. I will not be adding any more images to my Mandel's Fighting Starships collection for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that, but them's the breaks. Yes, there's a lot more out there, and yes I still have some that I have but haven't yet ported/added for various reasons, but the current pile has run completely down. That's just the way it goes, you know. Anyhow, I'm happy all of you have been enjoying and making use of my Mandel's online image collection, and I hope you and even more will continue to make use of it in the future. Perhaps I'll get back to it some day. In the meantime, however, I've got plenty of other things to do. Speaking

Hi, folks. I'm still making my way though the back half of TNG's sixth season in my revisit of the entire series after a very long time. Tonight, I've followed up the spectacular "Tapestry" with IMHO TNG's best two-parter since "The Best of Both Worlds," and that is "Birthright." We're back to basics with the latest installment in TNG's long running Klingon Politics story arc, again with Worf at front and center in a tale that strikes very close to home for him, but he is not the only one revisiting his birthright per the episode title. Worf's is just the "A" plot in this tale. Data's is the "B" plot, and as it's the focus of the first installment of this two-parter then let's look at that first. The Enterprise-D is visiting Deep Space Nine on official business in a rather blatant crossover to both plug what was a new Trek series at the time and to save money in TNG's budget by recycling DS9 locales and characters (wink). DS9's chief medic, Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig)

Hi, folks. I'm within sight of the end of TNG's sixth season as I work my way though the last dozen episodes of so in my revisit of the entire series in many, many moons. Today's episode was "Starship Mine." It was a typical TNG filler episode, revisiting things and ideas that had been done before on TNG and in earlier Treks but in a new way, with the Enterprise-D docked and evacuated for routine maintenance (same setup as the earlier TNG "11001001"), but this time around with a group of clever arms merchants infiltrating the ship and hoping to take advantage of the time needed to perform a full baryon sweep of the ship (to clean it and rid the ship of unwanted parasites and such) to siphon off and steal sizeable quantities of a rather volatile warp core waste product known as trilithium resin in order to sell it on the black market to the highest bidder for use in making illegal ultra-high power explosives. The one fly in the ointment is Picard, who made an excuse to get away

Hi, folks. I'm almost at the halfway point of the sixth season of TNG in my revisit of the entire series after many moons, and tonight's episode was the two-parter "Chain of Command." Having revisited it I'm reminded of the mixed feelings I had when I watched it on its very first airing, feelings that I once again experienced and still have. I'll get to those in a moment, so on with the setup. Starfleet Intelligence has determined that "something" is going on at the Federation-Cardassian border, something that may be leading to a major incident. They know the Cardassians are no more ready for another all-out war than the Federation is, what with the Cardassians still weakened by the last one and the Federation still reeling from the recent Borg Incursion. Best guess is that they're going to stage a border incident using a newly developed metagentic weapon -- sort of a biological equivalent of a neutron bomb, look it up -- to reclaim some disputed systems along the border that

"Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am." - Rene Descartes as quoted by Moriarty, TNG "Ship in a Bottle" Hi, folks. It's not often when a sequel equals the original, much less surpassing it in every way. Of course, as all of you reading this are Trek fans at some level, you're quite aware of this fact. The Franchise boast one of the best examples of this to this day: the 1982 feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which not only surpassed both TMP and its original inspiration, TOS "Space Seed," but is to this day still universally acclaimed as the greatest Trek feature film yet made, hands down and bar none. This is also true of certain episodes within the various Trek series over the years, and TNG boasts one of the best. That episode is TNG "Ship in a Bottle," the utterly spectacular sixth season sequel to the already fantastic and widely acclaimed "Elementary, Dear Data" from its second season. It features the return of two great past guest stars as two beloved

Hi, folks. I'm moving on through the first half of TNG's sixth season in my revisit of the entire series after many moons, and today's episode is one of those I have not been looking forward to revisiting. You see, I'm one of those Trek fans who didn't care for "A Fistful of Datas" the first time it aired, and I still don't care for it now that I've revisited it. It's yet another entry in the Holodeck Malfunction Trope, which by this point in the TNG series was starting to get stale even though it had been three seasons since the last one, and it would continue to get more stale to me and others of my ilk almost every time it got invoked in the rest of the Trek franchise. This time around they try to pretty it up with a good intention gone horribly wrong, so let's hit the pause button and recap the basic setup. The Enterprise-D is on downtime for two days while they're waiting on a supply ship, so Picard grants everybody aboard (including himself) two days of leave to relax