““You’re not Minuet.” Poor Commander Riker. Another girlfriend disappears. 11001001 is an interesting episode about survival. This is also the only episode that features Bynars; a civilization based on the pairing of man and computer.

I thought the episode had a very interesting yet basic plot. It’s basic only in the fact that you distract the commanding officers while you do your deeds. I thought it was an interesting idea having the Bynars use the Enterprise computer to store their system and then re-boot the system once they arrived, and even if the died, Riker and Picard would be able to restart it for them. Talk about planning for everything huh?

I thought the Holodeck Jazz club was superb in capturing the essence of what those clubs were like. No matter what that piano player said, I thought Riker was a good trombone player! I did find it interesting that there was no bar tender, but that had no impact on the story even though they had drinks.

"What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin-joint like this?" Riker said as he walked towards Minuet. I think they did a good casting job on Minuet. They needed a beautiful and convincing character and they got just that. It appears to me that they are trying to set Riker’s “type,” The sultry, seductive, dark haired women. Whether that sets the stage for the inevitable marriage of Troi and Riker, we will never know.

Some other interesting things I thought were Data’s painting and the abandon ship scene. In terms of Data’s painting, what was wrong with it? It was his first try wasn’t it? You can’t expect beautiful works of art right away. For crying out loud the man painted an alien egg! There isn’t too much to critique there.

I thought the abandon ship scene was funny. When Data first comes over the comm. and says “abandon ship…this is not a drill,” they show the crew, not running or even moving fast, but just casually strolling along. I’m sorry but if the ship is about to explode I think I’d react fast. It took the crew until the next scene to get fire under their butts to move it!

Good Trek episode. This is definitely worth the watch. I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best of season one, but it is very high on the list. 4 of 5.

RATING:

out of 5