A Look at Chain of Command (TNG)
Vložit
- čas přidán 24. 05. 2024
- Opinionated Next Gen Episode Guide kicks off its look at this classic two-parter. Picard is fired so he can run through caves to defend the Federation, and Riker is refused promotion because Starfleet's run by dicks, so he gets stuck answering to a guy, shockingly, he seems to resent.
THERE ARE... THREE... DUTY SHIFTS!
Delta shift is best
Get it done.
You're relieved of duty!
Ha!
THERE IS... ONE...UNIFORM!
Riker: "Why didn't you make me captain of the Enterprise?"
Nacheav: "I considered it, assumed you would turn it down, so I just skipped to the part where we asked the person we'd ask after you."
Jellico is who they send in the hope that they don't have to send Michael Ironsides.
I work for Dick Jones! DICK JONES!
yeah, everytime michael shows up on set its like always the same: "this is for the new people. i have only one rule: everyone acts, no-one quits. you don't do your job, the camera can't shoot you. you get me?"
I always wondered if Sisko ever served under Jellico? Whereas Picard is a diplomat, Kirk was an adventurer, Jellico was a military commander who basically went "No, I am in control of this vessel, I WANT peace, but I will do everything in my power to obtain it, even if it means lying and being a complete dick to get it."
Also, David Warner was a god damned gem.
Sisko is a hard one to figure out... Going from first officer on a Miranda class to someone key to the anti borg initiative to well we need *any* commander to go to this backwater posting... The way I see it, sisko left the fleet after wolf, and Jellico never left... yes I know he made Admiral but I expect they had to trick him into coming into starbase first... Point being I can't imagine their paths ever crossing. Its weird thinking about "Class" based postings but, i have to figure miranda is above excelsior and heck jelloco was as shocked as anyone to get a shot at a galaxy.. but yeah lotta layered politics i cant see their paths crossing.
@@FromMyBrainsisko is a man that lost his faith.
As a 21 year Navy veteran, here is my professional opinion.
1: Riker was way out of line. Picard would not risk the Enterprise or war for one man. Yes he should give the CO his input, but when the Captain makes up his mind, you follow orders.
2: Crusher and her snide remarks about getting sickbay ready, she knew exactly what the Cardassians were doing, She saw it first hand
3:Jellico should have explained that even though he can’t say why, the ship needs to get ready for battle. That means all science labs powered down, and the people re assigned to either security, damage control or medical assistance stretcher bearers and runners.
4: Either separate the saucer or get all the civilians into shuttle craft to get away. This is before they knew where the Cardassians were hiding
5: Jelico was correct is making Troi wear the correct uniform on the bridge. When she’s with a patient then yes she could wear what she wanted, but not on the bridge if the flagship.
6: the duty rotations are the dept heads issue to fix. The four rotation has the advantage of more time to get the ship ready for battle, more drills for the off section, and if done correctly, more sleep. Even Riker told Shelby that a worn out crew fighting sleep and the Borg is bad.
That is my two cents, if you need me I’ll be drinking coffee
That's why you will never be on the bridge crew of the Enterprise. Maybe the Saratoga.......
Let's be honest, after a certain point I'm pretty sure the writers had forgotten the non-crew existed, or were hoping the audience would.
@@oneofthosevoicesyouhear9044 that comment makes zero sense why don’t you explain yourself
@@MrGranten also when you can stream any episode in minutes and look for mistakes….yeah makes their job harder
Enterprise turned into a frigging Goodwill Vessel
Middle of a losing war and the command crew stayed together??
The Feds just wanted them out of the way
Bet that Dukat considers 1984 as an appropriate good night story for his
children.
It's no "Never ending sacrifice", that's for sure.
Nah I think 1984 would be suitable more for Cardassian Elementary School book reports.
It’s animal farm that would be the good night story for children.
From the Cardassian perspective it certainly has a happy ending. A very mentally disturbed man gets treatment and reintegrates into society.
@@Strawberry92fs And learns to love the state that he will serve till the state puts him down.
