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Q-Who

10/29/2017

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There’s an arrogance to the Star Trek universe that lives awfully close to the surface. People began realizing this back during the days of Kirk and company, as they saw the pattern of the Enterprise crew zipping over to an alien planet, monologuing about how humans used to be so backwards and clucking their tongue in disapproval before flying away. Roddenberry’s vision portrayed humans as having overcome want, need, greed, selfishness, and all of the other characteristics that he disapproved of, and these crews strode forth into the universe with the assurance that they were evolved enough to meet any challenge they might face. Sure, the occasional crewman might be killed, and wasn’t it a tragedy when a ship was lost, but the Federation would adapt and overcome, and continue to spread its vision of utopia across the galaxy. 

At this point in TNG, we’re seeing the writers be more aware of this pattern. They’ve begun to push back against the “humanity is perfect” ideal, and explore the flaws and mistakes that could be made by a group like Starfleet. However, we still look at Picard, Riker, Data, and the rest as the cream of the crop. They may make mistakes, and they have lost crew and suffered for those mistakes. But if their voyage of exploration requires the worst case scenario - that is, if it requires the sacrifice of the Enterprise and everyone aboard - that’s an acceptable loss in the journey of discovery. After all, that’s the worst that could happen. Right?

As I watched “Q-Who”, one of the best episodes of the Star Trek franchise that has ever been produced, I kept thinking of HP Lovecraft. I looked up some quotes by the legendary horror writer, and one jumped out at me. “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” What if the destruction of the Enterprise isn’t actually the worst-case scenario? What if, in this zeal for exploration and expansion, these men and women who we’ve spent nearly two seasons admiring catch the attention of something old, unknowable, and hungry?

The opening of this episode is almost painfully cute, with a junior engineer accidentally spilling hot chocolate on Picard while she chatters about her eagerness to explore. She’s so excited to learn about this ship and crew, and be a part of this mission, that she neglects to look where she’s going. (Holy shit, this scene is SO MUCH BETTER when viewed in the context of the larger episode. It’s a really solid summation of the theme.) Picard heads to his quarters to change, steps out of the turbolift, and into a shuttle, which currently sits light years away from the Enterprise. He barks at the pilot, who turns around and reveals himself as Q.

Q promised in his last appearance that he would never trouble the Enterprise again, which is why he spirited Picard away to the middle of nowhere. Picard demands that Q send him back to the Enterprise, and Q agrees, on the condition that Picard gives a request by Q a fair hearing. Picard nods, and without fanfare, they’re sitting in Ten-Forward. There’s a short squabble between Q and Guinan, who apparently have a fairly bitter history, but Picard insists they get down to business. Q agrees, and presents his request. He wants to be a member of the crew. He offers to forsake his powers if they insist on it, but claims that the crew of the Enterprise needs him, and that they aren’t ready for what’s out there waiting for them. Picard refuses. He doesn’t trust Q, and while he recognizes that they can’t possibly be prepared for the unknown, their determination and resourcefulness means that they are ready to face that unknown.

It’s to the writer’s credit that they craft a scene that places the viewer so firmly on Picard’s side, considering that as I wrote that last sentence, I realized how arrogant and contradictory that statement is. Picard genuinely believes what he’s saying. He’s a man that has committed his professional life to the discovery of the unknown, and he sees that discovery as something to strive for, to pursue, no matter the risk or the cost. Q smiles, says, “We’ll see about that,” and with a snap of his fingers, hurls the Enterprise to the other side of the galaxy. 

Guinan realizes where they are. Her people are from this part of space. Her only advice to Picard is to begin the multi-year journey back to Federation space as fast as possible, without looking back. Even with this advice from an old and trusted friend, Picard still decides to take a look around, survey a few planets, collect some data. It’s a stupid, stupid choice that is completely in keeping with what we know of Picard. They find a planet, devoid and lifeless, with giant chunks ripped from the surface where cities used to be, and as they scan, Worf announces that there’s another ship on an intercept course. They put in on the viewscreen, and it’s a simple, perfect cube.

Perhaps the greatest sin of many committed by the writers and producers of Star Trek: Voyager (which wouldn’t air for seven years) was their effort to make the Borg a more comprehensible threat. It’s easy to forget that this first glimpse of what would become the deadliest enemy in the franchise was so utterly alien. That seems like a strange word for a science fiction show, but it’s worth noting that up until this point, every alien race encountered on this show was recognizable, in that they tend to be a manifestation of an aspect of humanity. Klingons are aggressive. Vulcans are logical. Ferengi are Gordon Gekkos. This show managed to make aliens extremely relatable and human.

Considering this portrayal of aliens as humanlike, it’s astonishing how completely ill-equipped the crew of the Enterprise actually is to deal with this threat. Picard hails them. No response. He asks if they’ve charged weapons or shields, which they haven’t. Guinan tells him that the Borg annihilated her people, scattering the few survivors to the ends of the galaxy, and Picard raises the shields, but the Borg ship is just sitting there, motionless. When a Borg soldier materializes in engineering, they respond with a security team, but Picard doesn’t attack. He tries to communicate, to ask the Borg what they want. It doesn’t react, but continues to examine the engine room, ignoring them completely. It’s only when the Borg soldier tries to take control of the computer that Picard finally, and reluctantly, orders Worf to attack. Worf shoots it, and when stun doesn’t work, he raises the power level of his phaser and kills the intruder. Moments later, a second Borg materializes and silently resumes the work its fallen comrade was doing. Worf shoots it, but this time a force field pops up and blocks the phaser blast. When the Borg is finished scanning the computer, it grabs a few hunks of equipment off of the downed Borg, and both vanish.

This show has drawn inspiration from a lot of sources, but most are fairly rooted in the science fiction genre. “Q-Who”, however, seems to draw the bulk of its inspiration from horror films. Describing the Borg as cold or emotionless isn’t quite right. They just feel viscerally wrong, and the crew has no clue how to deal with them. When the Borg contact the Enterprise, they don’t communicate with a captain or a spokesman. Instead, a chorus of flat voices announce that the Enterprise can’t do shit to stop the Borg from doing whatever they want, and if they try, they’ll be punished. It’s not a threat; it’s a notification. When the Borg lock onto the ship with a tractor beam that drains the shields in seconds, the Enterprise can’t sustain its defenses. When the Borg fire a laser and carve a perfectly round core sample out of the saucer section, killing 18 crew members, Picard is finally forced to fire, and manages to destroy a significant chunk of the Borg ship. There’s no blustering, no demands, no pleading from the Borg. They just sit there, silent. 

There’s a lot of debate among giant nerds like me about Picard’s choice to send an away team over to the Borg ship. Considering that they’ve seen how ineffectual their hand weapons are against the Borg soldiers, it does come across initially as a foolish choice. I think, however, that at this point, it makes sense based on what we know of Picard. He still is trying to fit the Borg into the universe he knows and understands, still basing his actions off of his experiences and reactions. He doesn’t yet understand that this is unlike anything else they’ve encountered, and that they simply lack the fundamental comprehension of the situation to even comprehend how dangerous the Borg actually are. Riker, Data, and Worf beam over, and realize that the Borg are a hive mind, a collective consciousness that has the ability to adapt to threats instantaneously. Picard listens to their voices from the other ship, and Stewart does a masterful job of showing the growing sense of unease as his people prowl around the Borg cube, with the Borg completely ignoring them. 

There is a moment, though, when the realization of what they’re facing hits Picard. Riker calls over and says that they’ve discovered that the Borg ship is regenerating, repairing the damage sustained at a rapid rate. Picard doesn’t hesitate, springing to his feet and barking for the away team to be beamed back aboard. As soon as Riker’s feet hit the deck, the Enterprise turns and warps away as fast as possible. The time for scans, diplomacy, and scientific curiosity is over. This ship and crew, which we’ve seen face all kinds of threats and challenges, is fleeing. Picard realizes, in this moment, that the Borg didn’t consider the death of their soldier or the damage to their ship a loss. This, in a nutshell, is what the Borg are. They take the damage, they adapt, and they regenerate. When the Borg ship leaps into pursuit, it slowly, methodically gains on the Enterprise, wasting no more energy than needed. Picard fires back at it, and this time, the weapons do absolutely nothing. As the cube draws closer and closer, Q appears. He speaks as the Borg casually rip the Enterprise’s shields away, and creep ever closer to snatching them back up in the tractor beam.

“You can't outrun them. You can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually, you will weaken. Your reserves will be gone. They are relentless.”

As brilliant and tense as this episode is, this moment is what cements it as iconic. Picard hears Q speak, and realizes the truth of the situation. For all of his arrogance, his bluster, his obnoxious tips and tricks, Q was right. They aren’t ready, and they aren’t prepared. There is nothing in Picard’s arsenal of technology or training that provides any options. The Borg are a storm, and there’s nothing he can do to stop them. Wesley isn’t going to pull a technological ace from his sleeve. Riker’s not going to propose a bold maneuver to win the day. Picard looks at his crew, who are staring at the encroaching Borg ship with bald terror, and he does the only thing he can.

Jean-Luc Picard begs.

This is the last gasp of Gene Roddenberry’s idyllic vision of what Star Trek should be. Picard is the iconic captain, the manifestation of humanity’s journey towards this utopic future. But none of that matters. Humanity is insignificant next to this threat. He begs Q to save them, and Q does. With a snap of his fingers, they’re back where they started. But the damage has been done. The real cost isn’t the catastrophic damage to the ship, or the 18 dead crewmembers. I mentioned Lovecraft earlier, and I stand by that comparison. Lovecraft wrote of threats that existed so beyond our comprehension and power that the only way we could hope to survive was to never catch their attention in the first place. 

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”

The Borg know who and where they are. And they will be coming. 

A few other thoughts:
  • The design of the Borg ship is wonderfully surreal. Early, Data comments that there’s no command center, no crew quarters, and no engine room. The ship is homogenous, with no central point of activity. When they beam aboard, the fusion of technological and biological draws a huge amount of inspiration from HR Giger, and evokes a lot of the sounds and muffled creaks of the Alien films.
  • I’m not always sold on Q, and there are definitely some Q episodes in the future that flop pretty badly, but GODDAMN does John De Lancie chew up the scenery whenever he’s on screen in this episode. Some of his dialogue should be cheesy, but he knocks it straight out of the park.
  • Between the writing and Patrick Stewart’s performance, this show does a wonderful job communicating the reason that Q did this: that he saw it as a necessary lesson to teach the Enterprise crew the dangers of pushing too far. It’s also insinuated that the Borg were already beginning to sniff around Federation space, so this could definitely be interpreted as a warning of some sort.
  • This episode was written by Maurice Hurley, who apparently argued constantly that Roddenberry’s rule of “no conflict between the crew” was hamstringing the writers. “Q-Who” seems to be a direct shot at Roddenberry’s vision, and reinforces that the further the show got from what Roddenberry wanted, the better it was.

Next week, we learn why you shouldn’t loan your chief engineer to someone who smiles too much, and we get to the dreaded “Space Irish” episode. Blah.

- ​Dietrich Stogner
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The Icarus Factor / Pen Pals

10/24/2017

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“The Icarus Factor” is nowhere near as bad as some of this show’s episodes. “Code of Honor” still holds my bottom spot of the series to date, and the intro of this season was truly abysmal (“The Child”). But there’s now a difference. We’ve seen this cast and crew start to come into their own with the stories they’re telling. “Loud as a Whisper” and “A Matter of Honor” are wonderful, entertaining episodes, and “Measure of a Man” demonstrates that this show has the tools necessary to produce genuinely outstanding hours of television. That’s why I despised “The Icarus Factor” as much as I did. At this point, we know these people can do better. I’m okay with an episode not working because the writers swing and miss at an ambitious goal. I’m not okay with lazy, amateurish writing.

The foul taste in my mouth began with the episode's opening, in which Picard gets to give Riker some good news. The captain of the USS Aries is retiring, and Starfleet has selected Riker to take his place. Here’s the problem right off the bat: We know Riker won’t take the posting. He’s a main character, the season still has a dozen episodes in it, and if the show wanted to get rid of him, they’d most likely go for a more ambitious method. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. TV writers all the time have to introduce conflicts with a known outcome, but it means that the journey from point A to point B has to justify the conflict, because the resolution is a foregone conclusion. But “The Icarus Factor” uses this never-going-to-happen promotion as a MacGuffin, a pointless tool whose only purpose is to get Riker’s dad on board the Enterprise.

Riker’s father arrives as a civilian advisor, there ostensibly to brief his son on the mission of the USS Aries. Kyle Riker is confident, easygoing, and apparently has a romantic history with Pulaski. It’s not made clear why he and his son don’t get along (although the show wastes no time demonstrating Riker’s distaste for being around his father), but it’s not out of nowhere; earlier episodes have hinted at Riker’s difficult upbringing. So far, so good. Family strife can work fairly well in shows like this, illustrating that this universe exists as a place in which people have lives and histories that stretch outside the limited scope of the episodes.

But this is just bad. The dialogue between Riker and his father reads like a middle school skit about parents who just don’t understand, and neither of them come across looking particularly impressive. The episode is full of characters shoving their way into this conflict, then offering nothing but dime-store platitudes and empty advice. Troi thinks Kyle needs to listen to his son, which is not exactly the kind of vibrant insight you’d expect from a PhD psychologist with psychic abilities. Pulaski tries to convince Riker that his dad is cool because he was at a base that got attacked, and didn’t die because he had too much strength of will. Ummm… okay? Does that mean that the others who died were just spineless cowards?

There really isn’t any one particular failure in this episode that breaks it. I think we’re too far into this series for that. We’re (hopefully) past the days where a show doesn’t work because the fundamental idea is racist, sexist, or otherwise untenable. Instead, we have lazy writing, a meandering plot that never raises any significant stakes, and the bulk of the episode relies on two actors that don’t seem that invested in the entire thing. Jonathan Frakes spends the entire episode acting like a sullen child, but of course forgives everything before the credits roll. Kyle Riker (played by Mitchell Ryan, the sneering villain from Lethal Weapon) spends the entire episode slinking around the ship, flirting shamelessly with every woman that crosses his field of vision, and being a condescending ass to everyone else. The two circle each other like snarling dogs until the chest thumping reaches its crescendo, and they decide to meet out back by the merry-go-round for a fight.

