I had the privilege of watching last night the most horrendously dire, crass and cringeworthy episode of StarTrek: TNG that I believe they made, ever, in a long run attempting to move forward their acting and scriptwriting into the 24th Century. They took several series to produce TV that became worth watching, and then rapidly came up with some interesting and even gripping story ideas.

Last night's apology was That Episode where Tasha Yarr is unceremoniously killed off within 10 minutes of the opening credits in a singularly non-warrior-like way. Some omnipotent evil alien just kills her because it feels like it, or more likely because Denise Crosby had given notice on her contract and the producer hadn't liked that.

The alien in question was a puddle of tar. It was at least an attempt to conceive an alien life form which was not a humanoid with a different-shaped-nose, and credit to TNG for that. But is that the reason why it was the most appalling drivel which ever proceeded from the series? Really, this puddle of tar just didn't work as a main character, as Wiki explains:

"Gene Roddenberry gave reasons for this in an interview once. Budget constraints aside, if you try to make aliens look completely alien, you'll firstly make them look ridiculous (cf. Doctor Who), and secondly make it doubly hard for the actor playing the alien to do anything mildly resembling acting. This has actually been isolated to extremely specific requirements: if an audience can't see an actor's eyes or mouth, their ability to empathize with or emotionally invest in that character is significantly impaired. "

I also remember the "Crystalline Entity" which was another singular failure as an interesting encounter with alienness. Ergo, QED, implausible and annoying as it is, we doubtless have to put up with Rubber-Foreheaded Aliens if we want sci-fi-fantasy that is watchable.

Discuss.

Tags: skin of evil, star trek