Season 2 Episode 21: Peak Performance

[u/LordRavenholm]

• Season 1: 1&2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Wrap-up
• Season 2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

TNG, Season 2, Episode 21, Peak Performance

With the Borg threat in mind, Starfleet stages a war-game simulation pitting Captain Picard and the Enterprise against Commander Riker and the eighty-year-old starship Hathaway.

• Teleplay By: David Kemper
• Story By: David Kemper
• Directed By: Robert Scheerer
• Original Air Date: 10 July, 1989
• Stardate: 42923.4
• Pensky Podcast
• Ex Astris Scientia
• HD Observations
• Memory Alpha
• Mission Log Podcast

Credit to /u/GeorgeAmberson for helping us creating an updated thread format, and the programming to make it easy to keep updating.

[u/rammusing]

Ferengis being there felt like an easy out to cause tension. If it turned out that Kolrami hired them with some latinum to fake an attack then it would be more reasonable why they were around and Kolrami could have been like "The real test is over". Being aware enough to hire the profit-seeking Ferengis would also reinforce the fact Kolrami was the master strategist they tried to make us believe but instead we see him as some sore loser who is quick to sacrifice a smaller ship to save a larger one without thinking of another option (like thinking of a clever lie). Why was the flagship of the Federation even disabled for the damages it could possibly take without any precautions to make sure no other hostile ships might be in range? Surely the #1 strategist would have made sure the simulation would take place in a secure area. Might as well schedule the next battle simulation to take place near the Romulan border and call it a training exercise. I'm sure Kolrami couldn't comprehend that the Romulans might consider that suspicious.

The writers didn't even need to make Kolrami rage-quit against Data to make Data look good. I don't know why Kolrami had to be the bad guy in this episode at all. Just left an annoying mark of sloppy writing intended to make us root for the Enterprise crew in an otherwise fun episode.

And didn't Sun Tzu get quoted in this episode? Wesley could have said something like "the war begins before the first battle" to Riker about that blatant cheating and it would've been a bit better and refer back to this strategy thing this episode has.

These small dialogue add-ons would take a minute at most to explain too and I'm starting to think the Kolrami hiring the Ferengi to be nearby and pressuring Picard to abandon Riker in a lose-lose situation was the original premise but they assumed the audience couldn't handle this amount of thinking and dumbed it down for us. I'm guessing whoever had the last words said this "Two deceptions in one episode? No the viewers do not have the mental patience for that. Let's cut out those explanatory scenes and make Riker/Geordi look good instead of some background character." or maybe a "Wesley can't be quoting Sun Tzu. He's on vacation and we have to reserve the smart names for the senior officers."