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Star Trek: The Next Generation 1x16 "Too Short a Season" - Full Watch-along (Patreon)

Published:
2025-11-28 19:00:11
Imported:
2026-10

Content

Follow along with me using your own copy of the episode!

Files

Star Trek: The Next Generation 1x16 "Too Short a Season" - Full Watch-along

Comments

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

I like this one. Not a lot of going on with our regular crew but I really enjoy all of our guest stars and their stories. A solid S1 episode imo.

Mark Chrisco

A older actor with a bit of youth might have made a better Jamison Michael Pataki, Karnas, you might remember him as the Klingon, Kras, who started the bar fight with Scotty in The Trouble With Tribbles by insulting the Enterprise

Jim Jones

TV visuals back then we're grainy. No one would have noticed the "baby hands". 😂 Now we have upscaled shows and fancy TVs. Easier to see the imperfections.

William Terry

This episode's clips get shown often because, I think, of the great dialogue provided by D. C. Fontana. Nice that they brought back Pike😋

뱀파이안젤

What a mouth on this ancient Admiral! Picard ain't that old! Patrick Stewart is relatively quite young in TNG Season 1!

Desmond

Yeah, that's exactly it. The old man makeup doesn't look so great to us now, but to be fair, it was never meant to be seen in HD.

Desmond

Didn't know you had such vocal talent Bunny! ;)

Mark Gosine

Even, in the day, the makeup tech wasn't that great yet for aging. It always took me out of the story, which was a good one.

Mark Gosine

Good episode. Even when it premiered in 480i resolution, the makeup wasn't that great. The makeup really didn't hit its peak until DS9. This makeup implementation was always jarring, and I think the actor was a bit over the top with his 'old person' acting. I've never seen an old person of 85 act like that. You could attribute it to the disease. As Khan had said, 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'.

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

And the episode story also, of course. Those shots of Troi eyeing up Jameson are imposing as hell. She really does look like she's staring into our souls. I don't know what feels more weird, Jameson in the centre seat, Picard on the right, or Riker on the left

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

I like how we made all our guys and gals useful on the away team. They all had their little moments which was fun.

Matthew Graves (Graviton)

I chuckled when you immediately brought up Commodore April (April? April, hah! ) Clever Bunny! I’m not a big fan of this one. Sorry to sound harsh but the old age makeup was distractingly bad for me even back in the day, and I didn’t even notice the hands. And I really didn’t care for the guest star’s performance. Over the top and hammy can certainly work in Trek There’s a strong argument to be made that Shatner perfected the art of “effective overacting”, not to mention the likes of Mudd, Decker or Trelane. But for whatever reason this didn’t work for me. I suspect the problem is that they paired him whith an actress, playing Annie, who gave a more naturalistic and, I have to say, MUCH more skillful acting performance. As for the story itself, it seemed to me like it was “strip mining” ideas from”Private Little War” and “Counterclock Incident” but in a slightly duller way. There is a lot of potential in the idea of returning to the themes of “Private” and examining the long term ramifications of such a scenario. But I don’t feel like this episode did it effectively. Also, I really feel like Picard should have brought Tasha when he beamed down the second time. I feel like Riker would have insisted on it. Ah well. Not a bad episode, but very “meh” for me personally

Carlos Stevens

OK, to those who are confused about what is or is not a spoiler... Just pretend like this is the first time you've seen these episodes. And for those who are limited in their abilities to do so... Just Clamp Your Mouth Shut!

Carlos Stevens

Ok bunny... Your operatic version of the Star Trek Theme... That was pretty good.

Ron

I wouldn't worry about explicitly suggesting that the Admiral Jameson was going to de-age. I thought you were so close, I gave you full credit anyway. I wonder how this episode would look if they remastered the de-aging. I don't know of any CGI examples of reverse character aging (young actor to look old) -- only the reverse where an old actor is made to look younger. And, in those cases, I think they still look terrible. But, with AI, I think they could probably do it now.

Carlos Stevens

I must say it again... these episodes are better than I remember.

Carlos Stevens

I can tell you this much. I watched these episodes back in the day when broadcast TV was still the only option. The screen resolution back then was 720x480.I (NTSC Brodcast TV standards). The young hands were not so obvious back then. Indeed, a lot of the makeup on the TNG crew kinda stands out a bit. For the record, they were still using film back then, so that's why we can watch TNG in a higher resolution than 720x480i.

