The Peddler

Story: The Arsenal of Freedom
Written By: Richard Manning and Hans Beimler
Series: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Year: 1988

The Enterprise is looking for a lost ship, on a planet that appears to be a planet wide gun running company. Weird. In all honesty this is one of the better episodes of the season.
The nice thing is that it breaks one of Roddenberry’s dumb rules: people on the ship argue, for legitimate reasons too, but they aren’t supposed to disagree or ever be in conflict with each other. I liked seeing actual tension between characters.

Like everything this season is suffers from problems with characterizations, taking itself to seriously, weak plot points, and bad lighting. But if you are looking for good early TNG episodes, I don’t think I would hesitate in adding this one to the list, despite many of its first season issues.

NEXT TIME: Drugs