My Review

I find this episode awfully dull. It’s an attempt to start building some more personality for Sisko, who I also find awfully dull at this stage, but I’m not best pleased about the fact that they chose to do this by repurposing a story designed for Julian (and which would make much more sense for someone as naïve and romantic as Julian was at this stage). Sisko’s personality is best revealed by the way he deals with big, commanding-officery problems, not by a rather drippy love story.

So this blog is mostly going to consist of me whining and snotting, I suspect. I’m sorry to be like this, because I’m trying to make myself do more of these blogs so I can actually GET THE RESPONSES I CRAVE instead of just spending all my time squatting on Tumblr reblogging Julian looking pretty and My Little Pony. I will see if I can’t say something substantive as well.

• Haha! For some reason the disc started playing the German dubbed version of this episode. I didn’t even realise it had that. Sisko’s German voice sounds nothing like Avery Brooks (they couldn’t find a German with a bass voice?). Oh my goodness, I could be watching DS9 in German, French, Italian or Spanish. The idea of Julian speaking Italian to me is making my heart go pit-a-pat.
• But it might be a good idea to watch it in English because I’ll understand more of it that way.
• Perhaps today would be a good day to write Captain Picard hate mail.
• As usual, I like the interaction between Jake and Sisko, but also as usual, this is the main nice thing I can think of to say about these two characters. TV could probably use more dads who kiss their sons.
• This next scene plays, perhaps intentionally, as if it could be a dream Sisko had after falling asleep on the couch. Fenna’s very pretty, but very overdressed for wandering around the Promenade late at night. I like her elf ears and Bride of Frankenstein bouffant, and I like how the actress’ features are ethnically ambiguous so it doesn’t seem too much like a ‘we must provide a black lady for the black commander to date’ thing. (Though she is, of course, a nice nut-brown colour.)
• Fenna’s outfit is off the hook. She has, like, a cape, and leggings, and all these criss-crossing shoulder straps.
• Sisko, you are flirting pretty hard for a man who can’t sleep because he’s weirded out that he nearly forgot it’s the anniversary of his beloved wife’s death.
• and poof! she’s gone.
• poor O’Brien, down in his Pit of Suffering, having to tolerate an obnoxiously cheery commanding officer
• Kira is positively creeped out by Sisko’s change in his morning hot drink order.
• so Fenna contains caffeine I guess
• Dax is working at this outlandishly pretty machine, which is a ‘flux generator’:
• 
• It looks like it’s covered in beautiful snacks!
• Oh those wacky terraformers. I guess they just keep tampering in God’s domain!
• Apparently Professor Seyetik likes to terraform stuff like this: ’Imagine water cascading off cliffs the height of Mount Everest, thundering through continuous rainbows, straight into an ocean the colour of sapphire wine.’ So… what colour is sapphire wine? How can something be wine-coloured and sapphire-coloured? And doesn’t this sound like a poster you could buy in a New Age shop, possibly with a few pegacorns flying through the mists of the waterfalls like swallows?
• yeah, they’re laying on the ‘tampering in God’s domain’ stuff pretty thick, because Seyetik thinks he’s figured out a way to re-ignite a dead sun and bring life to a solar system. Obviously doomed.
• IRRITATING: Jadzia takes the last piece of ‘Andorian tuber root’ from Sisko’s plate, because he’s not finishing it and she thinks it’s delicious, and says she’ll need the calories to keep up with Seyetik, then doesn’t eat even a bite of it before she gets up to leave. I know acting with food is not easy, I know it’s usually cold and unappetising on set, I know you may get absolutely sick of it with repeated takes, I know if it’s mocked-up alien food it may not even be an edible substance, but THAT IS IRRITATING. EAT YOUR FOOD, JADZIA.
• you’re laughing at nothing now
• FENNA’S TOP HAS ALL THE STRAPS
• she is causing a STRAP SHORTAGE all around Bajoran space
• and speaking of ladies with outrageous taste in clothes, it seems Lwaxana is not the only person who thinks taking a picnic basket up a pylon is a romantic idea.
• anyway Sisko thinks Fenna’s, like, perfect, I suppose because she’s constantly agreeable and neither asks difficult questions nor tells him anything challenging – except for the part where she can’t/won’t tell him anything about herself, and seems scared by the request.
• Jake is telling a really weird story about, I guess, school lunch, which culimates in some poor girl vomiting ‘all over the table.’ I would get told off if I told a story about vomit at the breakfast table. I’m just saying.
• Jake’s voice is squeaking a lot during this scene. Was it breaking, or was Cirroc Lofton just over-acting a bit?
• HI ODO, IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO SEE YOU ODO! BRIEFING YOUR GUYS I SEE ODO!
• I guess it’s sort of sensible that Sisko goes to Odo for help in tracing Fenna. Is he just now supposed to be consciously realising how little he knows about her, and how weird that is?
• Avery Brooks’ face and voice when he says ‘she was wearing rehd’ are the creepiest thing.
• well may you shake your head, roll your eyes and mutter ‘huh,’ Odo.
• I sort of wish this episode was, instead, about Odo and his guys arresting the villainous short-range telepath he was warning them about at the start of the scene.
• Awkward conversation where Jadzia wants Sisko to tell her his business and he has an outburst of hyæna-like laughter. But they’re still bros, because he tosses her his baseball.
• Yeah, Professor Seyetek or ik or however it’s spelled’s personal ship is called the Prometheus. He’s so fuckin’ doomed.
• He’s supposed to be this big fancy polymath who has exhibitions of his paintings and has written a nine-volume autobiography and just seems insufferable. It’s that awful thing where we have to listen to characters tell us why they’re impressed with this other character, instead of actually seeing him do anything impressive. And why the hell would anyone write off van Gogh as ‘dark and dreary and dismal’? Yes, the man was suicidally depressed, but nobody could paint SUNSHINE like van Gogh. I think Julian is very politely trying to say that the most impressive thing about Seyetik’s own art is that it’s really big.
• O’Brien is just lurking in the background of this scene making faces of ‘can you believe this wanker; what am I even doing here’ and I love him so much.
• haha Kira wants to bolt
• there is a gorgeous little reaction when Julian says ‘I for one find him remarkably entertaining’ and O’Brien’s expression changes from smiling at Kira’s exasperation to one  of utter weariness with Julian’s Julianness.
• THE PLOT TWIST: Seyetik’s wife is identical to Fenna.
• Well, he’s clearly an overbearing blowhard in his marriage too, and Fenna is lonely, bored and worn out from living with him.
• The napkins are black and silver lamé. There’s no way those are absorbent.
• And Nidell/Fenna is stuck clearing the plates away, because she’s apparently a subservient housewife. In the Bashir version of this story, the mystery woman is actually being abused by her husband and creates the Fenna personality to have an escape; in this version we’re supposed to like Seyetik but think he and Nidell are just mismatched. And yet she seems so worn down. In the next scene Odo is going to tell us she hasn’t been off the Prometheus in the time they’ve been at the station, so she doesn’t even leave ‘the house.’ It’s creepy.
• Weirdly, Jadzia seems to be down with having affairs with married women, or at least says Curzon would have been. This increases my belief that her speech to Julian about joined Trills not looking for romance or dating was just an effort to get him to quit humping her leg.
• Quark really is the station’s counsellor. EZRI WAS SO UNNECESSARY.
• EVERY SCENE WITH FENNA I’M DISTRACTED BY HER STRAPS. And her wildly swinging earrings. Oh, gosh, her elf ears have two tips! Forked elf ears!
• gosh darn it, these vanishing women! they could drive a man to drink.
• Gloriously understated bit: O’Brien has got the engines on the Prometheus to do warp 9.6.
  Dax: I thought the theoretical maximum for those engines was warp nine point five?
  O’Brien (almost sheepishly): It was.
• O’BRIEN IS THE BEST AT ENGINES. SOMETIMES HE EVEN MAKES THEM BETTER BY ACCIDENT. I FIRMLY BELIEVE THIS.
• Oh hi, blond guy in a TNG uniform! Looking good. So the Prometheus is a Starfleet ship rather than Seyetik’s own?
• The only really interesting thing about the ensuing scene is the mention of a Klingon poem called ‘The Fall of Kang’ which is required reading at the Academy. I’m not sure exactly why they make Academy cadets read poetry, unless the idea is just ‘this’ll help you understand the Klingons’ as opposed to ‘we have a liberal arts requirement.’ Anyway, apparently this is not the same Kang who met Kirk in ‘Day of the Dove’ or who turns out to be BFFs with Dax. Just in case you were worried.
• urgh this guy is such an enormous toolkit
• he’s reminding me so much of fuckin’ Ira Graves, the same thing with a naïve young woman with no experience off her own world, and his fuckin’ beard
• at least he shows a flicker of humility in acknowledging that he doesn’t know why Nidell loves him (or loved him) (or said she loved him). I DON’T KNOW EITHER, PAL.
• wow Dax, you’re all business; you could shake hands before getting out your tricorder
• Has Nidell OD’d on something?
• FENNA – I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN
• like Fenna is such a big villain
• FENNA WORKS EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AS THE MOONLIGHT KNIGHT IN SAILOR MOON R!
• What is this supposed to mean? ‘Halanans mate for life. She can never leave me, no matter how much she might want to.’ Is divorce not allowed in Halanan culture? Would Nidell not be allowed to go home to start over? Or are they suggesting that there’s some survival-based reason why she can’t separate from her husband, who is not, after all, a Halanan himself? This just sounds like a bullshit hand-wave line that was thrown in because they’d decided to get rid of the abusive husband angle. If Seyetik actually wanted to make Nidell happy, he could divorce her, or, and I realise Star Trek wouldn’t actually go there, they could agree to have an open marriage so she could also be with someone who makes her happy – or just be by herself! I mean, there’s no reason why she actually has to travel everywhere with him, is there? If the ‘years of togetherness’ are the problem, spend time apart! You can do that! You totally have options!
• But no! Instead, Seyetik decides that the way to put things right is to COMMIT SUICIDE! JESUS CHRIST, this episode is MENTAL and he is MENTAL!
• and I hate, hate, HATE how Nidell is not allowed by the script to be AWARE of any of this, to have a CHOICE about any of this! The story is all about the feelings and choices of the MEN, about Sisko and Seyetik, and she’s just turned into an object, an irrational psychic dreaming woman, while Fenna who at least displays some agency and some wishes of her own is just a figment!
• And Nidell is allowed no realistic reaction to the fact that her husband, who she did apparently love in the beginning, killed himself in front of an audience to set her ‘free’ and oh, incidentally, burden her with enormous guilt for the rest of her life – and if this ‘mating for life’ thing holds true then she still can’t ever be with anyone else, just be a widow until she dies. There is no emotional truth in this ending!
• YOU DO NOT NEED TO APOLOGISE TO SISKO FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO REMEMBER HOW FENNA FELT ABOUT HIM.
• ‘I can remember for both of us.’ Yeah, I liked that line better when it was Lal telling Data ‘I will feel it for both of us.’
• She was NOT ‘just like you’! She looked like you but she didn’t act like you or dress like you or do her hair like you! And those were the only attributes she was allowed to have!
• THIS EPISODE IS FUCKED UP. That is my final word on the matter.

Memory Alpha says: Data makes contact with a young girl from a pre-warp civilization on a planet facing imminent annihilation. The Enterprise must wrestle with the moral dilemma of violating the Prime Directive or standing by while Data’s friend dies. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

I just sneezed and now everything smells funny.

Okay, whatever that was about: this episode is one of those ones that makes you think how absolutely weird it is that Data is not only a Starfleet officer, but is considered mature and competent enough as a Starfleet officer to be third in command of the Federation flagship, and yet nobody seems to have any real cognitive dissonance about how much like a young child he behaves in this story. Data was, what? Twenty-eight or nine by now? It makes sense for him to have an odd way of looking at the world, but not for him to completely overlook the number one rule of his job just because he was curious. Innocent and naïve, yes, but this goes beyond innocence into tomfoolery. Meanwhile we see an actual child, Wesley Crusher, being put in charge of adult officers.

Also, this episode is about the Prime Directive, so it’s going to be annoying. Here we go.

