UNCUT - Masks (TNG S7E17) | Star Trek Journey 310

Will someone get these snakes out of this m****r f**king torpedo? Brent can't save this episode - it's just unimaginably dull

Holy smokes Patrons -- some of you guys are nuts. This is one of the worst written, worst executed, PHONED IN episodes of all time. None of the actors have any idea what to do with their material so Patrick Stewart is just doing generic Picard and Spiner is throwing everything at the wall hoping maybe something will stick. This is not 'Brothers', this is "let's just get through this one last scene"

I always give an episode a fair chance until it's over. I remember watching this on first run thinking, what the fuck is this???

This episode was posted 2 years to the day of your Encounter At Farpoint reaction.

there are bad episodes and there are episodes that should be erased from cannon, but this is the only episode that I actually hate.

The only way this episode could have been saved would have been to bring in Robin Williams to play all those personalities and let him ad lib the whole thing.

i actually like this episode. B-

Oh God, this episode. Shaka... when the walls fell

This is my favorite episode.... TO POOP ON! I hate this episode.

Brent Spiner's effort in this episode is palpable. I think this whole episode is mostly just a weak excuse to give him some screen time playing a schizophrenic mixture of everything he's otherwise never allowed to do.

I get why this one is not liked, but for some reason I always kinda dug it. Here are some great quotes from Brent Spiner about it though! "The episode we did where I play the 5 characters is an episode called ‘Masks’... I do some of the most preposterous acting you’ve ever seen in your life in it. I mean, the other actors were laughing in my face at some of the characters I was doing. There was a point, when we finally got to the end of [the episode], Patrick and I were in masks and facing one another at 2 o’clock on Saturday morning. He was playing the god of the sun and I was the goddess of the moon. We couldn’t get through the scene. We were laughing at each other so much that the crew hated us because they wanted to go home! But we couldn’t control it.” He also described this as one of the “very worst acting” experiences for him, in terms of how difficult the schedule and the demands of playing multiple personalities were.

See? Sub Rosa is definitely better than this episode. At least McFadden, Frakes and the production team TRIED to make Sub Rosa entertaining. No one was trying here.

Listening to these Patron Takes...I think at least some people are having a laugh. You guys are correct. This is shit. It's widely regarded as one of the worst episodes of the franchise...and for more or less precisely the reasons you guys have covered. Honestly...the entire cast (exception Spiner) needs a stimulant or something. Its like they shot this whole thing at 4 AM on a Sunday night. Agree hats off to the director...but the writing has no blood flow. Pushing rope. Needs a blue pill.

Also...why would LaForge randomly set a torpedo on the carpet next to the warp core? With such urgency that they straight removed that entire control table thingy. Lets put the antimatter warhead next to the antimatter reactor. What could go wrong?

Shout out to Alex ex-girlfriends for being here. Thanks for the engagement! 🤪

I really liked this episode when I first saw it... it was my 5th episode I watched of any trek and I was 9... ... I'm older now. Let's watch some Deep Space Nine.

What a ridiculous fucking episode. That is all.

For some reason I knew that people hated this episode, but it always got my imagination going. Liked it as a kid... liked it now. As an adult I can appreciate that the story was VERY thin... so I am probably influenced by the head cannon I added as a kid. :-)

Ah forgot this episode ends with the antagonist falling asleep - just like the audience

Musaka is waking... to remind us this episode exists... ugh so bad

Oh...I had no idea people disliked this one, I always loved it.

Gosh this really is a terrible episode isn't it?

Talking about Brent Spiner playing the Joker, he actually has. In Young Justice, he played the Joker.

This episode left such a bad taste in my in my mouth I had to go back to a classic TOS reaction my favorite episode of the series The Naked Time and the boys crushed it for their fourth reaction !

Not good enough, damn it! Not good enough!