Dukat after reading 1984: "Ah, what a great story with a happy ending...wait--you're telling me it's supposed to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of authoritarianism? What's there to be cautious about?"
"No wonder Garak became a tailor. Guilt."
Hahahahaha, oh that's going in the file cabinet of my brain.
i just had a thought: is garak probably just dopamine-detoxing...??????
Picard is shown to have a significant amount of PTSD from his experience of getting assimilated by the Borg, but I always thought he’d have a similar amount of trauma from his torture experience in this episode. I don’t think it was ever mentioned again, though.
Just like living an entire life in 'Inner Light' only the flute comes back.
And a related issue, why would StarFleet EVER EVER allow Picard to do anything other than fly a desk after the Borg and Cardassian situations. They showed 5 seconds of "counseling" which was really just the epilogue for the episode. After BOBW, he visited his family and fought with his brother in the mud. In First Contact, it was shown that he could still "hear" them, in fact he explicitly states (I think) that the Enterprise was being kept out of battle since SF did not trust her captain. So you sideline a major ship in a significant conflict since the writers just let him return as captain w/o intense deprogramming/counseling. C'mon.
@@mgelliott1 Why do you think Riker stayed Picard's first officer so long? He was there to watch Picard. At least I'd like to think that. If they remade the series, that would be a scene, Starfleet command meeting with Riker alone, saying either he remains on as first officer or Picard will be retired or some such. Of course, that's what Riker wanted anyway.
@@scockery In any real navy, the cast would have moved on to their next duty station in something less than the seven years chronicled by the show, much less the years covered by the movies.
In a real navy, Riker wouldn't have been surprised he was passed over for command of the _Enterprise,_ either; dude had already declined starship command at least once by this point. The personnel office tends to agree with an officer who thinks he isn't fit for command.
When I was a kid and saw this episode for the first time, I did not like Jellico. But, many years later, after having served in the Navy, I actually understand him way better. He's a tough but, frankly fair, CO, who expects the best and demands nothing less. He's also a bit socially awkward so he's going to try to be friendly - but never your friend. He is highly competent and values competency and efficiency. CO's like him are actually great - if you're a by-the-book hard-working sailor. If you screw up with a boss like him, he'll actually be 100% understanding if you can point to the regulation you were following and explain your chain of logic, because he'd have done the exact same thing. I've worked with a couple of Jellicos in my time and I always enjoyed them, because you *always* knew where you stood with them.
Chain of Command is or one of my all time favorite TNG episode, or rather episodes since it is a two parter. However it is still hilarious that Starfleet is sending one of their best diplomats and captain of the flagship, the former head of Starfleet medical and the only Klingon in the fleet, that also has ties to the current leadership of the empire on an assignment that ist almost rated as a suicide mission.
On the other side of things Riker gets a much needed shake-up. I like it that they put Jellico in front of him. We know Riker has refused promotion several times at this point in order to stay on the Enterprise, so Starfleet is not willing to hand this ship over to him since he did not want to captain any other vessel they offered him. Thats quite realistic, even considering Rikers service record.
It’s just like when FDR and Churchill went on a spy mission in France during World War II
Agreed. The problem with all these shows are the loss of "crewman" over time since TOS (yes even on TOS the "crewman" were red shirts that got killed, and rarely had speaking roles, but still...). The real Navy has VERY few officers on a ship (of course carriers have more due to pilots), but in most shows after TOS, nearly everyone is an officer. What happened to the MAACOs on ENT. The fact that not just officers, but senior officers go on dangerous away missions is absurd. This very episode begs the question where are Starfleet's Navy SEALS. Finally even O'Brien was mishandled. A Chief Petty Officer (retconned as such in DS9 from him having 2 pips in TNG) in the navy does NOT turn wrenches. They supervise others, that supervise others that do. They presumably manage the duty shifts, but this is being shown as Riker doing it, probably since the "workers" were all officers. These newer shows have even shown ensigns pulling guard duty when folks are confined to quarters, or in the brig. I think these shows would have benefitted by having a real chief enlisted person, and some recurring enlisted characters that reported to that person and then explore the officer vs. enlisted dynamic. They did this, but used officers in Lower Decks the show and Lower Decks the episode. HUGE untapped opportunity.
