Yeah, but that happens every single episode they can manage it. Heck, it was just done with the Rebel Flesh in the latest season. They didn't lose that trick with the historicals. But the threat is never "Whoops, Gengis Khan is going to chop my head off!" anymore.

Thanks for eating my attempt at a previous comment, Disqus!

Barkley certainly proved that.

But that's just my opinion. I was simply curious if it played a significant part in your decision or not, and I can understand why it wouldn't.

Oh, I'm not arguing that the Jellico storyline is as good as Picard and Gul Madred. But the fact that the Jellico storyline comes together well in Part II seems like the reason Chain of Command Pt II is a great episode, full stop. Otherwise it could have been "It's a great episode, but it could have been better."

Yeah, it was mostly a split between "He's a terrible commander" and "He really screwed up, BUT…"

Is part of the reason you picked Chain of Command Pt. II as the best episode also because of Captain Jellico coming off better than he did in Pt. I? I know that we've had episodes in TNG with good A plots that get dragged down by a nonsensical B plot, so the Picard torture scenes might have seemed silly if Jellico had…

I have no idea, but I keep wanting to make his name into a rough anagram of goulash.

Agreed. I think the review hits it squarely on the head-this is not a bad episode, but it never builds to a coherent whole, and it doesn't really foreshadow what will come later in the series.

I rule it's failed but unintentional, so no credit, but also no scorn is required.

Time for Irritating Pedantry!

I think it would have worked well (and not been too hard on the show budget) if we'd occasionally had a bit of filler where "our" Riker mentioned getting an update on how Thomas was doing. However, I can't fault them for not doing something like that, since people might have gotten confused and thought RIker had some…

At least he didn't stay down long enough to get the temporal bends. I saw that happen to a man in 2007. Still wake up screaming some nights.

The Riddler is correct. Of course, that just makes Sava's opening note stronger, because you'd expect Blackgate to have stronger security than Arkham Asylum, the world's first minimum security sanitarium. Then again, "Birds of a Feather" showed him being paroled instead of escaping, so maybe no on at Blackgate is…

That's also my explanation for why the Doctor has regenerated 10 times as often as he should have-he's not living a normal Gallifreyan life anymore, constantly exposing himself to new dangers and people. If anything, it's remarkable he didn't go through every single regeneration in the first year, and then die…

You could also argue that the faces that go past Hartnell are actually other people in the Doctor's life-the children he had (or still had at the time, depending on what you prefer to think), old friends, his parents…after all, he had 800 years of a pretty safe life before he went on this crazy, not-quite-sanctioned…

I love the way it all ends. It seems so appropriate for the low-key menace, almost the ending to Alien by way of farce.

I suppose I should have said good instead of old, then.

We have an episode where everyone devolves into random animals, but not one where they're all turned into old comedians. It's criminal.

I think for next Thursday, the Star Trek review should go up at the normal time, but only have the text "This review will be delayed by 8 hours while it is exhaustively edited, spell checked, and grammar corrected."