• They’re going to investigate some geology!
• ‘These planets live fast and die hard. The question is, why?’ Because they’re rebels, man.
• Riker gives no reason for believing that the shattered planet wasn’t blown up by space jerks. True, it wasn’t, but that type of thing does happen in this show sometimes so it’s not silly of Worf to wonder.
• Meanwhile, Picard is going riding, and for no reason I can discern, Deanna is hanging out with him at the same time (even though she doesn’t want to try riding, just to watch him). I wish Beverly were here; this could have been a nice scene for the two of them.
• There’s a weird exchange as Picard says that the Arabs believed Allah gathered the south wind and made the horse, and Deanna says ‘On the holodeck we’ve made that legend come true.’ Which… what on earth does that mean? Just that the holodeck can make a horse appear out of thin air? Because holodecks don’t involve wind or gods as far as I can tell. What is Deanna saying? WITH OUR TECHNOLOGY WE ARE AS GODS? Later in this episode she’ll be arguing against hubris. I’m just sayin’.
• As they go into the holodeck the conversation only gets weirder:
  Troi: So you like horses for the romance?
  Picard: It goes deeper than that. A fine war mare would sleep in a Bedouin’s tent, carry him into battle, feed his children with her milk. There’s a bond which is created by mutual need. (to the horse) Hello, beautiful.
  Maybe it’s lucky Bev isn’t here; she’d feel she couldn’t compete. She hasn’t lactated in years.
• Now this episode was written by Melinda Snodgrass, who was also responsible for the excellent ‘Measure of a Man,’ and who included the horse scenes basically because she loves horses. I do like showing another hobby for Picard, and I do like his special outfit for the occasion (he’s wearing a cardigan! Yessssss!) – but this dialogue really is peculiar.
• And she says ‘You don’t want the comfort of a pet, you want a companion.’ Which… does Melinda Snodgrass have pets? Pets are companions. That’s why they’re sometimes called ‘companion animals.’ And honestly, it still sounds to me like Picard wants a wife. Just… a wife that he can feed sugarlumps, and curry-comb.
• In fairness, the horse in this scene is a very pretty horse. It has nice pointy ears.
• Did… Lwaxana get rid of Deanna’s kitten? She looks so sad thinking about it. That’s kind of horrible.
• Anyway, Interrupting Riker interrupts Picard just before he can get his leg over.
• They see a planet going right to heck, nobody knows why, and then there’s a conversation in the conference lounge where the biggest thing all these adults are focused on is Wesley, Wesley, Wesley. Because Riker thinks it would be a great learning experience for Wesley to lead the mineral survey team to study the Heck Planet. It just seems too weird to me to put a boy in his mid-teens in charge of grown-up scientists purely because he’s smart and ambitious. And there are sword metaphors, and it’s like they’re all trying to prepare Wesley to be King one day. (I think someone has to pull him out of a stone.)
• I do like how when Wes goes into the lounge and sees all the grown-ups sitting there looking at him, he has a momentary look of guilt and panic, as if he’s wondering how he screwed up and how much they’re going to yell at him. But of course, since Wesley bears a charmed life, nothing of the kind ensues, although Picard squelches him slightly when he seems too excited.
• Meanwhile on the bridge, Data is fiddling around with one of the workstations. He has part of its guts open, and he keeps a much messier workspace than I would have expected – isolinear chips are scattered over the floor, where people could step on them, and not in any sort of order to help put them back in the right places. I mean, I’m a messy person so I don’t really know, but doesn’t Data seem like the type to put things in neat lines and stacks without even thinking about it?
• And sure enough, after discussing the technobabble he’s doing, Worf accidentally steps on some of the mess, which is strewn clear across to the back of the wooden horseshoe. He gives Data a Look that’s equal parts ‘For God’s sake Data’ and ‘was that important?’ Data says he’ll be moving the junk to his quarters, Worf says ‘GOOD’ and Data turns back to his work with an odd little face as if Worf intimidated him for a moment there. At least he didn’t BEGONE you again.
• Super awkward transition into a scene where Riker and Deanna are walking together; she giggles, as if he just said something funny, but if he did, there was quite a pause before she reacted. I almost prefer to read it as ‘Deanna giggled at nothing.’ Perhaps at the memory of Picard wanting a horse wife.
• Boring walk-and-talk about Wesley’s responsibilities. It’s very bland. At least Wesley does seem to be humanly daunted by a managerial role. He asks what to do about personality conflicts, and Riker says ‘Completely irrelevant! These people are professionals. If there’s a personality conflict, you’re in charge, you settle it.’ He says nothing about how. Then, a dullish scene with Wesley and some science guy called Ensign Davies who doesn’t like married couples to work together (why???). Davies is doing some fantastic Fake Science that involves destroying rocks in a glass tube. I actually don’t believe he has any scientific justification for this; he’s just having fun. He offers to take over for Wesley if he can’t cope, which is both kind and slightly underminey.
• In his quarters, Data is still fiddling with the ship’s sensors (he’s trying to make them super-duper sensitive and accurate). Because he is a little gentleman, he follows most instructions to the computer with ‘please.’ After further adjustments, including the characteristic TV use of ‘enhance’ to make something illegible or inaudible magically come into a usable resolution, he picks up a faint, tinny little voice asking ‘Is anybody out there?’ Looking surprised and pleased, he answers ‘Yes.’
• Odd corridor shot whose low angle seems intended to draw attention to Wesley’s thin grey legs. He’s jittering around outside the room where his team are waiting for him. Dr Pulaski is encouraging and nice to him.
• And suddenly, it’s six weeks later! Six weeks of poozing around this solar system, finding that the same weird shit is happening to all the planets. What are the odds? I think Team Wesley are getting a bit bored and feeling tempted to do a half-assed job, because they pooh-pooh his wish to do some more thorough testing, and Davies undermines him again, implying that if Wesley were a good officer he would agree with him that the test is a waste of time.
• Data goes to see Picard, who is riding his horse in the holodeck, just to make the most of the fact that they rented a really pretty horse and did an outdoor location shoot for this week’s show. I kind of like to think that he’s been doing little else for the past six weeks: drinking tea, riding horses, reading books. Oddly, Data says he has been talking to his little ham radio correspondent, Sarjenka, for eight weeks. Picard’s eloquent response to hearing that Sarjenka’s people don’t know about interstellar life: ‘Oops.’ However, he really doesn’t get cross with Data at all, which you’d think he might, given that Data has been carrying on like this for two months (or a month and a half, depending on who you believe) before mentioning it to anyone. It’s an incredibly silly thing for an adult and a senior officer to have done.
• How have Sarjenka and Data managed to have frequent conversations for over a month with Data keeping his real identity and location ‘somewhat vague’ but without Sarjenka getting fed up with that and demanding that he tell her something? Do they only talk about her life? Do Sarjenka’s parents know she’s talking to adults on her radio? Do they not have the concept of ‘dodgy people’ on her planet? I know we didn’t have the concept of ‘Internet predator’ when this episode was made, but it was an absolute boom time for ‘stranger danger’ fears.
• How did Data find out that Sarjenka is humanoid, anyway? Has he been asking questions like ‘How many limbs do you have? Mm-hm. How about heads?’
• Anyway, Data hopes that there might be some way to save Sarjenka’s planet without violating the Prime Directive. I love Picard’s equestrian cardigan so much. He is wearing a cardigan over a sweater. He must be toasty warm! Picard agrees to have a staff meeting about it, but tells Data he has to stop talking to the kid.
• In Ten Forward, Wesley interrupts Riker on a date to ask for his advice about Davies the Underminer. Because everyone on the Enterprise is unfailingly kind, patient and encouraging to Wesley, even when he totally cockblocks them, Riker takes time to talk about it and delivers the perfect advice for all situations: ‘It’s important to ask yourself one question. What would Picard do?’
• Oh, and when Riker excused himself from his date to talk to Wesley, he said ‘Family emergency.’ Okay, that was adorable.
• In a nice bit of continuity, Wesley harks back to his big fear from the psych test: what if somebody dies because he makes a mistake? Not that he expects anyone to die if he fucks up in a mineral survey, but this is what underlies all his doubts about his own judgement and authority. Anyway, Wesley decides he’s going to tell Davies to run the goddamn test like he wanted. So he goes and tells him firmly and Davies is like ‘You got it!’ because all you have to do is belieeeeeeeve in yourself.
• Everyone gets together to have a big old Star Trek debate – oddly, in Picard’s quarters, not the conference room. I’m on Geordi (I know!) and Pulaski’s side: we shouldn’t let people die if we can help them. Worf is like ‘fuck ‘em, we’ve got a rule.’ The argument I find most irritating and beside the point is advanced by Riker and Troi, that there might be a ‘cosmic plan’ that we shouldn’t interfere with, because it would be ‘hubris.’ Since we don’t know if there’s a cosmic plan and can’t know if there’s a cosmic plan, I think we morally have to proceed as if there is none and how things turn out is up to us. Agnostic ethics.
• This next bit from Picard strikes me as odd. ‘How about a war? If generations of conflict is killing millions, do we interfere? Ah, well, now we’re all a little less secure in our moral certitude. And what if it’s not just killings. If an oppressive government is enslaving millions? You see, the Prime Directive has many different functions, not the least of which is to protect us. To prevent us from allowing our emotions to overwhelm our judgement.’
• But… why does that change matters? Because intervening to stop a war or oust an oppressive government would involve taking sides, and you might misread the situation and choose what turned out to be the wrong one? Or you might think you were making a difference but really only perpetuate the status quo, like Tintin and the Picaros? Or you might just find yourself bogged down in a situation from which you can’t withdraw, because your presence is always needed to prevent the original conflict arising again? Or is it because by intervening you would deprive the people of the troubled world of their free will and the achievement of solving the problem themselves? Picard’s lines seem to assume that the drawback is obvious, but it’s not to me.
• Anyway, Pulaski says ‘My emotions are involved. Data’s friend is going to die. That means something.’ Anyone who thinks she didn’t like him can just stick that in their pipe and smoke it. Pulaski frickin’ loves Data. ‘To Data,’ mutters Worf, and Pulaski, oddly, replies ‘Does that invalidate the emotion?’ Does she mean her emotion or is she ascribing one to Data?
• The debate turns to whether they could consider Sarjenka’s expressions of fear and concern about what’s happening to her planet as a distress signal, and stalls. Data gets up and asks ‘We are going to allow her to die, are we not?’ Picard, evidently feeling like a giant heel, tells him to ‘sever the contact’ with Sarjenka’s planet.
• And here’s something interesting. I would very, very much like to know whether Data did this deliberately, if he can be that manipulative (in this case, in a good cause, but still, this is some sneaky shit if it’s on purpose). He goes to a control panel behind Picard’s desk and starts pushing buttons, and oops! instead of just cutting off the connection, it plays Sarjenka’s voice to the room (conveniently, she is apparently trying to send Data a message right at this moment, unless of course he’s playing part of a message he recorded earlier), pleading for her friend to talk to her, because she’s afraid.
• Data used Tug at Heartstrings. It’s super effective!  As always with Picard. They’re going to look for a way to save Sarjenka.
• Staff meeting, and of course that extra test Wesley ordered is just what it took to establish what’s really going on with the planets. It’s something to do with dilithium and that’s all you’ll get out of me. Apparently Sarjenka’s planet is more loaded with dilithium than any other known world (nobody, of course, talks about the possibility of mining the place to fuel all their dilithium-hungry starships, but you’d think it would go on the ‘To Do Someday Maybe’ list). Alans and Hildebrandt, the married couple, finish each other’s sentences as they explain how it works, which is a nice touch. They think they’ve got a way to stop the planet dying, but they have to do some more figurin’ to make sure. Picard and Riker talk about Data’s efforts to find the safest location on the planet, and Picard gives permission for Data to take Sarjenka there. The thing is, if Sarjenka survived because Data managed to get her somewhere safe but her family and all her friends and their whole community died, well, what then? He’d have himself a very traumatised, shell-shocked new adopted daughter.
• Anyway, Data can’t get hold of Sarjenka because of atmospheric activity planetside. The Enterprise is going to shoot thingies into the planet’s crust to fix the dilithium problem. (Never mind what native geologists or miners who later discover them might make of it.) In comes Data to swing on Picard’s heartstrings again, pleading to be allowed to go to the surface to check on Sarjenka personally. And of course it works, because Picard is the biggest sucker where Data and his Earnest Innocent Slightly Sad Face are concerned. I think next Data should ask for a pony.
• In the transporter room, Riker and O’Brien have some snappy patter about O’Brien ‘taking a nap’ while Riker and Data blatantly violate the Prime Directive. Of course O’Brien is fine with this; he’ll do the same for Tosk one day.
• I feel I should pause to take in the set of Sarjenka’s home. Interestingly, either Sarjenka has a huge bedroom or her radio set is right in the family living room – so I guess her parents were around and able to hear her conversations with Data (and anyone else she made contact with – I mean, I presume there are other radio hams on this planet).
• It pretty much looks like Hell outside and Data’s hair gets blown around when he opens the (nifty, force-fieldy) door. So he goes back inside and… looks at a sculpture.
• While he’s doing that, Sarjenka comes running in and goes straight to try and pick up the radio set – which the prop people have built to look completely non-portable and too heavy for a kid to lift.
• Data calls out to her and she initially scurries away, but comes back when he identifies himself. This is a bit that always feels weird to me, not because I feel she should automatically be afraid of him, but because I, as a kid, would have been so disappointed to see that my mysterious pen-pal was just a grown-up. Takes all the magic out of it somehow. All right, there are a few grown-ups who would be exceptions, like the Doctor or Mary Poppins, but still. Well, maybe he told her from the beginning that he was an adult, so this doesn’t come as a surprise. Still, because we didn’t get to see the development of their friendship, it’s hard to know how to read the dynamic between the two of them.
• Sarjenka reaches up to Data’s shoulders and passes her hands down his arms, as if she’s sort of admiring and marvelling at him, but doesn’t try to hug him (realistically, they had to limit physical contact between the two actors because their makeup would rub off on each other, and Sarjenka had these silly prosthetic finger-extensions on that look like carrot sticks). They do hold both each other’s hands, though, which is rather sweet. Sarjenka also has some kind of chipmunk electronic filter on her voice – I had hoped that was just how she sounded on the radio through interference.
• Anyway, somewhere Sarjenka’s parents must be out of their minds with fear and worry, because they’d already evacuated from their house, but she’s snuck away and come back to get her radio so she can still talk to Data! Jesus, Sarjenka! Okay, it is believable kid reasoning, but her poor parents don’t even know where she is. Well, that makes up Data’s mind – he’s taking Sarjenka home with him.
• If you give Data an inch he will take a frickin’ mile.
• O’Brien! Don’t call little girls ‘that’ just because they have carrot fingers! No wonder Sarjenka doesn’t want to be left with you.
• On the bridge, Picard is pacing, waiting for it to be time to launch the magic solution devices, and Riker is hugging his own pecs, like he does. When Data arrives with Sarjenka, Picard turns to Riker like he’s too mad to even look at Data right now, and mutters ‘He has brought a child onto my ship –  and on my bridge.’ I honestly think the fact that Sarjenka’s a kid bothers him more than the fact that she’s here in, you know, FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE PRIME DIRECTIVE.
• Picard tells Deanna to take Sarjenka to sickbay, and Sarjenka, who let’s not forget has been abducted by aliens, understandably freaks out at the strange lady trying to take her away from the only person she knows here. Unfortunately, she holds her hands up defensively in a way that lets us get a really good look at those stupid-looking carrot fingers. Deanna even tries to bribe her with a treat – that’s what strangers always try! Data manages to calm her down and to get permission to keep her with him on the bridge, and permission to stay up late and eat ice-cream whenever he feels like it. Or, you know, something an android might actually want but not normally be allowed. Smoke his pipe on the bridge?
• As Data sits down at his workstation, he very sweetly asks Sarjenka for his hand back. She sticks close to him and watches as the aliens apparently shoot balls of light at her planet. But as Data explains, it’s all benign. And of course it works, incredibly quickly, because Wesley did such a darn good job. Wesley is totally stoked (although nobody says anything about it to him – he doesn’t even get a pat on the back or a Special Manly Shoulder Squeeze from Riker).
• Data tells Sarjenka ‘Your parents will be safe now’ (he doesn’t mention her brothers, though she asked after them too a moment ago!) and she asks ‘You did this for me?’ Perhaps to forestall her developing an overblown sense of her own importance, Data calls up a view of the planet on the big screen, and tells her ‘There is your home.’ She steps slowly forward, gazing at it in wonder.
• Picard, who is sitting up the back with a face like thunder, tells Data to take his pet kid to sickbay. After they leave, he goes into his ready room and comms Pulaski, telling her ‘Data and the alien’ are on their way to her and asking her to wipe Sarjenka’s memories of ever communicating with Data. Pulaski says she can do this ‘assuming her brain structure is similar to ours.’ Which is assuming a lot for a person with carrot fingers.
• Data and Sarjenka walk hand in hand down the corridor, talking about the ship. Oddly, he encourages her to think that she could serve on the Enterprise when she grows up. When they get to sickbay, the cheeky monkey immediately picks up an ornament from Pulaski’s desk and asks about it. It makes a faintly annoying chiming tone as Pulaski explains it’s a ‘singer stone’ that produces a different song for each person that holds it. When Sarjenka asks Data about his song, he says it doesn’t produce one for him, and when she asks why, he says ‘Because I am a machine’ in a tone of mild surprise, like, you know that Sarjenka. Seriously? Either he has told Sarjenka before now that he’s a machine, or right now, she has absolutely no follow-up questions about that bombshell.
• Anyway, Data lifts Sarjenka onto a bed and Dr Pulaski puts her under. Data has his doubts about the rightness of wiping Sarjenka’s memories, because he hated it when that happened to Donna Noble. Pulaski justifies it as protecting Sarjenka as well as them, because it would ‘complicate her future’ to remember the time she was abducted by aliens. I’ll say.
• But look, they don’t have access to Sarjenka’s parents, so what is Sarjenka supposed to think when everything has calmed down and one day her mum or dad says ‘Have you heard anything from your friend Data recently, dear?’ Or her brothers tease her about her pretend boyfriend and ask if he pretend dumped her? Did they know about him or not? Do Data and Pulaski even think about this possibility? Maybe Data does think about this possibility and decides to keep quiet about it, and maybe he does want to give Sarjenka the chance to remember him (no matter how this might ‘complicate’ her life), because when he takes her, still sleeping, back to her home, he tucks the singing stone into her hand before he leaves her. For an episode that’s supposed to focus on Data’s innocence, that is some sneaky shit right there.
• You know, I hope if Data and Sarjenka are ever reunited one day, maybe because some other interstellar power tries to occupy her dilithium-rich planet and mine the hell out of it and the Federation is forced to intervene openly before it gets all Avatar down there, it turns out she was just going through some kind of larval stage and those carrot fingers withered and dropped off. They make her look like an aye-aye that’s been eating Cheetos. I’m not even going to get into her forehead or her hair. That’s larval hair if ever I saw it.
• On the bridge, Riker offers Wesley a sit in the Big Swivelly Chair, but Wesley humbly declines. Riker tells him he did a good job and he’s proud of him. No hug or Special Shoulder Squeeze though. Data crosses the room behind them, on his way to Picard’s office, and I think it would have been nice if he had spoken to Wesley too. I mean, if it weren’t for Wesley, it wouldn’t have been possible to save Sarjenka. Maybe they just couldn’t find time for it, but a quick ‘Thank you, Wes’ wouldn’t take long.
• Data goes to apologise to Picard – perhaps realising that he has pushed his luck pretty far this week – but of course Picard is nothing but patient and kind and forgiving. And now that Sarjenka is safely the hell off his ship, he refers to her by name. Picard ties up the episode a little bit tritely, telling Data that this experience has brought him closer to understanding humanity.
• Yes. Here’s what Data now understands about humans: they are suckers for pathos and will let you get away with pretty much anything as long as you are cute. If Lore had understood this, he would’ve been unstoppable.