@@mgelliott1 When you think about it, it's really weird that there are only 2 significant NCOs in the entire Star Trek franchise - Chief O'Brien and Yeoman Rand.
That Star Wars quote sure did age lol
I mean, the _next_ film didn't make Phantom Menace look like Wrath of Khan. ...That came later.
Oh yes... which reminds me. I REALLY need to get rid of the massive amount of Lego Star Wars sets I've collected over the last ten years.
@Talisguy Nope, it was. Force Awakens was the worst movie ever, and then somehow, they managed to sink lower.
It's easy to forget, after the passage of so much time (and after several really awful movies and series), but a lot of people were very excited to see the Mouse buy up the rights to Star Wars when the sale was first announced. After all, at that time Disney was cranking out pretty good (and sometimes _very_ good) Marvel movies each year (sometimes _two_ per year!) - surely they could do the same for Star Wars, right? At the very least, the new Disney-made Star Wars movies were _bound_ to do better than the Prequel Trilogy! Because how could they do any worse?
I LOATHE Riker, when he makes Jellico essentially beg for Riker to please help them run a mission that will stop a war and indirectly help them get Picard back. What the hell? What if Jellico hadn't been the better man, hadn't disregarded his own ego and simply not begged? Would Riker have let the mission be done by a worse pilot and thus risk the lives of the shuttle crew and the mission failing, thus leaving Picard in the hands of the Cardassians and maybe even cause a war, in which thousands of people would have died, just over his bruised ego?
If it hadn't been for this one scene, I could respect the episodes for putting up two opposing positions, without a clear good or bad side. But this one moment drives it all off a cliff for me.
It's a big shame to me, Picard didn't give him the dressing down of a lifetime for his behaviour and end it with saying that by his behaviour, Riker proofed the admiral 100% correct in not giving him the command of the Enterprise in Picard's absence.
Jellico's negotiation tactic of "make them think I'm a loose cannon" is almost certainly a reference to Richard Nixon's madman strategy which employed the same methodology.
English Lex Luthor flying around in a spaceship with Kunta Kinte is really really funny.
They showed Chain of Command earlier this week on H&I. I consider it one of the higher points of the latter seasons of the series. Ronny Cox was great at portraying a different command style to Picard's, and showing that they are sometimes needed to maintain the peace.
Upvote for H&I, love how they air Star Trek
Ronny Cox is fantastic at being frustrating and seemingly unreasonable authority. He is just so good at that
Imagine if they had kept their plan to have Quark involved, You have a scene where they meet Quark incognito, Odo comes in, planning on giving one of his "I know what your doing, watch yourself" Speeches, then realises that it is Picard talking to Quark. Quark just sitting there silently gloating as Odo, has to walk away. It would of been a great way to introduce that dynamic between Quark and Odo to Next Gen fans who hadn't yet crossed over to DS9.
Alright Quark who whats this latest seedy despicable nefariou.....
I think the conflict is between the differing command styles between Picard and Jellico.
Picard takes the time to explain to his crew *why* he is making a decision, and will both listen to and take advice from them about said decision.
Jellico by contrast has his own ways for doing things, and wants them *done*, period.
Neither is *wrong*, but if you swap a leader like a Picard with one like a Jellico, you are going to have some rather significant growing pains.
I run a volunteer staffed hospital radio, and I’ve just realised I run it like Edward Jellico.
David Warner's finest role in the entire Trek franchise.
Most people don't get three unrelated roles to make the superlative relevant.
This story is a classic for a reason! Picard's struggle to hold onto himself and his defiance is incredible, showing off Patrick Stewart at his best, but the B plot is also incredibly strong and has its own powerful emotional beats. "There are four lights!" will live with me forever, as will the quiet admittance at the end of the episode that he was on the very edge of breaking.
