Since everyone has been turning out "top and bottom ten" lists for season four of TNG, here's how I rank all the episodes, from best to worst, with some commentary: THE GREAT EPISODES: 1. Remember Me Plot, pacing, characterization, suspense, internal consistency, this one had it all (except great music, that is). And the mysticism of the Traveller didn't bother me one bit. 2. The Mind's Eye Another tremendously suspenseful episode, with many great character bits. Fine direction here, as well; possibly the best TNG has seen. 3. Family An anomaly in TNG: An episode which relies solely on the characters and actors to drive it, and which succeeds wonderfully. THE GOOD EPISODES: 4. The Drumhead A rather preachy episode, but it still had me gripping my seat. When things were happening, they were really HAPPENING! Whew! 5. Final Mission Very stupid sequence with the garbage scow, but the Picard and Wesley story, the meat of the episode, was great. One of TNG's rare episodes with good music, too. 6. Identity Crisis Excellent horror stuff. Kudos for someone realizing that you can't always bring back everyone. Losing a few people made this episode all the more effective. 7. Clues A great mystery, with an ending I hated with a passion. I just couldn't believe it. 8. Night Terrors More excellent horror stuff, but with serious scientific problems surrounding it. 9. Reunion A solid story, but one which left me feeling a little cheated. Dramatically, I think they flubbed it by shifting the early focus on who would be he next Klingon leader to Worf taking vengeance on Duras. This resulted in anticlimax. Plus, I didn't care for K'Ehlehr. 10. Brothers Watching Spiner act his three roles was great fun. Too bad the opening sequence, where Data hijacked the ship, treated the crew like they were idiots. THE MEDIOCRE EPISODES: 11. Data's Day A 'day in the life' episode which was never quite able to find its focus. It did have some cute bits, though. 12. The Host A simple treatment of an intriguing, but complex, idea. 13. Half A Life See 'The Host'. The presence of Lwoxana Troi knocked this episode down a little more. She didn't belong here. 14. Suddenly Human An episode with lots of interesting ideas, but it was never able to bring them together into a coherent whole. Appeared to suffer from too much rewriting. Plus, the aliens should have been Klingons. 15. The Nth Degree Good story with an ending that made me want to heave something big and heavy at the TV. Very, very frustrating. 16. The Best Of Both Worlds Part 2 A disappointing, deus-ex-machina ending to the Borg story, and no ending at all to the Riker story. Nice direction, though, and some action thrown in for good measure. 17. Redemption Poorly paced and dull, with lots of decisions by Picard I disagreed with, and lots of space-filler scenes. The characters were by and large uninteresting. The high point of the episode was the space battle. 18. First Contact Another interesting subject, blandly handled. Made doubly bland by the similarities between the planet and present day Earth. Many two-dimensional characters, as well. 19. Devil's Due Sort of entertaining and annoying at the same time. A few effective scenes, but many large plot holes. 20. The Wounded Another episode with bad decisions by Picard, in my eyes. The O'Brien stuff almost completely fell flat for me, which clobbered much of the episode's impact. THE BAD EPISODES: 21. In Theory In theory, a good idea. In practice, a lame episode which takes the Data character backwards a year or two. 22. Legacy Nothing here worth seeing except a few actions scenes. Another episode that ravages Data's character. 23. Future Imperfect TNG tries to get clever, and instead gets predictable. 24. The Loss A lousy Troi episode along the lines of "self help" stories I've seen many times before already. ("Use the Farce, Troi!") 25. Galaxy's Child Just plain silly. Picards reaction upon the death of the space momma was one of the low points for his character in the series. 26. Qpid One of the least funny episodes in the history of Star Trek. This episode was nothing less than an embarassment to all involved. Using two of TNG's most annoying characters - Q and Varsh - this episode did little more than annoy me. Makes my bottom ten TNG episodes by a large margin. Comments welcome.