It does feel at times that because this was the last season of TNG the writer's attention had completely shifted onto DS9 and the first season of Voyager. This is an absolute stinker. It's weird that this season can have some of the best episodes of the show as well as rubbish like this

Just FYI, Brent Spiner did play the Joker in the Young Justice animated series

Now I want you to make also a worst 20 episodes of TNG list after the finale. Just to talk about turds like this one more time.

I still don’t understand what the hell was going on in this episode.

I forgot how stupid it is that they let most of the ship get transformed, but magically don't blow up and can still breathe, and yet they don't try and do anything to stop it. They don't stop their scanning beams, they don't make more-serious efforts to stop the "tractor" type beam, they just sit there and take it. 🤦🙄🤯

I only remembered Data sitting in the temple with his mask on. That says it all. Just to forget.

1:05:19 Josh and I at the same time to Alex: No you didn't. Nobody can follow what's going on because it doesn't make any damn sense!

55:52 Lies! LOL!

"Masks" is STILL better than "Sub Rosa" (and also better than another one coming up soon)!

34:20 But it's just BORING AS FUCK!

Data Goes Crazy × 14

There was an interesting idea here just so poorly written, my original opinion from 40 years ago is upheld. Sucks

They nailed it you just don't care

Remember all those times you wished they gave over the whole episode to a certain plot instead of having a B and C plot? This is the opposite of that. Max 20 mins of interest in the whole episode.

My prediction is that the writers were smoking some heavy shit when they made this

I’ve never said that I truly hate a Trek episode, but this one gets as close to that as possible. It’s definitely one of the dumbest episodes of TNG. D-

Lol, the look says everything. I used to hate this episode until I watched Brent Spiner interviewed about it, and yeah it's awful, but at least now I can laugh about it.

One of the worst episodes in all of Trek.

Don't worry guys after this is when the show starts to get good

When Picard said "You're starting to get sleepy" I was like "yeah, I am."

Spiner shows off what an absolutely *amazing* actor he is in an episode that wastes it

I do not remember ever seeing this episode. I was able to get through it this time by, thankfully, falling asleep for the last 15 minutes.

I could see the serotonin draining from Alex’s body minute by minute. If this turned out to be a two parter I think he would have slipped into a coma as a self-preservation act. The truth is season 7 should have had 22 episodes. Recording artists aren’t afraid to leave a shite album unreleased in the vaults and ignore fan pleas to release it. Maybe TV needs to be more willing to do the same when turds like this wash up on the shores.

Well here it is the worst , imho, episode of tng. Yes from my first watch I detested this episode and even managed a bad performance from Brent Spiner, well it’s all up from here boys. How could it be any lower?

It's easy to hate this episode, but while I can acknowledge it wasn't done well (especially in a way for mass appreciation) I do kind of like the idea. Everything is very metaphorical and archetypal. I can see what the writer was going for. And Star Trek should have been able to deal with this type of story well. But perhaps the idea of turning archetypes into literal characters and objects and concepts was not something that could adapt very well. Or maybe there could have been a secondary plot that all the metaphors and archetypes could have helped characters to resolve their conflict(s) in some way. But there was no anchor for this to mean anything otherwise, unless you just have curiosity and find archaeological type stories and learning about an ancient culture interesting. So yeah, not done well at all. But I still kind of like the foundational base concept. Needs to be totally rewritten though.

I suspect this is one of those polarizing episodes where opinions change over time. I have no idea what my first reaction was. Sometimes I watch this one to fall asleep even though I still like it. A B episode that puts me to sleep. Odd, but thats how I see it.

So glad to hear other people like this episode, I thought I was the only one! The quality is debatable but I just really enjoy how weird the story is, and it's nice to see Picard being able to enjoy his passion for archaeology again. Having said that, I agree that the episode does lack a certain energy or juice. Not that I think it's boring but it just seems like everyone's reactions are muted and there is no real sense of urgency. I mean no one really seems to be upset about what has happened to Data, or if he can be returned to normal. And near the end when Worf says they only have two hours left until the entire ship is transformed, everyone is just kind of like whatever. It's almost as if in attempt to take this episode seriously, the actors overcorrected and removed any emotion from their lines whatsoever.