"I had to kill Bob Morton because he made a mistake, now it's time to erase that mistake!"
I find it funny that five years later Jelico's actor would go on in infamy for playing one of the most hated recurring characters on SG-1, that of Senator Kinsey. Decent actor, frustrating characters.
He also played a Dick in Robocop
Admiral Aken Bosch from "Freespace 2" as well. Leader of the Neo-Terran Front, a rebel group that, in his own words, are "a herd of stupid cattle". Slips away from being captured by Terran forces a lot.
Fascinating villain. Has some great monologues. Much like Kinsey, we have no clue what exactly happened to him though you can presume that he mercifully died after a fate worse than death... but you can't be 100% sure.
Massively influenced how I write villains.
@@trekkie1701c I haven't thought about Bosch in a long time, damn. What a game that was.
What the hell was it with SG1 and Trek Actors playing complete assholes
Jellico's true skill was giving Troi a use for her powers.
I feel that Jellico is overhated. When I first saw "Chain of Command", I was like most people and thought he was just an overbearing asshole. But as I got older and rewatched the episode, I came to see that while most of Jellico's demands were a bit unreasonable, he had valid points and Riker was just being a petulant child. Jellico himself Ronny Cox would go on to say that he never saw the character as a villain. A bit of a hardass, but not a villain. He also said that he loved the aspect of Riker and Jellico butting heads as Gene Roddenberry didn't like conflict between the characters, so Jellico being the first guy to come in and sort of ruffle everybody's feathers was an aspect he loved about his character.
He is an experienced Captain, I dont think he made a single unreasonable demand, tbh
I never saw him as the villain. Just his style of command didn't mesh with the Enterprise's crew and his orders while stern were not without valid points.
Jellico is definitely more of a soldier than a diplomat, and that's no bad thing. It's just different. I like that Starfleet in their infinite wisdom decided to put someone who would mesh so badly with the established way of doing things on the Enterprise, it gives the cast a chance to be shaken up and stretch their acting chops a bit.
Jellico isn't a villain; he was very much intended as an antagonist. I'm inclined to agree with the folks that think Riker was largely in the wrong (I'd have to watch the episode again to see if I agreed with 'petulant.')
So glad you uploaded this all as one part.
Great episode, great analysis.
Superb episode. Definitely in my top 5 TNG. 10/10.
Patrick Stewart and David Warner are absolutely superb together. Knowing now that Warner was only cast a few days before makes his performance even more brilliant. He's wonderfully menacing, but charming and dangerous.
However, I found Riker very annoying and petulant. It was a time of potential war, the Enterprise is a military ship and Riker threw his toys out the pram when Jelico wanted to change things. I think Ronnie Cox was excellent and I think Jellico was a great leader in this crisis. He was right when he said he, "Didn't have time" to placate everyone.
In order to fully engage himself in the role of a torture victim, Patrick Stewart insisted that he actually be stripped nude, rather than simply implying it with careful camera angles. The scenes where he is naked were shot on a closed set, and he was, indeed, completely naked.
Ha. Picard Season 3 fixes the Crusher problem here.
There are three lights, Healer, Maker, & Fighter.
I see what you did there 😆
@@gregorywiederecht :) 🌙
Hold up friend
You glossed over the part where Riker really REALLY paints himself in the worst light as an officer.
When he petulantly makes Jellico ask him to fly the shuttle
It’s that moment that really makes oriole side with Jellico in this debate
You know... it was pointed out to me that the interrogator is holding a flashlight, and there are four lights on the wall behind him...
RIP David Warner.
(21:35) Sucks when you're a new extra and can't even hold your magical super-scfi healing ray properly so much so that the SFX team just gives up and simply draws a straight line from the tip to a lower part of Worf's injury.
EDIT: spelling
Unfortunately as we see in Lower Decks and Prodigy, Jellico doesn’t stop being a complete killjoy. Still he started Troi on the path to a proper uniform so he’s not all bad.
Still kind of offensive considering the behind the scenes reason for her not having a proper uniform.