The concept of using pugilism to let characters express and vent their anger and frustration, either at each other or at the world, is not necessarily a bad idea. It’s the foundation of every good Rocky movie, and the episode “Unfinished Business” of the Battlestar Galactica reboot is one of the highlights of the series in which the crew sets up boxing matches to let people vent their anger and frustration at each other. But “The Icarus Factor” eschews any interesting dynamic in the Anbo Jitsu ring in favor of something childish and silly. Anbo Jitsu, which Kyle bombastically proclaims is “the ultimate evolution of martial arts”, involves the two Rikers strapping on garishly colored hockey pads, covering their eyes with a plastic helmet that blinds them, and waving giant Q-tips at each other while occasionally bellowing Japanese words. It’s absurd, and even if there was any meaningful dialogue or character interaction during this “fight”, it would be lost against the background of this idiotic match.

Fortunately, there’s no need to be concerned. While swinging padded sticks wildly at one another, they hiss accusations from behind their blindfold, revealing the truth of their animosity. Riker’s mom died when he was young, and his dad was super sad and didn’t help him through it enough. That’s it. Oh, and Riker figures out that all the times his dad beat him at Future LARP fighting, he was using a maneuver that is illegal (according to the Anbo Jitsu Tournament rules, I guess?). So his dad’s a cheat. Anyway, that’s enough to make them like each other again. If you’re reading this saying, “Wait, that makes no sense,” you understand what it’s like to watch this episode. The pair hug it out in the transporter room before Kyle Riker beams away, never to be seen or mentioned again, and Riker decides not to take the captain spot on the other ship.

Oh, yeah, there’s a B-plot where Worf is really cranky, Wesley figures out that it’s his birthday and he’s sad because there aren’t other Klingons around to hit him with pain sticks, so they simulate a gauntlet of angry Klingons to jab Worf repeatedly with agony-inducing cattle prods while he yells about how honorable he is. It’s actually pretty good, and has some interesting discussion of respecting and supporting cultural norms even if they seem horrifying to us as humans, but it’s lost among the whiny Riker showcase. So, yeah.

A few other thoughts:
  • Pulaski is actually much better in this episode. She doesn’t act like an ass towards Data, she has some of the only interactions with Kyle Riker that are interesting, and she encourages and supports Worf in the Rite of Ascension (the aforementioned birthday party of agony). She’s kind of beginning to grow on me.
  • While trying to figure out why Worf is cranky, Data approaches him in Ten-Forward, only to have Worf nearly tear his head off. It’s a bit odd, especially when you consider that Data’s his commanding officer. Maybe Ten-Forward is a “leave rank at the door” kind of place.
  • The Enterprise has a dedicated room for Anbo Jitsu. That’s really, really depressing, but thankfully never comes up again.
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​So, let’s talk about the Prime Directive.

Ever since the original series, the Prime Directive has been one of the fundamental rules of the Star Trek universe. Considering the years that TOS aired, it’s hard not to look at the Prime Directive as Gene Roddenberry and company’s direct criticism of US foreign policy, particularly in regards to Vietnam. The Prime Directive was spelled out in the TOS episode “The Return of the Archons”, and essentially clarifies that the Federation is not permitted to interfere in the natural development of an alien species. It’s a philosophical argument stating that when a more superior culture interferes with a less developed culture, no matter how well-intended, the results are going to be disastrous.

The Prime Directive has already been the focus of several episodes, most of them fairly terrible (“Code of Honor”, “Justice”), and part of the reason is that it’s still very much an abstract philosophy. Without a concrete example of what kind of damage can be done when it’s violated, we never really have a sense of consequence beyond, “You’ll get in trouble for breaking the rules.” It’s one thing to promise the audience that the Prime Directive is super important, but you have to show why that is. A few episodes have explored this, most notably “Patterns of Force” from TOS (Nazi planet!), and “Too Short A Season” from season one. But in both of these cases, the original interference was malicious (creating a fascist regime, and dealing arms to warring factions, respectively). If the Prime Directive is going to be an absolute, it needs to be shown that even well-intentioned interference is going to be disastrous. The biggest flaw with an episode like “Pen Pals” is that those consequences are never made clear.

The Enterprise is exploring a system of planets that, for some unknown reason, keep being torn apart due to geological instability. Early in the episode, the senior staff get together to discuss the possibility of putting Wesley in charge of the planetary geological surveys. It’s a strange moment, and the decision doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. If the entire mission is focused on learning why these planets are going kablooie from geological stress, that would place the success or failure of the mission on the shoulders of a pretend ensign. In any event, Wesley’s put in charge of a team of grown, qualified officers (sure), and spends the bulk of the episode seeking command advice from everyone that doesn’t run the other way when they see him coming. It’s not particularly interesting. Fortunately, that is very much the B-plot of this episode.

While the Enterprise is poking around this system, Data picks up a transmission from one of the more stable worlds. A young girl transmits the question, “Is anyone out there?”, and Data responds, “Yes.” As he explains to Picard, Data then spent the next few months conversing with the young girl, named Sarjenka. (It’s a long survey mission, people.) Sarjenka doesn’t know that Data’s from another species, which is a good thing, because Sarjenka’s people think they’re alone in the universe. Their ham radio conversations aren’t technically violating the Prime Directive, but Sarjenka is now telling Data that they’re having earthquakes, and Data has realized that her planet is preparing to tear itself apart. Picard sympathizes, but realizes they’re now in dangerous territory, and orders Data to ghost the girl, cutting off all communication.

After asking for help from everyone, Wesley overcomes a command conflict (he wants a scan, one of his team members whines that it’ll be hard, Wesley whines for a bit and eventually still wants the scan, CHARACTER GROWTH) and figures out what’s causing the planets to go boom. Even better, they figure out a way they might be able to fix it. This coincides with a meeting of the senior staff in Picard’s quarters, in which they debate whether or not they should help Sarjenko. It’s an interesting debate, echoing the ideas of strict interpretation or a fluid reading of the law, but ends with Picard deciding that the Prime Directive stands, and that they have no choice but to let Sarjenko die. He orders Data to delete the frequency, and when Data goes to do so, the entire senior staff gets to hear this adorable girl pleading for Data to come back, that she’s scared. The room goes silent, and Picard changes his mind.

This is where the episode breaks for me. Either the Prime Directive is an established and proven necessity, a bulwark against well-meaning people causing irreversible damage through good intentions, or it is a flexible policy that captains can disregard at their leisure. If it’s the former, Picard has the duty to ignore Sarjenko, warp off to their next mission, and live with the consequences of this inviolate rule. If it’s the former, the entire debate is cruel and callous, and they shouldn’t be arguing whether or not to save the life of a child. By deciding to cut Sarjenko off, but changing his mind because she sounds really frightened, the decision - and thus, the Prime Directive itself - becomes nebulous and questionable. It doesn’t work.

Data tries to get in touch with Sarjenko to tell her to go to higher ground while Wesley and his team are making the arrangements to fix the planet, but she’s not responding anymore. He asks Picard if he can beam down to find her, and Picard says yes. Again, we’re seeing the Prime Directive being treated as flexible. Data beams down, finds Sarjenko, and when the quakes start up again, he beams them both back to the Enterprise. At this point, the entire argument behind the Prime Directive is unraveling. Pulaski wipes Sarjenko’s memory, they beam her back down, and the episode ends with everyone nodding their head and agreeing that no harm had been done.

“Pen Pals” is not a terrible episode. It’s a marked improvement over the last few episodes, and the debate between the Prime Directive and the crew’s responsibility to help is philosophical Trek at its best. But this show has yet to explore the consequences of their choices in a way that shows them having to make a hard, ugly call for the greater good, and if the Prime Directive is going to carry weight in this world, that has to happen. This crew needs to feel the pain of making the right choice, even when it’s not easy, and we as the audience need to see the agony of their decisions.


A few other thoughts:
  • While trying to find an earlier episode of the Star Trek franchise that demonstrated the disaster of good intentions, Juliette Vincent pointed out the brilliant TOS episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever”, written by Harlan Ellison. In this episode, Kirk and Spock go back in time, and when Kirk falls in love with a woman, he’s forced to watch her die, as interfering with the timeline has disastrous consequences for the future. THAT’S the kind of heat I’m talking about. Give me a Prime Directive episode that shows the bloody results of a Starfleet captain trying to do the right thing, and you lay a foundation for every other episode that references that rule.
  • Sarjenko is cute. Painfully cute. It gets really annoying. The writers really wanted us to understand why Picard had to save her. If she was fat and annoying, that planet would be in pieces.
  • If I was an experienced, commissioned officer, and was told that I had to follow the orders of an acting ensign because it was important for his education, that shit would come up with Human Resources.

Speaking of consequences, next time the crew gets a harsh lesson from an old friend and meets a new enemy in “Q-Who”. I may do this one by itself. It’s one of the great ones.

​- Dietrich Stogner
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The Royale / Time Squared

10/18/2017

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The Royale

Okay, this is a weird one.
 
“The Royale” is not a good episode of TNG. But it definitely takes the cake as one of the strangest. Some of the imagery reminds me of David Lynch (well, it reminds me of what little David Lynch I’ve watched. Look, I hate David Lynch. Come at me), the dialogue is straight out of a high-school play about mobsters, and the resolution is just bizarre. But I can’t bring myself to hate it. It may be bad, but it’s unique and it’s fun, and every once in a while, that’s enough.
 
A Klingon ship drops a dime to the Enterprise that they picked up some strange space garbage around a planet, so Picard and company go zipping off to check it out. When they arrive at the planet, there’s a lot of effort made to clarify that this is one of the most inhospitable planets that Geordi’s ever seen. However, a few minutes later, O’Brien beams a hunk of metal aboard emblazoned with the NASA logo, and Wesley finds a building surrounded in a bubble of breathable air on the surface. This is all strange enough that Picard somehow approves Riker, Worf, and Data to head on down to this bubble to find out what’s up.
 
The trio materialize in a black void, with raging ammonia storms a kilometer overhead. The only other thing they can see is a free-standing revolving door, spinning calmly in the midst of nothing. They can’t see the building, or detect anything unusual, but they decide to go through the door. Upon entry, they find themselves in a seedy 20th century hotel-casino, and smoky noir saxophone on the soundtrack immediately sets the tone. Every interaction they have, from the hotel manager to the observed argument about a bellboy being in love with a mobster’s girlfriend, is pulled from a cut-rate soap opera, one that’s jamming in a Mafia storyline to perk up a mid-season ratings slump. After a few minutes, Riker decides that it’s time to dip, but when they try to leave, the revolving door just spits them back into the lobby.
 
After some fruitless efforts to escape, Data detects human DNA on the second floor, and they discover a mummified corpse in a hotel room. In addition, they find a pair of books: A noir novel called Hotel Royale, and a diary packed full of exposition. Apparently, in the 21st century, some aliens decided to pay a visit to a NASA exploratory vessel, and accidentally murdered all but one of the crew while trying to say hello. Feeling guilty, they transported Colonel Ritchey to this world, and created a simulation to make him feel at home. Unfortunately for him, they only had this noir novel to go on, and “Hotel Royale” apparently SUCKS. (In my favorite possible cover blurb for a novel ever, Ritchey’s last entry reads, “I do not bear animosity to my benefactors. But they could not have known that it was such a badly written book… I shall welcome death when it comes.” Zing.)
 
Look, the reality is that this is effectively a holodeck episode that takes place somewhere other than the holodeck, and that’s not a good thing. In the course of this series, the holodeck was often used for some lazy storytelling, and this skirts dangerously close to that line. What saves it is the really clever choice to make “Hotel Royale” an awful book. “Away team trapped in a world based on a book has to play along to effect their escape,” is a workable plot, but making the book they’re involved with a steaming pile of literary shit makes it a bit more fun. Picard reads the entire thing to help the away team escape, and Stewart’s pained expression when he realizes the book actually starts with, “It was a dark and stormy night,” is a thing of beauty.
 
They figure out that the book refers to foreign investors who come in, buy the hotel, and leave, and so Data hits the craps tables with the handful of comped chips provided to them. He rigs the dice by squeezing them (I know), and wins the millions needed to buy the hotel and escape this strange fantasy world. This scene shouldn’t work (Data, apropos of nothing, announces, “Daddy needs a new pair of shoes,” before hurling the dice), but it’s also the point in the episode where everyone involved shrugs their shoulders, says, “Fuck it,” and starts having way too much fun. Riker’s grinning and buying drinks for everyone, Data keeps doing bizarre little dances as he throws six after six, and Worf… well, it’s Worf. He stands there looking annoyed. Worf keeps his shit in check.
 
The button to the episode has Riker in Picard’s ready room, saying, “None of it makes any sense,” in one of the rare times that this show has ever gone meta. This episode is bizarre, and unlike anything else the show has done so far (or after, as best I can remember). It doesn’t really work, per se, but it’s so different that I found myself laughing and enjoying it despite myself. I don’t think I’d ever watch a show that regularly featured episodes like The Royale, but what the hell. Data got to bankrupt a sexist Texan stereotype. Hell yeah.
 
A few other thoughts:
  • I mentioned the Texan at the end, a walking cliche who spends the bulk of the episode trying to hit on a 20-year-old woman who squeaks out dialogue designed to show the viewer that she’s a gorgeous airhead. It starts out lame, but definitely drifts into uncomfortable territory as he keeps touching her and leering at her in a very aggressive manner. Wasn’t a fan of that.
  • Pulaski and Geordi’s rescue plan: “We’re going to collapse the bubble and hope we can get you back on board before the -200 degree ammonia storms murder you in seconds.” Riker’s response: “Uh, how about we just cheat our way free, you psychopaths?”
  • When the away team realize they’re trapped and can’t get out, Riker and Data both start asking people where another exit might be like normal rational people. Worf shoves over a slot machine and phasers a wall. I prefer Worf’s approach.
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Time Squared

There was a lot of surprise when the new Star Trek series Discovery announced that the main character would not be the captain of the ship. After all, these are shows that have been defined by the man or woman sitting in the big chair, and TNG wasted no time setting that expectation. In the pilot episode, Q was putting humanity on trial, but the show eagerly placed Jean-Luc Picard front and center, with the unspoken argument being that he was the personification of this idealized future that Roddenberry espoused. Since then, the show has taken great pains to demonstrate that this man is brilliant, insightful, cultured, kind, and a big fan of Earl Grey, and at this point in the series, Picard is more fleshed out and defined than any other character. “Time Squared” works because we know who Picard is, and that gives the writers the chance to explore his reactions under extremely challenging circumstances.
 
The episode opens with Riker hosting an omelette party in his quarters. It’s a cold open that has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the episode, but it’s pretty entertaining. Riker cooks some strange alien bird eggs while espousing the value of cooking manually rather than using the replicator. The eggs are apparently terrible, but Worf digs the hell out of them. Riker’s called away to the bridge by Picard while Worf is scarfing down everyone’s portion, because they’ve picked up a distress signal. It’s from a Federation shuttlecraft, despite the fact that there aren’t any other warp capable ships in the area. That’s strange. They pull it aboard, and discover that it’s one of the shuttles that belongs to the USS Enterprise. That’s stranger. That shuttle, the El-Baz, is still aboard the ship, meaning that they now have two identical copies of this shuttle. This all feeds into a sense of wrongness that provides a great lead up to the reveal of the person passed out in the pilot’s chair: Jean-Luc Picard.
 
