7-19. Genesis.

Picard discovers Troi, transformed into an amphibian!

THE PLOT

When a test of Worf's new weapons guidance system results in one of the torpedoes swerving off course, Picard and Data take a shuttlecraft to intercept and disable it. While they are away, crew begins exhibiting strange behavior. Troi complains about the environment controls, finding the ship too dry and too cold. Worf becomes hyper-aggressive. Barclay becomes just plain hyper, working around the clock at full-tilt speed with no sign of fatigue. Riker finds it increasingly hard to concentrate, or even to remember the ship's current assignment. Too late, Dr. Crusher and Nurse Ogawa realize that a disease is spreading through the ship... one that is slowly affecting every member of the crew!

Picard and Data return to find the Enterprise adrift in space with no power. They discover that the entire crew have transformed in various ways; Troi is an amphibian; Riker is a proto-human; Barclay is halfway to becoming a spider; Worf is some strange Klingon creature with an armored hide and an aggressive mating instinct.

They are able to determine that amniotic fluid is the key to curing the virus, and go in search of the conveniently pregnant Nurse Ogawa. But they have only a limited time to find a cure. The disease is airborne - and Picard is already showing signs of infection!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: When Picard begins to "de-evolve," he develops a heightened sense of fear. Patrick Stewart gives Picard a slightly higher pitch to his voice and makes him a little less still and a little more fidgety. Because the process never gets past its initial stages in Picard, we see the man we know struggling to maintain control. When the transformed Worf is battering his way into sickbay, Picard can see that Data - who is working on a cure - is indispensable and that he is expendable in this situation. So he creates a distraction to lead Worf away, despite his terror.

Data: As Picard's faculties start to be affected, Data takes the lead in their investigation. He observes that Spot's newborn kittens were not infected, which provides the vital clue to the cure. He argues against Picard's dangerous plan to lead Worf away from sickbay, but does provide Picard with what he needs to execute that plan. And, as the one crew member immune to the virus, he is in a unique position to save the day. Again.

Worf: Continues to inch toward a relationship with Troi. It seems a bit odd that they would have a dinner date when all their relationship progress occurred in either parallel dimensions or hallucinations. Then again, both Worf and Troi have glimpsed the potential relationship in non-realities, so perhaps by now they have compared notes and decided to give it a try in the real world. Though he ultimately is not "Patient Zero," Worf is the first crew member to be visibly affected. Michael Dorn does a good job of showing Worf's decline. At first, he just seems excessively stressed, then he becomes ridiculously short-tempered and aggressive. When he attacks Troi, he stops, appalled at what he's done... but that is the last time he is able to stop himself. The next time he moves, his mind is basically gone.

Barclay: The opening scene presents Barclay as a hypochondriac, with Dr. Crusher all but treating him like a child while treating him. The fact that she manages to identify a mild illness by the end of that scene in no way stops her from treating him like an idiot. Even after the events of the episode trace the virus back to Crusher being careless with a treatment, the tag scene sees her and Troi basically exchanging eye-rolls over how neurotic Reg is. Why exactly doesn't he want to transfer off this ship? The episode makes less use of Barclay than most previous appearances by him, but Dwight Schultz remains engaging. His scenes both as hyper Barclay and as spider-Barclay are a great deal of fun, largely because of the actor's enthusiasm.


THOUGHTS

"Captain, I believe the crew is de-evolving!"
-Data makes an earnest pronouncement, and actor Brent Spiner somehow manages to keep a straight face.

Genesis is surely one of the silliest episodes of TNG's run. Brannon Braga's script is a dumb premise that exists solely to allow the cast to act in weird ways, all of which is given only the flimsiest justification. It's "science" is straight out of a 1950's "B" movie: De-evolution of humans into amphibians and spiders(!)? The episode might as well have a crew member turn into a crocodile and snap at Picard's heels!

It also spends far too long on setup, with fully half the episode passing before the crew has firm awareness that there even is a ship-wide problem. It should have been restructured in one of two ways: With Picard and Data on the ship throughout, working to stop the infection as it spreads; or with Picard and Data returning to the ship much earlier, with the bulk of the episode focusing on their efforts to resolve the situation. As presented, there is no real mystery, because we spend half the episode watching the disease spread. Picard and Data are able to solve the problem a bit too quickly and easily, because no time is left in the episode for their efforts to encounter serious complications.