We've forced the character into wearing weird skintight clothing, and then we're going to portray her being reprimanded for being out of uniform....
@@lillywho It was hardly a reprimand. Jellico just privately asked her to wear a uniform. Troi evidently agreed since she continued after Jellico left, and Sirtis obviously did too. It was probably her idea, since those dresses took a while to put on.
Jericho likes women in uniforms.....his views are logical
Found the one Vulcan in Ponfar.@@Deadxman616
I didnt know there was a schedule change and thought that the Cardassians withdrew from Bajor because of this ep
I never noticed, but it does sound like Picard is getting something cold placed on his back when he yells that that. That gasp is exactly how I sound when ice water hits me.
Thank you for the review, it really makes me appreciate the episode more thanks to the explanation of how the interrogation techniques work and all that!
If I was reviewing this episode it probably would be full of jokes about jellicle cats from Cats the musical... ;)
It's been a blessed eternity since I read Nineteen Eighty Four, so I'd never realised that scene yoinked the numbers straight outta Orwell.
We were coerced into reading it in school, and I'm glad we were, but an attempted re-read a few years back nearly killed me after only a chapter so it's now in my "fark no, never again" list
It's pretty clear the federation isn't ready for war and the admiral doesn't want to admit it
To this day fans are still debating whether Jellico was a good captain and whether the four-shift rotation was a good idea.
Now I wanna see the guy interrogating picard while smoking furiously 😂😂😂😂
Nice use of the Army FM in your analysis. Watching CoC/your video, as you show, has HUGE parallels to what we did and did not do during the Iraq War. Very prescient episode.
20:21 well... 🙂... I won't be too hard on you... You didn't know, none of us knew 🙂.
But I do have to say that this is a very good review, and the interrogation scene of Picard in this episode is probably one of the best sequences of scenes in all of TNG.
Tbf, episode 7 wasn't too bad and would have been a good jumping off point... If only Disney had a good idea or were willing to actually do something interesting with the franchise. Alas, what could have been.
@@dm121984 yeah episode 7 was definitely the best of the three main movies. solo and Rogue one we're really good. but episode 8 and 9, those were terrible. As always a big Corporation gets a hold of something and they mess it up.
@@dm121984Nope. It was the worst movie ever and somehow they manged to go lower.
@@lexington476 I didn't see Solo, but I quite enjoyed Rogue One as well. I think people are abit harsh on it for some issues with the overarching story, but I personally love much of the characters, humour, and in the act 3 action.
At the Rappel scene, if only they had Spock flying boot..
A classic... both for TNG and SFDB.
"And I really do hope you're not watching years from now and laughing at me because the next Star Wars film makes Episode 1 look like Wrath Of Khan I'd feel real silly."
Then comes the card from Present Chuck where it is confirmed he indeed feels really silly xD
Honestly, the highlight of this two-parter is the interactions between Patrick and David. Two masterclasses in classical theater is just a treat. I knew David Warner from his VA work playing Ra's al Ghul in Batman The Animated Series so seeing him here just makes it even better.
I’d be ok with reshooting Tormin 5 scenes for DS9
Chuck, we all feel very very silly. Thanks for the review.
Whenever people start talking about how groups they don't like don't deserve any kind of respect or decency, I always like to pull out Picard's line in this episode about how if children are taught to devalue others, they can be taught to devalue anyone, including their own parents.
Many of the things that needed to be said were covered already. I am of the opinion though that visiting DS9 would actually have been a mistake. Quark is a rogue... but a likeable one. Even if only arranging transport and even if he didn't know for what purpose, it would have made his character a little darker by association. Visiting DS9 would also have been a distraction from the core element of this episode, the crew of the Enterprise.
Did anyone else noticed that Nechayev wasn't wearing a combadge?
I am with Jellico except with the 4 shift thing. That´s something you can do when you have time, but when you go into battle I´d want the team to be well trained and everyone fully comfortable with his or her position and shaking things up some days before a possible fight...I don´t see that as a good idea at all.