Riker immediately calls up and asks Picard if he’s still on the bridge, a confusing question to the captain, who immediately runs down to the shuttlebay to see his unconscious doppleganger. Pulaski quickly confirms that he’s alive, and after taking Picard-2 to sickbay, discovers several odd things. First, it’s definitely, 100% Picard. Identical in every way. Second, when she gives Picard-2 a stimulant to try to wake him, his vitals crash, as if she’s pumped a sedative into his system. She stabilizes him, and starts trying to figure out what’s going on.
 
While Pulaski and Picard are investigating the doppleganger, Geordi and Data are trying to figure out what’s up with this shuttlecraft. It’s completely drained of power, and when they try to recharge it from the Enterprise’s systems, it nearly fries the shuttle’s computer. After some experimenting, they figure out how to recharge the computer, and gain access of the visual records. This exposition dump reveals several things. First, the shuttle and Picard-2 are from six hours in the future. Second, at some point in the next few hours, the Enterprise will become trapped by some spatial rift. Finally, Picard will abandon the Enterprise on the shuttle just in time to watch his ship and over 1000 crew die as the Enterprise explodes.
 
This is a fairly solid sci-fi mystery, but what really sells it is Picard’s reaction. He’s immediately furious, a cold, simmering anger that leaves him spitting out dialogue and seething at Picard-2’s unconscious form. At no point does the show have Troi spell out, “He’s angry because he never thought he’d be the type to abandon his ship when it’s in danger,” because it’s not necessary. We know Picard, we know the type of captain we think he is, and more importantly, the type of captain he thinks he is. But this insensate future Picard puts the lie to that belief. The Enterprise will be in trouble, and he’s going to get on a shuttle and survive when everyone else dies. It’s not a question of if it actually happened, because it will happen.
 
There’s a bit of interesting debate about whether they should change course, come to a full stop, or continue on their course, and the fact that they have no idea whether any of those options will help avoid this fate. However, the plot moves along briskly, and a few hours later, the promised spatial rift appears below them and begins dragging the Enterprise in. They can hold position only by gunning the engines as hard as they can, and Troi begins sensing intent from within the rift. Initially, she says that whatever it is wants the Enterprise, but after a few moments, it focuses. This presence wants Picard.
 
This scene on the bridge is chaotic. Geordi is yelling that they can’t hold the engines much longer, Riker’s trying to debate with Picard, and everything is clicking in place for the captain. If the consciousness within the rift wants him, then leaving the ship might be the only way to save the ship. Pulaski contacts him to tell him that Picard-2 is awake, and when Picard confronts him, his duplicate is disoriented, but obsessed with getting off the ship to save them. The two walk down the passageway, Picard pelting his doppleganger with questions, trying to understand what’s happening as the ship lurches and groans around them. Picard’s argument is simple: Leaving the ship to satisfy the entity makes sense, except for the simple fact that they’ve seen that it won’t work. If Picard leaves the ship, the Enterprise is still destroyed, and the loop happens all over. Picard-2 isn’t listening, though. He’s completely focused on his task of getting away from the Enterprise. When he starts to board the shuttle, Picard realizes that he can’t let him leave. If Picard-2 leaves, he initiates the same reaction they saw on the shuttle log, which resulted in the destruction of the Enterprise, this Enterprise. Upon realizing this, Picard doesn’t hesitate. He grabs a phaser and kills his duplicate. 
 
It’s a stunning moment. There’s no hesitation or regret in Picard’s action. He guns down his copy, and there’s no attempt to stun or wound him. Picard realizes what needs to happen, and does what he has to in order to make sure. He orders Riker to take the Enterprise directly into the rift, and the ship, no longer fighting the pull, passes through and emerges on the other side. The duplicate shuttle and Picard-2’s corpse vanish, and the ship lives to answer distress calls another day.

Look, this ending is a bit abrupt, and a bit too tidy for my taste. We never find out what the spatial rift was, or what it actually wanted. It’s there until the plot doesn’t need it to be there anymore, and then it’s gone. That’s not particularly good storytelling. But this story really isn’t about the mystery of the rift. It’s about this captain, a man who we’ve come to know very well over the season and a half of episodes. When people talk about Picard as a character, they reference his focus, his compassion, the fact that he’s the more cerebral captain of the franchise. This episode isn’t about distress calls, or spatial rifts, or even the fact that Worf likes terrible eggs. This episode is about teaching us one more thing about our captain: When push comes to shove, he’s ruthless.
 
A few other thoughts:
  • There’s a brief discussion between Troi and Pulaski about whether Picard is still fit for command, considering the stress of meeting his twin who might be a coward. It’s not a great scene, but does introduce the fact that the chief medical officer apparently has the right to relieve the captain of duty if she thinks he’s not fit. That seems easily abusable.
  • Stewart’s performance in this episode is great, but the rest of the cast do a hell of a job reacting to the video logs from the shuttle. There’s a sense of betrayal and confusion that underlies everything they do, and the way Riker in particular talks to Picard after that has a totally different tone.
  • I can’t call this a great episode, mostly because of the sloppy structure of the ending. But I think it’s one of the first episodes that shows how much easier it is to write for established characters, and introduces a lot of character elements that will become important later.

- ​Dietrich Stogner
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The Dauphin / Contagion

11/12/2016

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Wesley and his date pose for prom pictures.
I do wonder if I would have viewed “The Dauphin” differently if I hadn’t watched it right after “The Measure Of A Man”. That’s a really, REALLY high bar to clear, and I honestly can’t tell you if that’s tainting my view of this episode. Whatever the reason may be, I didn’t like “The Dauphin”. It’s loaded with cheesy dialogue, cut-rate special effects, and a plot that really doesn’t go anywhere. The best I can say is that it isn’t really bad. It’s not really much of anything.

The Enterprise is once again playing taxi, escorting a young woman named Salia, who is slated to become the new ruler of Daled IV, which has been at war for generations. Salia is expected to bring peace to this planet, a tall order for a teenage girl. In addition, Salia’s governess and guardian Anya is accompanying her, and immediately sets to criticizing everything and everyone. (Anya is played by Paddi Edwards, who was the voice of Zuul in Ghostbusters, so she’s instantly the best guest star ever.) While Picard, Worf and Riker escort Salia and Anya to their quarters, they run across Wesley, who immediately begins to moon over Salia.

As I write this, yeah, I’m being too harsh. Wesley doesn’t overreact, he acts like a teenage boy who sees a pretty girl. Wheaton overplays everything Wesley says about the girl, but it’s actually a standard teenager reaction (aka, that girl looked at me so we have to get married and have all the babies you don’t understand no I won’t turn down the music I hate you dad). I don’t like any of Wesley’s dialogue, but I think that’s less Wheaton’s performance and more the cheesy writing that’s probably pretty close to what teenagers gush at one another. I don’t like it, but it’s depressingly accurate.

It also gives us a fantastic sequence in Ten-Forward, where Riker and Guinan decide to demonstrate flirting for Wesley. There are two ways of looking at this scene. If the scene is badly written, Riker and Guinan actually believe that the ham-handed romantic platitudes (“I dream of a universe where your eyes are the stars”) constitute some serious game. If that’s the case, this scene is overacted, badly written, and a disaster. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. This is Riker and Guinan fucking with Wesley, in the vein of telling him that a pickup line like, “Is that Windex in your pocket? Cause I can see myself in yo’ pants,” is totally the way to go. Realizing halfway through this scene that they’re pulling his leg is a great moment, and one of the first times that TNG has really hit a comedic target.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Wesley takes Salia to the holodeck and shows her all the worlds he’s been to (including a floating asteroid the size of a trampoline floating in space; yeah, you’re full of shit, Crusher), and they gaze at each other like a couple of moonstruck assholes. Meanwhile, Worf takes Anya on a tour of the ship, including sickbay. When they enter sickbay, Pulaski is treating a crew member for meningitis. Anya reacts badly, pointing out that meningitis is contagious, and could infect Salia. Pulaski assures her that’s impossible due to super space HEPA filters, but Anya doesn’t want to take the risk. She insists that the patient be killed immediately. When Pulaski and Worf object (so unreasonable, right?), Anya promptly transforms into… I don’t fucking know. It looks like a really old animatronic bear that’s been fused with a Monchichi and left to rot in HR Giger’s warehouse for a few decades. It looks awful. Worf wrestles with this thing for a bit, Picard comes in with a security team, and Anya returns to old lady form, sneering about how pathetic they all are.

Never mind, my first impression was right. This episode sucks.

Worf escorts Anya back to her quarters to discover that her charge has snuck off to make time with the resident Boy Wonder. As you can imagine, the old lady isn’t thrilled that Salia’s gone. She slips her guards, and goes to Wesley’s quarters, where our favorite teenage prodigy is THIS CLOSE to getting some sweet hand holding action. Anya turns into the fucked up Teddy Ruxpin and screeches at Wesley, Salia gets between them and turns into an anorexic Sasquatch with pinkeye and wails at Anya, Wesley shits his pants (I’m assuming), and the security team shows up to calm shit down. They take Anya and Salia back to their quarters, forcefield the shit out of the room, and leave them there until they reach Daled IV. Anya tells Salia she’s done protecting her and says her goodbyes, and Salia sucks some chocolate mousse off of Wesley’s finger (not kidding) in the transporter room before turning into a being of light and beaming away forever. The episode ends with Guinan telling Wesley that it’s okay to be heartbroken, and with me cursing loudly at my television.

“The Dauphin” is nowhere near as bad as most of the first season, or even the low points of the second (Worf might have gotten his ass kicked by the world’s worst Chewbacca impersonator, but at least he didn’t try to abort someone’s baby). But it’s just so damn lazy. I’m sure someone figured that Wesley, a hormonal teenage boy, had to get all twitterpated over some girl sooner or later, but it felt like a bunch of kids sitting in a writer’s room, eagerly shouting, “So he likes the girl! But the girl’s a shapeshifter! And is made of light! And licks pudding off her finger!!!” There’s nothing interesting in the episode, and nothing worth remembering. After the sheer joy of “Matter Of Honor” and the intensity of “Measure Of A Man”, this feels like such a huge step backwards, and that’s a hell of a shame. Fortunately, it’s a temporary dip.
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Well, this seems bad.
As the show got more established and the writers began to have more confidence in the cast and crew, the plots in Season 2 were definitely increasing in complexity. For the most part, this is a good thing. If a show is ever going to be more than average, it has to have faith that the audience can follow the story without being spoon-fed every minor detail. I want to see this show get ambitious, push away from the storytelling techniques of the original series, and get into some decent, meaty science fiction. I want this enough to forgive a lot of the bumps that come when TNG tries to add complexity, but doesn’t quite hit that mark.

In “Contagion”, we spin the wheel of plot devices and land on that old chestnut, the distress call. The Enterprise gets a distress signal from the USS Yamato, her sister ship and another Galaxy-class starship. The problem is that the Yamato is transmitting from inside the Neutral Zone, someplace they are definitely not supposed to be. However, Picard and company waste no time in warping over to lend a hand. They find the Yamato, and Picard talks with the other captain about the odd malfunctions happening on his ship as well as some odd archeological sites discovered. In the middle of a discussion, the signal fails, and the Yamato explodes in front of them.

This is all in the cold open, and it’s fantastic. While they’d established that the Yamato was having some systems issues, there was no indication they were in immediate danger. Picard and Captain Varley of the Yamato are more concerned with getting them both out of the Neutral Zone before the Romulans find out they’re poking around. The dialogue between the two is the kind of easy familiarity that communicates a long history and friendship in just a few sentences. When the signal drops, and Geordi starts yelling in alarm, there’s barely enough time for the audience to register how fast things are going sideways before the Yamato blows up.

Picard (in a stellar bit of acting from Stewart) has a brief moment of shock, grief, and confusion before he goes into crisis mode, snapping orders to the crew to start piecing together what just happened. Things go from bad to worse just moments later when a Romulan Warbird decloaks in front of them, demanding to know why they’ve violated the Neutral Zone and insisting they leave immediately. Barely six minutes into the episode, and Picard is dealing with the death of a friend, the loss of a ship with nearly a thousand people on board, and facing down an angry Romulan. It’s a powerful and effective opening, and establishes the high stakes extremely quickly.

Picard refuses to leave until they’ve determined what destroyed the Yamato, slipping in some insinuation that he needs to rule out Romulan hostility into the icily polite dialogue. The Romulan commander cloaks again, and the crew begins investigating. Geordi and Data determine that it wasn’t an attack, but a bizarre and improbable malfunction in the Yamato’s engines. This is a big problem, as the Yamato and the Enterprise are of the same design, and thus there's a possibility of a design flaw in the relatively new ships. Picard orders them to figure out if there’s a problem with the Enterprise, and reviews Captain Varley’s logs, where he talks about searching for the ancient homeworld of the Iconians, a legendary lost civilization with remarkable technology. In his searches, he stumbles upon a visual record of the Yamato being scanned by an Iconian automated probe.

At this point, the episode is focused on three specific challenges to the Enterprise and her crew, all of which feed into each other. The Enterprise is beginning to experience minor malfunctions (doors not opening quickly, commands not being recognized). Picard suspects that the Iconian planet that the Yamato visited was involved, so they go in search of that planet. The Romulans are still all over them, and are getting angry because similar malfunctions have begun on their ship. Throughout the episode, Picard is juggling the malfunctions, the Iconian mystery, and the Romulans, and it’s a lot to keep track of.

The Enterprise arrives at the Iconian homeworld. By this point, the malfunctions are getting much worse, and when Geordi realizes that the probe scan started this entire mess, he can’t contact the bridge to warn them about the probe approaching them. The next sequence is unintentionally hilarious, as he gets slammed around a turbolift and catapulted out onto the bridge just in time to yell for them to destroy the probe. It’s meant to be suspenseful, but it’s just a bit silly. Geordi learned that the Iconian probe, unable to communicate with the Yamato’s comparatively primitive systems, was trying to rewrite the starship’s programming, which caused the systems failures. (Apparently, the future lacks decent antivirus software.) When the Yamato communicated with the Enterprise, fragments of the probe’s shitty code got into the Enterprise, which then spread that code to the Romulans (seriously, people, Norton or McAfee will sort you right out). Having destroyed the probe, Picard decides to take an away team down to figure out how to get rid of the Iconian code.