Max

Putting the A Team in the Away Team! :)

Greg

I'm late in watching this, and there's some good comments already made by folks, so I'll try to bring up new points. I really like this episode. It's not GREAT, but I think overall it's solid. I like the story and the themes around it, even if -- like so MANY Season 1 episodes -- it's taking stuff directly from TOS. The guest acting all around I found to be very solid, and the episode moved at a good pace with hardly any wasted time. Clayton Rohner played Admiral Jamison. He was never a huge name, but he stared in a bunch of movies and TV shows and had leading roles in a couple of them (and he's still alive today). I thought he did a great job with the role, personally. As far as the make up and de-aging effects, they had problems with that during the production, which I don't think comes as a shock to anyone. :) From the Wikipedia episode description: "Clayton Rohner was cast as Admiral Mark Jameson. Prior to filming, Rohner and director Rob Bowman worked together on weekends on the characterisation of Jameson. He also had a variety of problems with the wheelchair used in this episode which cost $10,000 to construct. Make-up supervisor Michael Westmore had previously used makeup to age DeForest Kelley in the season premiere "Encounter at Farpoint", but "Too Short a Season" proved a unique challenge as four stages of make-up were required to show Admiral Jameson de-aging. The initial stage to show Jameson at his oldest, involved Rohner wearing a bald-cap and wig plus latex prosthetics applied to his eyes, forehead, throat and jowls. That stage took up to four hours to apply to the actor. Westmore found himself worn out by the volume of work during this episode, as at the time the make-up team on the series included just him and Werner Keppler. Bowman later criticised the make-up used on Rohner, describing it as sub-par. Westmore said that "if I was working on a film, and had several months to test Clayton's make-up beforehand, it probably would have turned out more to my liking. With less than a week to work with, I don't think it turned out too badly." Michael Pataki was already mentioned. Anne was played by Marsha Hunt, an experienced actress who stared in many movies in the 1940's but ended up being one of the victims of the Hollywood witch hunt on communism in the 1950's and was blacklisted, not doing much acting after that. I like the touch in Karnas's office about weapons taken from TOS -- cause those are the kind of weapons that the Federation would have given to him about 40 years previously as part of the 'arms for hostages' secret deal. I had a good laugh when you asked toward the start of the episode if Jamison was experiencing 'manpause' as that actually IS where the idea for this episode came from! Again taking from Wikipedia: "Writer Michael Michaelian originally pitched a story idea based on andropause, sometimes referred to as "male menopause". He wrote a treatment and first draft script involving reverse aging. D. C. Fontana later explained that the terrorist MacGuffin (an ambiguous but central plot point) was not quite right. Fontana was brought in to overhaul the ending, and explained that a "lot of what I put in at the end was also in Michael's story and drafts, but approached with a different emphasis". Andropause is a real condition and you can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-onset_hypogonadism As far as how people would have handled it -- Picard is an experienced negotiator in his own right, but he's not afraid to take action if needed. I could see him deciding the terms were not acceptable and doing a armed raid to rescue the hostages. Jamison himself said that he 'bended the Prime Directive' to best come up with the solution of arming both sides equally. We can debate the ethics behind this, but it's a very interesting question and this is one of those episodes that makes you think. I agree Riker should have put up more a fight on Picard beaming down to the planet twice though.

Soma

Mark Simon

I have been waiting for you to get to this episode, Bunny. After the emotional reaction you had to 'Metamorphosis' from TOS and its subtext of eternal youth, long-term companionship, etc. This Next Generation episode turns those themes around in a lot of ways. There was still a great deal of 'feeling out' going on behind the scenes of TNG all through the first season. From trying to push the boundaries of Roddenberry's new Writer's Bible to the Starfleet Admiral's uniform (it's no spoiler to say that it will go through many more iterations just in this first season). This episode also had a very unique vibe which I picked up on immediately, and it stayed with me through many re-watches over the decades. One of the aspects contributing to this aesthetic is the music. I wouldn't find out until many years later that this is the only episode to be scored by veteran TV composer George Romanis, who is still alive at last report, but would retire shortly after his contribution here; making him one of the rare one-off composers in all of Trek.

bunnytails

Oh huh! Nope, I didn't make the connection between Kras and Karnas. Their names are even very similar!

bunnytails

I completely understand your misgivings. And in hindsight, the two guest actors playing Jamison and his wife were a bit of a mismatch with regards to how serious we were able to take them.

bunnytails

Thanks Ron for giving me the benefit of the doubt! Hehe

bunnytails

Maybe people are too harsh on early TNG! I get that they probably aren't as good as seasons 3 and up, but they aren't HORRIBLE. I'm having a good time :)

bunnytails

Wow, I've never heard of this Andropause! And it's always good to put into perspective the time and money constraints that cast often have for a show like this, in makeup and otherwise.

Preaching to the Horse's Mouth

This is it exactly. It's fair to say that there's a lot of "meh" in S1 and S2 but none of it is really "bad" in any way and there are more than a few gem episodes to be found. It's only "bad" when held up against S3 onwards. There are probably only 4 eps in the entire series I truly dislike.

Summer

Same

Carlos Stevens

I admit to being too harsh in retrospect. But I also remember watching these episodes when they first came out, and being Star Trek starved for about 15 years (since the cartoons...discounting the movies) they were awesome back then...but then it got so much better that these seemed to pale in comparison.