How can the Federation "go to war" when it doesn't have a military? Starfleet is a group of adventurers whose whole mission is exploration and scientific discovery. Or so we are told (as we are also told to ignore the uniforms and military ranks, and "armed to the teeth" star ships).
Star Trek: Jellico
Honestly I always forget about the ‘specs ops infiltration’ part of these episodes
Compared to the interrogation, the tension on the Enterprise between Jelico and the rest of the crew…Picard, Crusher and Worf playing Commando really is just forgetable
19:58 Oh to be so innocent, back when we had hope for Disney Wars.
It's common now in the fandom to treat Jellico as the bestest ever, but I still argue that his insistence of changing the rotation was ridiculous. The Enterprise is 1000 person crew and he had it go through an intensive top to bottom refit, and could go to war at any moment. Changing everyone's schedule on top of it was just begging for problems, and had no reason to be done right this moment.
You forgot to mention Deliverance. That made Ronny Cox the bad-ass that could handle the Cardassians.
Just not white water rapids in a canoe.
3:51 why is her comms badge missing? I didnt notice during the episode yet its gone!
Because she is an admiral and if you want to talk to her, you need to make an appointment or be a Four Star Admiral
@@ohmyjanitorhaha!! fair enough!! I'll go with it but it don't too much sense especially when an emergency occurs as it'll take awhile to communicate with them without a comma badge
@@indianastones6032 Do you think her, a Three Star Admiral would be concerned with emergencies? She's a desk jockey and that ship we see delivering her to the Enterprise is just her personal uber. Let the captains take care of the emergencies. Remember what Kirk said about how being a captain means making a difference and not to let them promote Picard.
@@ohmyjanitor haha!! Look, I'm half convinced that the admiralty is insane and aloof as it is and your comment there might some truth to it!! Yeah ya right with Kirk telling Picard that he can do more sat in the big chair than at a desk etc.
what was up with that weird explosion shot in the middle of the naked Picard stuff?
SFDebris' background frame with the planets. Either it slipped in or he was making a subliminal message joke.
If you have six pilots (alpha, beta, gamma shift main bridge, and auxiliary control) and you switch to four shifts, which two shifts don't have a pilot in auxcon? If engineering is expected to have 75 engineers on duty, and 225 embarked, where are you getting the other 75 crew to fill out delta shift? Same questions for minimum staff requirements in tactical, security, operations, medical. Assuming 600 of the 1034 embarked are starfleet, that means 200 personnel/shift. So Jellico needed to bring 200 extra personnel with him to make this happen. Because now, each shift is shorthanded 50 crew.
loved the star wars bit
While I get the narrative reasoning, but if Natchaif or Jellico actually explained their reasoning with Riker at least a bit more, I think there would be less friction overall.
Jellico needed to captain the full Starship, beyond normal diplomacy stuff, because he would need to give orders that could put the ship in danger, and we know how normally the cases where the diplomat goes too far and pushes the ship into danger trope goes.
Jellico could had also let Riker know that he is planning on getting Picard back but it could only be after the negotiation were complete.
Having Riker as an Ally would had made much of his commands and pushing move a little smoother as Riker someone who the crew trusts and understands would be given them the orders.
David Warner was one of those actors I feel many were familiar with (probably due to Titanic most of all) but he never got the recognition he truly deserved, even if a lot of us had seen him in at least one thing be it a movie, tv show or heard his voice in a cartoon.
And yes, everyone who badmouthed Lucas feels silly. Personally Disney's Star Wars is a definition of a mixed-bag, there's great stuff like Rebels, Bad Batch, Mandalorian, Rogue One, the Jedi games, Visions, some of the books and I personally really enjoyed Ahsoka and Book of Boba Fett, but I despised the sequels and found Solo and Obi-Wan to suffer from a lot of problems even if they had their good points, found Andor to be dreadfully dull and we can't forgive them for cancelling TCW and 1313.
Ooh, I don't know if we can be friends; I consider _Andor_ the best _Star Wars_ project Disney has put out.
