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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Heh, wowwwwww this arc is a huge piece of deja vu for me. Been where Terence is, been where the others are too. This rarely works out well unless someone snaps out of the “Things used to work fine, why you no do them fine go do things!” mindset and takes the extra time to get the new person really read in. Too many years of having people you can just tell to go get stuffs done without much explication tends to make many a mighty edifice sway in the wind when you don’t have those people to lean on anymore. Question is, do people realize this and take corrective action, or shout at the new folks while the house burns. If this was an entirely realistic con portrayal – I’d suspect option B honestly. Seeing as how this is a comic, and people sometimes try to act like sensible humans I’m going to vote A.
Actually I’ve been where they are and one of the things every new staffer needs to learn is to ask for help, as almost noone will think about that possibility. Of course, a real concom will not give a newcommer a hugely important impossible task to see how they’d handle it, but people with potential will get tasks that are out of their scope or comfort zone, just to see how good are they at handling them and if they actually get the thought of asking for help. A team needs to work like a team in the way that every member should be comfortable enough to ask for help and not just become abrasive and hostile.