Lwaxana Troi is in heat. Which is different from any other episode featuring the character... how, exactly?
THE PLOT
The Enterprise is escorting representatives of the alien Antedeans to a conference on a distant planet. Having watched Samaritan Snare and Up the Long Ladder back-to-back, the aliens arrive already in a comatose state. This saves them from the tedium of this episode, at least. As the ship gets underway, they are hailed by an approaching vessel. They have one more ambassador to escort: Troi's mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett).
Lwaxana is going through a phase, a period that all Betazoid women experience in mid-life, in which her sex drive increases radically. She has decided to focus all her energy on one man, who will, according to Betazoid tradition, eventually become her husband. The man in question? Captain Picard.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Deflects Lwaxana's advances by calling in the heavy artillery - Data, who proceeds to act as a fifth wheel in their private dinner, telling "anecdotes" of stultifying boredom until Lwaxana finally gives up for the night. Then Picard decides to deal with Lwaxana's unwelcome advances like a real man: He runs and hides, playing private detective in the holodeck. Not exactly a dignified episode for Picard, all told.
Riker: When Picard succeeds in evading Lwaxana, Riker finds that the older woman's sights have now fallen on him. He seems to actually find it rather amusing. He stops Troi from immediately setting her mother straight, instead preferring to let the captain deal with it.
Troi: Though she denies any ongoing relationship with Riker, she does become deeply upset when Lwaxana turns her focus to him. When Riker stops her from confronting her mother, she grumps at him that he's a "coward," acting for all the world like a jealous girlfriend. Marina Sirtis actually isn't bad at the comedy acting, and might even be good here if any of the material was at all amusing.
SHUT UP, WESLEY!
Wesley manages to offend Worf, first by passive-aggressively contradicting Worf's admiration of the Antedeans, then by admitting that he initially found Worf to be alien and ugly as well. Attempting to ingratiate himself, Wesley manages to dig himself in deeper when he tells Worf that he now thinks the security chief is "kind of handsome, for a Klingon." Worf shows admirable self-restraint in not demonstrating his warrior skills to Wesley first-hand.
THOUGHTS
Though I found the first Lwaxana episode to be enjoyable, lightweight fare, I found very little to enjoy in Manhunt. This is a deeply tedious episode, a series of sitcom-level set pieces that require our regular and recurring characters to alternate between stupidity and spinelessness in order to keep the "story" alive.
Much of the basic set-up here, with Lwaxana setting her sights on one of the regulars and chasing after him like Pepe LePew going after that white-striped cat, was recycled into The Forsaken for the first season of Deep Space 9. Even in The Forsaken, the notion of seeing one of our regulars being sexually harrassed as comedy fodder seemed dubious (how funny would anyone find it if Lwaxana was a man chasing after female regulars?). But there, the sitcom humor quickly gave way to some interesting character work.
Manhunt has no interest in character work. Lwaxana is one-dimensional in every scene, and shows no additional shading by the end of the episode. Also, for a well-travelled ambassador, she apparently has never heard of a holodeck (presented by this show as fairly standard technology) - or else the production team fell so in love with one fairly leaden gag that they didn't care about making her an imbecile for the sake of the joke.
Carel Struycken is still amusing, reprising his role as Lwaxana's giant manservant. But this episode is just a chore to get through. It starts out unpromising, and just gets worse and worse as it goes. Not quite down there with Loud as a Whisper or Too Short a Season - but just because it's slightly less awful than the very worst episodes of the series, that doesn't save it from being awful.
Rating: 2/10.
THE PLOT
The Enterprise is escorting representatives of the alien Antedeans to a conference on a distant planet. Having watched Samaritan Snare and Up the Long Ladder back-to-back, the aliens arrive already in a comatose state. This saves them from the tedium of this episode, at least. As the ship gets underway, they are hailed by an approaching vessel. They have one more ambassador to escort: Troi's mother, Lwaxana (Majel Barrett).
Lwaxana is going through a phase, a period that all Betazoid women experience in mid-life, in which her sex drive increases radically. She has decided to focus all her energy on one man, who will, according to Betazoid tradition, eventually become her husband. The man in question? Captain Picard.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Picard: Deflects Lwaxana's advances by calling in the heavy artillery - Data, who proceeds to act as a fifth wheel in their private dinner, telling "anecdotes" of stultifying boredom until Lwaxana finally gives up for the night. Then Picard decides to deal with Lwaxana's unwelcome advances like a real man: He runs and hides, playing private detective in the holodeck. Not exactly a dignified episode for Picard, all told.
Riker: When Picard succeeds in evading Lwaxana, Riker finds that the older woman's sights have now fallen on him. He seems to actually find it rather amusing. He stops Troi from immediately setting her mother straight, instead preferring to let the captain deal with it.
Troi: Though she denies any ongoing relationship with Riker, she does become deeply upset when Lwaxana turns her focus to him. When Riker stops her from confronting her mother, she grumps at him that he's a "coward," acting for all the world like a jealous girlfriend. Marina Sirtis actually isn't bad at the comedy acting, and might even be good here if any of the material was at all amusing.
SHUT UP, WESLEY!
Wesley manages to offend Worf, first by passive-aggressively contradicting Worf's admiration of the Antedeans, then by admitting that he initially found Worf to be alien and ugly as well. Attempting to ingratiate himself, Wesley manages to dig himself in deeper when he tells Worf that he now thinks the security chief is "kind of handsome, for a Klingon." Worf shows admirable self-restraint in not demonstrating his warrior skills to Wesley first-hand.
THOUGHTS
Though I found the first Lwaxana episode to be enjoyable, lightweight fare, I found very little to enjoy in Manhunt. This is a deeply tedious episode, a series of sitcom-level set pieces that require our regular and recurring characters to alternate between stupidity and spinelessness in order to keep the "story" alive.
Much of the basic set-up here, with Lwaxana setting her sights on one of the regulars and chasing after him like Pepe LePew going after that white-striped cat, was recycled into The Forsaken for the first season of Deep Space 9. Even in The Forsaken, the notion of seeing one of our regulars being sexually harrassed as comedy fodder seemed dubious (how funny would anyone find it if Lwaxana was a man chasing after female regulars?). But there, the sitcom humor quickly gave way to some interesting character work.
Manhunt has no interest in character work. Lwaxana is one-dimensional in every scene, and shows no additional shading by the end of the episode. Also, for a well-travelled ambassador, she apparently has never heard of a holodeck (presented by this show as fairly standard technology) - or else the production team fell so in love with one fairly leaden gag that they didn't care about making her an imbecile for the sake of the joke.
Carel Struycken is still amusing, reprising his role as Lwaxana's giant manservant. But this episode is just a chore to get through. It starts out unpromising, and just gets worse and worse as it goes. Not quite down there with Loud as a Whisper or Too Short a Season - but just because it's slightly less awful than the very worst episodes of the series, that doesn't save it from being awful.
Rating: 2/10.
Previous Episode: Up the Long Ladder
Next Episode: The Emissary
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