Mind, I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that it's more 'set in _Star Wars'_ than an actual _Star Wars_ story, but the space-wizard action-adventure has never been the main draw for me.
You know, that rewrite really confuses and annoys me. So because there was a scheduling snafu of a whole 2-3 weeks, it was best to not mention DS9 at all, over having the reference in their forever? Mentioning DS9 before the show just means, shock of shock, it will do what they wanted it to do! It's December 14th, 1992, you watch this episode, you have heard another Star Trek show is going to premier on January 3rd, 1993, that is about 3 weeks from now! Quark is a character, there might have been others about to learn about, now you might really want to watch DS9 because this was a really good two parter, but nah, someone around the shows think that, what, Trekkies will riot in the streets over the next few weeks?
I really don't get what they where thinking with insisting on the rewrite. Nothing stops them from running the reruns correctly and tell it to the syndication runners that season 1 of DS9 and season 6 of TNG needs to run at the same time for this one scene to work out like they want.
I am unreasonably annoyed over this minor change they did for really no reason. Promote your damn show in your show, let the absolute weirdo nerds be weirdo nerds about something being aired a bit too soon when it will make sense for all of ever!
The thinking by the powers that be at the time, which we can debate the merits of, was that they wanted to introduce the characters in the DS9 pilot first, under controlled conditions. Remember, the showrunners for DS9 (IE, Ira Steven Behr and company) had very little creative control over what happened on TNG, and would thus have been perhaps uncomfortable unveiling major characters on another show.
...yeah, but Riker was offered promotion and command of his own ship several times and he refused. That is like your kid holding out for a Porsche because you've only offered Mustangs. Also, isn't it reasonable the "flagship" would go to the next best experienced captain in Starfleet, and not to whomever the first officer is. Picard didn't get promoted to the Enterprise, he was already a captain. I agree about Riker's gripe and the way it's played, but he has no right to be irked. CoC is one of my favorite TNG episodes, but Jellico acts too much like a d@ck, yes, as you say he was reasonable and competent, but he used a dictatorial style to issue reasonable orders vs. a Pike (SNW) or Picard style. On the other side Riker acts too much like a whiny entitled brat (plus the crew goes along with Riker). More subtlety and nuance (i.e. Ducat B4 the last season or so) would have made a great episode even greater.
As far as Picard already being a captain, it's worth noting that he was a keel owner, and there hadn't been an _Enterprise_ for a couple decades since Garret's ship went boom.
I know I'd rather have Spock's jet boots instead of 500 meters of high grade rope.
Edit: Disney did do some good things for Star Wars. It also did some very stupid things. It's a mixed bag.
Nope! They ruined the franchise forever!
20:07 lol 😂🤣🤣🤣. Silly billy
Still an excellent review, Chuck, although it is showing it's age. Perhaps you should present it in black and white.
They should have just rocked with the DS9 material. What would have been the problem? Almost sounds like a great way to sneakily hint the coming of the new show. 🤷♂️
#Jellico did nothing wrong
Huh, what? My mind drifted off around 15:48. Didn’t hear anything after that. Have a bad habit for daydreaming.
20:06 what a beautiful edit!
Starwars? That aged well, lol. At least he had foresight of that when he said it
Need know second command
Force awakens was…fine?
No it's not.
It was fine. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was ... There. It existed.
My cousin summarized it pretty well when he called it "a filler movie". Personally, it's my least favorite because it's so easy to fix: Just tell us that Rey's parents were no one.
Amazing two-parter, but the premise of Picard, Crusher and Worf being sent on this particular mission is laughable. Let's just throw away our greatest living captain! And the flagship's doctor too, why not? Worf at least makes some sense. But it leads to the torture scenes, with Patrick Stewart shining like a star - so creatively, it made sense ;)
Jellico is a great character but still unlikeable. I can't help but think that his behaviour wasn't always in the best interest of his goals. Nevertheless, he was often in the right, and the crew acted like whiny snowflakes. But it is not just one-sided, which I appreciate. He is not just another crazy admiral or captain, and some of his actions are clearly needed for the mission's success. Gul Madred is a great and very sad character. All in all, this is rightly regarded as one of the best TNG (double) episodes, despite the lacking elements of its premise.