Memory Alpha says: When Commander Riker is offered command of the starship Aries, his estranged father, Kyle Riker, is sent by Starfleet to brief him on the mission. Meanwhile, Data, La Forge, Dr. Pulaski, Wesley, and O’Brien help Worf celebrate the anniversary of his Rite of Ascension.

My Review

Going into this, I expect to be vastly more entertained by the Worf B-plot. The director of this episode noted that the A-plot about Riker and his dad was kind of a damp squib because, at this stage, Roddenberry was still really pushing the idea that by the 24th Century, humans have just grown beyond stuff like grief and resentment and Daddy Issues, a.k.a. all the best stuff for character conflict (and the entire basis of Lost, no wait, that was ultimately about Mommy Issues… and bunnies). Also, the thought of Data, Geordi, Pulaski, Wesley and O’Brien all being involved in some of Worf’s Klingon issues just makes me smile in anticipation. Awkward people UNITE.

• Why does nobody want to use any of Data’s ideas? Oh, okay, Picard just really wants to go to Starbase Montgomery.
• And do you think Data was actually trying to protect Geordi’s ego or reputation by proposing a plan that let them solve the problem without outside help, or is that an idea a little too sophisticated to have occurred to him? Perhaps he just thinks it’s more efficient – particularly as he doesn’t expect this to be a big problem anyway.
• Oy, again with the manual docking we’re supposed to believe Riker did such a great job on. Data and O’Brien did all the work. He didn’t touch anything!
• And the reason Picard really wants to go to Starbase Montgomery is that Riker has been offered what actually sounds like a somewhat shitty job. Yes, it sounds cool to get the command of a starship (a little more badass if it were called Ares than Aries), but what it actually means is spending months in full warp, hauling ass out to the middle of nowhere, in order to check out a possibility of intelligent life that might not be there after all. If the Aries doesn’t have holodecks or at least an array of fascinating and sexy colleagues to have mutually damaging affairs with, it’s going to be dreadfully boring.
• I’m also somewhat confused about whether Riker’s going to rendezvous with the Aries and then head out to Vega-Omicron, or if the Aries is waiting in V-O and he’s going to have to go and join her on board another ship. Like, will another ship have to go all that way out of its way just to deliver Riker? Will Riker have to go on his own in a runabout (well, a mini ship, runabouts hadn’t been invented yet)? Ha ha I like getting to start a sentence with ‘Will Riker’ where ‘will’ is a verb.
• Picard assumes Riker will take the job, even though staying on the Enterprise sounds like much more fun (and more prestigious) to me. But what do I know? Perhaps this is the red-onesie equivalent of ‘frontier medicine.’
• So a civilian advisor on the ass end of V-O (if it’s so distant and we’re not sure what’s out there, how can he have any expertise?) beams on board and AW SHIT it’s Riker’s dad Kyle, the one who always made him cook the eggs, and Riker is like FUCK YOU OLD MAN only much more coldly polite. Kyle tells him that he’s done well and he’s proud of him, but it cuts no ice. Riker just stalks out and won’t even show him to his room.
• AIEE Riker’s dad was Greg’s dad on Dharma and Greg! I loved Greg’s dad! Wow, he did not age very visibly in between this and that, apart from his hair whitening.
• Next up, the Enterprise gossip machine is already kicking into gear, as Wesley ambushes Worf in the corridor and talks his ear off about OMG RIKER’S SURPRISE DAD, while Worf gets increasingly growly and repressive. Wesley is like YAY DADS and Worf is like CAN WE NOT TALK ABOUT DADS GOSH and neither of them has a dad and let’s just remember Picard is everyone’s dad. Worf bites Wesley’s head off.
• I guess the transporter room tech blabbed within seconds of the Rikers leaving his station? Earlier I got the impression that Picard taking Riker aside to the conference room was because he wanted to tell him about the promotion in confidence, so he could make up his mind without any pressure, positive or negative, from the rest of the staff. Which makes sense. He needs to think it over carefully without anyone going GO FOR IT GO FOR IT or BAWWWW STAY HERE WITH US WE LOVE YOU AND YOUR TREETRUNK LEGS AND SMILEY EYES. But it’s just the next scene, with only a short lapse of time implied, and everyone seems to know everything, right down to the cabin boy. You know what loose lips do to ships, people.
• In Engineering, Geordi has more help than he wants. Basically he and Data could have fixed this together, I think, but the place is full of extra nerds and it’s spoiled their BFF time. Wesley comes in all bummed out and headless, and calls Worf ‘really eccentric at times.’ ‘That’s one word for it,’ says Geordi, because I don’t think they were allowed to use ‘bitchy’ in their timeslot. Geordi thinks Worf is just sad about Riker leaving (because this is how he feels himself), but Wesley thinks there’s something more to it – no shit, son, you think it could be something about DADS?
• In Ten Forward, Pulaski is being a hit with the ladies at the bar and, for reasons I am not sure about, O’Brien and Riker are sitting at a table together. Riker is sitting there moodily petting his coffee cup while O’Brien tries to guess what’s bothering him. I sort of want to pinch him for his first guess being ‘Female?’ You couldn’t say ‘A woman’? (I object to being referred to as ‘a female’ because to me, that sounds like a female animal. I’m a woman; sometimes I also double as a lady or a girl.)
• I’m just trying to imagine how this scene started before we joined them; did Riker join O’Brien at his table and just sit there sighing like ASK ME WHAT’S WRONG, or did O’Brien see Riker moping and go over to try to cheer him up?
• And then, just to ruin Riker’s life a little more, it turns out two dudes in the bar know his dad and Pulaski at some stage nailed him. Kyle makes a joke about her baking him a cake, like dang, this dude always expects other people to cook for him. Diana Muldaur looks pretty foxy in this scene. She is well lit.
• In Engineering, Wesley is still fretting about bitchy Worf, although he describes his behaviour a little oddly, saying he was ‘completely unaffected’ by all the dad business. If the scene had been played with Worf acting cold and aloof, sure, but he growled and yelled.
• Data points out that Klingons are pretty grumpy just as a baseline, but ‘Worf has been unusually out of sorts.’ Geordi is kind of dismissive of the whole thing, because Geordi kind of hates emotions. Team Nerd agree that they’re going to try to figure out what crawled up Worf’s butt, but it’s Wesley’s job to observe him for clues. Perhaps Data will lend him a magnifying glass.
• Back in Ten Forward, it seems that Kyle is a civilian contractor and until recently has been working in Japan, doing battle strategies (?). Riker goes over just long enough to make it clear he’s in a huff – with both of them now. He says to Pulaski, ‘You never told me you knew him’ and she replies ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a secret. It just never really came up.’ Well, not in a non-awkward way. How would you have felt if, last week at your breakfast party, she was like ‘And by the way, I have also had breakfast with your dad, if you know what I mean’?
• The main point of this next little exchange is that Pulaski has been married and divorced three times, but (somehow) is still friends with all her ex-husbands. I don’t know if this is supposed to be evidence of advances in human relationships, or just that Pulaski is pretty awesome and easy-going. She calls Kyle ‘crusty’ but also says that she loves him.
• Meanwhile Geordi and Data are lurking and watching Worf, who is lurking and watching the stars. Even though they told Wesley it was up to him to keep tabs on Worf, he’s evidently manipulated Data into doing it for him by claiming he had to do homework. Data: ‘But he needs his study time!’ Geordi: ‘I can’t believe you fell for that.’ Well… note that because Data asked you to come and do this, here you are. Also, if situations like this annoy you, you have yourself to blame for palling around with teenagers and adorable androids.
• Geordi is still in ‘there’s nothing wrong with Worf’ mode, but as Data points out, since Worf is just standing there by himself, they can’t really observe any unusual behaviour.
• Geordi: Good point. Let’s not tamper with the status quo.
  Data: But that would defeat the opportunity for our behavioural research. In all probability, he is simply lonely. We can relieve his anxiety through socialisation.
  Geordi: Be my guest.
  I think the scene is supposed to be presenting Geordi as having a better reading of the situation than Data, because Data gets his head bitten off too, but I can’t help perceiving it as Data being kind and sweet and Geordi just not caring very much. Yes, Data’s attempt to approach Worf is clumsy, because he tells him he and the other nerds have been talking about him, but he’s just such a dear saying ‘You have friends here. We (looks briefly back to Geordi, as if considering whether this is the right pronoun?) – we care about you.’
• Anyway Worf tells him to BEGONE. He begoes.
• Do they just not want to bother Deanna with this, or something? I don’t mean Worf would react any better to her getting into his business, but the writer seems to have forgotten there’s a counsellor on the ship, and as Worf’s superior, Data could refer him to her (or vice versa). Oh well. Nothing wrong with watching the ships’ dorks try to solve emotional problems that they fundamentally don’t understand (Data because he’s Data, Wesley because he’s a kid and Geordi because have I mentioned I don’t think Geordi likes feelings?)
• Data: He seems quite sincere in his desire for solitude.
  Geordi: Seeing is believing, huh?
  
