The Last Temptation of Riker.

Ugh, I thought, another Q episode.

I'm none too fond of Q as a character. He's a capricious plot device with powers that the writers can just make up as they go along. There is no way to defeat him. The best they can do is demonstrate some moral superiority and hope he goes away.

This one promised to be just as bad. Picard is left alone on the ship while some of the other regulars are down on a possibly imaginary planet fighting some wtf monsters wearing Napolean uniforms. Oh -- the Enterprise is on its way to a medical emergency. Today, our crew serves as an interstellar ambulance service. This story, like so many before it, gets shunted to the background. But then a funny thing happened.

I started to like it. The medical emergency plot becomes relevant to the main plot -- which turns out to be Riker being tempted with Q like powers.

I found the climactic scene involving Riker's "gifts" being thrown back in his face to be strangely compelling. Riker is a much nicer person than, say, Gary Mitchell from TOS. It seems as if he would be less susceptible to corruption but the story demonstrates that, even with good intentions, a good man with too much power can have his mind be negatively effected. A timeless message -- with some Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. It's not everyone's cup of Earl Grey, but, to me, this is the stuff that Star Trek should be about.

Worf gets something to do. He gets to kick some butt on the Napoleanic ugnaughts, and shows off some violent foreplay with a magically conjured Klingon floozy. He seemed to know what he was doing. Perhaps he has had some practice on the holodeck. (Do all Klingons engage in such rough love play, or is this a Worf-specific fetish?)