Picard, Data, and Worf beam down, discovering a control room with an Iconian gateway still active. The Iconians apparently had the ability to open up gateways between any two points in the universe, and the gateway is cycling through various locations, including the Enterprise bridge and the Romulan bridge. Data tries to interface with the system, and gets infected with the Iconian code (COME ON). The Enterprise can’t beam them back up for two reasons. First, the ship’s systems are now in full on freakout mode, and there’s an understandable concern that if they try to transport the away team, they’ll come back looking like steak tartar. Second, the Romulans are here, they’re convinced the Enterprise infected them on purpose, and they keep trying to shoot the Federation ship, only to find that their weapons are switching on and off. So Picard sends Worf and Data through the gateway onto the Enterprise bridge, and stays behind to destroy the Iconian outpost so the Romulans don’t get their hands on this tech (at this point, would they really want it?).

Picard sets the outpost to self destruct, but misses the window to get back to the Enterprise through the gateway. With no other options, he hops through onto the Romulan bridge, which is definitely in the “fixer-upper” state right now. Sparks are flying, consoles are smoking, and the Romulan commander is PISSED. She points a weapon at Picard, sneers about how at least he’ll die with them, but before she can complete the sentence, he’s beamed back to the Enterprise. You see, while Picard was blowing up stuff and strolling onto an enemy bridge, Data was pretty much dying from the Iconian code. Until he did die. Then he was fine. Which let them figure out that they just needed to shut down the Enterprise computer and start it back up again.

Let me say that again to be clear: The solution to this catastrophic systems failure that destroyed one ship and threatened to destroy two others was to turn the computer off, wait five seconds, and turn it back on again.

Look, this is a stupid ending. It makes the crew of all three ships (especially the Yamato) look really incompetent. The solution to a science fiction plot should never be the solution provided by Comcast when your router isn’t working right. With that said, I actually enjoyed the bulk of this episode. There are a lot of great character beats that work well, such as Riker and the Romulan commander blustering at each other while their weapons and shields keep switching on and off, or Picard telling the Romulans how to fix their shit only after getting the hell out of there (nohardfeelingshereshowyoufixyourshitBYYYEEEE...). This episode tried to do a lot, combining a technical mystery, a legendary extinct race, and a showdown with the Romulans, and when you have that many balls in the air, it’s hard not to drop a few. But I’d rather see the show swing for the fences and miss than try to play it safe.

A few other thoughts:

  • Oh, yeah, at one point, Anya transforms into a hot teenage girl to chat with Salia. I mention this because it’s just as pointless and dumb as the rest of that episode. Anya also transforms into a bug-eyed Ewok that I’m sure was meant to be cute, Salia snuggles with it, and it gets creepy.
  • I laughed aloud at the “death” of Data, considering they had about three seconds to mourn. “He’s… he’s dead, sir. Such a noble creature, so much closer to humanity than he ever dreamt… Oh, fuck, nevermind, he’s cool.”
  • They’re definitely getting more confident with the effects. When the Yamato explodes, there are chunks of the ship, shattered and visibly burning in space. It’s unsettling in a great way.
  • I really hope no one was in the holodeck during all of that. It tries to kill crew members when shit’s NOT going haywire.


Next time, we visit a casino with the bizarre “The Royale”, and it’s Picard vs. Picard in the time travel episode “Time Squared”.

- Dietrich Stogner

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Measure of a Man

10/19/2016

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I’ve mentioned this before, but I'll say it again, for the record: when I was a kid, my favorite TNG character was Data. He’s extremely compelling and approachable for a child - he’s different enough that he seems almost like a superhero, but still rooted in the familiar. From the very beginning of the series, he’s introduced as a member of the crew, junior only to Riker and Picard on a ship of over one thousand. The stories that have touched on him revolve around how he relates to others, but always from the perspective of those who have chosen to trust and accept him. There’s a reason that so many people reacted badly to Pulaski being so dismissive of Data, and as I read through an article discussing how much Pulaski was disliked, I saw the same word used repeatedly in regards to her treatment of Data: "bigoted."

But that’s not quite right, is it?

Data is an android. This is a fact that the show has so far only made use of as a narrative hook (Data, open this door. Data, learn sign language really quickly. Data, try to joke with Joe Piscopo.), not really exploring what that actually would mean. Not only is he an android, Data is apparently the only android in existence, and that’s a strange, but important, detail. We’ve never seen a junior officer refuse to follow Data’s orders because they don’t like being bossed around by a machine. We’ve never had Picard question whether Data should be treated differently, despite the fact that he is incredibly different. The show has, until this point, used Data no differently than they would an alien: Strange, possessing of various abilities, but ultimately just like us.

There’s a moment early in “Measure of a Man” in which an admiral tells Picard, “Ah, yes, Captain, this is Commander Maddox. He’s here to work on your android.” The line is instantly horrifying. It’s spoken with such casual dismissal, in the same manner that someone would introduce the plumber who’s here to install your new sink. It’s the moment that this episode announces that it’s trying something new and ambitious, that TNG is going to embrace the unique nature of Data and explore the consequences of a creation like that living among humans.

The Enterprise is visiting a new starbase, getting some routine maintenance. (I really love the idea of the Enterprise in a Jiffy Lube bay while a mustachioed gentleman peers up at a trickle of oil draining from her belly.) While there, Picard runs into Captain Phillipa Louvois, and it’s quickly established that they’ve got a bit of a complex history. It’s possible they used to date, but it’s definite that ended badly when she prosecuted Picard at the court martial for the loss of the USS Stargazer. They chat for a bit, and we learn that she’s the new JAG (judge advocate general) officer for this sector. Before they get much further, Picard is interrupted by an admiral who introduces Commander Bruce Maddox, a cyberneticist. It’s apparently a day for reunions, because Maddox and Data have a history as well.

Maddox (who we learn unsuccessfully argued against Data’s admission into Starfleet Academy) immediately establishes himself as kind of a dick. He refers to Data as “it”, and announces that he’s transferring Data off of the Enterprise, and into his command. Once Data reports for duty, Maddox is going to disassemble Data in an attempt to figure out how Data ticks, so that hundreds, if not thousands, of androids can be built. One tiny problem, though: Maddox isn’t quite sure that he’ll be able to reassemble Data.

Picard, furious at having one of his officers snatched away from him for such a dangerous procedure, goes to Captain Louvois for legal advice. She informs him that Data can’t legally refuse a valid transfer order, but if he wants to avoid the procedure, he does have one option remaining: he can resign from Starfleet. To the episode’s credit, there’s no real debate here. Faced with an involuntary and dangerous procedure, Data resigns from Starfleet. Maddox immediately challenges this action, and calls for Louvois to rule about whether Data, a machine, has the right to resign and refuse the procedure. She considers it, and decides that Data is the property of Starfleet, cannot resign, and cannot refuse Maddox’s orders.
This all is rushed through in the first fifteen minutes of the episode, but I didn’t mind the quick pace. It’s important to set the stakes, and when Picard demands a hearing, the show slows down to allow the characters to fully explore this question. Riker, as the second in command, is assigned the role of prosecutor, responsible for proving that Data is a machine, and thus has no right to resign. When he tries to refuse, Louvois explains that if he doesn’t do the best job that he can, she will rule summarily against Data. (This could seem like a cheap effort to create drama, but it’s worth noting that this idea has a basis in fact. Traditionally, one of the roles of a first officer is to act as prosecutor in any court-martial proceedings that take place on a naval vessel. One of the many reasons everyone hates the XO.)

The hearing is remarkably complex, particularly considering this show's earlier attempts at philosophy. It’s not portrayed as a simple question, but one that actually is deserving of consideration. (One misstep: Maddox asks Louvois if the Enterprise computer would be permitted to refuse a refit. It’s meant to prove his point about Data, but I have to say, if a computer had the ability to actually ask for that, I’d probably hesitate before installing that RAM.) Riker has Data bend steel, removes Data’s arm, and in a brutal moment, explains that Data is a construct of humans, built to serve humans, and switches Data off, sending him slumping to the side. My favorite part of this excellent sequence: Riker quietly returns to his seat, and seems to sink into himself in self-loathing.

Picard, reeling from Riker’s presentation, sits down with Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg, doing some amazing work), and the two drink some space tequila. Their discussion is quiet and ugly. Guinan points out that the real danger isn’t if Maddox fails in his experiment and Data is lost. No, the real horror is that, if Maddox succeeds, Starfleet will have the ability to create thousands of Datas. Thousands of strong, replaceable, sentient beings that it can send into battle, into dangerous situations, or to do the jobs that humans don’t want to do. That's thousands of sentient beings that are property. (I do wish the script hadn’t had Picard point out that she’s talking about slavery. Goldberg’s monologue is powerful, and it’s not necessary for Picard to punctuate it to make sure the audience really gets the point.) 

Picard’s defense of Data demands a lot from Patrick Stewart, who turns in his first truly iconic performance of the series in this episode. This is Picard’s moment, and his interrogation of Maddox as to what qualifies as a life form is riveting, with Picard challenging Maddox, Riker, Louvois, and humanity itself to realize what choice is actually being made. For the first time, Data sits there as something truly unique, and for the first time, TNG embraces the questions and conflicts that come along with the presence of an artificial life form. It’s pure speculative science fiction, and anchored by the thundering performance of Patrick Stewart, “The Measure Of A Man” marks the first time that this show presented a truly compelling and complicated philosophical argument. Louvois rules in Data’s favor, and he doesn’t cheer, or smile, or do anything that a human would do. He simply rises to his feet, walks over to Maddox, and politely refuses the procedure.

The bulk of this show so far has revolved around presenting external challenges and seeing how this plucky band of space adventurers respond to them. Like any story, the more we get to know the characters, the more that we come to understand their reactions to situations, and it becomes easier to tell a streamlined story. But for the show's first season, Gene Roddenberry insisted that humanity be portrayed as perfect, having reached the zenith of civilized discourse and behavior. The writers railed against this, arguing that true drama needs conflict. They were right, of course, and in the second season, Roddenberry’s influence was minimized, giving the writers the ability to start exploring ideas that didn’t rely on aliens or distress calls.

As this series continues, the writers will tell some amazing stories that don’t focus their attention outwards, but instead truly examine what kind of influence the character’s history and nature would have on their lives, as well as the lives of those around them. Worf’s upcoming exploration of his Klingon heritage, Riker struggling to balance his loyalty with ambition, even Wesley learning about the demands of adulthood once the safety net is removed: All of these will result in the episodes that made this series iconic. When this show turns its focus not on the things happening in the galaxy, but the way these characters deal with issues with which the audience can relate, it accomplishes what all great science fiction manages to do. It provides a lens through which we see ourselves and our society differently.

All of that greatness, all of the remarkable places this show will go, began with “Measure of a Man”. With this episode, TNG emerged from under the shadow cast by the original series, and planted its flag as a show that could do serious philosophy as well as it could do pulpy spaceships and aliens. “Measure of a Man” is the first truly outstanding hour of this television show, and shows once and for all that not only did this cast had some challenging stories to tell, but it had the dramatic chops to tell them like no one else.

- Dietrich Stogner
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Unnatural Selection / Matter of Honor

9/29/2016

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We’re now seven episodes into the second season, and with the exception of the premiere, it’s been a marked improvement over the deeply flawed first year.
. There have been several tweaks to the cast and production, and for the most part, they all seem to be generally positive. The exception, though, is easily the character of Katherine Pulaski. While Diana Muldaur is certainly competent in the role, the character has so far been brash and unlikable, and that’s even without her open disdain of Data. It’s been a series of bad choices, and as I began the first Pulaski-centric episode, I have to admit to a fair amount of apprehension.

The Enterprise is responding to a distress call from the USS Lantree, and the cold open sees the crew rushing to the rescue. Unfortunately, when they discover the Lantree adrift in space, there are no life signs aboard. Not willing to risk the crew by beaming over, Picard uses his super secret captain’s password to take remote control of the Lantree, and they switch on the internal cameras. They discover that the entire crew is dead, and the cause of that death appears to be old age.

This isn’t a bad hook. Existing in a science fiction universe offers a myriad of possibilities, and the crew begins to narrow them down, performing some nifty detective work. They figure out that the Lantree recently visited a nearby medical research facility, so after posting a quarantine warning on the derelict ship, they make a beeline for the Darwin Genetic Research Station. Before they can arrive, they get another distress call from the research station, and discover that everyone there is aging at an astonishing rate. The lead researcher, Dr. Kingsley, is not asking for help for herself and her staff, however. She’s begging the Enterprise to evacuate the children that are the result of the facility’s research, insisting that they’ve been quarantined and could not be responsible for the aging disease.

Woven through all of this are scenes of Pulaski talking to Troi about how to best deal with Captain Picard. If there’s a major flaw in the A and B-storyline format that has come to define this show, it’s that one almost always suffers in comparison to the other. There’s a crazy aging disease and genetically engineered children, but we’re going to cut away to Pulaski whining that Picard doesn’t understand her. The scenes aren’t bad, per se, but they don’t really provide any necessary information. Pulaski soon gets to try out Troi’s advice (which consists of “talk to the captain”; thanks a lot, Counselor) when she argues that the Enterprise should indeed evacuate the children, despite the risk of passing along the infection to the 1,015 men, women, and children on this massive starship. Picard refuses, there’s some bickering, and finally, she convinces Picard to let her beam up one of the children, encased in Styrolite (transparent carbonite, really), so that she can see for herself if they’re infected. They all gather in sickbay, tell O’Brien to energize, and a fully-grown man materializes in the Styrolite.

These children, as it turns out, aren’t exactly regular children. They’ve been genetically engineered to mature quickly (if you think that’s the cause of this whole problem, I’m pleased to say that the writers were a lot cleverer than that), they’re telekinetic and telepathic, and, judging by the dude they beamed up, they’re all Calvin Klein underwear models. Pulaski runs her scans and pronounces the “child” the healthiest human being she’s ever seen. Picard is not convinced, so Pulaski, wanting to run a more thorough examination, asks permission for her and Data to take a shuttlecraft to just outside the ship, beam the genetically engineered beefcake aboard, and do the physical there in isolation. Picard begrudgingly agrees (the actual name of this episode should have been “Picard Begrudgingly Agrees”), Data and Pulaski beam the patient aboard, and moments later, Pulaski starts experiencing the painful first symptoms of the disease.

