UNCUT REACTION - Star Trek TNG S3E11 - The Hunted
Comments (51)
Aggressively average. Not bad with a good seed of a story idea with treatment of veterans, but slightly missed on the execution. And yes, still 6 bangers coming up...
The Hunted isn't an amazing episode or anything, but I do feel it gets some undeserved hate. Mostly I agree it's "alright", but I'm always going to have a soft spot for a story about veterans being abandoned by their country, which remains a real issue today. This episode is also an example of the kind of unrestricted democracy Americans tend to decry with the whole "we're a republic, not a democracy". Of course even in self labeled democracies, there are still rules. It's no a wild west, anything goes system. With the Angosians, majority rule allowed them to just sweep their veterans under the rug and forget about them. Their rights should have been guaranteed and not subject to a vote. For this reason, I do find Danar and the others sympathetic characters. I agree however that while it was cool to see the service corridors, or "Jefferies tubes" as we hear the term used for the first time, and other areas of the enterprise like the cargo bays and brig, the escape sequence took up far too much of the episode. At least it let O'Brien get in on the action for a change. "More security! MORE SECURITY!!" is a classic. Like just about everyone else I can't buy that he's able to fool sensors and repel a transporter beam because he got injected with some hormones and chemicals. If nothing else I assume his body heat would show up on thermal sensors. Stronger, faster, tougher, sure I get that. Even shrugging off a stun shot I can buy on account of those things. I wish there had been a throwaway line about Crusher finding a implant in his body that was connected to his nervous system and couldn't be removed, and that aside from a certain type of scan just registering the mass and shape of the implant, she wasn't able to get any readings on it. At that point masking life signs from the sensors and breaking out of a transporter beam can be attributed to this implant, and it makes a lot more sense. Finally I do like the little scene where Riker pulls Worf aside and emphasizes that Picard's safety is his responsibility. Riker as we know is not fond of letting the captain beam down into hostile situations, but there are times where Picard is going to do so regardless. But even when he makes it difficult, Riker still works around it and does everything he can to ensure his captain's safety. One more example of why Riker is Trek's best XO in my humble opinion.
The only place in the world I can get Star Trek and wrestling references
I completely agree with you guys on this one on all points. After watching your reaction, I realized why this episode is so skipable and forgetable. Over half of it is just Danar escaping. While we need to see a little bit of that to get that he's a super soldier, it drags out FAR too long. All of that action filler does nothing to advance the story. It's like they had 20 mins worth of actual good script and had to stretch the rest out. I started yawning through all the action because nothing was actually happening storywise, plot wise, or character development wise. I feel like this script had a lot of potential, but it needed reworking in order to be good. Bottom 5 of the season for me. Also, the transporter beam thing was dumb.
Jesus what a boring episode.
I'm really having fun watching these episodes with you. I'm discovering things that I either never saw before or I just forgot about. Especially with episodes, like this one, that don't get as many rewatches. Great job! As usual, the Enterprise leaves and we are left wondering what happened. 🤔
This episode was better than I remembered. Not in a "top list" for me, but still a good, standard episode. Also another episode in which the Enterprise arrives somewhere, discovers animosity between two groups of people and Picard leaves them to figure it out themselves with a healthy dose of sass, I might add! I look forward to your reactions to the rest of the season.
I wish people wouldn’t hype everything up. If episodes are overhyped they are never as good. It’s the same thing with “Shades of Gray” - notwithstanding the clips it’s nowhere near as bad as people said it was going to be. Based on the reactions so far “The Defector” could easily be in the boys top 2 or 3 episodes of the season.
This ep is one of the most quintessential "yes, this is an episode" episodes there are
You guys watch the next episode same day right. Well in that case. You know it wasn't a super strong week (but again...I actually thought this one was slightly better than decent).
Well I definitely liked this episode more than you guys but it's not better than the defector or any of the best episodes coming up.... But...it is better than some episodes coming up...and I'll just leave it at that....🤓
I've seen every episode of star Trek (oldTrek not newTrek) at least twice and yet I didn't remember this one. Surprising because I actually really liked it. Felt like watching new TNG
This is basically TNG does a super weak version of First Blood (rambo 1.) Very meh. BUT James Cromwell is ALWAYS nice to see.
I think this is a solid B-tier episode. I noticed while watching that the action was pretty intense for a Trek episode; they were really tackling, grappling, and rolling around in a believable way.
Ya but it was a bit silly that this planet just injected chemicals and then they are super soldiers who can take on the federation
Setting the two sides up against each other and then beaming out is a lot like Kirk in "A Taste of Armageddon."
Its a rather meh episode to me, if I was re watching the series for my own fulfillment solo I would skip over it as with the next episode.