I stand by my opinion that Jellico is dangerously incompetent, but that may be a side effect of the writers being idiots. He makes too many changes that would be a lot of work to implement and properly test, too close to the date of the potential battle. If they had more time, I would be okay with his changes. The new four shift system would need additional personnel, or a LOT more time to properly sort the existing personnel into new shifts. The changes to the ship would need additional days to test if everything really is more resilient, that the changes won't end up causing the ship to suddenly shut down when there's a large power draw, etc. The way he does it, he is only causing the crew stress and making them more exhausted and less likely to trust his judgement in a crisis. The exact opposite of what you want. I think the writers either failed to realize this... or were really bad at conveying it to the audience.
"I do hope you're not watching this years from now laughing at me"
alas, the next star wars film was ok but it was sadly downhill from there I'm sad to say to past you
Masterminds aint that bad, probably not a high point for Steward though, it literally ends with him covered in shit.
The Gul shouldve employed the highly effective Teal'c strategy of the despicable whisper
20:06
To be fair, it took them TWO films to make it so bad that there was basically a fan revolt that is, as I write this comment, still going on. Also, in relation to this review, they introduced a vice admiral in the film I'm mentioning so bad, she makes Nechayev look like a nuanced and brilliant character.
I wish jellico was captain of discovery
I also object to the term "pilot" in Star Trek and Riker and Tom being called great pilots. No human can "pilot" anything that moves at trillions of miles per hour w/o crashing into a planet, asteroid or some other object. It is clear the computer "flies" the ship. That fact that we see people pushing buttons to pilot a ship that large and fast is a joke (the joystick that popped out of the console in the movies proves my point. It implies some additional granularity is needed that button pushing doesn't allow). Finally, the fact that apparently EVERYONE is a pilot and can fly a shuttle craft (Jadzia, O'Brien the enlisted guy, Bashir, others) or the ship means being a pilot is like having a drivers license in the future? So, if the computer is really flying the ship, doesn't that make anyone a great pilot.
Force Awakens is still better than the Phantom Menace.
Nope! It's the worst movie ever!
Wrong
Force Awakens is a fair enough movie, the only problem being we already had that movie in the SW franchise - Star Wars! Force Awakens is simply New Hope, beat for beat, but done worse and acted worse with a mostly new cast. Plus Harrison Ford gave us the definitive example of "phoning it in" in Force Awakens.
TBH, I never really got the hate for Phantom Menace either; it is not the best movie, for sure, but it is not terrible and it does include three high points - it gives us Qui-Gon Jinn; it has the Pod race, and it has the awesome light sabre battle at the end. There is no new character in Force Awakens that comes close to Qui-Gon Jinn; it has no action sequence that compares to the pod race, and it has no light sabre battle that compares to the finale of Phantom Menace (nor indeed that makes any sense).
So I would have to go with Phantom Menace being the better of the two, even though Force Awakens is the best of the sequel trilogy.
I will not let my frustration with the sequels trick me into believing prequel propaganda.
Chuck, it's the future and the Disney Star Wars films are still the worst sci-fi movies in history.
How many genders are there?
So he’s saying theirs 4 genders?
@@BronzeBoy520 Bigot, there are as many or as few as is dictated.
What is the point of this?
A perfect 10? Are you drunk? This ep is at best, a 1/10.
I respect what they were trying to do, but the concept of sending an elderly captain on a commando mission I could never get past. And the interpersonal conflict between Riker and Jellico was forced, with Riker's insubordination being out of character. Riker may have a personal connection to Picard, but he's also been a professional, knows what's at stake, and was literally willing to kill Picard in Best of Both Worlds.
Scenes like Riker refusing to change the shift rotation were so petty and arbitrary, took me right out of the show. Felt like the script was written by someone who had never watched the show before.