TNG: Force of Nature

         This was by far my least favorite episode of all time as a kid. Today however I have more perspective on life and Star Trek so it is only the second worst TNG episode of all time. I get that they wanted to do an environmental episode, but limiting all ships to warp 5 forever is exactly the kind of thing that makes me glad Trek has been rebooted. If the writers has decided to limit it to warp 7ish it would have made going warp 8 or 9 super dramatic, but warp 5? They go warp 6 all the time for routine stuff so now they are going to take 10 times longer to go literally anywhere? The fact that the actor portraying the scientist who is trying to convince them about the warp problem is hella annoying also doesn't do the episode any favors. Plus, Geordi tries to convince Data to train Spot. Have the none of the writers literally ever had a cat???
         The episode begins with Geordi trying to convince Data that he needs to train Spot which should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about this episode. Next they go looking for a lost Federation medical transport ship and along the way find a disabled Ferengi vessel. But it is apparently not disabled and opens fire. Picard manages to defuse the situation and the Ferengi captain explains that they found what appeared to be a Federation signal buoy which turned out to be a mine that knocked out all there systems, so where they faking being disabled or not? This is not addressed. And since this episode is extra dumb the Enterprise then falls for the same trap and two terrorists/scientists beam directly into engineering for some reason. Despite no one listening to them (a sure sign someone is crank in real life and totally correct in poorly written fiction) they are convinced warp travel is going to destroy their planet.
         Since they are clearly cranks no one listens to them so the woman blows their ship up trapping the Federation medical vessel (I guess they found it finally, was distracted by how bad this episode is) and dooming their planet forever. Eventually they come up with a plan to surf their way out (not kidding) and the day is saved. But word comes down from the Federation that now no one will ever go faster than warp 5 unless war were declared.

         Review: In case you couldn't tell from the description above I pretty much hated this episode. Not interesting and it pretty much wrecked any sense of urgency for the rest of TNG.

1 out of 10