Man I guess I'm in the minority, but this was absolutely one of the ones I was counting down to this season. Having seen your other reactions, I can understand how it doesn't fit with the ones that are your favorites (no character scenes), but I love seeing a classic sci-fi idea like the action hero super soldier done on TNG - and pitted against our beloved characters. I think this one's a baller episode.
I guess I'm just a sucker for action, and also for the idea that even against the mighty Enterprise, one stone cold badass can always hold his own.
There is a particular genre of Star Trek (and "Doctor Who") episodes to which fans and critics refer as “Let’s Do” episodes. These episodes originate when the show’s writers choose to reimagine a well-known story, whether from legend, literature, film, or television, as a Star Trek episode, plugging the show’s characters into the place of characters from the original work. Previous examples of this genre have included “Balance of Terror,” based on the submarine film "The Enemy Below;" “Elaan of Troyius,” inspired by Shakespeare’s "The Taming of the Shrew" and the legend of Helen of Troy; “The Enemy” earlier this season, a riff on "The Defiant Ones" (or "Enemy Mine"); and “The Doomsday Machine,” “Obsession” and Wrath of Khan, which were all variations on the theme of "Moby-Dick." Viewers of Alex and Josh’s generation may not recognize “The Hunted” as TNG’s version of "First Blood," released in 1982, the first film of the Rambo series starring Sylvester Stallone. As such, “The Hunted” inherits "First Blood"’s commentary on the treatment of Vietnam War veterans returning to the United States – the underlying metaphor which Josh sensed but understandably could not identify. Jeff McCarthy (Roga Danar) is the third guest actor in TNG Season 3 who also appeared in "RoboCop 2"; that film seems to be Season 3’s equivalent of "Total Recall" in Season 2. James Cromwell (Prime Minister Nayrok) would later receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the 1995 film "Babe" (yes, the one with the talking pig). Other than Whoopi Goldberg, who was a recurring cast member, Cromwell was, to my knowledge, the first past or future Oscar nominee to appear in Star Trek since Seymour Cassel in “The Child.” At 6’7”, Cromwell is the tallest actor ever to receive an Oscar nomination. His extraordinary height is evident in the early scene of Cromwell walking alongside Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes (bear in mind that Frakes is not exactly a little person himself). (Edit: When I wrote this comment, I somehow overlooked the fact that James Cromwell appeared in the 1985 "Twilight Zone" episode "A Message from Charity." I always mean to point out whenever a Star Trek actor has also appeared in any version of "The Twilight Zone," although there must have been others I have missed.) Although writer Robin Bernheim (who is a woman, by the way) receives sole screen credit for “The Hunted,” the entire TNG writing staff participated in rewriting the script, as they frequently did. Ira Steven Behr joined TNG as a producer and staff writer during the development of this episode, and Michael Piller greeted him by saying, “Welcome aboard. Now rewrite act three for me and have it on my desk by this evening.” Media critic L. I. Underhill’s essay about the episode on the Eruditorum Press website assumes that Behr rewrote the chase after Danar through the Enterprise, but in fact Danar is in the Enterprise brig throughout Act Three, breaking out of the transporter beam at the very end of the act. This episode is, I believe, the first time O’Brien has gotten to participate in an action sequence. In a subtle piece of continuity, the method Riker suggests Danar might be using to elude the Enterprise’s scanners, hiding over one of the planet’s magnetic poles, is the same method Data mentioned that Riker himself had used in the past in “Peak Performance.” This is another episode in which Dennis McCarthy’s score is more noticeable than usual, allowing us to appreciate his talent. On these occasions, the main difference between McCarthy’s style and that of Ron Jones is that McCarthy does not include distinctive themes specific to the episode or its characters, as Jones usually does. Although I and other commenters have, I believe, been referring to the access tunnels aboard Starfleet vessels as “Jefferies tubes” ever since Alex and Josh were watching TOS, this was a spoiler: “The Hunted” is the first time this term has appeared in dialogue. The name honors Matt Jefferies, the Art Director of TOS who designed the original Enterprise and created the access tunnels for TOS. The term “Jefferies tube” had appeared in scripts as early as “Journey to Babel,” but never on screen until now. “The Hunted” includes one of the most obvious continuity errors in the Star Trek franchise: the hole Danar blasts in the wall over Nayrok’s shoulder in the climactic scene disappears when we cut back to that camera angle, inspiring fan jokes about how the Angosians are so advanced that they have developed self-repairing walls. Director Cliff Bole had hoped for a more elaborate action sequence at the episode’s climax, but considerations of time and budget ruled that out. There is a connection between “The Hunted” and a major spoiler which I gave away in my YouTube comment on one of the Target Audience TOS reactions, before I realized the extent to which Alex and Josh want to avoid spoilers. Since they may have forgotten it by now, I will not repeat the spoiler here.
