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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This should be fun. (Barring the obvious fun.) The first time that kind of relationship is tested with an outside sexual thing… it can be interesting. It might be fine, and it might kinda not. The reality sometimes record scratch skips your brain into spitting out how you really feel about this now that it’s not an abstract.
Don’t get me wrong, how you really feel can be yea, nay, and may or may not agree with how you thought you felt. But it is a bit of a portentous moment in any relationship that includes it. End pontificating.
This is not the first person Sarah has slept with since getting together with Ruth.
This is the first person who has shown up in the strip physically (others have been mentioned in dialogue)
Yeah, I think the point being this is the first person who it seems to be more than just a sexual attraction.
Yep, thanks Ecchi – that’s what I was trying to convey, albeit poorly – perils of too much post revision. Previous, it hasn’t been anyone that’s mattered enough to signify one way or another. The first one that strays into “Really want” territory is often the problem child.
Yeah – see my reply to Ecchi, over-revision led me to word that quite chimptacularly. Mea culpa.
“Someone break out the banjo”
….I’m not thinking of a banjo tie in. Am I missing something?
Only a very inside joke