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| Picard grows suspicious of Anna (Barbara Williams), the sole survivor of a freighter crash. |
THE PLOT
The Enterprise participates in a cultural exchange with the Iyaarans. While Picard goes to visit the planet Iyar, Ambassadors Byleth (Michael Harris) and Loquel (Paul Eiding) will spend time aboard the starship. Each ambassador is assigned to an officer. The pleasant Loquel is assigned to Counsellor Troi, who introduces him to the delights of dessert. The aggressive Byleth is assigned to Worf, whom Byleth immediately begins demeaning and insulting at every opportunity.
Picard's flight to Iyar is interrupted by a sudden loss of power. His pilot, Voval (Eric Pierpoint), is able to coax the shuttle to a nearby planet - but the resulting crash injures him. Picard leaves the shuttle to try to find help, but is almost immediately knocked unconscious by a plasma storm. He awakens to find himself tended by Anna (Barbara Williams), a human survivor of a crash from seven years ago. Anna tells him Voval is dead, and that there is no other intelligent life on this planet - leaving Picard scrounging through what equipment is available to him in hopes of finding a way to contact the Enterprise.
But Anna appears to have a different set of priorities, one that may endanger Picard's hopes of escaping at all!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: As soon as the shuttle experiences trouble, he immediately takes charge, demanding quick updates as to their status while checking on specific systems. He does what he can to stabilize Voval before seeking aid. He is patient with Anna and understanding of her instability after seven years alone, but he remains observant and it doesn't take long to pick up on inconsistencies in his situation. In an otherwise weak episode, the keen intelligence Patrick Stewart brings to Picard does a lot to keep things watchable.
Worf: What little amusement exists comes from Worf's frustration at dealing with Ambassador Byleth. Worf strains to be polite in the face of Byleth's antagonism, agreeing through gritted teeth to get the man different food when his first choices aren't to his liking. Then, in private, he fantasizes about killing Byleth with his bare hands: "I will take him by the throat and I will rip out his esophagus!" The end of the subplot is as predictable as everything else in the episode, but Michael Dorn's performance helps to at least make it somewhat enjoyable.
Troi: With Picard carrying the "A" plot and Worf the primary "B" plot, Troi is left with a "C" Plot. As a counterpoint to the antagonistic Byleth, Troi escorts the more agreeable Loquel. Loquel observes Troi's love of desserts and tries some... And then becomes an outright glutton. Troi admits that she finds Loquel's fascination with food to be a bit exhausing, and that weariness may influence her suggestion to Worf to "set limits on the Ambassadors."
Hot Space Babe of the Week: Anna (Barbara Williams), the crash survivor Picard meets, is very clingy and otherwise barely-characterized. There is an in-story reason for her weak characterization, at least, one that is sadly easy to predict. Williams, a solid television actress, is suitably appealing and does a reasonable job of playing Anna's neediness and confusion. However, there really isn't enough on the page to allow her to emerge as an interesting character.
THOUGHTS
With the cliffhanger out of the way, we get our first proper Season Seven episode with Liaisons. All I can say is, I hope this isn't a sign of what to expect over the remaining 24 episodes of the series.
There's a lot wrong with Liaisons. It's slow, predictable, and obvious, with guest characters who could only with charity be referred to as two-dimensional. It's also one of the cheapest-looking TNG episodes since Season Two, with the surface of the planet on which Picard crashes looking particularly articial. In both writing and production terms, this feels like a relic that would have been less at home on this series than in the third season of TOS. The latter half of the third season, after the money had run out and the best of the creative crew had jumped ship.
An episode this cheap-looking this early in the season is bizarre. Usually, something like this - with one story strand using entirely standing sets and the other using an obvious redress of a standing set - exists to make up a budget shortfall, after a "big" episode has broken the bank. But this is only the second episode of the season. They couldn't really have been behind budget already, could they have?
I'm sorry to keep harping on the cheapness, but I have trouble coming up with much more to discuss here. The "A" plot is bad, the "B" plot only slightly better. The regulars do their best with the material: Patrick Stewart, Michael Dorn, and Marina Sirtis all do good work, and each even manages to sell a stray scene here and there. But it's a bad script, one which frankly never should have been approved for production. It's also a bland bad script, with nothing in it so spectacularly terrible to even provide room to mercilessly tear it apart. The episode just sits there for 45 minutes before it finally ends, in a tag that's as dull as the rest of it.
Overall Rating: 2/10.
Previous Episode: Descent
Next Episode: Interface
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