Descent

The last two days have been quite good I must say. Things at school are a little tough at the moment because of the sheer number of students that I have on my caseload but I will make it by and manage. I am also happy to say that the weather this fall has been amazing; I love it when the fall starts cool and crisp. It really gets me in the spirit of the season. IN a bit of bad news, due to the fact that I am so busy with work and other responsibilities I have had to drop out of assistant directing the fall youth theatre shows. I am bummed about this but I need to maintain a certain level of mental health so that is what prompted that decision. Today I am heading up to St. Cloud to attend their annual Gay Pride festival. I’ll be exploring the park, going to dinner and a drag show. It should be a good time and at least I will be attending a pride festival this year since I skipped out on Twin Cities pride in June.

Weigh-in: I now weigh 195 pounds!!!!!!!!

I did part one of this episode on Friday and part two of this episode today.

Elliptical Machine:

Part 1- Calories: 450, Miles: 2.60

Part 2- Calories: 575, Miles: 3.77

Descent, Part I and Part II

Part I

The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Federation outpost that is under attack. Upon beam down the landing party is attacked by a group of Borg drones but they are acting much more like human warriors than a typical drone. These Borg move quickly, talk about themselves as individuals, and display emotions. While being attacked Data shockingly displays a violent outburst of aggression and anger. Starfleet puts the whole quadrant on alert and tensions rise as the Enterprise responds to multiple false reports of attacks from nervous Federation citizens. Meanwhile Data is trying to figure out how he has developed a display of emotions and he continues to be baffled by the outburst. The Enterprise is attacked by a Borg vessel, though it is not a typical cube design. During the attack two Borg are beamed over to the Enterprise to attack and the ship speeds away in a subspace porthole. One Borg is killed but the other lives and is put in the holding cell. Data is supposed to talk to the Borg and determine if he is broadcasting a signal to other Borg in the area. The Borg’s name is Crosis and he activates some device that makes Data start feeling emotions again. Shortly thereafter Data and Crosis leave the ship and go through a subspace porthole which the Enterprise closely follows. The shuttle is traced to a planet some 65 lightyears from Federation space. Picard orders for nearly the entire crew to beam down to the planet to form search parties, leaving a skeleton crew on board and Dr. Crusher in command of the ship. On the planet Picard, Troi, and LaForge are captured by the Borg, Data and the new leader of the Borg… Lore.

Part II

Lore reveals that he plans to use the Borg to destroy all biological lifeforms in the galaxy and turn the Borg into a race of pure artificial intelligence. Data takes Picard, LaForge and Troi to a holding cell where soon they estimate that Data’s ethical processor has been deactivated and therefore he is being controlled by Lore and not under his own control. Lore has been testing out new procedures on the Borg but decides to use LaForge for these tests and he puts Data in charge of them. While LaForge is being experimented on Picard and Troi put into motion a plan to reactivate Data’s ethical processor and they eventually get this processor to work again. Meanwhile on the Enterprise Crusher beams most of the crew back up to the ship but the Borg are attacking them so they make a run for it and use the sun and metaphasic shields to destroy the Borg ship. Also at the same time Riker and Worf are captured by a group of Borg in hiding who are being lead by Hugh, the Borg the Enterprise rescued nearly a year ago. Hugh is very angry about what the Enterprise did to him, he does agree to help Riker and Worf recover the away team because his friend LaForge is among the captured. During a confrontation Data refuses to kill Picard and before Lore can kill Data the whole scene is interrupted by Riker and Worf and all hell breaks loose. Data ends up killing Lore so that he can’t be a problem to the universe anymore! In the end Data and LaForge have a conversation abouth Lore’s emotion chip and LaForge refuses to let Data destroy it in case he wants it in the future.

The show is a great opening to the 7^th and final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We finally get to see one of the ladies taking command and doing a pretty good job of things. We also get to see Troi having a bit more of a brain and eventually she will become a command officer as well. The series had really hit its stride in later half of the second season and grew stronger and stronger as each season went by and I really think the show could have gone on for an 8^th season, too bad they wanted the crew to go on and make movies instead. The shame there is that of the four Next Generation movies one of them is amazing, two of them are just ok and one of them is horrible. Oh well.

I am also incredibly proud as I write this post as well because this marks the completion of ten seasons of Star Trek. My plan is to be completed with this season of the Next Generation by the end of October and to start Deep Space Nine on November 1^st. At this rate I should be done with that series by October 2013, Voyager by September 2014 and Enterprise by January 2015.