I could be mistaken, but I think they didn't like it. Wow, this is a lot slower than I remembered.

Genuinely surprised by how favourable those patron takes seem. This isn't THE worst episode of TNG. But it would be on the shortlist.

One thing I did enjoy was the transformation within the ship. It kinda reminded me of scenes out of Indiana Jones

Finally we are here: https://imgur.com/a/qjnDHfe

WHAT?

If this gives you a better idea of my thoughts on this episode, usually during your reactions i'm glued to both screens. Part way through this episode i got bored and started texting my girlfriend, it wasn't because of you and Alex.😂

There are episodes from season 7 that I’ve watched dozens of times and others that I haven’t. Guess which one this is. Conceptually this episode is good Star Trek but it’s dreadful television.

I'd have loved to have seen your faces if at the end it said 'To be continued '.😂. Obviously a lot of work by Brent being different personalities...nah that's about as high as my praise goes for this one. Thank god you've watched it now, and we can move on. D

I feel a good way to make this episode more fun would be to have each of those “gods” possess a different crewmember. Give everyone a chance to chew the scenery while Picard as the straight man tries to corral them into making any coherent sense

First 10 Minutes are C For me. The Rest is Hot Garbage and E Tier. Had a few moments were i fell almost asleep, and i am not the Type of Person who does somethig like this!

one of the best TNG episodes // data played 5 or 6 character. look at the symbols on his chest.

Imagine if this was the finale.

This is one of the top 20 worst episodes in all of trek

See when people bitch about "Sub Rosa," I want to point to this episode. This is boring-as-shit-bad, whereas "Sub Rosa" is bonkers-batshit-bad which is fun. Poor Brent Spiner. I remember watching some behind the scenes clip of him saying he'd JUST finished shooting the Data-heavy previous episode "Thine Own Self," and they handed him next week's script and it's him playing FIVE parts, haha. He's a trooper.

The Long Walk is a King adaptation, apparently one of the earliest things he wrote. It takes place in a totalitarian society where a group of prisoners are forced to walk, and only the last one standing survives.

Hold on…Alex dated Satan?! That deserves a video unto itself.

As people have mentioned, Spiner got the script for this when he was still filming the previous episode and he felt he didn't have time to properly develop the distinct characters which may be why it felt "schticky" to you

apparently this was initially a much more complicated story they had to cut down to bare bones to make sense

When Worf said "there is no one else here", it almost felt like he was breaking the 4th wall and referring to the audience that tuned out 15 minutes into the episode. This and Sub Rosa are probably the episodes that stand out the most as terrible S7 eps, but SR is at least widely acknowledged as being so absurd that it's actually entertaining. Spiner does some decent work that saves a few scenes, but the episode as a whole is pretty trash. I really picked up on just how checked out the rest of the cast was this time though. There really is just no energy for much of the runtime. Also I would have swore it was Jay Chattaway who scored this one given it's so much like his usual style, but apparently it was McCarthy. In the scene where Data/Masaka picks up the mask and beats up the 2 guards, I though the score sounded very TOS like. D for "didn't fall asleep as fast as watching Imaginary Friend" 9 more episodes of TNG to go

I think by this point in the series, I had started to check out. I don't recall ever seeing this episode. If by chance i did see it, I can see why I have no recollection of it.

