Seven Quarry Books by Max Allan Collins

 

We return to The Hard Case Crime Chronicles with seven Quarry books by Max Allan Collins. 

Collins ("Mac" to follow) can be a hard author to keep up with. Over the past year, not counting any of the below, I've read USS Powderkeg (great title, great plot, needed another draft) and Scarface and the Untouchable, pt. 1 (pt. 2 here) of a comprehensive biography of Elliot Ness that he co-authored with A. Brad Schwartz. Some of that Ness story was originally written in the 80s as four fiction books, recently collected into an e-book at the very agreeable price of $2.99.

I still plan to listen to this audiocassette of the first of them, acquired earlier this year (for more than the whole e-book collection. So it goes. As Frank London once klezmer-ed, in the marketplace, all is subterfuge.)

I mention all that because it seems no matter what other author or project has my attention, he's always in rotation along with whatever else I'm reading.  I haven't even mentiond the Nate Heller and Mike Hammer books and audiobooks I have in queue, or the additional ones as part of this Hard Case Crime Chronicles series (The Consummata and Two for the Money.) 

Anyway- the last batch of Hard Case Crime books I got off eBay had a bunch of Mac's Quarry books. I had two of them previously (reviewed here and reread for the below) but six were first time reads. These are NOT the complete Quarry novels; that list is here. Will there be another post with the rest of them, namely Quarry's List, The Last Quarry, The First Quarry, Quarry in the Middle, The Wrong Quarry, Quarry in the Black, and Killing Quarry? Probably, but it will likely be after this whole HCCC series finishes, so it could be years. I know how I am, though – if I start a series and like more than two of the books (which is the case here) it bothers me to leave the series unfinished.

That's how they get ya. 

Rather than rank them least-to-most favorite, the below are presented in publication order. A quick word on the publishing: Mac published four Quarry books in the 70s, a few more in the 80s, then all of them under the Hard Case Crime imprint, along with several new (and ongoing) entries. The below mixes all the eras of Quarry's publishing life. 

HCC-s02

Originally published as The Broker (1976). 

The assignment was simple: stake out the man’s home and kill him. Easy work for a professional like Quarry. But when things go horribly wrong, Quarry finds himself with a new mission: learn who hired him, and make the bastard pay.

The first and in some ways the best of the Quarry books. From the author’s afterword: “I wanted to take it up a notch – my ‘hero’ would be a hired killer. The books would be in first person. In the opening chapter, Quarry would do something terrible, giving readers an early chance to bail; late in the book he would again do something terrible, to confront readers with just what kind of person they’ve been easily identifying with. (…) A war-damaged Vietnam veteran. I had a good friend (now deceased) who was very much like Quarry – a sweet, smart, funny guy who learned to kill people for ‘Uncle Sugar.’” Also “I wanted to make a comment about Americans in general – that we had, through Vietnam, become numb to death. That we had grown used to watching body bags being loaded into planes as we ate our TV dinners taking in the nightly news.” 

A fine (and era-appropriate) American New Wave sensibility. And really that’s what should have happened – this shouldn’t be a book that came out in 1976, it should be a cinema classic in all its grainy-7os-footage glory. Would’ve been awesome. Still could. Well, sort of – you know what I mean. 

This is prototypical Quarry, and the author succeeded pretty well in his mission statement above: Quarry’s a dick, throughout, and every so often does or says something awful. This might make modern readers uncomfortable. He has a tendency to describe women by their tits and men by their ethnic stereotypes; he’s also just an asshole, in general, the type of person who's always one-upping the other person in a conversation. Is this not, though, the way it should be? Is he supposed to be a killer with a heart of gold? A passionate feminist? This is a first person POV from a guy who is not a sociopath but by virtue of body count a serial killer. 

I’m staying spoiler-free for these Hard Case Crime Chronicles and sometimes that handicaps my ability to review these things the way I want to. This is a very well-constructed book. The other characters particularly a fellow Vietnam vet working for the Broker, whom Quarry instantly browbeats, much like a short-timer would for a newly arrived soldier in a Vietnam movie, reflect theme and contrast Quarry in a way not always present in the other Quarry books. 

HCC-s04

Originally published as The Dealer (1976)

As part of his plan to target other hitmen, Quarry follows one from steamy Florida to the sober Midwest, But this killer isn't a man at all - she's a sloe-eyed beauty, as dangerous in bed as she is deadly on the job. Has Quarry met his match?