I did not remember this one. That says it all.
Viewing this now, I can see that this episode is somewhat underwhelming, but as a kid, I really enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game that was going on here, although the military stuff went right over my head. My main criticism, other than being kind of forgettable, is how did Danar break out of the transporter beam? What caused that flash/explosion? I guess we'll never know.
I took the transporter beam break out to be related to his ability to be shielded from scanning and his ability to absorb high stun levels with few problems? Like he can somehow redirect energy of the transporter and hence his own transport because of his special cells....I don't know. .throw some techno babble in. Lol
This and the next episode aren’t highly regarded, but soon you guys will be needing new pairs of shorts from how excited you get watching some upcoming stuff. Knowing how much you love and seem to understand the characters, I can’t wait to see some of my favorite moments through your eyes.
48:40 Where's the goose? Or maybe that was a duck
36:12 I forgot Worf's odd delivery of Danar right there. LOL!
Basic middle of the road episode
LOVE the shirt!!!
One more episode to go, then it's a banger-fest.
It also is for me, anyway.
In TOS there was a time when Scotty crawled up a jefferies tube, a forty five degree angle crawlway alongside the warp drive pylons I believe they may have mentioned jefferies tubes before in TNG but if I am not mistaken this the first appearance of jefferies tubes in TNG and they are more extensive in the galaxy class star ship again some one else said it but the ship is a character each ship having subtle nuances helping to make them unique with strengths and weaknesses many of these characteristics would matter to you more if you role played, or ran battle simulations so, it is kinda niche but calling the ship a character is appropriate
This episode is the first mention of the Jefferies Tube in Trek
I’ve always liked this episode! May be the actiony bits? I think the metaphor is about PTSD and people being changed by combat, these guys were just literally changed for war. And also societies treatment of veterans..
Certainly 'meh' on the scale of good to bad. But yeah, this was just 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War, instead of the almost 50 years past it that we are now. How you view it is certainly colored by that difference in perspective.
Its really no different than how we deal with veterans from iraq and Afghanistan wars
I wouldn’t say you guys missed a deep metaphor however, this episode was released 6 months or so after the movie Born on the Fourth of July and Rambo III, which was a sequel to first blood. A movie about a Vietnam nam vet unable to cope with civilian life Metaphorically I would say it is Rambo. All over, glossing over the dead guards, the same way Rambo was still a hero after killing the deputy in the helicopter by accident.
Very surprised at your summary!
What about it surprises you?
You basically summed up my feelings on the episode. The commentary was on Vietnam veterans, which I'm sure you'll get from the Patron takes. So, aside from the transporter thing that I mentioned in my takes, another one that rankled me was that APPARENTLY a conduit on deck 15 controls both the external sensors (no backup systems for those? They seem somewhat important) and the lights for a cargo bay on deck 38.
The back ups could have been disabled from engineering earlier
Hm, judging by the closing comments, have you guys not seen First Blood? If you haven't, I highly recommend it.
Yes. A more direct commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans after that war.
Kind of a quiet reaction, totally understandable. Yeah, the episode is just...fine. Eh. /shrug
Don't get hung up on the "six better episodes", guys. On a lot of reflection, I've personally found four are better, and maybe two are just as good. Of course that's only my personal fan opinion. There is a lot of argument on the discord as to exactly what the sixth "better" episode would be so not everyone has the same idea.
IMO there are at least six better. I don't think it puts any pressure on them liking the rest of the episodes.
Nice to see actor James Cromwell. He plays smarmy well.
It's surprising just how long Cromwell had been appearing in movies and TV before 'Babe' catapulted him to the first rank of character actors where he belonged. I met him once in Dublin where he was performing in a play. My wife and I were bringing our two basset hounds to a charity event. The male stopped dead on his lead and I got irritated at yet another halt in our walk. A man's voice commented: "I hope you are going to clean that up!" I looked back and saw our dog had crapped on the pavement and also that James Cromwell had been the man walking past.
Oooo, yeah as a kid this was hard to grasp, but once I got older and learned a lot more about war veterans, especially the Vietnam veterans then it hit a lot harder. My grandparents served in WWII, but there were questions I did not feel comfortable asking. Part of me wishes I had, but then again, that's not something I wanted them to explain and re-live
That's a very mature perspective to have. I'm Irish. My great uncle (on my mother's side) fought in WW1 at The Somme. He returned home and inherited the family farm. I met him as a pre-teen several times and always wondered (even at that young age) what his experiences had been like. He seemed content and of a friendly disposition, but then we all have our submerged psychology and emotions.
Well, I guess I have this to look forward to while at work. Ugh, shiftwork.
Stay strong bro