TNG: Lonely Among Us

 I have this friend who's pretty much a media sponge. Whatever she watches, movies or TV, she retains dialogue with apparently no effort whatsoever and will then repeat those lines to you days, weeks, or years later with absolutely zero warning. It's like movie lines are just part of her language and pop culture is an immersion course.

Anyway, I'm not a sponge. At least not in that way. I tend to be rather visual so I tend to retain images better than words. Still, yesterday, it's like my brain was broken.

I woke up sick. I assume this was just some kind of ridiculous allergy attack. I ran out of Zyrtec about three days ago and my aversion to the store supersedes my aversion to pollen--but only for so long. Apparently, my sinuses had had enough. My equilibrium was all wrong. Everything was throbbing. My chest was rustling. My throat alternated between scratchy and closed up. Around noon I began to  wonder whether I might be dying.

I resigned myself to my fate and stretched out on the sofa and just freaking left it on BBC America.

Top Gear I've seen.
Another Top Gear I've seen.
And then Star Trek: TNG which... wait what is this?

It was "Lonely Among Us" and it was very clearly first season--Riker's beard was missing but Tasha was there. I knew I'd seen the episode within the last year. I remembered the dog guys and I remembered the snake guys but this whole cloud thing and the lightning and people getting all possessed and dead and driving the ship around--no I didn't remember any of that biz.

I wondered whether my obviously fatal infection had crept into my brain and eaten all my Star Trek knowledge. I began to panic. "Why don't I remember this?" "Why can't I retain stuff like this?" "I wish I was like K and could just remember more of this stuff." "Maybe watching 700 episodes of a thing in one year isn't the best way to... wait, is that Gul Dukat?"

Yeah. It was. Marc Alaimo (aka one of the top five Trek baddies probably) made his first ever Star Trek appearance in this episode.

He's this one. Probably.

Anyway, once I got over my initial freakout, recognized Marc Alaimo, and stared at Riker's chin for a while, I calmed down. I drank some tea and ate some crackers and settled in with Bunny until I began to doze, waking up whenever Picard barked, "Mr. Data!"

I'm still not 100% clear on exactly what goes on in this episode but that's ok. I needed that nap--that specifically Star Trek nap--in a bad way. It's been a while since I got to just stretch out and watch Trek and let it calm me down. It was nice. It was comforting. I loved it. Isn't that kind of why I did this whole project to begin with?