I'm back baby! It was strange spending a week without Star Trek, but I am up in the mountains for the next few weeks and I packed my bluray copy of season 3 TNG so it should be smooth sailing for at least the next few months. Season 3 comes in with a bang, new sets, Dr. Crusher is back, and Wesley is up to his usual shenanigans. As a kid I always had mixed feelings about Dr. Crusher, but after a season of Pulaski I will take her beautiful red hair and snark any day. It is almost like she cares about her patients and her job or something.
The episode begins with Wesley waking up from a nap with Riker calling. They are approaching a star system with a neutron star that explodes in a strange way every two hundred or so years. They have a Starfleet specialist on board to study the phenomenon with a specially designed "egg". As they approach the star system, in this case a neutron star feeding of a larger red companion, they suddenly lose power and start falling towards the streams of stellar matter without shields. They recover just in time but strangely the computer doesn't record any failures. Geordi gets to work but things keep going wrong. First the replicators (called food slots for no apparent reason in this episode) start over flowing and then Star and Stripes Forever starts blaring on the bridge.
Wesley is acting suspiciously and Guinan catches him placing traps of some sort around Ten Forward. It turns out Wesley has released evolved nano-machines into the computer and they are eating the systems and evolving at a rapid rate. Guinan keeps his secret but his mom spills the beans to the captain as soon as she finds out. They try to slow them down but the egg scientist (hereby know as Eggman) blasts the computer core with gamma radiation killing a large number of them but provoking the rest to try and kill the crew with toxic gasses. Picard is convinced they are intelligent from this and confines Eggman to quarters where the nanites again try to kill him, this time with electricity.
Data figures out that they are evolving fast enough they should be able to communicate soon and quickly he is proved right. Eventually they take the drastic measure of letting the nanites take over Data and through him Picard manages to negotiate peace. Eggman's giant eggsperiment goes off just fine and the even find a planet for the nanites to take over. The episode closes with Dr. Crusher watching Wesley with some friends in Ten Forward.
Review: This is a solid scifi story with decent character bits as well. Wesley almost destroys the ship but also is only fairly super annoying. Troi manages to be useless as usual and Data saves the day just like always. Not super memorable, but a solid episode.
7 out of 10
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