Spoiler alert; he has not.

This book is kind of terrible, sorry. The whole post-Broker set-up of the Quarry books, where Quarry has the Broker's list of who has targets out on them, travels to wherever one of them may be, susses out the scene (always with more arrogance than is fun to actually read or partake in), then offers his services to the "client," is very cumbersome. Watching him talk the client into, berate the client's staff, etc. I'd have rethought this. But as it's the set-up for several books, what can you do, the deed is done. 

Mostly, though, Quarry's POV is so relentlessly juvenile and silly throughout that it completely dismantles anything else going on. Here's a mash-up poem of some of the more over-the-top inner musings of our protagonist:

I was watching that Oriental-eyed woman with the big breasts.

The smile was phony, but she was good at it. 
And the bustline was real, so who cared?

If she was here, she'd be easy enough to spot:
the Oriental eyes, the awesome breasts, how could you miss her? 
Even if the room were full of  women.

"I'll get right on it," Lucille said. But those Oriental eyes said Go fuck yourself.

Dark pubic hair against the whiteness of her loins. 
She was an architectural wonder, this girl. 
One day, if she lived long enough, those massive breasts would have to droop. 

Gravity, like death, is inevitable. 

But right now she and her high, huge breasts were alive and well in Des Moines,  Iowa.

She sure wasn't the dragon lady, not in the sack anyway.

The promise of the Oriental eyes was not delivered.

The jacket came off to reveal a yellow-and-tan-striped halter top that caressed her large breasts, cradled them like a child sleeping in a hammock.

She was on her stomach but turned to one side, hugging a pillow, against which rested one generous breast, cuddled there, not squashed, its large dark nipple soft and smooth and delicate, a flower with its petals unfolded.

Legs sprawled but gracefully so.

I wondered how decorum would feel about those two big naked boobs.

Her back-up man had almost as big tits as she did.

We humped like a couple of teenagers in the back of a car,
 with a desperate, innocent horniness.

Amen. I don't do this to berate the author, by the way. The only thing that matters is whether or not it makes sense for the character to think/ say these things. Does it? His breast descriptions are right out of Richard Blade. Is he sitting in the chair cooly appraising the swell of areolas? Who thinks like that? Would a hardened assassin whose soul was scrubbed to the raw in Vietnam really wander through life like this? I don't now. Perhaps so. I think not, though. It works against whatever else is going on, to say the least. None of this is over the top for 70s genre fiction, really; check out any blog dedicated to paperback novels of the 1960s and 1970s and you'll quickly see the Quarry books are middle-of-the-pack offensive to modern readers, even with all the drooling over the sloe-eyed bra-busters up there.

All of which is to say: it's a combination of a writer applying too much force to a set-up that couldn't quite accommodate it. I'm a 70s-movie guy in a lot of ways; I can watch a dickhead go through the motions of a script or setting if the style is right or other factors are in play, if the mood is right. That is the case in most of these Quarry books, in fact, but it's not the case here in Quarry's Deal. 

"He'd been watching Ruthy throughout, hanging on her every word, savoring everything about her with that special fatherly sort of lust that gives incest a bad name."

HCC-s05

Originally published as The Slasher (1977). 

It's normal to see bodies on the set of an adult film. But when they're dead bodies - and the cast and crew discover they're trapped in a house with a serial killer - Quarry's got his work cut out for him.

I liked this one, though it falls apart a bit at the end. The reveal of the killer and everything after. Up to that point, though, it cruises along pretty nicely. Somewhere between Inherent Vice and Boogie Nights is a great Paul Thomas Anderson adaptation of this one; wish I could peek into that alternate timeline and watch it. 

Quarry is at his most Mike Hammer-esque here, though. (Seems to me he should be at his most Mike Hammer-esque in the next one on our list, not here.) This one is dripping with 70s-isms, which were not 70s-isms at the time it was written, just nowdays-isms. I like that aspect of just about anything, but here in particular. It's appropriately sleazy.

"In my line of work, it pays to be skeptical, even paranoid, especially in the face of anything even vaguely coincidental. Otherwise, you may find yourself dead. And death is nature's way of telling you you fucked up."

