Star Trek: The Next Generation - ''Samaritan Snare''

Spoiler Level: High

Geordi beams over to a Pakled ship to help them out, which turns out to be a trap to capture people smarter than they are who can improve their technology.  Meanwhile, Wesley and Picard take a long shuttle ride together to Starbase 515, where Wesley will be taking more Starfleet Academy exams and Picard will be getting his artificial heart replaced.

My friends and I always loved the Pakleds.  "Make it go" is one of those phrases that we never quit saying.  It's a shame the Pakleds were only used once, but they're kind of a one-trick pony.

The Picard and Wesley scenes are generally good, with the possible exception of when Wesley confronts Picard on the fact that he doesn't like kids. I guess Riker didn't do a very good job of making sure that Picard projected an image of friendliness. But seeing Picard eventually open up to Wesley and the two of them starting to bond works very well.

Having Pulaski be the specialist who needs to save Picard's life in the end felt a bit forced at the time, but seeing it now (and knowing she would ultimately be the one to finish the operation) it just struck me as another way they were trying to bring her into the family.

Speaking of the Enterprise's extended family, Sonya Gomez got a repeat appearance in this episode, and it was great to have someone else in engineering that we knew while Geordi was off the ship.  It's a shame they didn't keep her around.

There's also some great ship shots in this episode, as they use multiple angles of the Pakled ship and the Enterprise.  There's also some great shots using the Enterprise viewscreen; having that giant viewscreen that took up the entire front wall really was a great design.

Deanna stands in front of the viewscreen showing Geordi.

And lastly, we have an even more blatant example of The Amazing Transmorphing Shuttle, last seen in "Unnatural Selection."  The same footage of the Sakharov with its newer design is used for take-off, but then all the exterior shots of it flying are the older egg-shaped design again.  (And just to nit-pick, when they're departing Wesley identifies the shuttle as Shuttlecraft Two, but all the footage of the shuttlecraft-- in both forms-- has it marked as "01"!)

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