Pulaski and Data then go down to the research station, where they figure out the problem. Part of the perfect genetic engineering in these kids is a ruthless version of the immune system. If the children's immune system detects the slightest threat, it produces its version of an antibody: a tailor-made virus that destroys the source of the infection. One of the Lantree’s crew had the flu, the children’s immune system responded, and created a highly lethal and contagious virus that rapidly accelerated aging to destroy the host. Unfortunately, because the disease irrevocably alters the host’s DNA, there’s no cure, and no time to find one. Enter Geordi and O’Brien, who suggest that it might be possible to find an old DNA pattern of Pulaski, and send her through the transporter, rigging it to reassemble her molecules based on the early, healthy DNA. There’s a bit of a struggle to find sufficient DNA (Pulaski apparently hates the transporter and avoids it at all cost, depriving the crew of her transporter records), but eventually they find a hair in her quarters, O’Brien rigs the transporter, and it works.

Wait. So does that mean that any disease or injury can be fixed by just sending someone through the transporter and resetting to an earlier save point? Does that mean that the person that comes out of the transporter isn’t the person that went in? Why the hell was the Federation, which has concrete and inflexible laws banning genetic manipulation referenced in many episodes of nearly every different show, genetically engineering super kids? These are all excellent questions, and we will never speak of them again. Pulaski lives to demean Data another day.

Despite the many holes in the story and the fairly dull B-plot, this isn’t a bad episode. The resolution of what’s causing the disease is actually pretty clever, Data’s excellent in this episode as he calmly deals with Pulaski’s criticism, then works to help her when she gets sick. (Data probably would have made a terrific doctor. You can be an asshole to him all you want, he’s still going to sort you out just fine.) The episode’s not perfect, and I still don’t like Pulaski, but on the whole, the pros outweigh the cons. I’m hoping we’ll be getting to episodes soon where there’s more to say than, “Hey, it wasn’t as shitty as you might have thought!”

Wait, “Matter of Honor” is next? That didn’t take long.
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Hell. YES.

I knew that two episode from this season are regularly included in the top ten lists of TNG. I’m excited to get to “Measure of a Man” and “Q-Who”. They’re my reward, my compensation for struggling through “The Child” and nearly all of season one. But I’d forgotten that those aren’t the only gems in this season. “Matter of Honor” is a terrific hour of television, and the first episode of this show that shows us some of the best of this cast and crew.


Riker and Wesley are in the transporter room, welcoming some new crew members aboard. While most are permanent transfers, several are from other organizations, taking part in a new Starfleet exchange program. Wesley recognizes one, who he mistakes as Mordock, the Benzite who beat out Wesley for Academy admission in season one. Actually, all Benzites look alike (I’m not racist, I promise; it’s a genetic thing apparently), and this is Mendon, who quickly assures Riker that now that he’s here, he'll get the Enterprise running smoothly.  Riker doesn’t have time to respond to this arrogant little junior officer, as Picard asks Riker to join him on the phaser range.

Picard is a big fan of the exchange program. He’s such a huge fan, as a matter of fact, that he wants to send Riker to serve temporarily on a Klingon ship. The scene at the phaser range is a lot of fun, with Picard tiptoeing around the issue, wanting Riker to volunteer but not wanting to force the issue. He needn't have worried. Riker is all about doing this, mostly because he’ll be the first human in history to serve on a Klingon ship.

This is a Riker episode, through and through, and while he hasn’t always worked for me as a character, this is a terrific example of finding the right plot to fit a specific character. Riker prepares for this with gleeful enthusiasm. He learns from Worf that one of the jobs of the first officer on a Klingon ship is to murder the captain if he ever slacks on the job, and it’s to the show’s credit that Riker doesn’t freak out at this fact, but instead, treats it as a cultural reality that he will need to adapt to, rather than forcing the Klingons to adapt to him. He goes to Ten-Forward, and feasts on Klingon foods with gusto, wanting to absorb as much of the new culture as possible. Everyone seems to have reservations about this assignment (even Worf, who gives Riker an emergency transponder to call for help if shit goes sideways), except for Riker, who never seems to doubt that this is going to be awesome.

Riker beams aboard the Klingon ship Pagh, and is escorted to the bridge by the ship’s second officer, Lt. Klag. (Yes, Klingon names are dumb. Moving on.) Klag is critical of Riker every step of the way to the bridge, and when they arrive, he calls Riker out as weak and disloyal in front of Captain Kargan, who grins and says it’s Riker’s first test as the Pagh’s new first officer. Riker sighs, considers the issue, and promptly beats the absolute shit out of Klag.

This is not a punch to the face, and Klag hits the deck. Riker pummels him, throws him to the floor, kicks him in the face when he tries to get up, and when he tries again, puts his face through a glass panel. It’s shockingly brutal for a show that avoids violence, and sets the tone for Riker’s interactions with the entire crew. TNG’s big weakness is that it assumes all too often that the galaxy would work fine if everyone just acted like humans. Here, Riker makes no attempt to talk to Klag, to hear out his concerns, and to teach him how to work with others. That’s what they do on the Enterprise, but Riker’s sure as shit not on the Enterprise, and he when in Rome’s that dude’s face through a damn wall.


There are so many places where this episode could have stumbled, and it still would have been pretty strong. Riker eats in the crew’s mess, and talks with the crew. The Klingons quickly establish themselves as much more complicated and three-dimensional than the show has ever let another culture be, and Riker approaches the situation by asking questions and never scoffing at their ways. When Klag (who likes Riker a lot more now that he knows he’s not a pushover) reveals that his father lives alone on the homeworld after being dishonored, there’s genuine pain and pathos there that’s handled in a subtle and effective manner. And when Riker is ordered to help the Pagh track down and destroy the Enterprise, the conflict Riker feels is portrayed extremely well.

Which brings us to the B-plot. I mentioned in the last review that often, the B-plot suffers when the main storyline is really compelling. This episode shows beautifully how to circumvent that problem. See, Mendon is eager to show how awesome he is at starship operations. When the Enterprise rendezvoused with the Pagh to beam Riker over, Mendon noticed a strange dirty spot on the Pagh’s hull. He scanned it with a sensor beam to get more information, but didn’t report it. As he explains later, Benzite captains insist that before receiving a report, the report includes all available information, as well as potential solutions. As such, Mendon continues his investigation without telling anyone of an issue, until that same dirt shows up on the Enterprise. It turns out that this is some kind of space bacteria that eats certain metals, such as those used in the hull of starships. This is bad, and while the crew figures out how to fix the problem, they quickly go after the Pagh to warn them of the situation.

Do you see the way these two plots inform one another? It’s not just that the same thing is happening to both ships, it’s the way they weave together. The Pagh doesn’t have the scientific sensors that the Enterprise does (exploratory vessel vs. warship), so the first indication that something is wrong comes when a section of the hull explosively decompresses. They realize that something is dissolving their hull, do a check to see what’s recently happened to that part of the hull, and find out that the Enterprise directed an energy beam at that precise spot, and didn’t tell the Pagh that they were doing it. To make matters worse, they detect the Enterprise on an intercept course. As the audience, we both know how wrong Captain Kargan’s assumption of hostile intent is, and exactly how he reached the conclusion. When he angrily decides to retaliate on the Enterprise, it fits perfectly in the way we would expect a Klingon warrior to react to an attack.

This episode just works so well. No one is doing anything unreasonable or inexplicable. We’re given enough understanding of all the different players, and the story crafts a perfect storm of confusion. Even Mendon’s error of not notifying the bridge crew when he found the space herpes on the Pagh makes sense in the light of his culture. It’s solid storytelling, good acting, and the resolution is excellent. Kargan demands that Riker tell him exactly how to destroy the much more powerful Enterprise, and is pleased with Riker refuses, promising him that for keeping true to his Starfleet oath, he’s earned the right to die with the rest of the Pagh (thanks?). Riker tries to convince Kargan that this must be a misunderstanding, and Klag even hesitantly argues for Kargan to wait, but Kargan refuses, and prepares to decloak and fire on the Enterprise. Before he does, he notices Riker pull the transponder from his boot, and demands to know what it is. Riker thumbs it on, hands it to Kargan, and the Enterprise (thinking they’re rescuing Riker), beams Kargan right onto their bridge.


Riker immediately assumes command of the Pagh. In a lesser episode, he decloaks the Pagh, hails the Enterprise, and they hash it out. But instead, Riker, sitting on the bridge of a Klingon ship, surrounded by Klingon warriors looking to him, doesn’t act like a Starfleet officer. He acts like the commanding officer of a Klingon warship. He decloaks, locks all weapons on the Enterprise, and demands their unconditional surrender. Picard, sitting on the bridge of a Starfleet ship, acts like the commanding officer of a Federation ship who trusts his first officer, and surrenders. Kargan goes back to his ship, backhands Riker across the jaw, and throws him off his ship. As Klag helps Riker to his feet, he says, “I think you understand us after all.”


Science fiction works not because of the crazy technology or strange aliens, but because of the ideas and characters that inhabit that world. Throughout the first season, this show failed to tell stories that actually stuck with us, that told us something new about our characters or a culture. “Matter of Honor” showed us more about what kind of officer and man Riker is in a single episode than the entire first season. It taught us about Klingon and Benzite culture in a way that wasn’t derisive or lazy, but helped flesh out this universe in an organic and compelling way. And it features one of the smartest scripts that the show has had so far. Yeah, I had to sit through a lot of garbage to get to this point, but now I’m genuinely glad I did.

A few other thoughts:


  • “Matter of Honor” really does sell the benefit of an officer exchange program. I like the show acknowledging that humanity has something to learn from other cultures, rather than swooping in and teaching those foolish aliens how to be.
  • “Unnatural Selection” gives Colm Meaney much more to do than he has ever before. This show had several background characters that occasionally stepped in, but O’Brien was always the most effective. Later on, he gets an entire episode revolving around his past, and he was pulled to be a main cast member on Deep Space Nine.
  • The old person makeup hasn’t gotten any better since the first season. Pulaski as old lady looks like someone just piled Silly Putty all over her mug.


Next time, we keep the good times rolling with the iconic “The Measure of a Man”, and Wesley falls in love in “The Dauphin”. I guess three in a row was just being greedy.

- ​Dietrich Stogner

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Loud As A Whisper / The Schizoid Man

9/20/2016

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I mentioned at the close of my last review that I had no recollection of either “Loud as a Whisper” or “The Schizoid Man”, and as I started up these episodes, I was waiting for the moment where I’d snap my fingers in recollection. Honestly, that never happened. Not once. If someone had told me that these were never-aired episodes that I was watching for the first time, I would probably believe them. That doesn’t mean the episodes were bad, per se. I think it just means that the show is starting to tackle concepts that don’t lend themselves to flashy action sequences that were particularly memorable to me as a kid.

The Enterprise is playing Uber to pick up a renowned diplomat named Riva. No one on board has ever met Riva, and none of them know much about him other than the fact that he’s apparently brilliant and has never failed to successfully manage a negotiation. Riva’s needed to mediate a centuries-old conflict on a planet called Solarais V, and the Enterprise is tasked with shuttling him there. Picard decides to lead the away team to meet Riva, a choice that Riker’s not too keen on. (The show has really worked to let us know that Riker doesn’t approve of Picard risking his life on away missions, but this is a bit much. It’s a friendly planet, Riker. Let him have this one.) Picard beams down with Troi and Worf, and meet Riva, who’s deaf and mute.

This is actually a cool concept. Riva is deaf due to a genetic defect, and communicates with the aid of his “chorus”, a trio of individuals who travel everywhere with him. The three members of the chorus represent the three facets of his personality: knowledge, passion, and compromise. While I don’t entirely buy that this is any more or less efficient than giving Riva a really talented sign language translator, it’s a cool effect, and the show plays with it well. Despite the fact that Riva never speaks, the camera stays fixed on him, and Howie Seago, who plays Riva (and is himself deaf), uses his expressions and gestures effectively.

Here’s the big problem I have with the first half of this episode: Riva is kind of a dick. He’s arrogant, smarmy, and hits on Troi with all of the subtlety of a drunk frat boy. When he asks Troi to walk him to his quarters, he specifically tells the knowledge and compromise members of his chorus to stay behind, bringing only passion with him. (Wink.) What makes matters worse is that Troi, quickly becoming this season’s problem character (an impressive achievement with Pulaski happily bigoting her way around the ship), seems to buy in completely. It’s not a great character beat, and very quickly, I was annoyed with Riva, Troi, and Wesley (he's not related to this, mind you; he’s just a shitty character).

Riva beams down to Solarais V with Riker, Worf, and his chorus, and quickly sets to placing his IKEA order for the conference. He’s busy telling Riker where he wants the picnic table and tiki torches (I wish I was joking) when the tribal delegates show up. Riva begins to greet them, when suddenly, one member of a delegation starts screaming about not wanting peace, and opens fire on Riva and the delegation. Riker and Worf get Riva back to the ship safely, but the chorus is killed. Fortunately, the shitty parts of this episode die with them.

Riva is heartbroken, furious, and despairing, and Howie Seago is phenomenal, expressing all of this emotion without words. His signing is frantic, his face is torn by anguish, and he absolutely sells the character. Picard orders Data to go learn sign language (leading to a cool scene where Data memorizes five languages in minutes while Worf and Riker watch in amazement), and orders Troi to try to salvage something of this disaster, assuming her empathy will help in the negotiations. Data steps up to translate for Riva, but Riva is wracked with guilt and doubt about the loss of his chorus. He makes it clear that he’s had his chorus since he was a child, and that they’ve been by his side for every negotiation he’s been a part of. He’s ready to abandon the mission entirely, insisting that without his chorus, negotiating a peace would be completely impossible.

It’s not a stunning twist that Riva changes his mind. This isn’t the kind of show that would allow the Enterprise crew to simply shrug their shoulders and give up. But they don’t make it easy. Troi tells Riva that since he’s refusing to continue, she’s going to try to negotiate the peace, which is something that she’s wholly unqualified and unprepared for. She asks him what his trick is, and Riva angrily responds that there is no trick - that diplomacy is hard, tiring work, and it’s a matter of helping two hostile parties find some tiny sliver of common ground. If he has a trick, he says, it’s that he exhaustively works to find ways to turn disadvantages into advantages. Troi challenges him to do that in this case, and Riva decides to rise to the challenge.

Riva returns to the surface, and instructs the Enterprise to leave him there, without any means of interpreting his sign language to the tribes. His intention is to teach the delegations how to sign, in the hopes that learning a new form of communication will provide the common ground needed to begin healing the gulf between them. Seago does such a great job in this scene. He no longer looks cocky, certain, or arrogant. He looks frightened, but determined, and the episode ends without giving us a nice, neat happy ending. Maybe Riva succeeds, maybe he doesn’t, but this is a sign that this show’s writers are starting to understand that drama doesn’t usually come in a neat package.

