I liked the Selay, their make-up was great. They seemed to have done something with their voices too. A Lot of effort obviously. The Selay and Anticans were supposed to be at war and Picard was ranting on that subject. Then he mentioned "Nonsense between them [...] Even, strangely, over economic systems." This cold war thing is really stupid and doesn't do the job properly. The dialogue was very bad at times. The whole show was very divided. I always remember it as three different episodes. The best part, about the Selay and Anticans, which was funny, is the one I always forget in this episode, because the rest, about the possessions and such is the worst part of it all. That of course makes this episode look worse than it is in memory. I would have liked to cut the whole energy-being-possession plot out all together. That would have made it more usable in the future, since the idea has become very old now. If they would have just kept the funny quarrels of the "dogs" and "snakes", it would have worked much better.

When I first saw the Anticans, I was like, wow! They had put a lot of effort into the make up. The aliens look much more realistic. Then I heard their voice, and it was the same as the Selay, which pretty much took away my excitement. They hadn't made any special voice effects for the aliens. The strange voice was caused by how far away the real mouth was from the prosthetic one. Oh well, we can't have everything.

The acting was again very poor, Beverly's not on a roll, her acting was really false. Her head device was BAD BAD BAD, Deanna's emotionalism is killing me, Data finally becomes better, holding up the third 'show'. It was unrealistic when the Assistant Engineer was killed, that the crew didn't do anything about it.

Now, let's look at these three shows; Antican/Selay = Funny, well done make up wise, but would have had to clean up the voice in post-production. Possession thing = Badly played,
unrealistic emotionally, only Patrick Stewart is doing anything of worth. Sherlock Holmes story = Funny, well played.

I'm not sure all of this made much sense, but for you those of you who didn't understand, I didn't like the episode at all!

RATING:

out of 5