User:Wfaulk/reviews/4x19

The Barclay episode to miss
2/5: not recommended

Barclay episodes are usually fun, but this one just isn't. It's actually somewhat reasonable that Barclay's social anxiety might morph into egotism as his intelligence grew (one wonders if it might not be a swipe at geeks), but it still doesn't make sense that his ideas would not be brought up with Geordi in engineers' meetings instead of in front of the Captain. And what was Barclay doing in senior staff meetings anyway? Also, Geordi's growing distrust of Barclay felt more like jealousy or mistrust of people more intelligent than him, rather than of Barclay in particular.

And then it turns into a virtual bad-computer story, which is almost always hackneyed.

Not a terrible episode, but there are many much better.