HCC-s06

Originally published as Primary Target (1987)

Now retired and happily married, Quarry turns down a million-dollar contract to assassinate a political candidate. It's not the sort of assignment you can just walk away from without consequences - but coming after Quarry has consequences, too.

As mentioned above this one should be the most Mike-Hammer-esque of the series. But Quarry's grief/ vengeance is actually rather underplayed. He takes a little revenge against one of the people who killed his pregnant wife by letting him believe he (Quarry) is going to murder his wife and family before shooting him. ("There's no reason to believe there's anything after this life but darkness, but I wanted to make sure the son of a bitch spent a few minutes in Hell.") But outside of that the wife is pretty much a forgettable character, and her death/ the whole loss of Quarry's A-frame house on Paradise Lake is kind of shuffled into the background. There's an episode of Hawaii Five-O where we meet Dan-o's fiancee (Anne Archer) in the same episode she's killed (halfway through) and then he's over it by the end. This is a bit more in-depth than that, but Anne Archer had more of an impact than... I literally already forgot her name, had to look it up. (Linda.)

Maybe this has more to do with Anne Archer. Could be an imperfect example. This is not a bad book, but the sameness of the set-up (Quarry bullies his way into his target's graces, becomes head of security, bullies the staff, bullies the target, oversells everything, sees someone he recognizes but must hide it) is a little grating. But there's an expectation of repetition in any serial genre fiction; I mean, how many times does James Bond allow himself to be captured, etc. So not a dealbreaker.

The political side of it stops short of being explicitly all-Republicans-are-hypocritical-asshole-fascists, etc. Which is appreciated, even if it's somewhat insincere. Still: better than anything one could hope for nowadays.

"Pros these boys had not been. Even driving a brand-new car they had managed to leave a trail of stupidity all the way back home. They were lucky they were already dead, or I'd be killing them again."

HCC-102
(2011)

Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him, that was the day he returned stateside from 'Nam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer. that transition was easy, too. 

He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one - by expecting trouble. 

What he didn't expect was ever running into her again...

The back cover copy - what I'm using for all the plot summaries - is a bit longer than usual, yet it reveals less. I mean, you basically get the character's origin story, and a restatement of the title. The actual plot has more to do with moviemaking and reflects the author's real-life experience as an indie filmmaker. That part of it is not as intrusive as it could be, mainly because the reader is right there with the protagonist learning things from the ground-up in an organic way. 

A few curveballs in this one to the usual set-up with Quarry pretending to be gay as part of his cover, which leads to some unexpected plot resolutions, not to mention his ex-wife and real-world past. As in Quarry's Cut it deals with a film set where Quarry shows up and pretends he's from a magazine. Stick with what you know, I guess. The time frame (1980) works in both Quarry's and Mac's favor here. (You know, I don't know if there is a Quarry set post-Y2k, with the internet and ubiquitous surveillance and cell phones, etc. He might even get killed in another book for all I know; I've avoided finding out so far.)

As in Quarry, which featured "pert Peg Baker", this one features a fictitious Playmate, Tiffany Goodwin, who is revealed to have been Playmate of the year "half a decade ago." I kept wondering who she was supposed to be a stand-in for. (Marilyn Lange, maybe? While we're here, my guess for Peg Baker was Jan Roberts. Quarry references Playboy a lot - it's fair to try to figure out who he's talking about.). Eric Conrad - the gay male lead who comes on to Quarry - starred on a popular show about cops on a beach with lots of slow-motion running. That's not a precise fit for any 70s show I know (although this was written in 2011 so it could be a post-Pacific Blue/ Baywatch projection back in time) but I'd like to know which one he meant.

"A couple of framed desert landscapes is all that separated this from a Ramada Inn 

in Who Farted, West Virginia."

HCC-118
(2015)

Quarry is a pro in the murder business. When the man he works for becomes a targethimself, Quarry is sent South to remove a traitor in the ranks. But in this wide-open city - with sin everywhere and betrayal around every corner - Quarry must make the most dangerous choice of his deadly career: who to kill?

The moral dilemma described there and in the title wasn't as weighing as it might sound. Basically once the novel gets to that point, it's fairly obvious which character he's not going to kill. I thought back to the original character description, i.e. "late in the book he would again do something terrible, to confront readers with just what kind of person they’ve been easily identifying with." But I felt in no danger of that actually happening. Except: the whole relationship with the young girl is kind of gross altogether. So, mission accomplished.

