I just finished watching one of the (imho) better TNG episodes on TNN. I’m unsure of the episode name but Data receives some manner of homing signal and hijacks the Enterprise thereby meeting up with the man who created him (Dr. Soong) and his brother Lore, both of whom were thought to be dead. Soong summoned Data to give him an “elemental emotion” chip which was subsequently stolen by Lore.
Anyway, after Soong mistakenly implants the chip into Lore, Lore sings a few lines of a song and says he “always loved that ditty but could never get the cadence right.” The lyrics as best as I can find are as follows:
"The sons of the prophet were valiant and bold, and quite unaccustomed to fear, but of all the most reckless or so I am told was Abdul Abulbul Amere.
There were brave men a plenty, all well known to fame, who served in the ranks of the czar.,…"
A simple google search on the lyric brought four hits, three quoting this episode and a fourth which appropriates it into a piece of fan fic. My question is if this “ditty” was a creation of this episode’s writers or is this from some other work that my admittedly limited search skills have left me unable to find? Thanks in advance.
The ditty in question is from the song Abdullah Bulbul Amir. There is some disagreement about the exact lyrics, but you should be able to find several versions by googling that.
“Brothers” is one of my favorite ever episodes of TNG. Brent Spiner is amazing. For most of the episode, he’s playing three dudes simultaneously.
Thank you friedo that was exactly what I was looking for. And I agree with your assessment of both Mr. Spiner and this episode in particular. I would absolutely love to see him “dialog” Data with the Bob Wheeler character he played (infrequently but repeatedly) on the old Night Court sit com. The line “burned out his retinas staring into an e-clips” could almost be spoken by either charter.
I’m awful with epsidoe titles but there was one in which the Enterprise runs into what is essentially a database of an entire lost civilization. Data is infused with the entire mythology of the culture and proceeds to take on the different characters. This is probably the best showcase of Mr. Spiner’s talents on the show.
I understand why some people think it was a horrible episode. It was kinda silly, after all. But for a “bottle” episode it had some great acting (especially Mr. Spiner) and some beautiful setpieces. I especially loved Musaka’s temple. That thing was cool.
The worst episode ever is a tie between Cost of Living and Imaginary Friend.
Shades of Grey is one of those things like Star Trek V. People seem to have this memory of it, but in actuality, it doesn’t exist.
Aesiron, I assure you, Cost of Living is far worse than either The Child or The Naked Now. At least The Child had Troi having sex with an entity. (A trick Dr. Crusher would later repeat) and The Naked Now has hot android action.
No, no… “Skin of Evil” is the worst TNG episode. How they could take a good thing (killing off Tasha Yar) and fuck it up I don’t know, but they sure did a fine job of fucking it up. The planet set looked like something out of TOS (I kept expecting to see their shadows cast against the obvious backdrop), and the plot was almost as inane as the dialogue.
And Yar’s little “farewell” at the end… ugh. Shut the fuck up and be dead already, bitch.
Although, it would have made a great parody episode had they intentionally done all that.
Imagine: A planet where some evil Alien COnspiracy wants to know more about mankind. So they take a look at all the “historical documents” and set up he place exactly like in TOS…
Coincidentally enough, I went searching for that song after seeing the episode Brothers just the other day. I was a little disappointed to find that the only downloadable version of the song I could find was a country version by Hank Thompson.
I’m just glad I didn’t spend 60 years searching for it like some people.