• We see what you did there, blind guy.
• SEE what you did there!
• oh how I laughed
• Riker is still moping, over his old photos now, including a not-terribly-believable (early Photoshop? Wikipedia says it was in development around the time TNG started but wasn’t released until 1990) one of his dad stiffly posing with him as a kid.
• Perhaps smarting from the fact that the nerds have been pitying him, Worf seeks solace with a fellow jock. Because Worf isn’t quite sure how to talk about his problem, they have an adorably awkward exchange about one of Riker’s childhood snapshots: ‘That is a fish you are holding.’ Riker explains that he didn’t really catch it – he hooked it, but then his dad insisted on reeling it in, because he thought he’d fuck up. (He also told him ‘Don’t choose, Will, don’t decide. You don’t want to be a hero. You don’t want to try and save everyone because when you fail… you just don’t have what it takes. And your eggs? Are rubbery.’)
• Anyway, Worf asks Riker to take him with him on the Aries, because he hopes there’ll be fighting and there’ll be a chance for him ‘to die a true hero.’ Okay that is pretty close to suicidal ideation and I really think someone should mention to Deanna that Worf is not doing well.
• Conference room, Riker is all frosty and calling his father ‘sir,’ all the information Kyle needs to give him is on a USB, Kyle tries to excuse being a shitty distant father by claiming ‘It’s a funny thing about being a parent. There aren’t any tech manuals. No quick readouts to get you to the next set of variables. You just got to wing it from day to day.’ Excuse you, even in 1988 there were stacks of books about parenting. You do have to read a lot of different ones to find all the bits you need for your particular weirdo kid, and you do have to exercise a lot of critical thinking and judgement to discern which bits those are, but come on. You didn’t even try reading Dr Spock? Or did you think that would be all about suppressing your emotions and playing the lute?
• Kyle wants to reconcile before his son goes off to the ass end of the galaxy, Will is having none of it. So Kyle goes to sickbay to bother his ex-girlfriend, because it is the Riker Way to keep an ex-girlfriend handy for when you’re at a loose end.
• Pulaski makes chicken soup? Nice. Deanna finally shows her face in this episode, with a crashingly awful line, ‘Doctor Pulaski’s greatest medical skill is her empathy.’ Look, yes, empathy is an absolutely necessary quality for a doctor to have, but I think it’s a social skill, not a medical one. That’s just naff, especially considering the huge amount doctors learn about anatomy and pathology and diagnosis and STUFF. But then, I understand why Deanna would think it was high praise. Anyway, Kate has summoned her to handle Kyle, because, as she awesomely says, ‘Deanna’s job is to keep us from deluding ourselves.’ She excuses herself to do ‘lab work’ (cooking soup).
• Kyle and Deanna have a really boring conversation, in the early stages of which he keeps hitting on her as a kind of defence mechanism. Deanna has another line that I disagree with, ‘Respect is earned, not bestowed.’ The problem with that line of thinking is that you end up with people refusing on principle to respect anyone else until they prove themselves. I think respect, at least at the beginning of a relationship, should be extended as a gesture of goodwill. We all owe others a certain basic level of respect (listening to them, taking them seriously) just because they’re people. If a father has lost his son’s respect over the course of their relationship, that’s a different issue. So she might have said something like ‘Respect, once lost, can’t just be given back.’
• Anyway, Riker finally gets to have a talk with his real daddy as Picard pops in to talk to him about the Aries. Apparently the first officer is an Irishman with a Babel Fish, because ‘he has this unique ability of instantaneously interpreting and extrapolating any verbal communication that he hears.’ Dude. Dude. That is exactly my desired superpower. Well, half of it, because I also want to be able to understand any language that I see. So Commander Flaherty is essentially better at learning and understanding alien languages than the incredibly powerful and adaptable Universal Translator software. We will never see or hear anything about this incredible savant again. He probably has at least one officially licensed novel about him though. Or would a character like that be too hard to write, like how it’s hard to write about a brilliant writer, because sooner or later you have to show your audience an example of his work and it has to be good enough to impress them more than your surrounding narrative?
• In a world where a malignant virus destroys the Universal Translator, one man can prevent Babel… becoming Hell.
• yes okay back to the actual episode, but I hope you read that in the voice of that one guy who always does the action-movie trailers.
• Riker’s crap dad intrudes and he and Will argue some more, concluding in the exchange,
  ‘I only want you to know I’m here if you need me.’
  ‘I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen. I can take care of myself.’
  ‘Please, spare me the pain of your childhood. I hung in for thirteen years. If that wasn’t enough, it’s just too bad.’
• THIRTEEN YEARS
• WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT
• NO PARENT COULD HAVE ENDURED YOUR PUBERTY
• (What was happening during the two years in between, before Riker gave up on their relationship but after his dad did? Lots of Alaskan juvenile delinquency – snowmobiling drunk and knocking up Palin girls?)
• Kyle Riker is officially a gaping asshole, by the way.
• In Engineering, Geordi is fretting about that computer problem that I thought wasn’t really a big problem (the episode can’t seem to make up its mind about this, and I think it’s trying to do that thing where the ship hangs around in one place for an unusual length of time because Geordi won’t take it out of park until it’s just right – even though there have been multiple references to spending a twelve-hour layover at Montgomery).
• Wesley bounds in to inform them that he knows what’s wrong with Worf – not because he got him to talk about it, but because he read the Klingon Wiki. Basically it’s Worf’s Klingon birthday but he doesn’t have any Klingon friends to celebrate it in the appropriately Klingon way, so ‘Worf is feeling culturally and socially isolated.’
• Geordi, seriously, asks what they’re going to do about it because he doesn’t want to invite ‘a bunch of Klingons’ onto the ship. He somehow refrains from making any comments about how they smell or that ‘only top-of-the-line models can even talk.’ Geordi LaForge, gaping asshole number two. The only nice thing he says is ‘We’re his family.’ Just… his family who look down on his original family.
• So they decide to make a bunch of fake Klingons in the holodeck and throw Worf a surprise fake party! God I love these dorks. (I mean Data and Wesley.) This is so inept and disaster-courting, but I guess because it‘s TNG it’s going to work.
• Riker and Pulaski have a strange conversation in the course of which she basically says that, because his dad can’t be killed by Tholians, he ought to forgive and love him despite the fact that he bailed on him at the most vulnerable stage of his adolescence. I think she’s trying to imply that Kyle didn’t remarry because ‘he had other priorities’ meaning Will, but he bailed on Will when he was thirteen. He did not make his son a priority! A parent does not have a right to give up on a kid that age, even if he’s a frickin’ psychopath – which Will was not. I can buy that he was unruly as a kid but he is a basically nice and mentally sound person, as everyone in Starfleet except admirals is required to be. And if Kyle had remarried, if he chose his wife well that could have made Will’s life happier. The dates don’t work, but just think what a fine stepmother Pulaski would’ve made.
• Over in the B-plot, the nerds are planning Worf’s party, and Geordi keeps being a sarcastic little shit about how trashy the Klingons are and how weird their rituals. Data has to remind him about ohana. Why is painstik spelled without a c? Are the English ‘stick’ and Klingon ‘stik’ incredibly improbable cognates? If it’s an attempt to distract us from what a silly name ‘pain stick’ is, it’s not working. Anyway, Geordi seems to be uncomfortable with the idea of watching Worf get physically hurt, but I don’t really give him that much credit for it, because has he cared that Worf has been hurting emotionally this week? No. He hasn’t wanted to be bothered with it.
• Riker talks to his real daddy about what to do, and Picard says he can’t advise him, but tries to break down the situation for him: the Enterprise is super awesome but he is only second-in-command. The Aries is kind of shitty but he would be the boss there, ‘and being who you are, it will soon be vibrant with your authority, your style, your vision.’ Awwwwww. This is how you validate your kid, Kyle.
• In Engineering, I think the issue is that, although Geordi and Data were sure there’s nothing wrong with their ship, because Riker and Picard had doubts and asked the Montgomery people to take a look, Geordi is doubting his judgement and getting really antsy about others doubting it. (Is he cross with the Montgomery people or with his bosses for calling them in? The Enterprise does not have a good history with consultants – look at the Bynars, and that jackass Kosinski.) Data, gorgeously, remarks ‘If I were not a consummate professional, and an android, I would find this entire procedure insulting.’ This seems to make Geordi feel better. It is comforting to know that your best friend is the cutest thing ever, I suppose.
• Hey, it occurs to me; there’s plenty of talk in this episode about what it would be like for Riker to move on, but nobody talks about what it would be like on the Enterprise without him. Would Data be promoted, or would another Commander (like Shelby from ‘Best of Both Worlds’) transfer in to take his place? Data doesn’t even seem to be thinking about how the changes may affect him, because he’s too busy being supportive to Geordi and trying to help Worf. A) Data, sweetest little buddy ever, B) Data needs to look out for number one once in a while. This is why he’s not Number One, after all.
• Wesley invites O’Brien to Worf’s surprise party. Little does O’Brien know the precedent of involvement in Worf’s masochistic festivities this establishes.
• Riker goes to say goodbye to Troi, implying that he’s decided to go, and she acts all weird trying to hide her feelings and saying she can’t read his, and in the end she cries and probably gets snot and mascara all over his onesie. Interestingly, I think this is the first time we’ve seen a set for her consultation room. He either kisses her hair or takes a good deep whiff of it.
• Then Crap Dad and son have one more confrontation, and Will tells his dad to fuck off again, and they decide to settle this LIKE MEN, with a fight/game of something made up called ‘anbo-jyutsu.’ There’s a conversation between Crappy and Pulaski to let us know that THIS IS DANGEROUS, and frankly I’m just hoping Riker cripples his dad, because that would be great. I mean, they could rip off the bit of ‘Amok Time’ where Spock thinks he’s killed Kirk and is all ‘Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. / For nothing now can ever come to any good’ and then McCoy reveals Kirk was only mostly dead and Spock is all ‘JIM!’ *rainbows and kittens*
• I mean, Pulaski was basically cloned from McCoy, so why the hell not have her use one of his tricks as a way to reconcile father and son?
• Also, apparently the Rikers have been competing against each other in this dangerous martial art since Will was eight, and don’t you just know Kyle was a total Competitive Dad about it?
• In the holodeck, the nerds are getting the fake Klingon party set up, and O’Brien has some really disturbing anecdotes about cruelty to animals.
• For some reason, maybe because she had nothing whatever to do with setting it up, Deanna has been given the job of leading Worf to the holodeck (they couldn’t just be like ‘SECURITY TO HOLODECK 4!’?), and pretty much ruins the surprise by telling him they all know about his Age of Ascension. Worf says ‘That is impossible. It is a secret known only to Klingons.’ (Except… you guys wrote it down and stored the information on an accessible computer system, so no, no it is not a secret.) I think he kind of wants to kill Wesley. It’s lucky this doesn’t turn out to be the kind of secret where you have to kill outsiders if they find out about it, isn’t it? Or the kind where you feel hurt and violated when people pry into it without your permission?
• Anyway, they have a very masochistic running-the-gauntlet ritual where Worf gets his ass kicked (or, kind of, his nips tased) with painstiks, and at the end he thanks his friends… although I can’t help feeling he thanks them for the thought rather than for the reality, because while it’s great to know you have friends who will try to set up a fake Klingon pain party for you so you don’t have to feel homesick and crappy, it can also make you feel homesick and crappy that the best you can do is a fake Klingon pain party. At least the pain was real, even if the stiks weren’t! Nobody seems to know what to do at the end – clap?
• Now, although she led Worf to the holodeck, Deanna didn’t go in for the pain party. Pulaski, who was there and kind of grossed out by it, finds her afterwards in the conference room. I’m going to assume that Deanna preferred to sit it out because, for an empath, having to be in the room with Worf getting painstikked would’ve been pretty ghastly. The ladies link A-plot to B-plot by talking about how Worf’s ‘barbaric’ ritual isn’t so different from what Will and Kyle are about to do, and Deanna talks some gender-essentialist bullshit, saying ‘Human males are unique. Fathers continue to regard their sons as children, even into adulthood. And sons continue to chafe against what they perceive as their fathers’ expectations of them.’
• Deanna. Your mother calls you Little One and patronises the hell out of you even though you’re a grown-ass woman with a highly responsible job. And you chafe against what you perceive as her expectations of you like crazy. Don’t you remember ‘Haven’? That is not a male thing!
• And there’s this crap about ‘men never really grow up, that’s why we love them, it’s so cute’ and I’m like NO. As a feminist, NO. I believe men are better than that. Everyone retains some immature traits into adulthood, or sometimes regresses to childish behaviour, and everyone (barring certain mental illnesses and disabilities) is capable of rising above that when necessary. Yes, boyishness can be sweet and charming, but without manliness (mature and honourable qualities like courage, kindness, judgement, honesty) it’s utterly insipid.
• Apparently ‘anbo-jyutsu’ is ‘the ultimate evolution in the martial arts’ and involves dorky-looking plastic samurai armour and pugilsticks. (If you ever watched American Gladiators you remember those.) And you have to do it with a visor that makes you blind. Does Geordi do this? And some very poorly pronounced Japanese.
• Anyway, there’s a ‘cathartic’ fight and Kyle cheats and it turns out he’s been cheating since Will was twelve (so a year before he gave up on him). He says ‘I knew I couldn’t take you but I had to keep you interested, I had to keep you challenged, didn’t I?’ Please note that, in the course of ‘keeping his son challenged,’ he never once allowed him to win and feel good about it, even when he could have done so fair and square. And there’s some stuff about how Kyle’s grief for his wife made him distance himself from his son (he seems to have resented the fact that Will, the small child, didn’t recognise that Kyle’s grief was greater because Will ‘hardly knew her’? And never mind that she was his mother) and it’s not really well explained or psychologically convincing. And then it wraps up really really suddenly, like this:
  Kyle: You know, it’s funny. I can talk to a whole roomful of admirals about anything in the galaxy, but I can’t talk to you about how I feel.
  Will: How do you feel?
  Kyle: How do you think? I love you, son. I’ve got to get back to the Starbase.
  Will: I know. I’m glad you came.
  (huuuugs)
  Kyle: Be careful now, okay?
• AND THAT’S IT.
• I find it very interesting that Riker didn’t say ‘I love you too.’
• I like my ‘Amok Time’ rip-off idea so much better.
• Back on the bridge, you know how at the start of the episode Data said there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with the computer? There wasn’t anything seriously wrong with the computer. It just needed the adjustments which, again, Data suggested at the start of the episode. Data shrugs adorably. None of that stress on Geordi was necessary at all – although Picard considers it worthwhile because it gave them the twelve-hour layover in which Riker could make his decision. Apparently he has accepted the Aries post.
• But then Riker prances onto the bridge and asks to stay on the Enterprise after all. Now logically, this should follow from some realisation he had during the fight that was meant to be the climax of this episode and of his conflict with Kyle. Perhaps that his dad is a crappy person, and he can’t do anything about that, and it’s time to let go of his anger about it for his own sake, not Kyle’s; meanwhile here on the Enterprise he is surrounded by lovely people, a family with a good and loving father, and it would be crazy to leave them all just to have his own ship? But this doesn’t follow from anything that was said or done, not that I can see. Because there is so little time left in the episode, the only explanation he gives is ‘Motivated self-interest. Right now, the best place for me to be is here.’
• So who’s going to command the Aries now? Somewhere, is Commander Flaherty saying ‘Yes!’ in forty different languages?
• Further, it’s hard to see what ‘Icarus Factor’ there is in this story, other than ‘it’s about a father and son.’ Icarus was an adventurous boy who didn’t listen to his father’s safety warnings and died as a result. He’s a cautionary tale.
• Okay, next time we have one more TNG episode, ‘Pen Pals,’ in which we see that while Picard is a good daddy, he is a pushover when it comes to his little boy Data. Also, carrot fingers! After that it’ll be back to DS9.

Memory Alpha says: An attempt on Quark’s life re-opens a five-year-old murder investigation.

My Review

This is a lovely noir-tribute episode that focuses on Odo, and since René Auberjonois was pretty much the best actor in this show, you know it will be grand. (Not that I am slagging off any of the other actors, it’s a very strong cast – but it would be silly to pretend he isn’t outstanding.)

IT IS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. Let’s go.

• In fact, this opening scene is so gloriously stylised that I initially thought it was a holodeck game Quark was playing.
• This woman’s outfit! Her hair! Magnificent. Obvious strumpet.
• It’s strange to see an obviously rich Bajoran, but then, I suppose those who were willing to collaborate with the Cardassians could do quite well.
• You see, this is another scene in which Quark is played as very savvy and connected, in contrast with his relative naïveté in the previous episode. I’m going to have to keep an eye on this and decide for myself whether it’s an ongoing problem or just an effect of the character being ill-defined in the early stages of the show.
• This is also a scene in which I get the impression Armin Shimerman is enjoying himself.
• I do enjoy Odo being snotty. He’s being very snotty. Yes, we do like to keep records. I’m just happy to listen to his voice. GRAVEL.
• Okay, here is their first seeding of the idea that Rom is a technical savant, or at least a good lockpick.
• Actually, why does DS9 have a ‘night’? I mean, it just gives nefarious scalliwags like Rom and Quark an opportunity get up to monkeyshines like this.
• Aw, it’s pretty stationery. Is that a design of rainbows?
• Rom has a weird, weird walk. Oh well, it gets him out of the scene so Quark can get attacked by some shadowy Bajoran dude.
• URGENT DOCTORLY SHOUTING
• I love the fact that Odo knows the RofA better than Rom does. And, of course, it’s one that’s relevant to CRIME.
• ‘Constable, it’s his own brother!’ protests the Sisko, apparently having forgotten Rom’s earlier attempt to blow Quark out of an airlock.
• Cardassians have groats?
• ‘Ooooooh, irony of ironies!’ What a great awkward line.
• Do you think Odo and Sisko agreed before going into the bar on their Good Cop, Bad Cop act? And was it anything like my favourite variation on the theme, from Black Books?  ‘So I’m Nasty, you’re Nice, okay?’ ‘You’re not so bad.’
• THIS SHOP
• THIS SHOP IS AN IMPORTANT SHOP
• aaaaand flashback
• EVERYTHING IS GREY AND BLUE
• and DUKAT
• and BEATEN-DOWN UNHAPPY SCIENCE EXPERIMENT ODO.
• I know the Cardassian Neck Trick is supposed to be like the Noodle Incident, but damn it, I want to know.
• Say what you will about Gul Dukat, but the man gave Odo his vocation.
• I don’t have enough to say because I’m just so engaged by the Alaimo and the Auberjonois.
• IT’S THE DAME. But she hasn’t gone platinum blonde yet.
• I love all the grim industrial sound effects in the background and the smoky lighting, giving a completely different mood to the same sets. Do you think Chief O’Brien installed completely new lighting as part of moving into the station?
• COLUMBO MOVES from Odo. I have never seen any Columbo but I suspect I should. There was some discussion of how excellent it was in the most recent episode of QI (‘Imbroglio’) which piqued my curiosity. On the other hand the same panellist went on about loving George Formby, so you know, horses for courses.
• Look at Mrs Vatrik now trying to fake some tears because Odo has pointed out she should be crying.
• I had a completely undignified flip-out the first time I watched this episode, because Flashback Kira has total Belle Hair. Which makes Dukat into Gaston, and he does have the neck for it.
• EVERY LAST INCH OF ME’S COVERED IN SCAAAAAAAAAALES
• I am being distracted from Odo’s interrogation of Rom by the fact that my bitchy tsundere cat Pearl has decided she loves me and wants to lie in my lap and look at me adoringly. She does this from time to time and it’s just best to appreciate it when it happens.
• Is Odo actually using hypnotic regression here?
• well of course you would have tried to defend her, but would you actually have been able to protect her? realistically?
• SAD-EYED URCHINS
• BELLE HAIR
• AWKWARD OPENING LINE
• Odo, you sort of have a blinking sign over your head that says COP.
• his widow – the one over there giving you a blistering stink-eye
• he got the ginger tea from Quark! (indirectly) I like that link-up.
• aaaand origin of ‘constable.’ No indication of why that word occurred to her.
• fancy fancy dress and hairstyle. This woman must just FROLIC through her wardrobe in the mornings.
• YOU RECKONED WITHOUT A FANCY FEDERATION DOCTOR, DIDN’T YOU, MRS FEMME FATALE.
• COLUMBO MOVE
• I am doing such a rotten job with this episode and I really want to apologise for it. The thing is, episodes that are really engaging in and of themselves are sometimes harder to comment on. You just want to watch and listen, and there’s hardly anything to criticise or question; it just all fits together.
• Odo is just detecting all over the place! He’s so thrillingly competent.
• HISTORIC FIRST FRENEMY MEETING. Everyone’s heard about the fuckin’ neck trick.
• look at that jackass Quark trying to imply Kira put out; look at Odo getting all GROWR about the honour of the woman he’s already helplessly in love with.
• Ginger tea, chocolate and hookers. The three primary needs in Quark’s view.
• The Bajoran currency is called litas? Or… Leetas? Like, is Leeta’s name basically Dollar?
• YES THAT IS ALL I HAVE TO SAY.
• WOW that guy has an impressive widow’s peak.
• ‘Nobody ever had to teach me the justice trick.’ Badass line is badass.
• ‘Is this her? IS THIS HER? Hey she looks a little like a chick I boned a few years ago.’
• IDIOT SECURITY GUARD. Why would you not be suspicious of someone bringing flowers for Quark? Not to mention they’re proteas. No good can come of proteas. Well, now you’ve been stabbed in the guts and it kind of serves you right, from a professional viewpoint.
• I like how, in a super high tech futuristic sick-bay, you still get a good old-fashioned pillow-over-the-face murder attempt.
• how did that security guy even know which buttons to press to turn life support back on.
• ROM STOP MAKING THAT NOISE IT’S NOT AS FUNNY AS THE WRITERS THINK
• another fantastic headdress from Mrs Vatrik. That makes three, a Vatrik hat-trick.
• OH HO HO DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE
• I love how ginger tea is so significant in this case. Ultimate marker of ill-gotten gains.
• I like the idea that Dukat had a ‘network of Bajoran sympathisers.’ I bet he charmed them all with his smile and his neck.
• DOWNBEAT ENDING.
• Well, I have to apologise for not being very entertaining about that one. The episode itself is very entertaining – it feels shorter than it is because there are no parts that drag. So really, just watch it, and enjoy how DS9 has started to establish its own identity, because shit like this could never happen on the Enterprise.