This one is set in 1972. I'm not overly familiar with the Quarry chronology, as I've mentioned - this endeavor will remain a whatever-I-grab-off-the-shelf-in-whatever-order affair to keep it flowing at the necessary pace - but that puts it a year or so before the events described in the first Quarry aka The Broker (1976). The 70s touches (the early videotapes and TV schedule) are all appreciated. That goes for the next one as well.

"'Who was it said 'whatever one sows, so shall he reap?' 

'God or some shit,' the sheriff said with a shrug.'"

HCC-130
(2017)

Memphis, 1975. 'Raunchy' doesn't begin to describe Max Climer's magazine, Climax, or his all-hour strip club, or his planned video empire. And evangelists, feminists, and local watchdog groups all want him out of business. But someone wants more than that and has hired a killer to end Max's career permanently. Only another hit man - the ruthless professional known as Quarry - can keep Climer from becoming a casualty in the Sexual Revolution.

I loved it when I read it the first time, and I still enjoyed it on a reread, but there's that sense of repetition again. I mean, this is just a slight variation on any of the ones above with some of the same details, characters, settings, etc. You expect some repetition with these sorts of things, sure, but maybe a bit too much of a hodge-podge grab of previous books, here. The later-John-Gardner's-Bond effect, maybe. 

I think Climer comes across as a cross between Al Goldstein and Larry Flynt, but the author alludes to some interesting reading on historic Memphis in his Afterword. It's worth mentioning that the short-lived Cinemax series with Logan Marshall-Green as Quarry (with author, below) was set in 1970s Memphis. I prefer the character to be a Midwestern one, but the show had its moments.

I reviewed one of the episodes at the end of this post.

Logan's a good fit for the character. Certainly looks more like how I picture him in the books than this Jack Kirby lookalike they gave him for the Hard Case Crime covers:

"His leisure jacket was a plaid number 

from the Who-Shot-the-Couch? collection."

~

The Hard Case Crime Chronicles will continue with:

Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus,
sooner or later.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, My Favorites

I've had an unequivocally agreeable ol' time revisiting TNG these past few months. I'll probably be leaving the show alone for the foreseeable future, so I wanted to end this series of posts by revising my list of favorites. I last did these in 2013. so taking a quick snapshot of how everything feels to me immediately post-rewatch-2020 makes sense. 

There were one-hundred-and-seventy-eight episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, produced for an era where owning all of them - even taped off the television onto videocassette - was uncommon. Here are my twenty-five favorites. These aren't the series' best episodes - you're big girls and boys can make up your own mind on what best fits that description. These are the ones I personally always want to watch more than any other. 

I've more or less said everything I have to say on the show in the other posts, but I added mostly new remarks to the below. Couldn't resist - with Trek, I'm always running my trap. You're on your own for plot descriptions, though.

25.

Some people hate it; we here at the Dog Star Omnibus ranch just love it to pieces. Just the other day I did my best Captain Picard voice when I told daughter number two I could tell she'd been in my office because "clues had been left behind."  

The Paxons join the Orgainians and the Metrons and the Q as alien races who think humans have potential. Potential for what? Who knows. If we were living the Trek timeline, we'd still be in the shit years of the twenty-first century, some forty-odd years out from Zefram Cochrane's boogie-woogie warp speed flight. Which means we still have a lot of this shit sandwich to eat before things get on the road to Trek. Seems to be tracking.

On the other hand, apparently UFOs are real so maybe First Contact's already been made. Was it the Chinese or the Persians who said "may you live in interesting times?" Maybe it was the Paxons. 2020 is an interesting time, to say the least.

24.

Kind of a crap episode in some ways. But a fave.

Is part of the reason it's endured with me over the years because when I watch it I time travel back to March 27, 1989, the night I watched it when it originally aired? Undoubtedly. Doesn't happen with just any episode, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when it does. 

While not sensible criteria for a Best-Of list, this is exactly the sort of thing that exerts great influence on a Favorites list.

23.

"Intelligent converse is impossible. You do not discuss, you gibber."

Who hasn't felt like the Sheliak lately, trying to engage with the world? Perhaps even more than lately. 

