Star Trek The Next Generation Ruminations S4E24: The Mind's Eye

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[@malvane8061]

It wasn't Picard slowly turning to stare at Krell that got me, it was the immediate glare from Governor Vagh. Like he knew his fellow Klingon was bad news from the get-go.

[@Yura-Sensei]

The torture of Jordi was deeply unsettling. Surprised me in a big way

[@SchneeflockeMonsoon]

My headcanon is that there are three “Geordi’s” in his head. The agent, the face, and LaForge. There are these little hints when the face or the agent are moving that makes me think the real Geordi is calling for help. “Everybody’s got an alibi. Except for me.” He calls O’Brien for help at one point, he lets O’Brien distract him at the critical moment, and he intentionally spilled his drink on O’Brien to get him suspicious in case of any conflict of orders in the future.

[@dreamwhisperer2340]

The quality of your ruminations really is a treat. That you for your hard work, Lore.

[@Rasolisu]

This is what I like to call 'earned darkness' it was so affecting because we have known Geordi for 4 years now and tossing him into this. DS9 does this too with O'brian and there it is even more effective since we have seen him as a character for 7+ years up to that point. If this was S1 then I wouldn't have cared as much, which is my major issue with Discovery S1.

[@clearmountain28]

Well I have a hard time liking a lot of the characters in discovery as much as I like Geordi, so even if they did hold off 4 years to do this kinda stuff, I still wouldn't care as much.

[@robertsollanych6852]

I love this episode. It's essentially a version of The Manchurian Candidate from the 1960s. Some scenes are almost verbatim.

[@Vietnam_Chr0nicles]

I love your series. it really got me into Star trek again. Im currently rewatching season 1 right now

[@jeffreymiller9438]

The one real clue in 'The Mind's Eye' that something is off about Jordi was his relating how he had this wonderful encounter with a woman on Risa. That should have set off Deanna's BS meter..Jodi never did well with women..

[@Mulberry5]

I love, love this episode! This was one of the first I remember ever watching as a kid with my family! The one super nitpicky thing that I've always wondered was why Geordi's shuttlecraft didn't immediately alert him the second the romulan ship began uncloaking. If Geordi hadn't turned around and noticed the ship, he would have had no chance to defend himself at all, not that a shuttlecraft would have been able to do much... still. Lucky they didn't want him dead I suppose.

[@sora6748]

One of the best scenes in this episode is when picard cuss out the klingon gov as he should that what the klingons like someone with a spine that can handle insults and give it back notice also picard never takes his eyes off of the gov keeping eye contact except for a spilt second when he signals the enterprise to beam up, that is awesome acting as he should keep eye contact he earned his respect. I wish we would have known what picard said cuss wise. The whole scene is acting perfection.

[@paulscott2037]

My own head canon in regards to the shuttle. Something that is never really brought up in Trek is that planets like Risa deal with a ton of space traffic so a ship as big as the Enterprise isn't always allowed to get too close for fear of collisions. Therefore they just dropped out of warp at the edge of the system and let Geordi go on in the shuttle.

[@mikepastor.k6233]

I liked the end of the episode where Picard was pleaded to give the ambassador sanctuary on the ship and he just gives him up to be horribly tortured no doubt.

[@corssecurity]

Klingons don't torture its not honourable. He will be put to death and his house dissolved and the family put out in the street, banished from the city.

[@athrunzala6919]

I wonder if they knew about Gordi's VISOR from Bachra from The Enemy, they likely become interested in the tech then and understood what could do with it after that episode. Clockwork Orange.

[@williamozier918]

Somewhere in the basement of the TalSheyar HQ there is apparently a Geordi LaForge Desk. In fact, now that I think about it that make alot of sense. They probably have a desk focused on most notable Federation folk.

[@AlucardNoir]

LOL Future guy, thanks for making me literally LOL.

[@Analog_Mind47]

In the lense of late 19th century politics, I think Spain would be the Kardashians in your analogy

[@paulscott2037]

One thing I noted the last time I watched this, which was only a couple of weeks ago. The Governor instantly accepts that it cannot be Picard sending the signals to Geordi, and the only reason why he would have that certainty was that it was Picard that stopped Geordi from killing him if Worf had managed to get to him first or one of the Klingon officers saw and protected him instead then I suspect the Governor would not have been so ready to accept Picard had nothing to do with it. Also as an aside y other half watched this episode for the first time and didn't realise it was Denise Crosby's voice either. Her assumption was that it was the Romulan Spy, the one who was pretending to be the Vulcan Ambassador before. And we've been going through episodes super quick so we watched Yesterday's Enterprise only a couple of weeks before.

[@Eric_Hutton.1980]

"If you done it it ain't bragging" Yogi Bera

[@ShadowStoryteller]

I've always been in the thought of "the worst kind of dark story is the one where you see the darkness and gore". This episode is my proof. This is the kind of episode (for me) where the less you see, the more horrifying the events are. Let me explain. If this was a Discovery episode (just so you understand, I am not particularly fond of Discovery but it's not for the usual reasons), the horror that Burnham sees would be on display for full gore and shock value. Yes, it would be squicky but the pay off at the end would be cheap and predictable to the point of boredom. By Livingston having things implied and metting out the creepiness in small doses and degrees, Geordi is our only key to see just how bad it's getting for him and how bleak things are becoming. This (and I've stressed this out in the past with other people) is a thinking episode, the kind that sets the mind and imagination into overdrive. On the whole fingerprints thing, the only explanation that I could think of besides "the ship cleans itself" is that it's a busy cargobay and there are fingerprints upon fingerprints so it would be impossible to separate the fingerprints out without destroying the evidence they need. Yes, they have tech to separate the fingerprints out now...but it only works if there are two or three cleanly viable prints with only a little overlap. A busy cargobay would have hundreds of people touching containers, access consoles, the cargo transporter controls and pads, etc. That's my theory, anyway. I love this episode, if you can't tell.