Coming up are some episodes that I remember finding fairly annoying, ‘Second Sight’ (Sisko falls in love with a disappearing elf lady) and ‘Sanctuary,’ (people with crusty skin think Bajor is the Promised Land) but after that we get to ‘Rivals,’ which is utterly justified by O’BRIEN AND BASHIR RACQUETBALL OUTFITS. So I will just be holding out for that.

(I know Julian’s absurd silver jumpsuit is the star of the episode, but I find O’Brien’s rugby shirt really adorable.)

Memory Alpha says: Grand Nagus Zek assigns Quark to initiate negotiations with a planet in the Gamma Quadrant, but Quark’s new associate is not what he seems. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

I am, at last, getting back to DS9 – partly because I have seasons 1 through 5 on DVD, whereas my current internet situation makes it difficult to stream the TNG material. Just to date this entry (other than by looking at the actual date on it): the TNG HD/Blu-Ray trailers have just started going around. I don’t actually have a Blu-Ray player. I would be happy enough just to have plain old DVDs. OH WELL. Let’s get on with ‘Ferengi Twelfth Night’ and try to get out of this blogging dry spell.

It’s hard to see any better way to open this than with a snippet from Memory Alpha: ‘This episode was originally to be titled “Profit Margin”. It began life as a TNG pitch. Hilary J. Bader‘s original story had Pel involved with Will Riker. Beverly Crusher would subsequently find out, and she and Pel would develop a kind of sisterhood.’

JESUS CHRIST LITTLE CROSS-DRESSING FERENGI CHICK HITTING ON RIKER. Though I am sure he would be a perfect gentleman about it, in a twinkly-eyed way. And I am sure Quark would be tickled to be slotted into a Riker-shaped gap in an episode. It is weird how TNG pitches got reshaped into DS9 stories at this stage, and the trend continued with some later DS9 pitches getting recycled in Voyager; that’s why there’s an episode with the EMH Doctor having this conflict with a hologram of a Cardassian Dr Mengele type. That should have been a Julian episode, and it just didn’t get used.

I appear reluctant to start watching the episode, which is odd because I’m not conscious of really minding it. It’s not ‘Melora’ or ‘Profit and Lace.’

• Return of the round playing cards! And introduction of Jadzia’s gambling and palling around with Ferengi dudes. I liked the little low-key opening with Morn and Odo, although it’s a little sad that Morn can’t get into his ‘home’ after hours.
• It’s interesting how they chose to handle Pel’s ‘fake’ ears, making them visibly fake to the viewer compared with the other Ferengi actors’ ‘real’ fake ears. I guess I’m a little puzzled about those ears, because going right back to TOS we have a convention that you can be ‘surgically’ disguised as pretty much anything without it looking ‘fake’ by the show’s own terms (the Klingon spy in ‘The Trouble With Tribbles,’ Kirk’s Romulan disguise in whatever the hell episode they disguised him as a Romulan in).
• Perhaps Pel couldn’t afford surgery (I’d say ‘or didn’t want to make such a major modification to her body’ but these cosmetic surgeries are always presented as a totally minor thing, with nobody being upset about being physically changed or worried about whether they can get their original features back. Quark’s temporary sex change in ‘Profit and Lace’ is, bizarrely, presented as if he really has had a full surgical sex change rather than just modifying his ears and putting on a Mrs Doubtfire bodysuit, and yet he’s not supposed to be upset or weirded out about, you know, HIS PENIS BEING CUT OFF, and apparently Julian was just fine with performing this procedure for him without any sort of psychological testing or counselling, because it’s not as if gender reassignment is a BIG THING, oh lord this parenthesis has got away from me, do you think Julian kept Quark’s dick in a jar until he wanted it back, THIS IS WHY WE DON’T WATCH ‘PROFIT AND LACE’) or sophisticated prosthetics; perhaps she had to make them herself. It’s a good thing she has a head for business because she’s not going to make it as a sculptress.
• And yet, despite being visibly fake to the audience, we are meant to buy that they look realistic enough to other Ferengi for her to pass as male.
• Pel this idea has already been thought of. It’s called salted peanuts.
• I know they’re just doing expository dialogue but who interviewed Pel for her job? Does Quark let Rom hire waiters? It’s being played a bit as if he hasn’t talked to her before.
• I kind of hate it when the Ferengi are required to laugh raucously.
• I mean, I presume (I don’t remember clearly) that the Nagus is just dicking around with Quark here, but it does seem a little bit odd to make him chief negotiator with the Gamma Quadrant just because he’s local. He’s just a guy who owns a bar. He doesn’t have any other businesses or anything to indicate that he’s capable of working on a bigger scale. You’d think he’d need to show a couple of intermediate stages of competence before being given a shot at such a big gig.
• I privately believe that if anyone does accept the Nagus’ offer of beetle-snuff, he expects them to pay for it.
• oh lord that poor valet has to keep Zek’s snotty handkerchief in his own sleeve
• just… just never put your face close to Zek’s. It’s a bad idea. Especially if he has some fertiliser to sell you.
• and Sisko smirks because it always amuses him to see his staff sexually harassed by old people
• WHY DO WE HAVE TO BEGIN A SCENE FOCUSING ON AN OLD MAN’S EAR HAIR. WHY IS QUARK REQUIRED TO TAKE OFF THE OLD MAN’S BOOTS WHILE POINTING HIS ASS AT HIM. GO AND POINT YOUR ASS AT PEL QUARK SHE’D APPRECIATE IT MORE.
• I always imagine tulaberries are pretty much like Smurfberries. And I always imagine Smurfberries taste like wintergreen.
• The thing I wonder here is, is tulaberry wine already known in the Alpha Quadrant, or is Zek trying to introduce a really new product? Has he done any market research? He’s sort of talking like tulaberries are already a known and desirable quantity but the GQ is a new source, which doesn’t make sense at all (why would the same kind of berry be found on planets in such distant bits of space?).
• And Rom doesn’t even know what tulaberries taste like, but then, you could fill a book with things Rom doesn’t know.
• The Ferengi foot in the GQ door won’t be much use if tulaberry products don’t become popular; it’ll be associated with failure. I know you have to take risks in business, but has Zek even commissioned any market research? Does he have an angle in mind for how he’s going to present tulaberry wine – as something exclusive and exotic? As something fun and partyish? As something healthy and invigorating? I want the tulaberries to make more sense than they do.
• I like the twirly party straw in the glass Quark is filling with red drank.
• yep, yep, yep, Quark, you should change your name to Patsy
• This is one of the uneven things about Quark. He’s sometimes presented as a real sharp operator with extensive underworld contacts. Other times he’s presented as kind of a rube who doesn’t think of things like ‘putting me in charge of this operation gives Zek a scapegoat if it goes wrong.’ Is it just that he gets so star-struck when dealing with the highest authority figure in his society (it is kind of like the Pope-President-King suddenly showing up to offer you a job) that his judgement goes out the window?
• And this is one of those scenes where Quark seems kind of attracted to Pel while thinking she’s a guy – Pel’s all aflutter but so to an extent is he.
• welp, just got home from work, think I’ll take off my fake ears and reveal my boobs. Aaah, that’s better.
• seriously, Pel, look into some kind of binding-down garment because if you have to take your jacket off at work for any reason your cover is ber-lown.
• I am pleased to see that Quark is wearing one of my favourite outfits, the jewel-tones Mondrian-grid jacket with teal/jade pants.
• Everyone is standing so close together. Why would Kira ever stand so close to Zek, apart from the obvious ‘he just goosed her’ gag they just did? Either that, or Zek’s confusion is real and it was the valet who goosed Kira. We have no idea what he’s capable of.
• And here come some people in gaudy face-paint and holofoil-trimmed bondage outfits. The dude, the one who’s a total Hey It’s That Guy, mainly trading on having a Schwarzeneggery kind of look, was also in the ‘Riker goes to Klingon Camp’ episode of TNG. You know, the guy I thought was called Klang and I was so disappointed that it was only Klag.
• Not terribly subtle, but I think they are trying to show us that the woman negotiator is the senior and the bigger, stronger man is concerned about meeting her standards.
• That was a weird little nose-twitch.
• Jeez, why not take five thousand vats, do a limited release to test the market, and go back for more if it’s a success?
• Sorry O’Brien, your role today is to be ignored, while we run a comedy sub-plot about the Nagus courting Kira.
• This is one of those times where I think Jadzia forgets that, while her seven lifetimes allow her to take a ‘big picture’ view that most people can’t, they have also given her a confidence that other people simply can’t feel. If she feels safe and comfortable around greedy misogynistic little trolls, that’s fine, good for her, but it doesn’t mean anyone else is wrong to be bothered by them.
• ALL THIS FUCKERY OVER A PRODUCT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IF ANYONE LIKES.
• ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ Quark’s delivery of the line is rather sweet, because he doesn’t sound really suspicious, he sounds kind of pleased and surprised, as if he’s not sure whether to trust this niceness but he likes it an awful lot.
• I know we’re supposed to think that Jadzia rumbles Pel because, being so old and wise, she recognises from behavioural cues that she’s not what she appears. I just can’t get past thinking that she must be weirded out by the ears. Except they ought to be much more obvious to fellow Ferengi than to an alien.
• okay Quark is mental. WHY would you think a lady would want to make out with you in a replica of her childhood bedroom? I CAN’T DO THIS MY CARE BEAR IS STARING AT ME.
• The question is whether Jadzia is actually surprised when she says ‘You’re a woman?’ I really can’t tell how we’re supposed to read that. If she is surprised, then she thought Pel was a guy and was totally fine with him being in love with Quark, which is nice, Star Trek, heart in the right place, BUT YOU DON’T GAIN BACK ANY OF THE POINTS YOU LOST BY CANCELLING JULIAN/GARAK. I’m not sure why she would sham surprise, it’s just that Terry Farrell’s delivery of the line is odd, and maybe I’m reading something into an element that was just an actor being a little off.
• I am also interested in why Jadzia has decided to talk to Pel about this. I think, and I like her for it, she’s being a little protective of Quark as her friend and wants to make sure Pel’s intentions are good. If she wants to get a gold star from me, though, she can go and tell Zek to fuck off bothering Kira. Jadzia is playing Beverly’s role here, per the origin of this story, and I’m not so sure why Bev would be intervening. Deanna would seem like a more natural choice, since she wouldn’t be able to ‘read’ Pel (Betazoid ESP doesn’t work on Ferengi), but would have reason to be protective of Riker and want to make sure he wasn’t going to be messed around.
• And I think the implication as a whole is that, because Pel is passing herself off as a man, her feelings about Quark are transgressive in a way that they wouldn’t be if she were male. The reason I interpret Ferengi as being, by and large, okay with gay relationships is the paired Rules, ‘Never have sex with the boss’s sister (112)’ and ‘Always have sex with the boss (113).’ The latter appears only in the book Legends of the Ferengi but doesn’t really leave much ambiguity – because a Ferengi with a job is by definition a male Ferengi, and do we imagine there are many male Ferengi willing to work for a woman, even a woman of another species?
• Ferengis just love twirly party straws.
• Kira, no amount of fertiliser is worth this bullshit.
• We’ll take your ship! Okay, but you’ll owe me gas money.
• A detail I liked very much – when Quark kisses Zek’s hand, Pel briefly stares, because Quark+kiss in any context=hello you have Pel’s full attention.
• Their seats look really uncomfortable.
• BACKGROUND PAKLEDS.
• ODO YOU JUST KIND OF ADVISED ROM TO DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE TO PEL. BE CAREFUL. YOU KNOW HE IS NOT SMART.
• Speaking of which, I just love how in between the first Grand Nagus episode and this one, Rom has done a 180 from being willing to kill Quark to being willing to kill for Quark, or at least ruin someone’s life in order to hang onto him. With this and his later secret genius thing, I think he gets retconned even more severely than Julian.
• haha Julian and Rom bonding over being secret geniuses
• Julian and Rom bonding over both having banged Leeta?
• let’s not go here any more
• Rom searched everywhere else before trying under the bed? He really isn’t smart.
• So tulaberry wine is blue? Okay, I can already see a problem. The number one blue drank in the Alpha Quadrant is Romulan ale (despite the fact that it’s kind of illegal in the Federation – I guess the best analogy is Cuban cigars in the USA). And after that, blue Gatorade. Where’s the market niche for tulaberry wine? Is the best you can hope for number three?
• This is odd, because despite the earlier display of the woman’s superiority, they’re now playing it as if Schwarzenegger-lite is the person whose say-so they need to make the deal.
• Quark you asshole. You are wasting booze.
• There is absolutely no reason why this works! Why doesn’t he kill Quark for being such a dick?
• Pel. Quit panicking. It’s not like you’re going to get a lady boner in your sleep that he’ll notice. Unless there are things about Ferengi women’s bodies that I really don’t care to know. You can also get around this by making a show of feudal spirit and offering Quark the bed to himself while you curl up on a chair or the floor. AND IF HE STILL WANTS YOU TO GET UP ON THE BED WITH HIM THEN GO FOR IT. JEEZ.
• Scared to be in an intimate situation with boss you have a huge crush on… give him a drink and flatter him. Pel, you are smart at business but kind of dumb otherwise.
• Sometimes I’d love to be an actor but other times I realise I might have to play a scene like this and would probably cringe myself to death before I could get paid.
• Pel, changing her mind for no reason (unless tulaberry wine makes you drunk really fast, and I guess that could be their marketing angle), kisses Quark and his response is to lie back on the bed. I’m just saying. What am I saying? I don’t know. Quark is part gay. Whatever. He looks startled by Pel clambering on him but he doesn’t look scared or repelled.
• Ferengi VPL sighted.
• DO NOT HIT ON YOUR BOSS IN A ROOM WITH ONLY CURTAINS FOR WALLS AND A DOOR.
• First mention of the Dominion in a corny Ferengi romantic comedy episode. I do really like that.
• And Quark’s refusal to acknowledge the kiss could be read equally as ‘uncomfortable with Pel’s attraction to him’ or ’not wanting to get bogged down in mush when on the verge of making the biggest deal of his life.’ Again, I do want to award a heart-in-the-right-place point for the fact that he doesn’t act repelled or go into gay panic mode.
• You know, I’m just thinking about things wrong with Rom’s discovery of Pel here. One, if Pel hadn’t left her spare ears at home, this couldn’t have happened – though I suppose she thought they’d be safer than if she were carrying them around and Quark asked what was up with the big bag. Two, the fake ears don’t actually prove anything incriminating on their own. It’s not like there’s a precedent for Ferengi women disguising their ears in order to pass as men. They could just mean that Pel has deformed ears or humiliatingly small ones for a man; the equivalent of a toupée. Three, how much do we expect Rom to be able to deduce from a pair of rubber ears?
• And why, exactly, did Zek send Quark on this fishing expedition without telling him what he was looking for? What if Quark had just come back with a fuckton of tulaberries instead of new information on the Dominion? It works because it pays off the way Zek wants it to, but if it hadn’t, it would have been nonsense.
• And I guess they play the revelation scene in dumb-show because it’s hard to imagine what the actual lines would have been. At least it didn’t involve Pel’s jacket being ripped off.
• Why is Pel just answering the door with her jacket and fake ears off when she doesn’t know who’s going to come to the door?
• HAHAHA THE DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA FRAMING of Quark staring into the camera and Pel, out of focus over his shoulder. (yes, sorry, that’s all I’ve got out of their confrontation, it’s shot like a scene from Days Of Our Lives)
• PEL WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS.
• Well, obviously, so that Quark can step up to defend her and show that he cares, but that’s not an in-character reason. Is someone as cunning as Pel, who’s carefully studied the Rules and all their Commentaries, and managed to finagle her way off Ferenginar in the first place (that can’t have been easy – how did she get together her initial stake? How did she secure the materials to make her fake ears and learn how to make them? How did she learn to read?) now supposed to be so upset that things haven’t worked out with Quark that she just throws away the opportunity he gave her to leave safely, and puts him in danger of ruin as well?
• And now Pel acts like her point was to prove women are as capable as men – but her behaviour actually made it appear that women get carried away with emotion and create unnecessary scenes. This is just frustrating.
• I guess at least she gets quite a nice kiss? Although both actors are visibly struggling a bit with their prosthetic noses and dentures. And Quark got his ear felt up so everyone’s a winner.
• So you won’t even play a hand of tongo with the guy to help him get over it? Cold, Jadzia, way cold.