And who hasn't felt a bit like Data, as well, trying to talk sense into the stubborn colonists, only able to persuade when he starts waving a phaser around?

I like this episode because like "Darmok" (though a different shade of "Darmok") it's really just a story about discussion and communication. It offers no firm philosophical conclusion - save "find a way to use your opponent's intransigence against them" I guess - just sketches out the difficulty inherent in people getting people to listen. 

The meaning or reference of the title, though, continues to elude me. Does anyone know?

22.

"With all the power that MacDuff had to alter our brain chemistry and manipulate the computers, it's hard to believe he needed the Enterprise."

It's true. That sinks this episode for some people, that the Satarrans and Lysians seem technologically incapable of pulling off this sort of stunt. When it comes to incongruent technologies in the Trekverse, everyone has different breaking points.

The dramatic device used here - inserting MacDuff into things with no undue attention or music cues to announce "here is the villain, folks!" - is great. Unless you're tuning in to TNG for the first time - and it would be cool to talk to a fan whose first episode was "Conundrum" - the viewer is one step ahead of the crew in figuring out the mystery. I like that. Same device is used to good effect in a couple of other TNG episodes as well. 

21.

Darmok

Speaking of not making sense, here's "Darmok." But who needs sense? Hell, "Amok Time" doesn't make much damn sense either, but that's not the part you remember (or love) about that one. Like any Trek fan, I vacillate between demanding the series be science-fiction ("that's not the right warp mix ratio...") while tolerating the occasional flight of science-fantasy ("PUNCH IT!). This inner struggle won't end anytime soon. 

I wonder what happened to the Children of Tama after this first contact was established? I'd also like to know how their civilization got to this point. How did they come up with warp drive given their range of metaphorical examples? Although I guess, as we see here, with "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" being added to their lexicon, they have enough flexibility to accommodate new situations. 

20.

I didn't realize it when I put these together, but this is the first of a three-episode Data cluster in my favorites. I should've put "The Offspring" at 21; for awhile it was in the countdown, but I wanted to make room for the ones above.

Pretty airtight episode. One of those scripts like an Ira Levin novel - every piece working in concert toward a seemingly effortless finish. 

19.

"Are we no longer a couple?"

"No we're not."

"Then I will delete the appropriate program."

Ouch. 

Great episode. Sure it's got the whole Picard-solo-pilots-the-shuttle thing; that kinda stuff annoys me in Trek. Anyone who's read any of these posts has heard me bitch about it. Probably the best of the Data-explores-humanity episodes. But not my own personal favorite. That would be:

18.

A great little mystery with some truly memorable imagery. The first time I saw this was in college; it was the ones I never saw until 2003. I had a professor that semester who would occasionally teach Freud in class; it was an English lit class but it was one of those classes that kinda went all over the place. The Freud stuff in this episode, as a result, cracked me up. I think they're kind of dismissive of Freud in this, which is a perfectly reasonable attitude for anyone in the 24th century to have - especially the 24th century of Roddenberry/Berman-era Trek - but it's still a hoot for me when he calls into the dream to advise Data to "KILL 'ZEM!"

17. 

Michael Piller co-wrote this but took his name off for Writers Guild reasons so that his staff could get their credits. What a guy. Has anyone ever said anything bad about Michael Piller? I’ve never seen it if so. 

I was amused to discover Ron Moore’s original contributions included grisly deaths in graphic detail of all the principal cast members (Data electrocuted, Wesley’s head blown off, etc.) Those were the times. When I see this episode now, I think of this. The 80s were great for that kind of alternate-reality-everyone-dies sort of things. 

16.

A unique episode of the show, with a moving, earned ending. The moment above is very bad-ass.

One thing. After Sito passes the gik'tal challenge, she asks Worf if there really is such a thing, and he responds there is not but perhaps next time it won't take as many bruises before she protests. Aren't Klingons all about bruises? I'm not saying it's not good advice, or that it's inappropriate to the occasion. It's a great scene. Just seems odd that this would be a Klingon thing. I get that Worf is making it all up for Sito's sake, but if she were Klingon it'd be easy to miss the point of, is all I'm saying, because Klingons love bruises. 

15.

