Too Short A Season

So far in TNG, all Admirals have been wrinkly.	Time to get the viagra out.	Hey - I'm young!	Comical disbelief face.
(more images below)

Overview: The Enterprise transports a legendary geriatric admiral who must once again negotiate a hostage situation.
Writers: Michael Michaelin & D. C. Fontana
Director: Rob Bowman

Anon²: Almost 10%!

Anon: Yeah, almost 10%. We'll have a party for that, don't worry. So, Too Short A Season. Strange name really.

Anon²: Yeah. Actually, let's get some basics out of the way before I discuss this. Card-count: 2 for me, none for you. Wes: not present. Hooray! Geordi, not doing much. Data wasn't told to shut the fuck up. That's almost unique, isn't it?

Anon: Pretty close to it, yeah.

Anon²: Except for Datalore where he didn't get told to shut the fuck up because it was his episode.

Anon: Plus maybe the last episode too.

Anon²: Erm, don't remember. Anyway, this is quite ironic - this episode is about ageing and the main guest star is a guy who ages backwards. We're in a year where a film came out called The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Ironically, and this was something I thought of a while back, Crusher was in sick bay and behind her there was this very symplistic view of DNA on the wall. A double-heelix on the wall. And also, this week's been kind of weird because there's been 5 things in nature... I'm a scientist, just to explain... there were 5 things that came out about anti-ageing. Some of them were genes and some of them were drugs. This was an episode where these notions were there and I spotted the double-heelix. There you go. That was my sensible bit of the dialogue. Okay, basically, ask me a question and I will answer if very sensibly.

Anon: Let's come back to the episode title then, what's the point of that name?

Anon²: It's about ageing, simple as that.

Anon: What, a lifetime is a season?

Anon²: Well no, a lifetime isn't a season. You have your spring, your summer, your autumn, your winter. You're born, you grow, you age, you die. That's it basically.

Anon: So the episode is Too Short An Ageing?

Anon²: Pretty much.

Anon: My favourite bit of this episode, in fact, probably the only thing I really remembered about it before watching it again, was this shot, about 10 minutes in where Picard walks off the bridge into the turbolift and pulls this amazing face just as he's going off camera.

Anon²: (laughs)

Anon: It's brilliant. You've really got to check this out.

Anon²: Yeah.

Anon: It's classic.

Anon²: Yeah, you'll know it. Basically, he's not even facing the camera. He's just walked into the lift and it's like he just opens his mouth and screams this silent scream. Now, there's several conclusions you might make out of this, but he thinks as an "actor," and a Shakespearean one at that, and he's come off the set and thought, "There's no way that scene's making it in there" and just screamed "Oooohhhhhhhaaaaaaaa"... but silently. Secondly, he may have shat himself. He's gone "Oh my God" or he's done a fart. Or the turbolift does a fart and he thinks "Oh, don't wanna go in there!" Or he's basically come in his pants.

Anon: Or just that he's French.

Anon²: Yeah, that's my take on it. "Oo la merde!"

Anon: Mark Jameson, he also had a proper 1980's haircut.

Anon²: Oh, the blokey? Admiral Whatshisface?

Anon: Mark Jameson, yeah. I thought they did the ageing stuff quite well.

Anon²: Yeah, through the episode you saw like 4 or 5 stages of him getting younger. But then Picard's on the planet negotiating with that guy...

Anon: Karnas?

Anon²: Yeah, the Karnas character who's holding some hostages. He shows him just 3 shots - old, middle-aged, and how he is now anyway. And Picard goes, "Yeah, this is him. This is Jameson." And the guy's saying back, "Erm yeah - a bit more evidence please!" I've got to agree with him. That would have been thrown out of court, wouldn't it? You'd go, "That's shit" or "Not enough evidence, fuck off."

Anon: It's important for the prosecution to prove their case.

Anon²: Ah okay, you're defending him then?

Anon: Not my job mate.

Anon²: Okay, fair enough.

Anon: I thought the guy that played Jameson did it pretty well too. The scenes seemed to carry well between the different versions of him.

Anon²: Yeah. He went from old git to young git. I was wondering when the voice was going to change.

Anon: It was slightly different with each of them.

Anon²: I guess what we're saying about this episode is: not bad.

Anon: No, it's not bad. It's average for the season.

Anon²: It's a non-action episode in terms of no one really does anything.

Anon: There was a better phaser battle in this episode than in Datalore though.

Anon²: Yeah, the actual battle scene in it - they were saying, "We've got our phasers on stun; they've got theirs on kill." Well, you go in any situation like this, you want to get those fuckers out. Don't you?

Anon: Yeah, I guess.

Anon²: So, revenge then. Basically, there was this whole war going on and the guy... ah fuck I forgot what I was going to say. Ah fuck it, let's have a beer.

Anon: Okay, anything else?

Anon²: (pause) Ah yeah, it was the second use of a set.

Anon: Oh, it was the same one as Code of Honor.

Anon²: The lezza one?

Anon: Yeah, Tasha. You know what? I think I even mentioned in the captions for Code of Honor that the set got re-used a few times.

Anon²: Oh really?

Anon: Prediction!

Anon²: Hmmm... I can't remember what I was going to say earlier. Was the plot stolen from Benjamin Button or what?

Anon: Unlikely dude. Other way round perhaps.

Anon²: Ah fuck it.

Anon: Next episode is, I think, When The Bough Breaks. You remember that one?

Anon²: At the moment, no.

Anon: Great, well I'm not even going to explain it. It was terrible. See ya.

- Anon & Anon², 17-Jul-2009