Well, that was bracingly weird. Can’t say I’m sorry it’s over. The next episode will be ‘Necessary Evil,’ or as I think of it, ‘Terok Noir.’

Memory Alpha says: The Enterprise discovers a duplicate of Picard from six hours in the future. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

This is another of those early episodes that I can’t remember ever having seen. I am an optimist; therefore:

Further in ‘stuff I found on Tumblr,’ wrap your eyeballs around this:

'Welcome to destiny, Rarity.'

(Source.) That just tickled me to bits – though I think Pinkie Pie would be Q’s favourite pony. Picard would prefer Twilight Sparkle.

Okay, enough of that, let’s go and see what actually happens in this episode.

• A technique that they’re using more often for teasers now is showing a brief ‘slice of life’ scene interrupted by the beginning of whatever is going to be the real story for the week. I love this, because glimpses like this built up such a vivid picture of the relationships and community of the Enterprise for me. In a funny way, it’s as if, over a year into their tour together, everyone has started saying ‘okay we’re clearly going to be together for a while; let’s socialise more.’
• So Riker is scat-singing and setting the table for a breakfast party. Strangely, he’s doing food prep over the dining table, and he has to beat his eggs in a weird future-bowl that has no base – it’s just a hemisphere that rocks around on its rounded bottom. Given his lecture on delicious fake meat in ‘Lonely Among Us,’ I’d really like to know whether the eggs are replicated, or whether there is – a glorious thought – a henhouse on the Enterprise.
• And it looks like Geordi and Data brought… a hotplate? In two bits? Riker says ‘Eggscellent – that’s eggsactly what I needed.’
• So for his breakfast party, Riker has invited Data, Geordi, Worf and Pulaski. Pulaski brought beer. Why don’t more people love her? I mean, she calls it ‘ale’ because Star Trek is weirdly Ren Fest about beer, but she still brought beer to a breakfast party, which is so Chaucery of her. Furthermore, in the foreground of this shot is a glass coffee table with more glasses on it and a bottle of wine in a lucite stand. Is this actually a breakfast-for-dinner party (mm, brinner) or does Riker really like to start the day with some alcohol? He also has what looks like a small silvery statuette of a woman with no arms or head and her ass on the front of her body. Don’t just take my word for it.
• 
• Data points out that this isn’t an efficient way to ‘prepare sustenance’ and Riker Siskos ‘No, you’re right, Data. The ship’s computer would be more efficient, but it wouldn’t allow for the subtlety needed for great cooking. It would give you all of the ingredients in pre-determined measurements, but wouldn’t allow for flair or individuality. And Data, as we both know, flair is what marks the difference between artistry and mere competence.’ Is that… a neg? Also, you’re making scrambled eggs over a hotplate your friends brought over. Don’t talk it up too much.
• Pulaski decides to educate Data a bit too, about how ‘the breaking of bread was a symbol of friendship and community. Something we have gotten away from in the twenty-fourth century.’ This seems like an odd thing to say in response to Riker’s spiel about cooking. Should we really take it that friends and family don’t have meals together any more? Of course, I can see that happening in some situations, but only some (e.g. Beverly probably has to put her foot down to get Wesley to just sit down and eat dinner with her, instead of eating in front of his computer).
• From how Riker pours beaten eggs onto a hotplate, we get an odd segue to dropping in some of his family backstory: that his mother died when he was tiny and his father made him cook for both of them. This will actually be relevant before long because I think Riker’s dad shows up in the next episode. They really were reaching towards continuity more than I remembered.
• There’s one of those ‘progressive but in a way not really’ bits, as Worf says ‘It is my understanding that in most human families, the woman shares in the cooking.’ So, progressive, yes, in the idea that family cooking isn’t all woman’s work any more, but kind of not in the overlooking of the fact that there might be human families formed by two men or two women.
• Incidentally, in defiance of Riker, I am currently drinking my lunch in the form of a meal replacement shake, which really are wonderful when you realise you ought to have a meal about now but feel no interest in preparing or eating actual food. On the other hand, for dinner tonight I’m making this and serving it with smoked salmon. I do try. I try harder when there are other people involved.
• Data is watching the cooking very seriously – while Pulaski pours the beer. I would prefer a mimosa, but more power to her.
• And there is no hen-house on the Enterprise, because Riker got these eggs at Starbase 73, their ‘last stop.’ This seems to make Geordi apprehensive, and for a moment I thought they were saying Riker bought these eggs back during ‘Measure of a Man,’ but that was Starbase 173. That would have been interesting, though. ‘Monday: nearly got little android buddy deactivated and disassembled; curse this silver tongue. Tuesday: bought yummy eggs at farmers’ market!’

• 

  Breakfast beer makes Pulaski happy.

• Why does Riker say ‘For you, Data – something special’ when he’s just serving him eggs from the same pan as everyone? It would be blisteringly adorable if he had actually made him something special (Mickey Mouse pancake!). Dude, Riker, did you even season these eggs while you were beating them? Salt, pepper, a little bit of milk and butter? Chopped parsley if you’re feeling posh? Of course, if this is just the kind of bachelor cooking you did as a kid for your dad, okay, but you did invite your friends over and set the table and make a big deal about flair.
• Then he tries to coax an android to eat eggs by saying ‘Don’t be afraid. They won’t bite you.’  Not that Riker couldn’t coax me into an awful lot of things, but… Wisely, Data does not react.
• ‘A cook is only as good as his ingredients,’ Riker says, belatedly trying to cover his ass in case his eggs are horrible – as Geordi and Kate certainly seem to think. Even Data looks troubled. But Worf is very happy. And Riker gets to ditch his guests with the clean-up because Picard calls him to the bridge.
• I notice Data has followed Riker to the bridge, although Picard didn’t ask for him. Oh, so has Worf. I guess they didn’t want to help with the dishes (though I imagine Worf finished all the unwanted eggs in three mighty chorfs). Anyway, the strange thing is that they’ve found a Federation shuttle floating around on its own, far from any known Federation ship’s position. There’s a live humanoid on board, although the power’s off so they can’t talk to that person, so they decide to see who it is by intercepting the thing.
• So they tractor-beam it into their shuttle-bay, and things are getting spooky, because it’s one of their own shuttles. The El-Baz. But the El-Baz is parked right over there. And inside the recovered El-Baz is… Captain Picard.
• 

• Establishing a running theme of ‘people tagging along when they weren’t requested,’ Riker asks Picard to come and see his double and bring Data; Picard turns up with Data and Deanna Troi. Now why wasn’t Deanna invited to the breakfast party? Would it have been uncomfortable, given that she’s probably had quite a few breakfasts with Riker, under rather different circumstances? Why is Deanna here now, when she wasn’t called for? I’m going to go with my preferred explanation for any unexplained appearance by Deanna: she’s just nosy. It’s as good a reason as any to go exploring space.
• Interesting that when Pulaski, examining Picard 2, comments that his brain-waves are strange, Picard asks ‘In what way? Non-human? Artificial?’ Clearly he’s thinking in terms of replicants, and possibly ‘What Are Little Girls Made Of?’, one of the more creepily-titled TOS episodes. (Also, how much does that episode suck for Christine Chapel? One reason why I’d like both Chapel and Rand to show up in the next reboot movie [besides the fact that the crew cast, to date, is a sausage fest and there need to be some more women alongside Uhura for balance] is because I hope they’ll get to have some cool adventures, particularly ones that don’t involve finding out their long-lost fiancés are androids or just generally being rejected or overlooked by every man they like.)
• Deanna justifies her presence by giving a read on Picard 2. There’s an interesting bit where, as Picard approaches her, he smiles hopefully, then becomes more serious as he sees how serious she is and asks ‘Counselor?’ Picard is disturbed to hear that as far as Deanna can tell while he’s unconscious, the double is him.
• Anyway, the reason Riker asked for Data was because Data’s the brainiest so they need him to download and read the shuttle’s logs. That doesn’t sound like a job requiring the attention of the Ship’s Nerd to me, but whatever. The shuttlecraft’s primary and back-up batteries are totally flat, so Data’s going to have to connect it to the Enterprise’s power supply – and for that, Geordi is summoned from Engineering. You need the Chief Engineer to come all the way down to the shuttlebay to, basically, plug in an extension cord? Make Wesley do it. Gosh.
• (It does turn out to be more complicated than that, but there’s no way they could have known it at this stage.)
• Picard starts to leave for Sickbay, but Riker calls him back, pointing out some minor black scuff-marks on the El-Baz 2‘s hull that we’re told look like damage from an antimatter explosion, just out of range of the shuttle. It looks more like someone in the props department gave it a few kicks wearing shoes with cheap black plastic soles (like my awesome two-tone wing-tips that leave scuffs on the kitchen lino).
• Picard going to sickbay means Riker is in charge on the bridge, so they whizz off, with their scanners turned up to 11.
• Geordi gets that extension cord plugged in, but there’s something wrong because the control panel pukes blue sparks on Data. (Geordi holds his hands in front of his VISOR at the brightness. Shouldn’t it have, like, a dimmer?) Weirdly, even though this is a Starfleet shuttle, its power circuits aren’t compatible with the Enterprise‘s, and they’re going to have to rig up a kludge to get it started. Geordi asks ‘Data, what do you think is going on here? I don’t mean just with the shuttle, I mean everything.’ Data, sensibly, answers ‘I do not have enough information.’ Sadly, he does not produce his Holmes pipe and suck on it thoughtfully.
• In Sickbay, Pulaski is examining Picard 2, and a nice job is done of a shot in which Patrick Stewart lies in the foreground as Picard 2 while Patrick Stewart enters in the background as Picard 1. You can’t see the strings. Picard 2′s vital signs are peculiar, although he doesn’t seem to have any head injuries. Pulaski puts shimmery force-field restraints on him, ‘for his own protection,’ I guess in case he panics when he wakes up, thrashes and falls out of bed.
• Picard asks Pulaski to wake Picard 2, but the stimulant injection she gives him turns out to have the effect of a shot of sedative, causing an OD, and she quickly has to give him an antidote (presumably, more sedative to counteract the stimulant) Clearly, Picard 2 is a profoundly contrary man.
• In the shuttlebay, Data is figuring out something similar, that the mystery shuttle seems to work backwards, so he and Geordi manage to mend it by doing stuff that should break it. I like how, when Geordi points out that their kludge could be dangerous, Data suggests that he step out of the way, and Geordi reminds him ‘you’re not indestructible yourself, you know.’ Although he kind of turned out to be in ‘Contagion.’ Data’s pleased-and-surprised ‘hm!’ when cranking the shuttle backwards works is delightful. And now that the dashboard clock is on, Geordi can see that this copy of the El-Baz is… from six hours in their future.
• 
• Speaking of which, it will probably never cease to tick me off that Lost didn’t wrap up that bit with the mystery outrigger. It would have taken one scene, Damon. Maybe even one line. You had time to give Richard a stupid boring romantic backstory that didn’t shed any light on interesting questions like how his relationship with Ben developed over the years that they knew each other and worked together or how and why decisions like the Dharma Purge were made, but you didn’t have time to establish who was in the other goddamn outrigger shooting off a gun? Anyway, here the El-Baz sort of is the other outrigger, I suppose.
• So Picard 2 is Picard from the very near future, from later the same day. I agree with this episode’s screenwriter, Maurice Hurley (HURLEY) that this is interestingly different from the usual kind of time-travel plot where the difference is decades or centuries. We’ve probably all wished that we could go back a few months or years to tell our younger selves ‘Study (x) instead of (y)’ or ‘Don’t get too serious with (Z), you’ll only hurt each other,’ and I personally would love to have a thirty-second rewind feature for all the times when I’ve stood up under an open cabinet door, tried to open a can of soda too soon after it was dropped, or grated the tip of my thumb along with the cheese… what might the later-the-same-day version of you have to tell you, or warn you about? (‘Don’t eat the eggs.’) And is there time for that to make any difference?
• Back in Sickbay, everyone is very perturbed. Pulaski has another shot at waking up Picard 2, who doesn’t speak yet, but seems distressed. Picard stops her giving him a sedative shot (wouldn’t a sedative make him hyperactive?) and asks her to let him remain conscious. (This reminds me a bit of how he thought Wesley should be able to face death awake, back in… blessed if I remember which episode.) Although the cutting of shots doesn’t make it quite clear, I think the two Picards exchange a look; certainly, Picard looks at Picard 2, but Picard 2 may be too disorientated to make eye contact.
• And it’s off to the conference room! Because they have some serious shit to discuss. Data and Geordi couldn’t get a complete copy of the shuttle’s log, because the files are partly corrupted (no real reason why is given, other than that it would kill the mystery plot for our heroes to have too much information at this stage). However, they did get a bit of video showing the El-Baz taking off from the shuttle bay, and shortly after, the Enterprise getting slammed into a wormhole and destroyed. They’ve also salvaged an audio clip of Picard 2 logging ‘I have just witnessed the total destruction of the USS Enterprise with a loss of all hands, save one. Me.’ So why will Picard leave the Enterprise in a shuttle, alone? Why would Riker even let him do that? If they knew there was a crisis, why wouldn’t they try to evacuate the civilians by lifeboat, or separate the hulls (other than ‘we’ve realised that looks silly’)?
• Nobody knows of anything on the route they’re travelling that could cause the kind of disaster they saw in the video. Data, if possible, further cements my word nerd love for him by saying ‘There is not enough information upon which to base a hypothesis.’ And of course there’s the question of whether it’s possible for them to avoid the events of the video, whether by picking up Picard 2 they’ve committed themselves to a loop in which his course of events must happen again, but to the present Picard in his turn. So everyone is very worried, but in that special TNG way where you play it super cool and don’t get sweaty or squirmy.
• Picard, thinking his way through it, says ‘We have to anticipate and not make… not make the same mistake once.’ There’s a reaction shot of Riker beaming appreciatively at the quip. He is such a suck-up.
• In the sickbay (Deanna is still following Picard around, I think equally out of nosiness and because she can feel that he’s considerably rumpled-up in spirit and wants to take care of him) Pulaski explains that time travel has put Picard 2′s body clock out of whack in some way, which is why he’s not talking or getting up, just lying down making faces. I don’t think this is consistent with any of the other cases of time travel in Star Trek, but I’ll accept it for the time being. Anyway, as they get closer to the point in time from which he jumped, he’ll become more lucid and get back to normal when he catches up with himself, so to speak. Picard finds this hard to accept. Deanna gets a clearer impression from Picard 2, that he urgently wants to leave the ship. (Because he thinks it’s his own ship that he’d thought he’d escaped from, or because he realises it’s earlier in the day and he’s not supposed to be here twice?) Anyway, this causes her to gasp and toss her head around in a manner that has given rise to many screengrabs and orgasm jokes.
• Time keeps on slipping into the future, and they’re about two hours away from the projected destruction. I find it quite weird that they don’t at least try to evacuate the civilians, when they know almost for certain that something extremely dangerous is going to happen. Keeping the crew so that they can try to deal with whatever it is makes sense, but what about all the little kids and non-Starfleet spouses and people like Keiko and Guinan who aren’t (currently) spouses or Starfleet but have jobs on the ship? What about the golden retriever puppies from ‘The Child’? If you manage to solve the problem and survive, just double back and pick them up. I know Picard 2′s voice log said ‘with all hands,’ but you could at least try to get around that part. For the puppies.
• There’s a strange bit where, after Picard heads off to Sickbay on the possibility of getting some sense out of Picard 2, Deanna sits there looking troubled, and Riker gives her a Look, and after a bit she gets up as if she’s Made Up Her Mind and hurries after Picard. I’m not sure what her inner conflict is supposed to be here. It can’t possibly be that she doesn’t want to interfere.
• It seems to me that Pulaski has called Picard back for nothing, since although she said Picard 2 was ‘more coherent,’ he still isn’t talking and can’t answer any of the questions Picard puts to him with increasing frustration and intensity. Deanna can feel that he’s still too confused about what’s going on to be helpful, and is full of remorse and fear. Picard 2′s remorse and fear faces are pretty funny.
• When Deanna points out that Picard 2 is afraid, Picard asks ‘afraid of what?’ and neither of the women answer him – they just give him Dramatic Looks. Should we take it that Picard 2 is afraid of Picard and his shouty questions?
• There’s an interesting development, as Picard can’t believe that Picard 2 is the real future him – ‘Except for his features, there is nothing about him that I find familiar.’ It seems to me that he’s resisting the possibility because accepting it would mean that he’s going to let down his crew, and flee from a doomed ship like a coward, as if saving his own life could possibly be worthwhile if he didn’t save any of the others. That’s simply too inconsistent with everything he believes about himself and his sense of duty for him to allow it.
• Once Picard flounces out, the women talk about him and whether he can handle being so het up. Troi has a different interpretation of how Picard sees Picard 2: that he represents ‘Doubt. He’s afraid that seeing him here and knowing what happened to the Enterprise will make him timid, or worse, make him to hesitate.’ I’m not sure that makes sense. Anyway, Pulaski raises the possibility that if Picard seems to be losing his shit, she will have to take him down. It’s interesting how Deanna seems to be protective of Picard here, trying to defend and justify him to Pulaski, who doesn’t know him as well. After that conversation, Deanna flounces out of the room too, even though Picard told her before he flounced to stay with Picard 2, as she should be able to communicate with him before anybody else. I think she just had to make a dramatic exit, because staying in the same room after that conversation would be really awkward.
• Down in the shuttlebay, Picard is examining the Fateful El-Baz. Then in his ready room, he and Riker talk about what the hell is going on (none of the science stuff they know about can explain it, and they make references to the plots of Star Trek IV, ‘Where No One Has Gone Before’ and ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’ in the process) and Riker makes one of those speeches screenwriters seem to really love about how an analytical, strategic person is going to have to give up that way of thinking. Like that hugely irritating bit in Jurassic Park where Laura Dern tells Richard Attenborough ‘But you can’t think your way through this one, John. You have to feel it.’ (If you want a really good read, have a look at And You Call Yourself A Scientist’s review of Jurassic Park.) Anyway, Riker is mentally writing up his diary entry (‘I feel like we really bonded!’) when there’s some kind of Space Thud and they’re called to the bridge.
• And, for no reason, an energy vortex has appeared beneath them! I suppose it’s just one of those occasional random hazards of space – although Hurley wanted it to be Q fucking with them, for further continuity.
• And now, as Picard tries to decide what to do, he’s got the horrible problem of trying to second-guess whether he’s making the same decision Picard 2 did. Anyway, he decides to run away. It doesn’t help. And they’re getting sucked down the Plughole of Space! And both Picards get zapped by a weird blue beam! And Bridge Picard gets zapped again! It appears that whatever lives down the Space Plughole is interested in Picard in particular, so we can see how Picard 2 may have made the decision to flee the ship, hoping that in that way the Plughole Beastie would pursue him and the others could escape – not desertion after all. In character for Picard, the only reason he would abandon his ship would be to save her.
• ‘We may be on a road that has no turns,’ Picard says, but of course he’s hoping that he will find the turn, the opportunity, whatever it is, to head for a different outcome.
• Lovely exchange in Sickbay:PICARD: Release him.PULASKI: Do you know what you are doing?PICARD: No. Release him.