Gates McFadden, in her directorial debut, may have gotten lumbered with a ludicrous script, but she makes a good stab at bringing it to life. The dark corridors of the drifting Enterprise of the second half are eerie, the noises of the transformed crew members adding to the atmosphere. Spider-Barclay's abrupt entrance, banging against the glass through which Picard is peering, is a "jump scare" that works, and the makeup job on Dwight Schultz is highly effective (if slightly comical). The chase at the climax, in which the transformed Worf pursues Picard into first the turbolift, then a Jeffries tube, takes care to keep Worf in the shadows to avoid the budget limitations of his costume from ruining the effect. This has the bonus of keeping the focus on Patrick Stewart, acting the heck out of the increasing terror the infected Picard can barely keep in check. I'd love to see another episode directed by McFadden - preferably one with an actual good script.

In a way, this episode feels like the flip-side to Masks. That episode featured Data behaving strangely while the ship transformed around the crew. This episode features everyone except Data behaving strangely, while the crew transforms around the ship. Unlike Masks, there's no sense of anything interesting is struggling to get out. Much of it plays like Braga's first draft for Voyager's infamous Threshold, like he needed a warm-up to figure out what works so that he could be sure to remove those elements from his next try.

In short, it's all dizzyingly dumb... but it's also very watchable.


Overall Rating: 4/10.

Previous Episode: Eye of the Beholder
Next Episode: Journey's End


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7-9. Force of Nature.

Two alien scientists deliver a dire warning.

THE PLOT

The Fleming, a Federation medical transport, has disappeared in the Hekaras Corridor. The corridor is the only safe path to travel through this region of space, which is characterized by intense tetryon fields. The Fleming isn't the only ship to experience issues. During the search, the Enterprise encounters a Ferengi vessel whose warp drive is offline and whose systems are crippled.

After Picard assists with repairs, DaiMon Prak (Lee Arenberg), the Ferengi captain, admits that they observed the Fleming traveling through the corridor and provides Picard with the ship's heading. But the Enterprise arrives too late. All that remains of the Fleming is debris.

Just then, the Enterprise is struck by a verteron pulse, taking the ship's warp drive and shields offline... at which point Hekaran scientists Rabal (Michael Corbett) and Serova (Margaret Reed) beam onto the ship with a potentially devastating revelation!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Though he is not pleased at the tactics of the Hekaran scientists, their claims are serious enough that he immediately agrees to let Data review their findings. He states that he considers it part of his job to keep an open mind, even when he's annoyed. When the rift opens near the end of the episode, complicating the ship's rescue mission, there are two obvious options - both of them bad. He tells his officers that he wants them to find him a third option, and trusts Geordi and Data to do just that.

Data: Has allowed his cat, Spot, such a degree of free reign that Geordi finds the cat unmanageable and "out of control." We see that whatever difficulties Data may face in training Spot, the cat has certainly trained Data, who feeds and plays with the animal on cue. In the "A" plot, it is Data who figures out how to complete the rescue mission without using warp engines in the rift, calculating what to do to the exact second.

Geordi: His engineering acumen gives him enough knowledge to improvise when Data's rescue plan gets thrown an unexpected curveball. His basic decency is such that, despite Serova displaying no sympathetic traits whatever, he still feels guilt when she is driven to rash action.

THOUGHTS

Force of Nature is TNG's environmentalist episode. It's the one in which warp drive turns out to be damaging the fabric of the universe. I'd love to say that this idea has potential. The truth is, it was a lousy idea from the start. With warp drive so integral a part of the Star Trek franchise, it was inevitable that the limits put on warp travel in this episode would never be enforceable across multiple series. The only possible result was what happened: The limit was paid lip service to a very few times before being utterly ignored thereafter.

Which... Fair enough. It's an episode that exists entirely in isolation, because it cannot affect the wider franchise. Fine. After all, Ethics paralyzed Worf, ended with us being told that he had a long, slow road ahead of him, and then saw him 100% recovered by the next episode with the incident never even mentioned again.  None of which prevented it from being a worthy episode in its own right. 

4-25. In Theory

Data tries to understand romance.

THE PLOT

Data has befriended Jenna D'Sora (Michele Scarabelli), a security officer who has recently broken up with her emotionally unavailable boyfriend. Jenna quickly becomes infatuated with the eternally kind and attentive android. When she gives him an unexpected and passionate kiss, Data decides to pursue a relationship, attempting to create a program to navigate his way through a romance. But the complexities of love (along with his choice of a perhaps overly needy girlfriend) are too contradictory for a computer program to untangle.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise finds itself experiencing odd incidents while exploring a nebula. These are minor, at first: an unlocked door that allows Data's cat, Spot, to escape; a smashed ship-in-bottle that Picard was working on. But as the disturbances become more frequent and serious, the crew realizes that the ship itself may be in danger!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Picard: Gets the punchline to the "Data's advice" montage. Patrick Stewart is terrific in this scene - a hilariously strained expression when Data approaches, followed by his blunt-yet-polite reply. His initial response to the incidents on the ship is to "be cautious" but take no action. Only when one incident causes the (nastier than usual) death of a crew member does he finally decide to get the ship out of the nebula.