As I write this, I’m even becoming a bit more forgiving of Riva’s portrayal at the beginning. Riva is smarmy, and he is arrogant, but that’s fitting for someone who’s never failed. I still don’t like Troi’s reaction to him flirting with her, but we’re finally starting to see the show build a dramatic arc that pays off in an interesting and satisfying way. I don’t know if Riva’s plan will work (the cynic in me says that the first time they get confused about a sign they’re going to laser his face off), but in the end, it’s not important to the episode whether it works or not. The final shot is of the Enterprise warping away, but I think that was a missed opportunity. The episode should have ended with Riva, standing alone on the planet, waiting.

Then Data gets possessed by W. Morgan Sheppard, and we’re back to being just plain weird.
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I really like Data. As a kid, he was my favorite character, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s smart, he’s super strong, he can speed read, and he had an evil twin. I know for a fact that he’s central to some of my favorite moments in this entire show, and I know that Brent Spiner is generally considered one of the strongest actors on the series. But man, it’s rough sometimes when he steps outside of the Data role. I don’t know if that’s because there’s such a contrast between how he plays Data and how he plays an emotional character, but I didn’t like him as Lore, and I don’t like him while possessed by a creepy old dude.

So Dr. Ira Graves is really, super smart. He’s so smart that he taught Data’s creator, Dr. Soong, everything he knows. He’s so smart that he has an entire planet named after him. He’s so smart that when a distress call from his assistant reaches Starfleet, they tell Picard to drop whatever else he’s doing and beat feet for Gravesworld. There’s a lot of very concerned musings about how bad it would be to lose Dr. Graves, and that getting this 88-year-old man back to feeling vigorous and in the pink is a priority one mission. I don’t know what that means, but it’s more important than a priority two, and as compared to a priority five? Get fucking serious, people. A priority five is clown shoes.

Unfortunately, right before the Enterprise gets to Gravesworld, they get a distress signal from a damaged colony ship with thousands of people aboard. That’s apparently a priority half or something, because Pulaski immediately makes the medical decision that she's needed to help the colonists, she can’t go help Dr. Graves now, and sends her B-team doctor, a Vulcan named Selar. The Enterprise drops out of warp just long enough to beam the away team down, and then speeds off to help the damaged ship. They arrive, meet Dr. Graves’ young assistant Kareen, and then the man, the myth, the legend comes out... and starts hitting on anyone lacking a Y-chromosome.

I actually like W. Morgan Sheppard, and to be fair, I even kind of like him in this role. He’s definitely an asshole, and definitely sexist, but he’s super old, so it comes off more like he knows it’s inappropriate, but just doesn’t care. He quickly takes a shine to Data, and points out that since he taught Dr. Soong, who Data refers to as his father, Data should call him Grandpa. Unfortunately, it turns out that Dr. Graves is (gasp!) dying, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Graves invites Data into his office to chat, and this is the highlight of the episode for me. Graves playfully pokes at Data, who seems eager to speak with someone who was so involved in his design. They discuss life, love, women, Graves’ plan to transfer his brain into a computer, whiskey, books, the fact that Data has an off switch, philosophy, metaphysics, and we cut to a commercial, secure in the knowledge that surely this charming old womanizer won’t take advantage of a supercomputer on legs that just wandered into his office.

So, yeah, Graves turns off Data and uploads himself into Data’s brain, and now Data has to act like a arrogant sexist jerk for the rest of the episode. It’s… fine? I guess it’s fine. Spiner overacts, and has a lot of fun portraying this jackass, but it’s honestly kind of boring. Data gives a wildly flattering eulogy when they beam Graves’ body into space, which is kind of funny. He hits on Kareen, who Graves was apparently madly in love with but didn’t do anything about it because an old man hitting on a young woman was creepy. But, now that he’s possessed the galaxy’s most advanced RealDoll, it’s totally not creepy, right?

Things move to a head when Data / Graves (Daves? Grata? Dataves?) begins to get paranoid, suspecting Picard of trying to move in on Kareen. He snarls at Picard on the bridge, yawns when Picard tears him a new asshole, and swaggers his way to engineering for a diagnostic that doesn’t show anything. Finally, he tells Kareen the truth, and finds out that she, for some reason, isn’t down with the idea of running away together. Dataves accidentally crushes her hand, and goes to mope on the upper deck of engineering. Geordi and another engineer come to check on him, and he beats them unconscious for interrupting his brooding. Picard comes to try to reason with him, and he pimp-slaps Picard (okay, that was pretty awesome). Apparently, pimp-slapping Patrick Stewart was what he needed all along, because he goes back to Data’s quarters, uploads himself into the Enterprise computer, and leaves Data in peace. Everybody’s happy.

Wait, so the intelligence that turned Data into an arrogant, paranoid, jealous sociopath is now living inside the computer core of the most powerful starship in the Federation? That seems really dangerous, and… Oh, never mind. Credits are rolling. I guess it’s fine.

A few other thoughts:

  • There’s a scene in “Loud As A Whisper” where Pulaski suggests to Geordi that she might be able to restore his vision, and he tells her he’ll have to think about it, stunned at this revelation. I’m sure we’ll be coming back to that! (Nope. Never mentioned again in the entire run of the show.)
  • Apparently, the initial script for “Loud As A Whisper” involved Riva forcing himself to learn basic speech to conduct the negotiations. Howie Seago asked the writers to change that, as it was uncomfortably close to the all-too-common practice of the parents of deaf children forcing them to speak, even when that’s not the right choice for the child. Kudos to the crew for being willing to roll with that information. The new ending’s much better for it.
  • “The Schizoid Man” isn’t really terrible, but between the two episodes that I had no memory of, it’s definitely the one I’m most likely to forget again.

Next time, we find out the dangers of being super, super old in “Unnatural Selection”, and Riker becomes an exchange student in “A Matter of Honor”.

- ​Dietrich Stogner

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Elementary Dear Data / The Outrageous Okana

9/12/2016

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While watching “Elementary Dear Data”, I had an image in my head of a driver waking up with a start to realize that he’s fallen asleep at the wheel, and is plowing through shrubs and about to drive into a family’s dining room while they enjoy a roast. He grabs the wheel, acts quickly, and manages to barely avoid disaster. This episode follows the same path. The beginning is a disaster, filled with the overacting and lazy dialogue that characterized season 1. Fortunately, guest star Daniel Davis stepped in, slapped everyone involved off-camera right in the face (I assume), and righted the ship.

Once again, we have an episode that features the dangers of a malfunctioning holodeck. Once again, we see Data clamping his teeth around the pipe of Doyle’s iconic detective. Once again, we have Pulaski being super condescending and racist towards Data. These are not ingredients that lead to a positive result. And the first twenty minutes of this episode are genuinely terrible. Geordi calls Data to engineering, calling it urgent. This urgent business is to show Data the model ship he’s built (not an emergency, chief engineer; kinda feel it’s important that you know that), and to tell Data it’s time to go LARPing in the holodeck. They dress up, walk into 221B Baker Street, and the game is afoot! For about five seconds, because Data instantly recognizes the Holmes story they’re in and solves the mystery before Lestrade can finish introducing himself.

Geordi, not happy with Data spoiling the end of a 500 year old story, storms out of the holodeck. Data follows him to Ten-Forward (the ship's bar), where Geordi explains that the point is solving a mystery, not Data showing off his computerized photographic memory. Cue Pulaski, who feels it completely appropriate to interrupt their conversation to explain that Data’s not really intelligent, that he’s just a machine, and that he couldn’t solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery he didn’t know if his life depended on it. Instead of saying, “Holy shit, doc, that’s a fellow officer, a highly decorated one at that, and maybe knowing Data for a week isn’t enough time to inform a decision about the nature of his intelligence, especially considering that all of these other highly accomplished and experienced officers consider him not just a colleague but a friend, and maybe a racist asshole like you should drink alone in your cabin,” Geordi makes a bet with her. They go to the holodeck together, and after one failed attempt in which the computer just jams together plot points from several different Holmes stories, Geordi gets specific. He tells the computer to create a Holmes-type mystery, without using any components from existing stories, and to include an opponent capable of beating Data.

And the episode goes from shit to pretty damn cool in one line of dialogue.

See, Geordi made a critical mistake. He didn't ask for an opponent who could beat Sherlock Holmes. He asked for one who could beat Data. So, the computer, ever willing to comply, taps the entire massive computer core of the Enterprise, and infuses Dr. James Moriarty with a massive amount of intelligence and information. Moriarty, played by Daniel Davis, visibly reacts to this surge of information. In the next few moments, he abducts Pulaski, and leaves a trail of breadcrumbs to bring Data and Geordi to him. The pair still don't realize how much trouble they're in until Moriarty, quietly musing about the confusing new thoughts ricocheting around his head, hands Data a sheet of paper with a sketch on it. Data takes one look, barks for the exit, and leaves without a word, with Geordi following him in confusion and demanding to know what's wrong. Data hands him the paper, upon which is an excellent drawing of the Enterprise.

This moment is beautifully done, and genuinely shocking. Moriarty is a character created by the holodeck. The show has played a bit fast and loose with the rules involving the holodeck, but Moriarty should not be in any way aware of anything outside his world. Data assembles the senior staff to try to figure out what’s wrong, and they quickly realize that they can’t shut down the holodeck (seriously, people, circuit breakers), and that the program has deactivated the safety protocols that keep people from getting genuinely injured. As they’re speaking, the ship is jolted violently around for a few moments, and the computer informs them that control of the Enterprise’s maneuvering adjustment was temporarily shifted to the holodeck. In other words, Moriarty is learning how to take control of the ship.

Picard decides he needs to meet with Moriarty face to face, and he and Data enter the holodeck. (They both dress up, as does Worf, but Worf just waits outside. I think Michael Dorn just really wanted to play dress-up too.) Moriarty greets them with the unharmed Pulaski, and he and Picard begin to have a very frank discussion about what’s going on. Daniel Lewis is an incredibly talented actor, and he and Patrick Stewart crackle off of each other in a way we haven’t seen before on this show. In the first season, we saw how much damage a weak guest star can do to an episode in “Too Short A Season”. Here, we get to see how a relatively weak episode can be elevated to something much stronger by a guest star that really commits. Everything before Moriarty shows up is dump. Everything after he shows up is solid.

That continues in the ending. There’s no false bravado, and the episode doesn’t try to milk tension out of the scene. Moriarty knows what he is, and he wants to be more. He wants to leave the holodeck. When Picard explains that that is impossible, Moriarty accepts that, along with Picard’s promise that they will put their best people on trying to find a way to let Moriarty escape. Moriarty releases Pulaski, they save his file in active memory, and the episode draws to a close. It’s an excellent ending to an improbably entertaining episode.

Oh, and continuing on that whole idea of guest stars having a major effect on the quality of an episode? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen five words that depressed me more recently as the opening credits of “The Outrageous Okana” eagerly announcing “Joe Piscopo as The Comic!”
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When I was a kid, I really wanted to be liked. Not popular, but liked. More specifically, I wanted to be considered funny. I wanted to be one of those people who always seems to know what to say to make the people around him laugh, to put those I’d just met at ease, and to come across as a clever and charismatic guy. The problem was, I wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t confident, so my attempts usually fell quite flat. So in one of the most misguided moments of my life, I went to the library and borrowed a book about how to be funny. Needless to say, it was a massive failure. And in that regard, the Data subplot in “The Outrageous Okana” felt very familiar to me. It’s just too bad it’s executed so poorly.

The Enterprise comes across a ship that’s having some engine trouble. Picard hails the ship, and they meet the single crew member: Okana, an affable and roguish captain that quickly charms the hell out of everyone on the bridge. A part of Okana’s ship is busted, and as part of their mission to spread happiness and joy across the galaxy, Picard and company offer to beam Okana aboard while they fix his shit. Okana is an instant hit, not least with the female members of the crew (including a guest starring Teri Hatcher, who’s sporting some truly baffling 80s hair). At one point, there’s a suggestion that Okana has fucked at least three crew members, and Worf has to nearly physically drag him from one female officer’s cabin.

Okana is played by William O. Campbell, who was in the running to play William Riker. Apparently, the show's crew loved his personality, but worried that he didn’t have enough of a hard edge to play Riker. Campbell has a lot of fun in this part, creating a strange yet entertaining blend of Han Solo and Barney Stinson, and it’s certainly never indicated that anyone begrudges his attentions.

Unfortunately, two ships from nearby rival planets soon arrive, and each is demanding Okana’s head. The first ship is commanded by Debin from the planet Atlec, who is furious that Okana apparently knocked up his daughter. The second ship is commanded by Kushell from the planet Straleb, who is accompanied by his son and wants Okana turned over for stealing their version of the crown jewels. They both puff their chests and make a lot of loud bombastic demands, but neither of their ships is a threat to the Enterprise, and Picard has a lot of fun rolling his eyes and giving them a Shakespearean-level “eat shit” look.

Eventually, Picard brings Debin and his daughter, as well as Kushell and his son, over to the Enterprise to sort the whole mess out. As it turns out, Okana’s only crime was acting as a pilot bringing Kushell’s son to romance Debin’s daughter. Kushell’s son proposes using the jewels he entrusted to Okana’s care, and everyone is happy. Okana goes on his merry way with a wink and a charming quip, and the Enterprise warps away, off to the next adventure.

Oh, and Data decides he wants to learn to be funny, and the writers promptly try to make every viewer commit suicide by having Joe Piscopo teach Data to do a Jerry Lewis impression.

Look, this makes sense in a lot of ways. Okana is so instantly likable and charming that Data, who is on a never-ending quest to discover his own humanity, immediately recognizes the ease in which the man makes people around him laugh. He decides to talk to Guinan about humor, and she offers him some guidance, suggesting he utilize the holodeck to practice telling jokes. He goes to the holodeck, practices with a recreation of a comic that the computer insists is one of the funniest in history (we’ll get back to that), but still bombs when he tells one of the jokes for Guinan. In the end, she reassures him that being able to make people laugh is not the be-all, end-all of being human, and that’s it.

 That’s not a terrible idea for this subplot. Humor is one of the defining traits of humanity, and the concept of Data exploring that is worthwhile. But it’s handled so fucking badly. Guinan tells a joke to Data, and when he doesn’t laugh, tells him he was wrong not to do so, and that the joke was funny. It wasn’t. (“You’re a droid, and I’m a noid!” Yup, that’s the joke that proves Data’s humor is broken when he doesn’t bust a goddamn gut at that gem.) The holodeck insists that Joe Piscopo is one of the funniest comedians in history, which makes me want to blow up the holodeck. Even if Piscopo was funny (he isn’t), the cast has access to Whoopi Goldberg, who, at the time this was produced, was one of the most popular stand-up comedians in the world. But instead, they go for the bro version of Jay Leno, who tells Data that a briefcase shaped like a fish is funny, has him put in a set of rubber buck teeth, and stomps around on stage with Data doing a fucking Jerry Lewis impression. It’s painful on so many levels, and wrecks the episode.