  PULASKI: Security to Sickbay.

• The idea that the Plughole Beastie ‘recognised the Enterprise as a life form with me as its brain’ is a bit ‘Spock’s Brain’y, and an attempt to very quickly account for something that would really need quite a detailed explanation. Isn’t Computer the Enterprise‘s brain?
• Anyway Picard 2 is all KATE WE HAVE TO GO BACK and clearly not thinking clearly and won’t tell Picard what the other option he thinks there might be is, because he doesn’t think it would work, and URGENCY.
• And Captain Picard straight up murders himself! Ice cold.
• Why does O’Brien accompany Dr Pulaski to the shuttle bay? He looks as unsure as I am. And very sad about Picard 2 being dead.
• Anyway, I guess on the basis that doing things backwards has worked so far, Picard decides to fly into the Plughole instead of trying to get out. So she simply whizzes through and there are noisy noises and the dead Picard 2 and the duplicate El-Baz disappear before O’Brien’s eyes!
• And everything is all right again! Not so much as a skinned knee or a chipped teacup anywhere on the ship.
• Picard is left feeling quite creeped out, and Riker suggests that perhaps they all imagined it all. Picard suggests that Picard 2 was sent back in time so that a resolution would be possible – which doesn’t account for who or what he thinks was responsible for that sending. Picard is not the type of person to believe in Providence.
• The next episode is ‘The Icarus Factor,’ which reminds me there was an early episode of Friends called ‘The One With the Ick Factor.’
• I think the moral of the story is, don’t let Riker cook you some eggs.
• When I saved this episode WordPress suggested some tags I might like to use: ‘Pinkie Pie, Memory Alpha, Commander Riker, Geordi, and setting the table.’
• Which just sounds like a silly fic prompt. You could write about it in the comments if you like!

Memory Alpha says: The Enterprise investigates the wreckage of a 21st century Earth spaceship orbiting a distant planet and the appearance of a casino with inhabitants based on a paperback novel. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

I think it’s safe to say that ‘The Royale’ is one of the strangest episodes of Star Trek. Apparently the original script was even more surrealistic, but that was roped back in rewrites (upsetting Tracy Tormé, who was quite proud of how weird it was). I know some people dislike it because it’s so ridiculous, but if you’ve been reading so far I imagine you have some inkling of my response. I have a tendency to like things that are weird for weirdness’ sake (although I will eventually get cross if hints of deeper meaning are not paid off in a satisfying way, as with Lost; if you don’t have a really awesome deeper meaning planned from the start, DON’T HINT), and to enjoy it when Star Trek interacts with past space exploration efforts, and besides ‘The Royale With Cheese’ features Data looking adorable in a cowboy hat, so I’m not really in the mood to make thoughtful, intellectually robust criticisms.

• So they’re going to have a look at this planet because some passing Klingons saw some junk. I’m not sure why this is a Thing, other than general Federation nosiness, minding everyone’s business. I suppose they may reason that the debris could indicate there are castaways nearby in need of help, which is nice of them. Or the Klingons were just making an ‘Enterprise=garbage scow’ joke that nobody on the D got.
• of course Picard is looking at a French maths mystery. In 1995 some dork had to spoil this episode by coming up with a proof for Fermat’s theorem. Some dialogue was written into a DS9 episode to get around this, implying that the 1995 proof simply didn’t meet Picard’s standards. On the other hand, by the 1990s Earth was also supposed to be embroiled in a Eugenics War (not that Voyager was prepared to acknowledge it), so I don’t think there’s any need to be too terribly precise about this. We’re just privileged to see how space exploration turned out in the Star Trek universe.
• Hallo O’Brien! I like how in these early episodes he has a very particular posture when standing at the transporter controls, with his head tilted just so, such that almost any establishing shot of O’Brien at the console is hard to distinguish from any other. Actually, do I like that or have I merely noticed it without having any particular feelings about it? Do I just like seeing O’Brien? Probably.
• The BGM wants us to be really, really weirded out by the chunk of NASA vessel hull that Riker and O’Brien hold up. It is a very cool image, two men in Starfleet uniform holding a bit of the contemporary space program. Not that there’s much of a space program any more. Stupid USA, don’t you know your existence is only justified to the extent that you do interesting things nobody else has the resources to do? I said interesting things. Confiscate all the money George Lucas uses to make increasingly bad new-format revisions of Star Wars and build more moon rockets.
• I… probably shouldn’t be looking at this or commenting on it, but I suspect O’Brien of stuffing a sock down the front of his onesie today.
• Look at Data standing with his hands clasped nicely to recite.
• doop de doop Wesley has checked in for the week; he will contribute nothing
• hahahahaha oh this is so gloriously dorky and cheaply strange-looking. That revolving door in the middle of darkness is a lovely image. So in they go!
• Wow, it sounds like people have LOUD FUN at the Royale. I have trouble seeing casinos as fun or elegant places. At the SkyCity casino here in Auckland, the staff wear flea-collars around their ankles to discourage the fleas that infest the carpets from biting them. The management won’t close the place down long enough for a full fumigation. I know the existence of a shitty casino doesn’t rule out the existence of pleasant casinos any more than the existence of a shitty zoo rules out the existence of a well-kept one, but dude. Flea-collars.
• And here’s… Bernard from Lost, whose name I never learn despite him showing up in all sorts of things. He has a nice creepy Twilight Zone demeanour here, all we’ve been expecting you.
• Yes, I think ‘a trio of foreign gentlemen’ covers it quite nicely.
• HA I love the SAXOPHONE OF EMOTION that accompanies the bellboy’s entrance to ask about Rita and MICKEY D. Were people not calling McDonald’s that yet, or was Tormé being deliberately weird? And the SAXOPHONE OF EMOTION cuts right out as the bellboy leaves. It’s great.
• They get a room key each and some complimentary chips. Data examines his with great interest. (Do they get a room each, or are they sharing?)
• It’s interesting how Bernard functions much like a holodeck NPC who will take things like three grown men in matching onesies, guys with porcelain skin and golden eyes, and Klingon foreheads in his stride as long as they don’t require him to depart from a certain script. I know he’s only a simulation, but it would be so interesting to know how such an AI perceives such characteristics and deals with them.
• They’re not alive? Then what are they? GHOSTS! Why, so far, have none of them said ‘It’s like our holodeck’? Surely that would be a comparison they would think of pretty quickly, especially as the holodeck is shiny new technology and everyone loves to play with it?
• ‘Man, you sound just like my ex-wife.’ Your ex-wife was given to claiming you lacked DNA? An unusual spousal complaint.
• Riker is smirking. He… likes rude Texans?
• DATA GETS A HAT. AND HE GETS TO PLAY A NEW CARD GAME.  AND THIS HAPPENS.
• 

  Congratulations, Data, I believe you just pulled.

  (The frizzy-haired woman’s impressed whistle is quite absurd. Data’s little eyebrow-flirt even more so. I don’t think her name is ever spoken in the episode but apparently she’s Vanessa.)

• DATA IN HIS HAT IS JUST SO ADORABLE. WHY COULDN’T A HAT BE PART OF STARFLEET UNIFORM?
• Interesting exchange:
  RIKER: Having fun, Data?
  DATA: Fun, sir? While there is a certain amount of enjoyment involved, I am mainly conducting research into -
  RIKER: Save it. We’re getting out of here.
  There is a certain amount of enjoyment involved – Data, by his own account, is actively enjoying what he is doing. Not that Riker actually cares – either about Data’s fun or whether he’s found anything out. He hasn’t. But he could have – Riker doesn’t know.
• Awwww, you could have let him keep the hat. Or he could have won it off you!
• Technobabble with Picard, Geordi and a silent, touch-typing Wesley. It is dull.
• Revolving door comedy.
• Strangely, Data cannot get attention from little old ladies – presumably because they are only programmed to gamble, not as interactive NPCs.
• I like how both Data and Riker go around asking about an alternative exit, while Worf goes looking for one, moving furniture in the process. Oh come on, Worf, why use a phaser when you could kick it in?
• Does Deanna have this detailed a read on Riker’s changing feelings planetside because they have a close relationship? Is this yet another example of the writers changing the actual extent and nature of her powers for narrative convenience?
• There is an incredible level of background detail, particularly fashion-wise, in the Royale. You should, of course, see what Fashion It So had to say about it.
• LOOK OUT HE’S GOT A GUN. I love the bellboy’s magical effect on the BGM. It’s as if he can summon an unseen band.
• Back on the Enterprise, it’s boring, Picard and Deanna are worried and confused.
• Worf cannot conceive of a lift that is not turbo. It takes Data, the guy who was confused by a standard lamp going out when he pulled its plug out of the wall, to push the call button.
• Seeing Riker, Data and Worf in a hotel corridor just reinforces my impression of how much the corridors of the Enterprise tend to look like they’re in a hotel. Particularly that place at the end of a T-junction where there are a couple of chairs, a coffee table, a painting on the wall and a potted plant.
• DEAD SKELLINGTON
• Excellent exchange: Riker: Looks like the poor devil died in his sleep. Worf: What a terrible way to die.
• I don’t know, his decomposition looks pretty advanced to me – his bones are showing. If he looked more intact but desiccated, the line and the visuals might work better together.
• Another glorious visual: a spacesuit in a hotel wardrobe. If there were fifty-two United States of America ‘between 2033 and 2079 AD,’ I wonder what the extra two were? I also wonder why the hell the line about the dates was given to Riker. It wouldn’t seem odd at all for Data to know the exact dates of different periods of the United States’ membership (Datas gonna date) but it’s a peculiar thing for a mere human being to know off the top of his head. Riker doesn’t even need to pause to remember!
• Worf has located the Gideon Bible and the Hotel Royale – which Data proceeds to read by flicking through its pages. It would have made a great strange, otherworldly moment if they had opened the Bible to find it was blank inside or just had vague scribbly approximations of print, because the aliens who made this might have found a description of a Gideon Bible in the novel (not that most people would bother to describe a Gideon Bible when writing about a hotel room, they’ve become such a given) but wouldn’t know what its text should be like.
• For that matter, the visual execution of this episode seems slightly wrong to me because it is too detailed and accurate. In most novels, there are all sorts of things about the setting that the writer doesn’t describe directly or explicitly because readers are expected to know enough about such locations to fill in the background from their imaginations. This is part of why older novels become harder to read, because those background details are less and less familiar, readers are conscious that they’re missing something, and it interferes with their enjoyment. Guidebooks like What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew become necessary. The environment of the Royale should be full of areas that are blurry, smoothed-off to disguise uncertainties, drawers that don’t open, carpets that just blend into the bottoms of walls, people who appear normal at a distance but display a disturbing lack of realistic detail when examined closely. Perhaps effects like this were described in Tormé’s original teleplay and were written out?
• If Colonel Richey’s ship was the Charybdis, did it have a sister ship called Scylla?
• God, what a grim fate Richey faced. On the other hand, why did he wait thirty-eight years before writing anything down about it? Based on this episode, I would say that every astronaut heading into space should take care to keep with them at all times a copy of a novel whose world they wouldn’t mind living in. Just in case. I think mine would be Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, although I’d have to have it on a Kindle or something because the book is gloriously fat and heavy. Some books could be used to swat insects; I think Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell would be sufficient to swat a mouse.
• I also think it’s a shame that somebody brought the Hotel Royale along on a mission beyond the solar system, when they could so easily have brought Casino Royale.
• Actually, given the length and purpose of the mission, to get beyond the solar system, wouldn’t it make sense for the astronauts to have brought along a lot more books than just one novel? Unless they did as I suggested and brought their books on a Kindle or other electronic device, which the aliens couldn’t figure out how to read, and there was only one paper book on board.
• Lieutenant LaForge has a thought! His plan is… to let you freeze and then thaw you out. Dr Pulaski is also here, briefly earning her paycheque for the week.
• Does Picard really mean it when he says they’ll wait for months if necessary? The Federation flagship will wait for months in orbit of some nowheresville planet, because three of its crew (admittedly, its first and second officers and its security chief – which seems like an awfully high concentration of indispensible personnel for one away team) are stuck in a weird dumb magic hotel on the surface?
• There’s something inexplicably delightful about the sight of Worf answering a phone. I’m impressed that he knows which end of the receiver to hold to his mouth and which near his ear, given his unfamiliarity with elevator call buttons.
• So in The Hotel Royale, which Data just read, the term ‘room service’ is never used in a way that would let him correctly infer its meaning? I think my favourite use of the term is Miss Hannigan’s in Annie, to imply, probably correctly, that Lily St Regis is a great big prostitute.
• How considerate that Worf closes the door of the dead man’s room on the way out.
• It’s just as well for Picard that Hotel Royale‘s text is on file in the memory bank of a military/scientific starship. I mean, what are the odds?
• How unfair is it that no complete and authoritative text of any of Shakespeare’s plays has survived to the present day, but Hotel Royale has been preserved for the ages?
• Bulwer-Lytton moment.
• Worf doesn’t know how to do casual queries, Data. You could at least be his wingman. (One thing I love about the dynamic with these two is that Data is actually better with people.)
• Riker comes back and asks what they found out, and Worf answers ‘Nothing,’ neglecting to mention that he hasn’t actually talked to anyone yet because he’s too shy.
• SAXOPHONE OF EMOTION!
• Mickey D. gets his own entrance theme music. And he looks ridiculous. What is it about wearing an overcoat draped over your shoulders with the sleeves hanging empty? It doesn’t look dapper or powerful. It looks as if you don’t know how to wear coats.
• I love how the audiobook version Picard and Troi are now listening to has voice actors who sound the same as the characters on the planet. Either that or they’re just listening to what’s going on in earshot of Riker’s commbadge. It’s really not clear.
• This episode is so cheap. How cheap is it? They just had the bellboy get shot in the back by a large caliber handgun, and he fell to the ground, his back fully visible, with no hole in the back of his coat. Or is that just the kind of uncanny lack of detail I was wishing for earlier? There’s no blood puddle spreading out under him either.
• I wouldn’t call that a bloody shoot-out – one shot was fired and its target died immediately, with a conspicuous lack of blood. How has Picard managed to read ahead when a few minutes earlier he was listening to an audiobook that was up to the same point as events happening on the planet?
• I do like the fact that Riker figures out that he can escape from the story by playing along, adopting a role in the narrative. That’s a very nice idea.
• RIKER. DON’T SAY ‘ELABORATE’ TO DATA UNLESS YOU REALLY MEAN IT.
• Is ‘Texas’ supposed to be plotting with Vanessa to kill her husband, which was meant to be the subplot of the novel, or just trying to make her waste all her money and planning to nail her once she has nowhere to stay but his hotel room?
• I do not think Vanessa is the person to ask for a luck-blow on your dice. Ask Worf.
• I also think it was intended to be funny when Vanessa repeatedly said ‘yeah’ in a vapid tone of voice just after Data made some valid point. I feel a bit sorry for this actress. I think the role was cast with Bernadette Peters in mind – possibly because I was thinking of Lily St Regis earlier – but she is no Bernadette Peters.
• Look at Data fix loaded dice by… squeezing them? And then, out of nowhere, he suddenly hits on a persona for gambling, and we’re right back to the ‘preposterously sexy’ or ‘sexily preposterous’ territory of ‘Lonely Among Us.’ If he put the cowboy hat back on at this point the combination would be quite lethal. And the invisible band has just decided to favour Data with what only the doomed bellboy and Mickey D were worthy of before, THEME MUSIC! Data gets a much cooler jazzy sort of theme than the Saxophone of Emotion. Eyebrow-flirting is in evidence once again, but the target is Riker. This scene gives the impression of Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes saying ‘ah, fuckit’ and just going for ULTIMATE CHEESE (while Michael Dorn sticks with ‘stoic’ – poor Worf has nothing to do). It is all the better for it.
• Riker likes the idea of being ‘flamboyantly generous.’
• How has Data won $12.3 million at a roulette table in a hotel lobby?
• How does Riker know how to spread money around, given that he comes from a socialist utopia? Is he just an instinctive high roller? Or did he just suddenly think ‘Oh, like Risa’?
• You didn’t show me your car. You didn’t let me keep your hat. Therefore I have broken you. Sorry Tex.
• I would have liked it if Tex had given Data the hat and he’d borne it away as a trophy.
• And then they went home. Bit of a flat ending – all it really has for a climax is the cheese scene. I feel like this could have been made more interesting if Vanessa and Texas, as the other known characters at the table, had had some kind of conflict with Data, something at stake, like Texas thinking Data is trying to steal Vanessa away or to ruin him and retaliating in some way (instead of just seeming hurt and confused for a moment, then chuckling and deciding he likes them). Or Vanessa latching onto Data, deciding that he’s a better ticket out of her situation than Texas, and Data having to work out how to extricate himself from that situation without messing up their attempt to roll with the plot of the novel. But such a complication would need to be introduced earlier in the episode to be played out properly.
• So they are left saying that the Charybdis’ presence so far from where she could be expected is just an unguessable mystery – when just last week they discovered the Iconian gateway.
• Well, I’ll just leave you with this.
• 
• Next time it’ll be ‘Time Squared.’ Two Picards! And Riker tries to cook!