One further point. I believe this episode was very esoteric. Def made for a narrow audience. I have a soft spot for it because I am EXTREMELY into mythology and folklore. I love symbolism and especially comparative mythology and archetypes. Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero With A Thousand Faces' is my Bible. I also Love 'The Golden Bough' by Sir James George Fraiser. Lately getting deep into The Brothers Grimm and how these fairy tales were based on older folklore, and how that older folklore were based on even older legends, and how those legends were probably based on a real event. Etc etc. So I think my background in mythology, religion, folklore etc makes me appreciate this episode a little more. That doesn't make it good. It is a sleepwalk, and I don't think the cast enjoyed this. To be honest it probably started out as an amazing premise....Picard, with his love of archeology, finds his Enterprise is being transformed into an ancient alien city. That sounds AMAZING! But somewhere along the way....things happen, and the story ends up sucking. To me it's not boring, just a bizarre train-wreck, and I love me some of those.

Geordi needs to cut his fingernails

I find it difficult to understand why I've read reviews and commentary and seen here, as well, that this episode is described as "incomprehensible, impenetrable, and incoherent." (as Wikipedia quotes). Yes, it is weirdly low energy, as if the actors couldn't relate to the story, or the direction was off, or whatever went wrong; and it fails to tell an interesting story with a worthwhile payoff. But what is difficult to understand? It's all explained on screen - an alien archive is transforming the Enterprise into their culture, and using Data to manifest characters from that culture. With a ritual of sun and moon gods at the heart of it. Now, very little of that is presented interestingly, and there is no emotional impact in the ritual being played out. But my only real confusion back in the day and now, is how this terrible mess made it to production, much less through the writer's room.

I hope this ruins Sixto's day!

Everyone talks about Sub Rosa being the worst ever, and Masks is *right there*.

I started the reaction when it went live. 30 minutes in i needed a nap because this episode is just . . .

oh god this episode. just kill me

Ah Masks great idea low energy execution. Gotta give Brent Spiner some credit considering he had no time to prepare.

Interesting premise, terrible execution.

I can identify with Data here. The way he fell asleep... is how I feel watching this episode.

I have a soft spot for this one. It's SUCH a bad episode and I love it. lmao. Bizarre doesn't begin to describe it. The symbolism of Misaka being about the sun was SO obvious that it was actually patronizing but I definitely don't think episode was boring. This is a "lets watch this with beer" episode that's fun to laugh at. So....I dunno. Its tough to grade. B-? Yeah, I'll go with B-

Bizarre. Absolutely, positively, bat sh*t bizarre. I quite enjoyed it.

I barely made it through the rewatch on this one. As a former archaeology student I feel like I should love this, but cool concept aside, the episode is just plain boring.

Even Brent Spiner's acting couldn't save this one. We've seen his positronic matrix given just one too many level one diagnosics by this point... and after all these other times he's been taken over you would think his internal security worked a little better.

And according to some interviews with Brent near when it released he didn't have fun (time maybe changed his opinion), But he felt like he was just winging it, with no where near enough time to make up so many different characters.

I missed the chance to post a patron take on this one since I was on vacation - but I'm a big outlier on it. I LOVE this episode. Weird iconography, mythology, using the logic of the mythos to arrive at a solution - hook it to my veins. (I do have one criticism which is that the sun/moon dichotomy is a very Earth-centric thing; most planets wouldn't have a single large moon that's roughly the same angular size in the sky as their sun). Fully expected you to hate it, though.

I just kept thinking of Alan Rickman talking to the mirror in Galaxy Quest. "You used to be an actor!"

I remember not liking this one... But I forgot how absurdly low energy it is.

All I remember of this episode is Data saying "Musaka is waking" in that funny accent. And I think, who cares? D

Guido of Arezzo is usually credited with creating the basic musical notation.

If only Picard had some experience with a probe being left behind to remind other species they existed.

I pretty much knew you guys wouldn't like this one. I think they were cutting corners to save money.

Yeah, this episode is just boring. Waste of a good premise and a sort of fun Spiner performance.

Sorry you didn't enjoy it. The acting is definitely a little flat. But the premise is just so interesting to me.

Sorry, for me this is the one time having multi-character Brent Spiner goes way too far over the top. Some of it just amounts to silly voices.

Brent Spiner is a national treasure and this is an A from me.

So bad it's good.