I am a fan of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television show. So, for this date we go back to the sixth season episode entitled “Ship in a Bottle“. The episode is a call-back to a second season episode, “Elementary, Dear Data“.
Elementary, Dear Data
In that episode, Data (Brent Spiner), and Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) play Holmes and Watson on the Holodeck. Data, however, knows all the stories and solves them too quickly to be any fun at all for Geordi! Unable to explain to Data that the fun is in the process of figuring out the answer, Geordi issues the computer a challenge: create a new mystery with an opponent able to confound Data. It turns out that a Professor Moriarty who can outwit an android Holmes is capable of some nefarious business indeed! Data Holmes and Geordi Watson must thwart the Professor’s plot and rescue the ship’s doctor.
Ship in a Bottle
Four years later, Geordi and Data return to the program with another engineer to look into some anomalies. In the time since he was last seen, Professor Moriarty has somehow continued to exist and believes that he is a real person. He is also desperate to bring his love, Countess Regina, out of the digital realm and into real life, through any means necessary. With the Enterprise on a collision course with two gaseous planets and thoroughly under Moriarty’s control, it appears that the ship’s crew has no choice but to meet his demands. It is a problem thoroughly worthy of a twenty-fourth century Holmes and his Watson!
LeVar Burton played Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge for 176 episodes between 1987 and 1994. He was born Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr., on February 16, 1957 in Landstuhl, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Sources:
My source for this information comes from A Curious Collection of Dates by Leah Guinn (“Amber”) and Jaime N Mahoney (“Tressa”). [With additional information from StarTrek.com and IMDB -Selena Buttons]
I love these episodes!
Me, too! Now I really want to go watch them again!
Thank you for the compliments. I must tell you that the credit is for Selena and myself. WE have co written the columun Tid Bits since she came up withe idea to use pictures and found another source book for our information. I think anyone who likes our new approach should write in and help me convince Selena that the columun should be posted under both our names. We pledge to continue making the columun something you will look forward to reading every Day. Chips and Selena.