Honestly, though, I’m starting to realize something. In the course of its run, TNG did a lot of things well. But I don’t believe the writers, producers, directors, or anyone else ever figured out one simple truth, a truth I learned when the book I got from the library didn’t transform me overnight into the slapstick king of Mount Logan Middle School. The harder you try to be funny, the less funny you actually are. TNG was great at drama, action, suspense, and philosophy at various moments throughout its run, but it wasn’t a funny show, and every time it insisted that it was, I want to beat the show up and take its lunch money.

A few other things:

  • Again, the episode glosses over the fact that the holodeck can apparently create a self-aware, intelligent consciousness with one misspoken verbal command. That’s kind of a terrifying concept. Are the other characters self-aware? Do they realize that they’ve been brought into existence for the sole purpose of being the playthings of the crew, until they are dismissed into oblivion with a casual verbal command? Yeah, the holodeck is kind of fucked up.
  • There’s an amazing moment where Picard sends Worf to drag Okana to the bridge, and Okana, not happy about being interrupted in flagrante dilecto steps to Worf, silently challenging him. Worf’s response is to snarl, and quietly say, “I would love to, but I have my orders.” Cool scene, but I did have a moment where I thought Worf was saying that he’d totally like to bone down with Okana. I’m not sure which version I like better.

Next time, I take a look at two episodes, “Loud As A Whisper” and “The Schizoid Man,” which I have no recollection of whatsoever. Zero. I read the summary on Amazon Video, and still don’t recognize either. Juliette Vincent gave me a quick rundown as well, and still nothing. Hmmm. That might be a bad sign.

- ​Dietrich Stogner


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The Child / Where Silence Has Lease

9/7/2016

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I once read an interview by some well-regarded CEO. He claimed that one of the keys to his success was a position he created, an employee (whom he jokingly called his no-man) who would sit in at every meeting and receive briefings on all of the company’s new initiatives. This employee’s job was to carefully listen and review, and then come up with as many reasons as they could as to why the plan was the worst idea in the history of modern business. The "no-man" would voice these criticisms with no fear of retribution, and the CEO would only approve new initiatives if every single one of these concerns could be addressed.

Holy shit, I wish the producers that approved “The Child” had someone like this.

“The Child” is a strange animal. First, it’s not an original script. A writer’s strike between the production of the first and second season ended only days before the show had to start shooting, so in an effort to expedite the first episode, the producers pulled a script that had been written for Star Trek: Phase Two, an attempted reboot of the series that had never been aired. Unfortunately, they didn’t read the original script very closely, and instead, just gave the writers a loose summary: “Alien impregnates a female member of the crew; the resulting baby endangers the ship.” It’s a rushed, sloppy episode, but that’s not its biggest crime, and that’s not the reason I wish they’d had that no-man position. The problem is how wildly tone-deaf the episode actually is.

Before we get to the overarching plot of the episode, let’s take a moment to look at all the big changes between season 1 and season 2. Worf is wearing a gold security uniform, and has some impressive new facial hair. Riker’s sporting the beard that we all agree he should have had from the beginning. The musical chairs game that was the chief engineer position is over, and Geordi LaForge is now happily running the engine room. We have a new bartender (seriously), played by the fake nun from Sister Act (also seriously). But the biggest change is that Gates McFadden, who played Beverly Crusher, is gone, and replaced by Diana Muldaur as Katherine Pulaski.

I’ll get this out of the way first: I think Muldaur gets a bad rap as Pulaski. She’s a wildly unpopular character, and is fired at the end of the second season, replaced by the returning McFadden. But it’s important to realize that at the time they wrote and filmed this episode, the expectation was that Muldaur was going to be a permanent member of the cast. If she’d stayed, a lot of the problems that come up with the character could have become a positive, as Pulaski warmed to the crew, and slowly earned her place as part of the family. That never happened, so we just get the shrill asshole of a doctor that everyone has come to loathe.

Picard’s annoyed. His brand new doctor has arrived on board, but didn’t immediately report to him for duty. To make matters worse, when he asks the computer where she is, the computer calmly informs him that Pulaski is in Ten-Forward, the ship’s bar. Not the best first impression, and Picard immediately heads to set her straight and tell her how things work on the Enterprise. But before he can start tearing in on her, Pulaski calmly tells him to sit down with her and Deanna Troi, and explains that Troi got raped by Tinkerbell and is now pregnant with a super-fast growing baby.

Nope, not a typo.

The cold open of the show is a glowing ball of light, which looks remarkably similar to the form Tinkerbell takes before transforming into a fairy, appearing next to the ship. It passes through the hull, passes over a few sleeping crew members, and finds Troi. It then goes under her blankets, between her legs, and up inside her. It’s crude and disturbing, and I’ll admit that I reacted much more negatively to this scene as an adult than I did as a child. It’s not handled particularly well, and nothing that comes after justifies the scene.

If the initial impregnation of Troi is handled badly, that’s nothing compared to the following scene. The senior staff assembles in the conference room to discuss what’s to be done. Troi is sitting at the end of the table, and isn’t saying anything. Pulaski explains that at the rate the baby is growing, it will be born the next day. Riker gets super indignant and demands to know who the father is. Picard and Data debate what’s to be done while Troi sits silently. And, in one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve had since I started rewatching this show, they debate whether or not to abort the pregnancy, all without actually asking Troi.

I mentioned my reaction to this episode being worse as an adult. Even with my limited experience in matters such as this, I find the idea of a bunch of men casually talking about forcing an abortion and demanding to know a woman’s sexual history repugnant. As a child, it seemed pretty abstract. As an adult, this scene is horrifying. Troi is marginalized, ignored, and debated over. She eventually insists that she’s keeping the baby, and Picard, to his credit, instantly ends the discussion, saying the decision has been made.

Sure enough, the next day, Troi gives birth to a bouncing baby boy. The birth is painless, which is strange, and Troi’s immediately in love with the child. By that evening, when Picard comes to congratulate her and meet the baby, he finds Troi in her quarters with what appears to be an eight-year-old boy. Pulaski insists that not only is Troi fine after the birth, but as far as she can tell, Troi shows no signs whatsoever of having ever given birth. However, before they can start trying to figure out why this kid is going to be forty by next Tuesday, shit goes sideways.

I haven’t mentioned the B-plot yet. There’s a plasma plague on some planet, killing lots of people. Starfleet Medical needs samples of this plague to work on a cure, and the Enterprise is going to transport these samples. If anything goes wrong, if even a single cell of the plague escapes the containment facility, everyone on board the ship will die within thirty minutes. Unfortunately, something on board (guess what) is causing one of the strains of plague to begin growing rapidly. If they can’t stop it, it’s going to breach containment. (Why not set up the containment unit inside a shuttlecraft and tow the damn thing? Why send the flagship, which has over a thousand men, women, and children on board, to carry a lethal pathogen that everyone seems to doubt can be effectively contained? Don’t you have cargo ships? Why doesn’t the Enterprise have HEPA filters? These are all good questions, but we have to get back to Miracle-Gro baby now, so no time.)

If you guessed that Troi’s kid (named Ian) is causing the problem, you’re right. So the senior staff assembles, and holds a discussion about how to address this problem that respects the rights of a life form - even if that life form violated a member of their crew - while simultaneously preserving the safety of the crew. Data comes up with a very effective isolation protocol, while Pulaski researches ways to prevent Ian from affecting the pathogen. Picard and Riker discuss the philosophical problem of whether Troi’s immediate infatuation with Ian is natural or forced, and how to respond to a life form that invades a crew member with no consent or consideration.

No, I’m just fucking with you. None of that shit happens. Ian kills himself, everything’s cool. Episode over.

Season 1 of this show had a LOT of problems. In most cases, it felt like the writers and directors had something they wanted to say, but were still remarkably clumsy and ineffectual with how they went about saying it. It makes episodes like “Justice” and “Symbiosis” a bit easier to accept, despite their many, MANY flaws. “The Child”, though? I don’t have a clue what they were going for. It’s a premise that is deeply screwed from the very beginning. It’s an episode that someone should have slowly raised their hand and pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Troi getting knocked up against her will was problematic at best. It’s a bad idea, a bad execution, and a bad episode. Not a promising start to season 2, but at least the next episode is a step in the right direction.
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We’ve had two Q episodes in this show so far. And honestly, that’s more than I would have preferred. Q is a concept that works, but only sparingly. By their very nature, god-like beings are a bit of a cheat, a way to create a challenge that the Enterprise’s technology cannot overcome. This episode doesn’t have Q in it, but “Where Silence Has Lease” does raise one interesting question. Q is a dick. But what if he was worse than that? What if he was a killer?

The Enterprise has found an unexplained phenomenon, an area of space that’s just blackness. (At a certain point, I believe I’d be warping as fast as possible away from anything that I didn’t 100% know for sure what it was. “Sir, we have an unexplained phenomenon… oh, I see, we’re already leaving. Statistically, that’s probably smart.”) They shoot a few probes into it, and they just vanish. Picard’s about ready to head on their merry way when this hole in space envelops the Enterprise in an eyeblink, and suddenly, the stars are gone, and they don’t have a clue where they are.

There’s something immediately eerie about the views out the windows that show nothing. The backdrop of stars is such a fundamental reality of any show about space travel, and the simple act of taking those away is disturbing. (See the brilliant novel by Robert Charles Wilson, Spin, for a terrific take on that idea.) Things go from eerie to dangerous fairly quickly, though, when a Romulan warbird decloaks right in front of the Enterprise and starts lighting her up. Picard gives them one chance to stop, then orders Worf to fire. On their first shot, the warbird explodes. The ease of its destruction is a bit confusing, and Picard tells Wesley to take them back the way they came. When they can’t find an exit, they drop a stationary beacon behind them, and head away from it at full impulse. After a few moments, that stationary beacon isn’t behind them anymore. It’s in front of them.

This scene is fantastic. I’m a sucker for creepy horror or science fiction that plays with the idea of things being simply wrong, of the basic assumptions we make about the universe being turned sideways. The beacon sounds a tone at steady interval on the bridge, an interval that increases as they get further away. When that interval begins to speed up again, it’s a simple but wildly effective technique of showing just how bizarre things have gotten. Their instruments say they’re going in one steady direction. Their instruments also tell them that the beacon has not changed position. But they’re not going anywhere.

While they try to determine what’s going on, they detect another ship. This one is the USS Yamato, the Enterprise’s sister ship. It’s not responding to hails, and, desperate for answers, Picard orders Riker and Worf to beam over and find out what’s going on. The scene on the Yamato is even better than the beacon. Riker and Worf are beamed to the exact same location, but materialize decks apart. Riker hears Worf screaming in agony, and runs to reach him, only to find Worf running to reach Riker, whom Worf heard screaming in pain. They make their way towards the bridge, and everything is just a little… off. The bulkheads look the same, but are made of the wrong material. The carpet is a strange color. They arrive at the bridge, but when they open another door, they’re looking onto another exact copy of the bridge. The corridors and rooms loop back upon themselves impossibly, and Worf begins to lose his composure as things begin to make less and less sense.

Things aren’t much better on the Enterprise. Moments after Riker and Worf beam to the Yamato, an opening in this blackness appears directly in front of the Enterprise. Data confirms that it’s an escape, but now they can’t reach the away team, and can’t beam them back. As they scramble to try to get in touch with Riker, the Yamato begins fading from existence. They manage to beam Riker and Worf back just as the other ship vanishes, and as they do, the opening seals again. There’s a terrific moment where Riker gets back to the bridge, yelling at Picard that they have to get out of there. Jonathan Frakes sells this scene perfectly, looking genuinely angry and slightly unhinged. Another opening appears. They dart towards it, but it seals seconds before they reach it. Moments later, another opening appears behind them, and Picard realizes the truth: Someone’s fucking with them.

He orders all stop. A few seconds later, a face appears in the blackness in front of the ship. It introduces itself as Nagilum, and begins questioning Picard about the nature of humanity. It casually jerks Pulaski around the bridge like a marionette, asks her to demonstrate sexual reproduction, and when she refuses, moves to another topic of curiosity. Humans, it points out, have a limited life span. That intrigues Nagilum, who decides to test this by murdering the helmsman, who screams, bleeds from the ears, and falls dead at Picard’s feet. Nagilum is pleased by this, and informs Picard that he wants to see all of the ways that mortals can die. He assures Picard that these experiments should only result in the death of about half of his crew.

I mentioned Q at the beginning of this review. Nagilum provides an interesting contrast to Q. If we are okay with the concept of beings that can simply do anything they wish with a thought, Q might very well be the best case scenario: someone who is curious about us, but seems to demonstrate some level of restraint. The frightening truth is that Nagilum is probably the more likely result. Picard, realizing that he can’t stop Nagilum from murdering half of his crew in increasingly imaginative ways, decides on a scorched earth approach. He sets the auto-destruct, insisting that it’s better for the crew to die on their own terms rather than at the mad whims of some psychotic god creature.

There are several issues with this. It’s a very James Kirk thing to do, but it feels a bit impulsive for Picard. Also, I’m not sure why a being that could create ships from nothing, twist spacetime to meet its needs, and manifest as a giant face in space would have much difficulty switching off a countdown. With that said, it’s kind of an intriguing scene. Picard sets the timer for twenty minutes, and goes to listen to music in his quarters while waiting for the end. Data and Troi come to see him, and begin questioning his decision. They argue that a chance of surviving Nagilum’s experiments is better than assured death by the self-destruct, and that the captain is making a mistake choosing this for the entire crew. When they both refer to Picard by first name, he realizes that they aren’t really Data and Troi, and he’s once again being fucked with. Picard doesn’t like being fucked with. He tells Nagilum to get bent (he doesn’t phrase it that way, but he absolutely should have), and as faux-Troi and faux-Data vanish, the Enterprise is suddenly among the stars once more. Picard doesn’t buy it at first, and orders the ship to book it in any random direction, but as the self-destruct winds down, he realizes that Nagilum has indeed released them, and ends the countdown.

