Well come on, he said it pretty threateningly. That head explosion is probably the sweetest thing to have ever come up in Star Trek other than the time traveling whale movie.

I cannot for life the of me understand this episode. In pretty much all of televised Star Trek canon, it is easily the most weirdly unpleasant and violent episode arguably ever aired. It's radically out of tone with most of TNG and especially this season in particular which was still in that weird, early phase of TNG where the stories were largely the usual Roddenberry fodder.

The best part of this episode is when an old man Van Damme kicks Riker through a door.

Another good moment, and this one's for serious, is when Picard has a secret meeting with three other captains down on a lava planet. They tell him that something is up within Starfleet and he should watch his back, and the whole meeting is very tense, good-looking, and cinematic. For all its story flaws, the earliest seasons of TNG looked the most like movies, with big dramatic lighting and staging, etc. The show developed a glossed-over TV look as time went along, but the early stuff looked great, as though everyone was bringing their A-game to this show except the damn writers. Even this scene is a good example of someone looking at the script and saying, well, it reads like Aliens, so let's just go for it.

Probably the only watchable episode of season 1.

"But captain, I thought peaceful co-existence was the whole purpose of Starfleet."

"Yes, but there are limits, Number One. Certainly, one can peacefully co-exist with an alien species which happens to look exactly like humans. One can even co-exist with a species that looks exactly like humans except they have some weird thing on their foreheads so we can tell they're aliens. But those guys? Those guys were gross-looking. I didn't spend four years in British Captain School just to make friends with a smiling tumor."

They could have spent another 10 minutes of airtime consulting with Deanna Troi as to whether or not he was being sincere.

Captain's Log, 41780.2. Commander Riker and had to do the most gangster shit I think either of us has had to do in quite some time.

The episode that set this one up has a great montage of the crew all telling Remmick to fuck off. Only Picard cooperates with his investigation.

I find it impossible to believe that shit was inside a Starfleet Commander and the teleporter never noticed.