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| Troi gets a little too close to the leader of an endgangered colony. |
THE PLOT
Tracking the path of a stellar fragment, the Enterprise discovers a hidden human colony that will be wiped out when the fragment passes. Contact is successfully made with Aron Conor (John Snyder), the colony's friendly leader, and an Away Team is beamed down to investigate whether any alternative exists to evacuation.
The Away Team learns that this is a genetically engineered society, created generations earlier by Earth scientists who wanted to prove that they could create a paradise society. It is not only the colonists who have been engineered. Everything within the dome of the colony has been engineered into a single, perfectly-balanced eco-system. For the colonists, this means that simply leaving is not an option.
Geordi works with Hannah Bates (Dey Young), the colony's top scientist, to find a solution. But with colonists beginning to see the possibilities of life outside the dome, the stellar fragment may not be the only threat to this society's continued existence...
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Voices his disapproval of genetic engineering. He feels that much of what the colony has bred out - uncertainty, self-discovery, finding and testing one's own limitations - are the very things that he feels makes a human life worth living. He tries to respect the colony's desire to avoid contamination, limiting contact to only those personnel necessary to rescue the colonists from destruction. Even so, at the end he seems to wonder whether the Enterprise has done the right thing... though given that the alternative was the total annihilation of this colony, I honestly find that a bit hard to swallow!
Geordi: Has a more personal reason than Picard for opposing genetic engineering. As he points out to Hannah, the colony would never have allowed his birth. As such, he draws great satisfaction from the irony of the colony's salvation resting with technology created for "a visor for a blind man," technology that would never have been needed on the colony it's saving.
Troi: She quickly bonds with Aron, and spends a lot of time with him at the colony, trying to help him through the difficult decisions the Enterprise's arrival has forced on him. She is strongly attracted to him from the first, an attraction she gives into during a vulnerable moment. Then, when colony members begin requesting asylum aboard Enterprise, she faces a difficult decision of her own: Telling Picard about her breach of professionalism.
Hot Genetically-Engineered Babe of the Week: Hannah (Dey Young), the colony's top scientist, is instantly curious about the starship and eager to beam up to work with Geordi. But once she sees the technology aboard the Enterprise, she is amazed. She feels as if her entire society has been kept in the Dark Ages due to a generations-old "cosmic joke." She is less than happy at the prospect of simply returning to her life as it has been, and searches for a way - any way - to avoid staying behind.
Pompous Genetically-Engineered Bureaucrat of the Week: Martin Benbeck (Ron Canada) is "the interpreter of the founders' wishes." As such, he is by definition a fundamentalist, insisting on a religious adherence to the colony's perfect balance. He opposes allowing the Enterprise Away Team to beam in, and even more fervently opposes allowing Hannah to beam up to work with Geordi. Aron appears to pay him only cursory attention, shooting down his fundamentalism with the cool logic that the founders "probably didn't intend for us to die." Though the ending attempts to justify Martin's position, he really just comes across as a cartoon. His "better dead than contaminated by outside influences" position seems just as laughable at the end as at the beginning, no matter how much hand-wringing Picard does.
THOUGHTS
The Masterpiece Society is a solid, well-crafted piece. It's a good-looking episode, with careful and almost classical shot selection within the colony. The set design for the colony is very well-judged, and it's not surprising that this same set would be reused multiple times for future Trek series. The model shots are also well above-average, with the introductory shot of the dome on this desolate world of dust a particularly strong visual. Boasting an intelligent script, co-written by Michael Piller, this is a success on an intellectual level. It's almost the dramatic equivalent of chamber music.
And like chamber music, while it may be elegant and pleasant and easy to appreciate, it's also just the tiniest bit boring.
I actually like The Masterpiece Society, as far as it goes. It's just so very clear, so very quickly, exactly where this episode is heading. It's enjoyable enough, which makes it far better than three of the last four episodes, but there are no surprises. We know as soon as Hannah beams aboard that she's going to want to stay. We know as soon as she and Geordi start talking about his visor that the visor will be the key to solving the technological problem. We know as soon as Troi and Aron start talking that they're going to end up having a Doomed Romance (TM). It's ironic that, in an episode that sees Picard complaining about people living lives that have already been mapped out for them, that the episode itself plays out as something that's already been mapped out.
There's a lack of subtlety to many of the touches. The entire character of Martin Benbeck is unnecessary. The episode would work perfectly fine without him, simply by allowing Aron to more calmly voice some of the reservations that sound so irrational coming from Martin. Ron Canada's not a bad television character actor, but he comes across poorly here - and how could he not, given that Martin is a one-dimensional cartoon? Add in three different bits in which Geordi points out that he would never have been born in the colony's "perfect society" and a finale in which Picard invokes Its Holiness, The Prime Directive, and the whole episode feels much more didactic than in needs to.
Still, it is enjoyable, with Winrich Kolbe's direction really bringing a sense of elegance to the colony scenes. These "Prime Directive" episodes (a category of Trek that this show just about fits with) tend to be among my least favorites. But thanks to some good acting by Dey Young and John Snyder and some terrific effects work, this is an above-average example of a type of Trek show that I'm admittedly not much interested in.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
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