The episode ends with Picard having a quiet conversation in his ready room with Nagilum, who appeared on his laptop. (Yeah, I thought it was stupid too.) Nagilum delivers the standard god-like being speech: Humans are immature, they’re violent, they’re always double-dipping chips at the party and don’t put the toilet seat down, etc. Picard doesn’t point out that humans also don’t go around murdering people, which I kind of feel was the right response, but instead points out that humanity and Nagilum both have one trait in common: curiosity. Nagilum agrees, vanishes, and the crew go on their merry way. It’s an oddly abrupt ending, and one that doesn’t quite work. But it’s a solid, creepy episode throughout, and if this had been the first episode of this season, I’d be feeling pretty damn optimistic about where this show was going.

A few other thoughts:

  • This week, on scenes that totally happened but Dietrich didn’t care about: In “The Child”, Wesley thinks about leaving the Enterprise, chats with Whoopi Goldberg, then doesn’t leave after all. In “Where Silence Has Lease”, Worf and Riker beat the shit out of Skeletor on the holodeck for kicks. Okay, the latter scene is pretty cool, actually.
  • I didn’t really get into Pulaski’s bizarrely bigoted attitude towards Data. It’s really aggressive (she mocks him when he asks her to pronounce his name correctly, refers to him as “it”, and suggests that Troi needs a person to hold her hand during delivery, not “the cold unfeeling touch of technology”). Again, if the show had taken the time to show her coming to respect Data, that could have been interesting. Instead, we get strange racist doctor.
  • “The Child” would have gone from being a disaster to the greatest episode ever if Ian had exploded from Troi’s torso, fully grown, wearing a spangly tuxedo and singing “New York, New York”. Please, someone get on that animation post-haste.

Next time, Pulaski continues being a huge bigot, causing Data to pick up the Sherlock Holmes pipe once again for “Elementary, Dear Data”, and we get to see a bargain-basement Han Solo eye-fuck half the women on the ship while dodging child support in “The Outrageous Okana”. Are we sure season 1 is done?

- Dietrich Stogner​


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The Neutral Zone / Season 1 Wrap-up

9/1/2016

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In a perfect world, I think “Conspiracy” would have been a perfect season finale. The shock of that episode, coupled with a mysterious ending (okay, sure, it never panned out to anything, but we didn’t know that at the time) seems to be an excellent way to bring this show’s season to a close. But in its own right, “The Neutral Zone” is probably a better summation of season 1 as a whole: A whole lot of promise, dragged down by a whole lot of cheese. To mark the end of this mostly dismal season, I hopped on Slack with two friends that love this show as much as I do, warts and all, to watch this episode and discuss season one as a whole.

Dietrich: Is this the last naked Riker face episode?
Juliette: It is. He gains the +2 Beard of Calming after this.
Josh: THANK GOD.

The Enterprise is under the command of Riker while they await the return of Captain Picard from a conference. (Another space conference!) While waiting, they discover an old Earth capsule floating in space, something that impresses Riker not at all. Despite this, Data convinces Riker to let him beam over with Worf to check it out. The two arrive, and find disk drives, non-automatic doors (which appear to be Worf’s new nemesis), and three frozen people in cryotubes. Data wants to beam them back over, Riker seems to be considering abandoning them there, but as Picard returns, they quickly beam the three preserved humans to sickbay.

As soon as Picard returns with news that the Romulans might be on the move, the atmosphere in the ship changes. He orders a course set for a system within the Neutral Zone, and when he discovers that three peoplescicles were beamed onto his ship, he’s extremely upset.  I’m not exactly sure what alternative he feels Data should have pursued. Leaving living people on a doomed ship really doesn’t seem particularly like Picard’s style, but with a possible incident brewing with the Romulans, he really doesn’t want the distraction. Crusher introduces the three people, all of whom were placed in cryostasis in the late twentieth century. First up, a woman Juliette described as a “Linda Hamilton wannabe” who was a homemaker; next, an older man named Ralph Oppenhouse who was a financier; and finally, a drug addicted country music star played by Leon Rippy. Rippy was amazing in Deadwood. He is somewhat less so in this.

Josh: So let’s wake up the sick, naked folks with the meanest, scariest motherfucker (Worf) on the ship.
*the woman sees Worf and faints
Dietrich: She didn’t faint because he’s Klingon. She’s actually wildly racist.

At this point, the episode splits quite neatly into two fairly distinct storylines. The first involves the destruction of several Federation outposts in the Neutral Zone, and the resulting fear that this is only the beginning of a Romulan invasion. This storyline is suspenseful, well-acted, and one of the highlights of the season. The second storyline involves a homemaker who’s weepy because her kids are dead as fuck, a banker who keeps demanding to contact his lawyer so he can get access to his money, and a country music star who slaps Crusher on the ass and asks Data to rustle up some “low mileage pit woofies” for some fun. (...I...I don't know what that is. Is it dirty? Am I on a watchlist now?) This storyline is terrible, poorly acted, and makes me actively dislike this episode.

Let’s start with the bad. The three twentieth century survivors are objectively awful. The woman is the only one who actually shows some acting chops, but that’s drowned beneath the fact that the role is fairly sexist. She’s listed as a homemaker, talks about her husband making the spending decisions, and does nothing for the bulk of the episode but weep uncontrollably until Troi comes to comfort her. Oppenhouse is a caricature of Ayn Rand with even less morality, who insults Picard, bullies his way onto the bridge, and makes a general ass of himself. But the prize for disaster of the episode sadly goes to Leon Rippy, whose folksy dialogue (it’s worth noting that even having lived in Tennessee for nearly a decade, I’ve never heard anyone sound this stupid) and casual sexism is accompanied by comedy music stings. It’s a misguided disaster, which is a shame. The idea of 20th century people in this world has some merit, if they’d been able to do anything interesting with it at all.

Josh: I find it terribly offensive that this supposedly Southern boy drinks a James Bond martini.
Dietrich: I’m going to be terribly depressed if the Wall Street Journal is still in print in 400 years.
Juliette: The rich guy has a very Grand Moff Tarken look when he talks about power.

The failure of this B-storyline really is too bad, especially considering that the primary story about the destroyed colonies is excellent. Starfleet is worried that the Romulans are testing the Federation, trying to evaluate their response. It’s been fifty years since there was any direct contact, and that contact was something called the Tomed Incident, in which thousands were killed. Not wanting to provoke the Romulans, Starfleet isn’t sending any other ships, and the sense of danger is immediately palpable. The Enterprise reaches the first colony, and finds it gone. Not blown up, not smashed into rubble, but scooped out of the crust of the planet.

The tension of these sequences is palpable, fueled by the fact that this is the first time in the show that the Enterprise has faced an enemy with a cloaking device. The bridge crew suddenly seems like a submarine crew huddled in the deep, watching fearfully for the depth charges that they can’t see. There are a few moments where the sensors think there’s something there, but they can’t quite get a fix, and most of the time, the Enterprise is completely blind. They’re being stalked by something they can’t see, and these scenes are electric. I got irritated for a moment when Oppenhouse bursts onto the bridge, but this was actually beautiful timing, creating a brief distraction. Picard’s barking orders, Riker’s moving angrily towards him, and in the midst, Worf calls out, “Captain!”, and the Romulan warbird appears.

Josh: Yeah… The Romulan warbird is cool as fuck. Also, Riker is either angry or holding in a fart.

This season has been pretty lazy on most other ship designs, but the Romulan warbird is instantly iconic. It’s bigger than the Enterprise, and looks ready to fuck shit up. Picard opens a channel, and the Romulan captain (played by Marc Alaimo, who would go on to play Gul Dukat in Deep Space Nine) informs Picard that several of their outposts were destroyed in exactly the same fashion. The two ship commanders agree to cooperate in this investigation, but before they part ways, the Romulan captain calmly informs Picard that their fifty year absence has come to an end, and they are very much back.

It’s a killer ending to the episode. The mystery of the destroyed outposts is still unresolved, and suggests a dangerous new mystery (even better: unlike the ending of “Conspiracy”, this is the beginning of possibly the most iconic enemy in Star Trek history). The conversation with the Romulans is dripping with menace and danger, despite the icily polite words and calm demeanor. If it hadn’t been for the train wreck of the other storyline, this would be the highlight of the season. As it is, it’s just a missed opportunity with some solid scenes.

Speaking of the first season, Josh Abel, Juliette Vincent, and I took a bit of time to discuss season one together. To say that the season is a mixed bag would be an understatement. There’s a lot more bad in this season than good, and while the quality is on an upward trend, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the show had been canceled. We know for a fact that it gets much, MUCH better, but it’s been a rough start.

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Dietrich: So let’s talk about season 1 as a whole. The second half of the season shows a definite upward trend. There are still some weak points, like “Skin of Evil”, but for the most part, the cast seems to be clicking a lot more.

Juliette: Most definitely. They’re slowly finding their characters and how they interact with each other. It’s not really that unusual for a show to take a bit to find its way.

Josh: I think this episode (“The Neutral Zone”) kind of sums up the whole first season. It has promise, but it can’t get out of its own dumb way.

Dietrich: True, but it’s nowhere near as messy as the beginning. I might not be a fan of “We’ll Always Have Paris” and the like, but for the most part, they’re competently written and executed episodes.

Juliette: You can tell when Roddenberry started being kept out of things a bit more.

Dietrich: Do you think that the problems with Season 1 stem more from the usual growing pains of a new show, or because they were still trying to find an identity separate from the original series?

Josh: Both.

Juliette: I think a bit of both. They had to really establish that this show was different. I mean, look at Picard and Kirk. So different.

Dietrich: Picard and Kirk are easily the most defined difference. Experienced vs. young, a thinker vs. impulsive. But even with that difference, they still leaned more on the same character beats as the original series. Data is an updated Spock, and Riker’s clearly heavily influenced by Kirk.

Juliette: Yes, but when they tried to copy what the original series did, it backfired horribly, like “The Naked Now.”

Josh: I think with this season, they seemed to assume that people would instantly like the cast because it was Star Trek. Because of that, the bulk of the cast was pretty uninteresting.

Dietrich: “Code of Honor” feels like the worst example of trying to copy the original series. Plotting, dialogue, everything just felt like something from TOS.

Juliette: Can we just never speak of that episode?

Dietrich: So what episode do you two feel was the first that felt like something unique and distinct from TOS?

Josh: “The Battle”. But that just expressed just how different these captains were.

Juliette: For me, it was “Encounter at Farpoint”. But they weren’t yet steady enough to make it all that it could have been. So they fell back to what they knew.

Dietrich: “Encounter at Farpoint” is actually a really fair answer. I guess I don’t count it because it was the pilot. For me, “Where No One Has Gone Before”, for some reason, feels like the first original thought of the season.

Juliette: I picked “Encounter at Farpoint” because of the introduction of Q, and his interaction with Picard. The rest of the cast was still very meh with me at that point.

Josh: Q and Picard ends up being one of the great relationships in all of TNG.

Juliette: But to me, that's something we didn't have in TOS.

Dietrich: What’s that?

Juliette: That odd relationship with a being that ended up becoming a thread throughout the series. Like I said, they just weren't established enough to really stand on their own feet.

Josh: TOS was more like a radio serial in space.

Dietrich: That’s a great point. I don’t think TOS ever had connecting plot threads. Virtually every episode existed on its own.

Juliette: To me, the early episodes of this first season are similar to the movie Star Trek: Generations. Folks didn’t think that the TNG cast could pull off a movie on their own, so they jammed in some original cast members just in case. And it was terrible.

Dietrich: That’s true. And to your point, I think the better episodes of this season are those that reflect a level of confidence in the cast and crew.

Josh: Absolutely. TNG doesn’t get better until it’s allowed to be different than TOS.

Dietrich: Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Season low point?

Josh: Is it really up for debate?

Juliette: It’s a three-way tie for me. The episodes I can’t watch without cringing. “Code of Honor”, “Justice”, and “Angel One”.

Josh: “Code of Honor.” It’s so bad in all the worst ways possible.

Dietrich: Those are all rough, but I think “Angel One” has to take top honors. It’s horrifying. “Code of Honor” is broken from the beginning, “Justice” is laughable, but “Angel One” seems to try to argue that it’s a feminist episode and whips wildly in the other direction.

Juliette: I just can’t stand any of those three.

Dietrich: Okay, which episode marked the turning point for this season, when we started seeing an improvement in quality?

Juliette: Maybe “11001001”. I mean, I like “The Battle”.

Josh: “The Battle” is a strong point for sure. It’s hard for me not to put some of my own knowledge to use about where the show is going when it comes to “11001001”.

Juliette: It’s tough. Even after “The Battle” and “11001001”, season 1 still had some not-so-great episodes throughout the entire season.

Josh: I mean, we just watched a dumpster fire, and it was the season finale.

Juliette: Hey, the Romulan storyline was decent.

Dietrich: Okay, best episode of the season?

Josh: Best episode for me is a tie between “The Battle” and “Heart of Glory”.
Juliette: “Encounter at Farpoint”, but only because of Q. Otherwise, “The Battle”, “Heart of Glory”, and “Conspiracy”. I also love “Datalore” even though I know it’s not one of the best.

Dietrich: See, I just can’t include “The Battle” because of the Ferengi. That’s a huge black mark for me. But “Heart of Glory”, I think, has to be the undisputed highlight of the season. “Conspiracy” is fun, but it’s a bit of a mess at times. “Heart of Glory” is solid throughout.

Josh: “Heart of Glory” made Worf one of my favorite Star Trek characters ever.

Dietrich: Okay, so season 1 is done, and I’m about to jump into season 2. I remember that it’s bookended by two weaker episodes, but it also contains two legitimately great episodes. I’m feeling more optimistic. I’m going to keep doubling up on episodes for my reviews, but I’ll go ahead and say that “Measure of a Man” and “Q-Who” are going to get their own episodes.

Juliette: Dude. “Measure of a Man” and “Q-Who”. Easily two of my favorites.

Josh: Both are in my top ten, that’s for sure.

Dietrich: I think that’s a good point to wrap up. Any final thoughts on season 1? What would you say to someone who’s about to start the show from the beginning?

Josh: I tell them something similar to someone who’s about to start watching Doctor Who. Watch the two or three good episodes, then jump to the next season.

Juliette: Just bear with it. It’s like sex. Somewhat painful and not so great the first few times, but it totally gets better with experience.

Dietrich: That quote should go on the Season 1 box.


Thank you for sticking with me through season 1! Next time, Troi gets knocked up by Tinkerbell in "The Child", and the crew of the Enterprise learns what would have happened if Q had REALLY been a dick in "Where Silence Has Lease".

- ​Dietrich Stogner

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    Star Trek: The Next Generation

    Recaps and Reviews of a geek's favorite show... for better or for worse.

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    Season 1

    Encounter At Farpoint

    The Naked Now / Code of Honor

    The Last Outpost / Where No One Has Gone Before

    Lonely Among Us / Justice

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