Will they ever resolve the whole Guinan/ Picard thing? I can't see how. They should've found a way to do so in the last season; I think everyone was signed on for eight seasons and maybe they had it earmarked for that. Why they didn't do it in Generations when Guinan was in the frigging movie and it might even have made a tiny bit of sense is beyond me. Good lord, Generations! Every time I think of that movie something new occurs to me about how awful it is. 

Anyway, Guinan is one of those characters that's kind of hard to bring back. You couldn't drop her - not played by Whoopi Goldberg anyway - into Picard (perhaps we should be thankful for this on behalf of both parties); how to explain the actress' aging? I suppose they could recast her. I don't want them to do this, partly because I'd have to watch it and the idea makes me grumble. Watching, I mean, or having an obligation, entirely self-imposed, to do so. I'd just as rather not.

14.

I remembered Ro as having a bit more to do on TNG than this rewatch revealed. She's really not in all that many episodes and there's only two or three ("Conundrum," aforementioned, and "Rascals", not included in this countdown, but I do love that one. Although while that's Ro in that one, it's obviously not Michelle Forbes, so we'll put an asterisk next to it.) 

Anyway this one's great. "What am I, some kind of blind ghost with clothes?" will forever crack me up. Like "What does God need with a starship?" it's one of those Trek questions that seems bigger than its literal meaning. 

13.

Some may balk at this episode coming in anywhere other than the top spot, or at least the top three, but I had to be honest with myself. The twelve still to come are simply episodes I'd rather watch. I do not dispute the warmth and originality of the episode nor the skill of the cast and crew who brought it to life. It's an A++ affair, top to bottom, reputation well-deserved. 

All that said the list is Favorites 2020, and I'm just a tad burnt out on it. 

12.

Was that a groan? I think I heard one out there. (There's one guy out there fist-pumping  - thank you, sir). And Gates McFadden, maybe, who used to refer to it as a favorite though she's distanced herself in more recent interviews. Not me. Each time I watch it I say crazy things like "This is the greatest episode of TNG ever filmed; inform the men."

...

This is an incredibly entertaining episode, in all its icky-ghost-orgasm glory. Running ghost story tropes through the Trek-translator usually lands with me; pairing them with gothic romance tropes to them even moreso.

11.

"Nothing has changed, Jean-Luc, except for you. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? To change the man you were in your youth? Well, you did it. This is the man you are today. And You should be happy. You have a real heart beating in your chest, and you get to live out the rest of your life in safety, running tests, making analyses, and carrying reports to your superiors."

An episode designed to make you feel both inspired and like time is running out and you need to change/ seize the day. An urgent message, that. Both, I guess. Also an important word of caution: be wary of which errant threads you tug at lest you unravel more than you bargain for. 

10.

What more can possibly be said about this episode? I've been too wordy as it is. 

Wil Wheaton has an amusing anecdote about hiding in his home office, refreshing the page to vote for this episode over and over as best of all TNG in some official Trek online poll, while his wife pounded on the door asking what he was doing. 

Were the Borg ever as cool as they came across here? For my money, no.

9.

"I believe you are reasoning by analogy, classifying objects and phenomena according to superficial observation rather than empirical evidence. Wood, for example, does not contain fire simply because it is combustible, nor does it contain rock simply because it is heavy. Wood, like any complex organic form, is composed of thousands of different chemical compounds, none of which is fire."

"That will be enough for now, Jayden."

Poor Talur! Even with his memory gone, it's got to be tough being a teacher with Data in the class. 

The very ending of this one with Riker and Crusher visiting in disguise and beaming Data directly from his grave to the Enterprise is great. "He was my friend, too." Someday that culture will exhume the body and find it gone and assume resurrection. Two thousand years later, hi-jinks will have ensued. 

8.

The final bit of this episode where the alien reveals himself to Riker and Riker puts his hand on his shoulder is one of the warmest moments in all of Trek. Great episode. Another of the warmest moments? The ending to this next one, captured in this screencap:

7.

"Let him dream."

Prophetic words, given the future-present of the franchise. Maybe not just the franchise. 

That's not the only warm moment in "Family"  the whole thing is pretty warm. I love that scene between Worf and the Rozhenkos for another. It's funny that Worf has this whole Russian side to his biography, right down to the luxuriant-hair wigs they put on him (from Russia, and a few thousand apiece, I think), but his other brother is Paul Sorvino. And Tony Todd. 

6.

