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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I had this terrible feeling they were going to end up stranded on the side of the road. Mind you, we don’t know yet that the gas station is open, but still.
Y’know, I’ve never understood how people end up off the side of the road. I mean, all you have to do is slow down. And if it’s still not safe, you pull off.
Lo and behold though, any time I have to drive in bad weather (especially on the stretch of I65 between Chicago and Lafayette, IN where I live) I see half a dozen cars in the ditch.
What I</ don’t understand is how people end up on the side of the road when the weather isn’t all that bad. Then again, these are probably the same people who are eager to pass me when I’m doing around 55 in a 45 mph zone…
First, I love the action in the last panel.
Second, ending up in the ditch is very very easy. All you have to do is hit a patch while driving too fast. A slick patch, a non-slick patch, a patch of hard snow, a patch of gravel, doesn’t matter. And ‘too fast’ doesn’t always mean fast. 10mph can be too fast in some situations.
After my wife and I bought our current car, when we got the first snowfall of the year I drove out to a local parking lot that hadn’t been plowed yet and purposefully did my best to lose control to see how the car felt and reacted in those conditions. Losing momentary control isn’t the problem — it’s not knowing how to recover.
This is true.