The Enterprise is on-hand to witness and collect data as a sun undergoes magnetic changes, emitting flares. As they begin collecting their data, they receive a distress signal from inside the planetary system.
A freighter is losing its orbit. The Enterprise tractor beam is unable to lock on, because of interference from the flares. With few options left, Picard orders the ship's crew beamed onto Enterprise. But the crew beams over its cargo before beaming over themselves. The reason becomes clear: The cargo is medicine, desperately needed by the Omarans to treat a space plague that has been devastating them for the past 200 years. The Brekkians insist that the medicine does not belong to the Omarans. After all, the goods they were using to buy the medicine burned up with the shuttle.
The Prime Directive means that Picard cannot interfere. Then Dr. Crusher makes a horrifying discovery about the nature of both the plague and the medicine...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Picard is left to walk a tightrope between the morals of the situation and the demands of the Prime Directive. He is sympathetic to the Omarans early on, negotiating with the Brekkians for at least a single dose of the medicine for the two Omarans' immediate needs. Once he discovers the true nature of the medicine, he stops being sympathetic to either side. He insists on following the Prime Directive absolutely. Apparently, one race acting as a parasite on another race requires absolute adherence to the Prime Directive in the way that, say, the son of the pretty redheaded doctor being put on trial for walking on grass does not. In any event, Patrick Stewart delivers an excellent performance, acting on a level far above that of the material he is working with.
Riker: "I've never seen anything like this before. The violence of those eruptions is awesome." Said in the same tone of voice, with the same inflections, one might use to observe that, "Fred is walking to the store today." Riker has little to do in this episode, and Jonathan Frakes doesn't even bother to go onstage to deliver his lines. Unfortunately, Frakes' nonacting in this episode is more or less echoed by every member of the cast, leaving Patrick Stewart to carry this show alone.
Dr. Crusher: On the opposite extreme of nonacting is overacting, which is the extreme Gates McFadden opts for. Dr. Crusher is Morally Outraged with a capital "More." Every line is shrill and trembling with indignation at the evil of the Brekkians. Needless to say, it gets very old, very fast.
SHUT UP, WESLEY!
"Why do people become dependent on drugs?" Wesley asks, prompting Tasha to deliver a Drugs For Dummies 101 lecture to him. "I guess I just don't understand," he says, with a smug, "punch-me-in-the-face-please" grin. The scene passes the Picard Sledgehammer to Tasha for her final full episode. It's genuinely painful stuff, that is only missing the actors turning to the camera while a graphic whizzes by to spell, "The More You Know" on screen in order to become an official PSA.
THE PICARD SLEDGE-HAMMER
Picard is not content to let Tasha have all the fun, though. While in the turbo-lift with Dr. Crusher, he halts the lift. Not for the usual reason (though all things considered, when others see him and her coming out of the delayed lift, every member of the crew will draw the obvious conclusion), but to give a speech about how interference with other cultures, even well-intentioned, inevitably results in disaster. Bludgeoned into submission by the power of the sledge-hammer, Dr. Crusher ceases all her whining. Doubtless, she is afraid that even one more word will result in another speech, sapping her will to live.
THOUGHTS
"Drugs are baaad, mm'kay?"
A truly dreadful episode, full of the kind of obvious, tedious preachiness and utter lack of subtelety which Star Trek's detractors seem to believe marks every episode. From about 15 minutes in, it is painfully obvious exactly where this story is heading. And sure enough, that is the exact path it follows, with no surprises or twists or variations at all.
No real conviction, either. The two races are monolithic in the extreme. All Brekkians are drug pushers. There isn't a single person on the planet who has devoted his or her life to anything other than drug refinement and drug sales, and there isn't a single person on the planet who has any kind of a problem with what they are doing. All Omarans are drug addicts, eternally coked out of their minds. Not a single Omaran has done anything over the past 200 years other than toke up, bliss out, and then whine when the withdrawal pains hit. Certainly, no one on Onarra has built up a resistance to the drug, or missed a couple of doses and survived detox.
In short, these are two civilizations that could not possibly exist unless the entire population of each world was smaller than that of a very tiny village.
Some minor interest is created near the end in watching Picard come up with a cold-blooded, but well thought-out solution (which, again, rests on not a single Brekkian having access to a shuttlecraft). These scenes are well-played by Patrick Stewart, the only member of the regular cast who seems to actually be trying. But even the effectiveness of Picard's final judgment is undercut by a simple, yet very logical, question:
Exactly how are our villains going to get back home?
Finally, look fast for Denise Crosby's "goodbye wave" in the background of her last scene of what was her last filmed episode. It may be the cutest breaking of the Fourth Wall you'll ever see, and it's almost worth giving this episode an extra point for that alone.
Rating: 2/10
Previous Episode: The Arsenal of Freedom
Next Episode: Skin of Evil
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