Star Trek: TNG Season 1 – The Arsenal of Freedom

Link to StarTrek.com episode guide

I never realize just how busy I get when I’m traveling. I thought that I had already posted about a couple of episodes but I guess not, so here goes . . .

This was always one of my favourite episodes. It definitely is a lesson against extremes of all sorts along with one on ethics and responsible science/tech.

One of the other themes that I also find fascinating is humanities inherent mistrust of machines and robots. You can see it come up again and again in sci-fi and fantasy that the machines will one day wipe out humanity if we make the machines smart enough. I wonder if it’s just paranoia or if it has something to do with a species-wide feeling that we deserve to be wiped out; that any purely logical beings will take one look at us and decide that we are definitely inferior.

We also get to see a bit of internal politics on the Enterprise when Geordie’s command is questioned by another officer. I’m glad that we didn’t see more of that in the show, but it did give Geordie’s a chance to show his leadership ability. I’m glad that he eventually switches to a different career stream in engineering as I think it really helps to show all the different aspects of running a star ship when we have a main character represented in each of the areas.

Cool Science/Tech:

• Evolving weaponry

Fun Stuff:

• The USS Drake is one of the ships that was offered to Will, but that he passed up to be commander of the Enterprise. The Drake is just one of the many ships that Riker could have captained, but that gets destroyed during the series.