Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So I'm just going to come out and say it: My favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is "Conundrum." It's episode fourteen of season five, and I just deeply love it.
I don't know if it's because I literally just assumed Erich Anderson's Commander McDuff was a random Enterprise officer of the week (which we saw quite often during the show) when I watched it as a kid during the original run, so the twist actually worked on eleven year old me. I don't know if it's because I just like a good "everyone has amnesia" story. I don't even know if it's just because it's a good Ro Laren episode. I don't know if it's just because we learn that Starfleet doesn't give a crap about lasers.
I just like it. It's neat.
And I rewatched it last night, and feel that it holds up -- which is why I found it deeply weird that the folks who wrote the episode actually think it's not that good. My favorite episode of the entire seven season run of the show was a failure according to the folks who wrote it.
And maybe, as a writer and creator, I should remember that.
Like the hardest part of releasing creative works to the public is that often, after a while, I'll start to judge those things far more harshly than when I first made them. Or I'll compare it to the potential I thought an idea had in my head. And if I don't reach that potential, I'll think of it as "bad" -- when it might just be slightly different than that idea. I have one hundred percent published stories that I thought were just sort of okay and later had someone tell me how much it meant to them to read it.
*cough*I Hate November*cough*
So I should make sure I remember Conundrum. That one of my favorite things to rewatch is considered one of those failures by its creators. That the things I make might have value, just not in the way I originally thought they should.
It's just sort of how things work out.
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Wow I called this one and I didn’t even know what the story intends to do.
I’m waiting for when they go to the police station and start to describe Terrance the police chief goes, “He sounds like someone we’ve been looking for for the past year. He escaped from a mental asylum”
I’ve been seeing a lot of this recently. Terrance isn’t insane. Yes, he lives in a world that is different from reality, but the only difference is that, in Terrance-world, Terrance is always right. He’s not nuts, he just never stops to double-check or reconsider, because there’s no need. He’s right, so why waste the time? Therefore, any time he seems to fail or be wrong, someone else must have sabotaged him. Probably someone he already has a low opinion of, therefore proving he was right to dislike them. And if anyone doesn’t like Terrance, clearly they’re either jealous or evil, because how could you not like Terrance? He’s great!
Exactly right.
Terrence isn’t insane.
Terrence is just THAT MUCH of an asshole.
Dunning-Kruger Effect…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I dunno… He’s pretty much dinged every box for narcissistic sociopathy. Even in your description of him.
I tend to shorthand that as ‘insane’. His brain does not work with facts, it works with some mumbo-jumbo it made up on the fly. That does not count as sanity from where I’m sitting.
@Viktor: I was using the phrase ‘mental asylum’ for a comedic effect, knowing that it is an extreme and derogatory term for those who are in need of professional help.
And yes I’ve known assholes and professional victims like Terrence. Short of electroshock therapy*, there isn’t that much one can do with them.
*Again an exaggeration for comedic effect
I’ve discovered the legal definition of actual insanity has one specific symptom that Terrance doesn’t seem to have manifested, hallucinations.