[@SchneeflockeMonsoon]

Geordi’s torture was hard to just listen to, let alone watch. This whole episode threw me for an emotional loop.

[@pajaf0341]

Hi Lorerunner. Great series. In building your chanel, content like yours will have to play the long game. But I am sure, depth, honesty and attitude of your complete series will be influential to our reception down the line. To your question: There IS multiple personality disorder in real life. The hollywood display of it didn't help, even if Edward Norton did quite a job here... My father worked as supervisor/counselor in psychiatric wards in Germany. I read his case documentations of two multiple patients. One of the patients had 7 personalities of differen genders. One of them allways was active when the woman went to work out. This part of her called himself Christoph, and it was was dangerous, when he surfaced, because he had a black belt in Karate. At that time (about 2004, I think), some doctors in the team questioned the possibility of people with this condition living "in the wild". Nobody was doubtful the condition existed. They just brought up the possibility, that therapy could be the catalyst for compartmentalizing of such already highly damaged and unstable personalities. There was a high priority of affirmationat to the pations narratives at that time, especially when they experienced heavy trauma. The Idea was, that under such an observed social environment, feedback-loops could develop, locking the partial personalities in their niches AFTER they experienced their shares. Subconsciously, the patient could want to feel as she felt expected to feel by the authorities in her daily life (the Doctors...), reprogramming herself. I don't think, you could magically replicate that pattern in a matter of days. Perhaps not even recreate it to this coherence at all by force. These were learned behaviors observed with longtime inhabitants of the clinic. But the concept itself and the shown extreme compartmentalization are possible. It needs a lifetime to get there. First extreme traumata and then years of conditioning. And I would guess, sb. who has been there would not function again in high stress situations, at least not professionally on a spaceship. But then: These are stand-ins. Nobody would experience that many high-stakes incidents in 4 years of real life. The characters are a device for us to identify with the crew. WE need Geordi, they can not take him out of duty for our sake: We need our familiar faces for this narratives to work, to be able to identify with their dilemmas. This is the core of many narrative traditions. For example in the comedia dell'arte: "Pulcinella, a man without dignity, is nevertheless indispensable to us all: without [him] ... none of his countless 'bosses' could ever escape from the awkward tangle of troubles in which they find themselves. Pulcinella is everyone's saviour, saved by no one." And yet, he is saved all the time. With every new play. Nice of the writers of StarTreck, that they helped our suspension of disbelief by some elements of character arks and overarching storytelling. They had to strike a sensible balance there to still be able to tell us convincing fables of morality in space. And in the end, even the transporter was born as a plot device out of budget necessities...

[@starwolf99]

I think the term you're looking for is Return on Investment.

[@corssecurity]

A woman died fishing her I phone out of a outhouse toilet in a national park.

[@francoislacombe9071]

In this episode, there are several scenes shot from Geordi's point of view. Some of those scenes are on the holodeck the Romulans are using to test Geordi's programming, others are on Enterprise. The visual effects in both cases look the same, but Geordi's visor has a much wider spectral range than normal human eyes. Real environments and their holographic simulations should look quite different to him.

[@sharkdentures3247]

As much as Patrick Stewart is an acting God among Sci-Fi performers, it is nice to see episodes where others get opportunities to shine. In this case, Levar Burton. While the episode didn't stand out especially much for me, it did have good performances all around. (par for the course in TNG)

[@corssecurity]

Can you imagine the touch screens everywhere if fingerprints got left behind? Gross.

[@Tuning3434]

Early, I must not be at work.

[@zuzoscorner]

"not saying it horrible" me "but it is!"

[@harpercole5321]

It slightly irks me that Data doesn't try to beam into the cargo bay at the end (or lock onto Geordi and beam him out). In fact, he doesn't even run! Plot holes aside, though, it's an emotionally effective episode, perhaps TNG's darkest, at least until Picard gets tortured.

[@mr51406]

An episode I disliked originally but now (just watched it an hour ago) I really enjoyed. I usually cringe with the “Jordi/O’Brien must suffer” episodes, but this was really good. 🚩Totally agree about horror: psychological impact has nothing to do with spilling large amounts of ketchup. 🦑Fascinating to see a “decadent” Klingon à la Kempec; notice how he says Qapla’ in a nonchalant, desultory manner, and his gluttonous satisfaction as he attacks his Klingon smorgasbord.

[@athrunzala6919]

Hey Data, no need to run or site-to-site transport to Gordi's location at the end there buddy.

[@Eelco_de_Boer]

Mem-summary: En route to Risa, Geordi La Forge is taken prisoner on a Romulan ship and mentally conditioned to assassinate a Klingon governor in order to implicate the Federation as enemies of the Empire and unbalance relations between the two governments. (not bad, not bad...)

[@Brando64]

Geordi gets abducted by the Duras sisters at some point. It's bad enough that the man is blind and no luck with women.....

[@technosworld2]

I really like this episode, however it's not one that I like to watch frequently if that makes sense

[@andrewkyriacou6405]

I like this episode though I don't really have much to add to it. There's just a lot that's enjoyable and a lot that's done right. A good watch for me.

[@ThisVideoAnnoyedMe]

Great to hear the first acknowledgements that Discovery sucks.

[@ecarlm]

Opulence

[@DarthDJJD]

Just one question: Do you like the SJW filled joke of Star Trek: Discovery? Need to listen to the Fandom Menace community to see why Star Trek died when Jar Jar Abrams took over.