Data: Another Data episode, another terrific performance by Brent Spiner. One of the best decisions of Joe Menoski and Ronald D. Moore's script is to emphasize from the outset Data's lack of emotion. He can emulate human interaction, but he does not actually feel. This leaves him attempting to emulate romantic emotions, which goes over about as well as faking romance ever does. When he attempts to be a solicitous boyfriend, he mainly comes across like a cheesy waiter ("What can I get you? ...An excellent choice"). When Jenna calls him on this, he is perfectly honest: "When it comes to romantic relationships, there is no real me."

Geordi: The sum total impact of last week's harrowing experiences... are nada. As I feared would be the case, Geordi is exactly the same as he was before. A limitation of the "standalone episode" format: Events that should change characters forever are emotionally reset the following week, with Picard's Borg experience being a rare exception. It doesn't harm this episode as such, but I would at least have liked some reference to Geordi dealing with what happened rather than it being completely ignored.

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Michele Scarabelli is suitably appealing as Jenna. She's attractive and likable enough for the viewer to care about, at least enough to be interested in her feelings during the episode. She is also able to project enough neediness to make it plausible that she would attach herself to Data, even after he reminds her that he is incapable of emotion. I get the sense that the relationship would likely have lasted longer had Data not attempted to emulate romantic behavior - though it's equally apparent that Jenna's neediness would make her entirely unsuited to an unemotional suitor.


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Geordi strides down a hallway with two engineers in tow: Thorne (Gary Baxley), who has previously had a line, and Van Mayter (Georgina Shore), who does not speak. Van Mayter is sent down a hallway. There's a scream. When Geordi and Thorne run back to investigate, they discover her fused to the floor, her arms and upper body sticking out like a particularly ghastly car hood ornament. It's a striking visual, and probably TNG's most memorable redshirt death in the midst of an episode that otherwise has little external threat.


THOUGHTS

"What were you just thinking?"

"In that particular moment: I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters; analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens; calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips; considering a new food supplement for Spot..."

"I'm glad I was in there somewhere."


Late Season Four has seen a number of romance episodes, none of which has quite worked. Qpid suffered by playing the comedy so broadly that the Picard/Vash relationship never had a chance to be explored. Half a Life presented a convincing romance, but sabotaged it with ham-handed social commentary. The Host presented a solid "B" plot, but suffered from a central relationship made up entirely of romance novel cliches.

In Theory somehow manages to succeed where those episodes failed. Much as I'd love to credit Patrick Stewart's direction in his debut directorial outing - and he does a very competent job - I think the bulk of the credit goes to the script. Joe Menosky and Ronald D. Moore wisely focus on Data's unemotional state throughout the story. He may look forward to his time with his friend Jenna D'Sora, but he isn't capable of returning her affection - something he bluntly tells her from the very start. The result of this is that anything artificial in the Data/Jenna interactions is simply part and parcel of Data's attentions being artificial.

There are two great scenes demonstrating this. The first is the one I quoted above, as Data demonstrates that he is a machine. He may look more or less human, he may have a personality of his own. But his mind works so much faster than the human brain that he pretty much never is absolutely focused on simply one thing - He will never give a prospective mate his full and undivided attention, simply because it isn't possible for him, nor does he give any more weight to his thoughts of Jenna than to his thoughts of the warp field, the works of Dickens, or the food supplement for Spot. It's all of equal importance, with his list enumerated (presumably) by complexity of the calculations.

The other great scene is the episode's closing. Data and Jenna's relationship reaches its inevitable close, as she realizes that she has moved from an unemotional man to a man incapable of emotion. Data asks if they have broken up. When she confirms it, he considers and states that he will "delete the appropriate program." No expression of regret or sadness, because he simply cannot feel regret. She leaves him alone, and his cat approaches and jumps on his lap. He strokes the cat, and the camera cuts to a close shot of his mechanical fingers, imitating the motion of stroking a pet with no accompanying feeling. The final shot sees Data in darkness, stroking his cat, feeling nothing: a situation that may satisfy a cat, but would never satisfy a human being (at least, not for very long).

The ship in jeopardy "B" plot is serviceable, doing its job of creating some dramatic structure to an episode that otherwise would have little. The nebula shots are some of the most visually striking effects shots TNG has yet presented, in an episode that otherwise is one of the least effects-oriented. And just as the threat appears to be too abstract to really build tension, we are presented with one of the most memorable Random Crew Member deaths to date.

Overall, an episode that holds up surprisingly well, given that "relationship" Trek episodes are usually either painful or, at best, merely dull.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: The Mind's Eye

Next Episode: Redemption

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