Such a wonderful episode. this is one of those that hits me on a spiritual level I can’t quite put into words. Not the Wesley/ Traveler gobbledy-gook, but everything on Beverly's side of the bubble. The script reads like an Oracle of Delphi-type response where you perceive your own truths.

Along those lines, here’s a mash-up poem of bits from the script, words courtesy of episode-author Lee Sheldon, arrangement on the house:

So many of the people you've known all your life are gone.

All you said was 'Thank you.'

I said, 'My pleasure,' or something, and that was the end of it.

Your word has always been good enough for me.

A lie I can live with.

Narrow perceptions of time and space and thought.

I won't forget. I won't forget any of you.

Once we've cataloged the symptoms, we will proceed to determine the illness, 

and find the cure.

We will start with the assumption that I am not crazy.

If this was a bad dream, would you tell me?

That is not a valid question.

Like hell it's not.

That information is not available.

There is no Tau Alpha C listed on current star maps.

That information is not available.

If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe.

The universe is a spheroid region seven hundred and five metres in diameter.

That's when it started. That's when I started losing everybody.

My thoughts created this universe.

That information is not available.

One thousand and fourteen.

That's the exact number there should be.

5.

"The intelligence that was formed on the Enterprise didn't just come out of the ship's systems. It came from us. From our mission records, personal logs, holodeck programs, our fantasies. Now, if our experiences with the Enterprise have been honorable, can't we trust that the sum of those experiences will be the same?"

Good perspective. Not just for TNG but for that other several-year-mission called the USA. Meta but classy, inventive yet trope-ish, this one fits the whole s7 theme of family, to boot; this is the ship's family episode, where it gives birth. My personal favorite of all the meta-Trek commentaries given to us: this weird and genre-mixed ride, coming to an end and a new beginning, not fully understood but born of our mutual experiences.

4.

Things I love about this episode:

- Everything Moriarty (Daniel Davis) does or says and the way he does or says them.
- The surreal scene in Engineering where Data deduces how Moriarty "left" the holodeck.
- The Countess (Stephanie Beacham) and Moriarty's relationship.
- The nested-universes of the story as a chess game between Data and Moriarty, fulfilling the computer's challenge from back in "Elementary, Dear Data" for an opponent that can but not necessarily does beat Data.
- This idea that two computer programs could be out there exploring an entire virtual universe, fully stocked, one would imagine, with no reason to suspect anything other than the reality of their surroundings. The ultimate benevolent holo-sim. I'd watch this show.
- That shot of Moriarty and the Countess leaving the Enterprise and into the infinite, and the cut to Barclay et al closing the lid on it.
- Everything else.

3.

"All hands, abandon ship! All hands, abandon -" kaboom!

Great cold opening.

And it gets better from there. How long do they stay in this causality loop? Years? Months? Centuries?

Speaking of causality loops:

2.

"Goodbye, Jean-Luc. I'm going to miss you. You had such potential. 

But then again, all good things must come to an end."

Indeed they must. Today would have been my best friend AJ's forty-fifth birthday had he not died in 2014. All good things indeed. I picture him out there, watching the ship get destroyed from different timelines/ different realities. Did he navigate his way through it and into the great beyond? Does the trial ever end? 

Sorry - just got some things on my mind this morning. Dearly departed aside, this is probably the greatest series finale of all time. Not counting Ron Moore's BSG - but hey, he had a trial run with "All Good Things!" 

In many ways it's still my favorite TNG episode. But over the years I've found myself watching this one more and more:

1.

I especially like that it centers around Worf's birthday. Each time your birthday comes around you can't help reflecting on the years gone by, paths not chosen or unreachable, the number of paths ahead lessened by one in a finite, steady direction. Going a little sideways with it, like this (or a lot of the above episodes, actually - I guess these are the kind of things I most like in Trek) refreshes my mind each time I check it out. 

I was happy to watch this with my two daughters during this rewatch. I wonder if that will ever happen again in life? I hope so.

Well before we turn out the lights, let's do one more round of Leftover Screencaps, shall we? I hope you enjoyed the insertion of the title into the screencaps themselves, above - I wish I'd thought to do that all along.

Adios, Tomalak.

Goodnight, Gates, goodnight, Gowron.

Ka dish day, Lal.

K'plagh! (You I'll see in my DS9 watchthrough, coming soon to these pages.)

~