Memory Alpha says: The Enterprise and a Romulan warbird are attacked by the same computer virus that claimed another Federation starship – one of the same class as the Enterprise. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

Besides the making of tea history, a background detail that I really like about this episode (and here I quote MA):

• This episode was conceived by computer technician and Star Trek fan Beth Woods, who at the time worked on the Trek offices’ computers. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion)
• Gene Roddenberry was not initially keen on the story, having written in the TNG bible that Federation technology was so advanced that there was no possibility of it ever malfunctioning, but Woods brought him round to the idea by explaining the idea of computer viruses and how they could bring even the most well-designed computer system to its knees.

Firstly, hooray for lady computer technicians; somewhere the ghost of Ada Lovelace punches the air. (If Data ever gets tired of his Famous Mathematicians And Scientists Poker Game being such a sausage fest, I think he should invite Ada, who coincidentally was one of the very few humans to have an approximation of a Vulcan upbringing centuries before first contact. Her mother was understandably worried that Ada would inherit her father, Lord Byron’s mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know tendencies, and raised her to be as mathematical, scientific and unromantic as humanly possible. Sadly, Ada did eventually succumb to the Byron family mental illness (probably bipolar disorder), but not before becoming the first human computer programmer and being declared an Enchanted Math Fairy by noted cowcatcher-inventor and music-hater Charles Babbage. Ada has been cartooned by Kate Beaton, which means she has achieved Internet Popularity, and has her own webcomic (well, she shares it with Babbage and the mighty Isambard Kingdom Brunel) at 2-D Goggles.

One long digression later: secondly, Gene really did love to write himself out of a story opportunity, didn’t he? It’s also strange that he raised this objection at this stage when holodeck malfunction (well, arguably, in ‘Elementary, My Dear Data’ it functions too well) had provided plots for a couple of episodes already broadcast.

Thirdly, I cannot help imagining explaining computer viruses and their story potential to the elderly Gene Roddenberry to be quite similar to setting your grandma up to use Facebook; or repeatedly shutting your fingers in a drawer, whichever.

I’m sure you’ll be thrilled to hear that I have no memories of this episode either, so let’s just hit it with the bullet points.

• A desperate plea! An old friend! A ship called Yamato! The NEUTRAL ZONE! They are really ramping up the excitement in the teaser.
• A weird floaty  camera shot of Picard walking onto the bridge. The effect is really strange; it feels like a point-of-view shot for someone unseen. Maybe a ghost? Either that, or it just looks really, really amateur, like a not-very-clever student film that just happens to be shot on the Enterprise.
• OR
• AND THIS WOULD BE BRILLIANT
• A COPS-STYLE REALITY/PROPAGANDA SHOW THAT IS BROADCAST THROUGHOUT THE FEDERATION AND SHOOTS ON A DIFFERENT STARFLEET SHIP EACH WEEK.
• oh lord could you imagine Picard ever tolerating such a thing
• Riker would love it though
• try to hijack it into a sort of MTV Cribs thing, taking the cameras on a tour of his quarters, ‘where the magic happens.’
• Data has to keep being reminded not to look at the camera. ‘Carry on as if we weren’t here.’ Gives the director an odd ‘are you sure?’ look, walks into the sound guy.
• Picard’s ‘antique humour’ was… kind of a pick-up line. I’m not going to pry about your history together. Just… know how that sounded.
• Look, why not take the Yamato in tow and get her out of the Neutral Zone, instead of sitting here with your arses hanging out waiting for Marc Alaimo to come along and bite them? (I don’t think we can actually look forward to Marc Alaimo today – it’s just that he was one of the last Romulans we saw.)
• Oh these two are archaeology besties. They used to watch Indiana Jones movies together and point out the inaccuracies to each other but still totally dum-da-DUH-dum along whenever the Indy theme swelled up on the score.
• No more Donald. No more Yamato. It looks as if the saucer section tried to separate at the last moment but either couldn’t get clear of the blast or suffered similar failures and explosions shortly after the stardrive, so all the children and pets and civilians on board just died too. It really is an extremely grim sight to see a Galaxy-class ship go down. Did you know that one reason why DS9 got poor ratings was that, when they had the Dominion destroy the Galaxy-class ship Odyssey to demonstrate that Shit Just Got Real, many casual viewers thought that it was the Enterprise and were furious at DS9… disrespecting the parent series, I guess? Which is an odd thing to get upset about if they weren’t paying close enough attention to know that it was a different Galaxy ship. I suppose they didn’t like Dr Bashir either.
• BUT this gives rise to a semi-useful piece of headcanon for me. You know how it’s just stupid that the Enterprise is never involved in the Dominion War? Well, to account for that, I think that footage of the destruction of the Odyssey went out on Federation news channels, and caused widespread public panic because, in-series, people thought it was the Enterprise, the flagship, the symbol, so it was hugely damaging to PR/morale. Consequently, even though it was a ridiculous waste of resources and expertise, Enterprises D and E were carefully kept well away from the dangerous area for the duration of the war. Military historians will long debate how much sooner the war might have ended with the involvement of a strategist like Picard. He could well have invented a new Manoeuvre!
• Have I told that story before too? I know I’ve written about it in drafts of fanfiction that never developed to a sharable level.
• Now here comes a big green Romulan to rub salt in the wound.
• There’s a guest star this week called Thalmus Rasulala! THALMUS RASULALA! What an exuberant name.
  
• Hallo Romulan commander lady. You’re not as slinky as the Romulan commander lady from TOS.
• This is a COLD WAR SUBMARINES IN SPACE episode. I quite like those.
• STAFF MEETING IN ONE HOUR. PREPARE THE COFFEE.
• Picard says ‘theorise’ when he means ‘speculate.’ I’m sorry, I am such a nitpicker when it comes to the use of the word ‘theory.’
• This is another of those episodes where Deanna is written as a diplomatic officer rather than a therapist.
• I should have more to say, shouldn’t I? I’m mostly sitting here being curious and interested!
• Oh Donald, Donald. you done fucked up, Donald.
• FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE: Picard’s doors don’t open properly.
• Picard goes and asks Data to Google something for him.
• They discover the blue zappy ball thing that I presume is the source of the virus now fucking with them.
• oh Wesley why must you bother the Captain when he’s playing with his iPad? Oh, you’re here to provide Picard with an opportunity to exposit at us, using a special spooky story-telling voice to describe the ‘demons of air and darkness.’
• Anyway, clearly, Shit Just Got Real for Wesley when he saw the Yamato blow.
• You handle it by being a god damn grown-up, Wesley – and by drinking tea until you bleed it when cut.
• Geordi is scooting around Engineering in an office chair of, let us say, a design that has not changed since the late 1980s.
• It twinkled at them! The cheeky monkey.
• CAPTAIN! DO NOT SEEK THE TREASURE!
• And because he can’t get the captain on the comm, Geordi hauls ass to reach the bridge on foot, and if I were on my own computer instead of the laptop upstairs, I would share with you my much-loved sped-up GIF of it.
• I really love the effect of Geordi getting – sucked? thrown? magnetised? into the closed lift doors. It gives an appropriately physical sense of how much has gone wrong with frightening speed, and LeVar Burton (and his stunt double) does a great job of moving convincingly as if he is being flung around. Would you look at that! A well-executed action scene in Season 2 TNG!
• When your chief engineer flies out of the lift and lands on the floor with his eyeballs showing all white and gross, you know something’s up.
• The line ‘Welcome to the bridge, Mr LaForge’ plays kind of weirdly given that Geordi used to work there every day.
• Surely ‘two completely incompatible computer systems trying to interact’ just… wouldn’t. I mean, try running Windows software on a Mac without something like Boot Camp.
• You guys really need to scan your downloads for viruses.
• Isn’t it crazy and asking for trouble to program a starship so that 90% of its operations are completely out of the crew’s control? Of course, asking for trouble is a lot of what the Enterprise does. Perhaps that should be written into the mission statement.
• Yes, Kate, this is a terrible, scary and frustrating situation, but ranting at that embarrassed Asian nurse isn’t going to help anything.
• A splint should not be an obscure concept to a doctor or nurse; it’s still basic first aid that he should have learned for emergencies. I bet Dr McCoy would slap him upside the head.
• The blue lightning effects when Geordi is shocked by his control panel are reminiscent of ‘Lonely Among Us.’
• Data’s ‘oopsie!’ expression and gestures when his effort to free Geordi from the panel flings him across the room are simultaneously adorable and ridiculous (for an android). Now is hardly the time for me to learn to make animated GIFs from an AVI file so I will just stress that you need to be watching the episode.
  
• I love how the two of them play the next little exchange, with Data solicitously bending over Geordi and Geordi not moving at all while he talks, because fuck moving, it has brought him nothing but trouble. Geordi is getting flung a lot this week – on the other hand, he’s not annoying me because this episode lets him focus on his strength, being a competent and resourceful engineer, not his horrible relationship skills.
• At least you didn’t lose your glasses again?
• YAY, an AWAY TEAM! And Picard’s going to lead it, because Indiana Jones would not let Will Riker tell him to stay put in a safe place.
• Hi O’Brien!
• The line ‘They’re arming photon torpedoes!’ goes to a woman I’ve never seen before with an impressive wedge of hair. She looks a bit like Gozer. She is not an especially good actress, so I guess she was cast for her hair.
• Riker has what became a somewhat iconic line, ‘Fate protects fools, little children and ships called Enterprise.’ So… I guess it doesn’t protect little children on ships called Yamato. Maybe that’s why Deanna looks a trifle pained.
• Marina Sirtis plays the line ‘In another time and place this could be funny’ as if Deanna actually does find it funny and is trying not to laugh inappropriately.
• Okay, so the Romulans are obviously having the same technical difficulties as the Enterprise. Time to declare common cause?
• What about the away team? Well, the away team consists of Worf, Data and Picard, the three toughest nuts on the ship.
• I love how Patrick Stewart shows Picard’s fascination with and enjoyment of the puzzle alongside his concern and urgency. Because even if this is a crisis, it is still so cool to get to snoop around an old Iconian facility.
• Give everyone something to do – for example, gathering rocks to throw at the Romulans.
• So Riker gives Deanna something to do. Which, of course, also improves her chances for survival if all this goes horribly wrong. Awwwwwwww, Imzadi.
• ‘That was… not manual override.’ Oh, Data, my little precious. Brent Spiner is doing some nice work in this episode.
• DON’T JUST STICK YOUR ARM IN IT. GOOD GOD MAN.
• OW DATA. (I do like the continuity that when Data falls unconscious his arms go stiff like a Ken doll’s.)
• AAARGH I AM HAVING SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH DATA ACTING LIKE HE’S HAVING A STROKE AND DESCRIBING BLINDNESS. (THIS MUST BE WHAT IT’S LIKE FOR HIM STUCK INSIDE B4 I CAN NEVER WATCH NEMESIS.)
• and the Away Team has rapidly become Team Blow Shit Up, which viewers of Lost will know is the best of all teams.
• Because I can always notice something inappropriate: the jerky movements of poor damaged Data’s head are making Brent Spiner’s mullet wiggle.
• OH GOD WORF HAVING TO HOLD POOR LITTLE DATA UP.
• controlling this thing is apparently a lot like playing Simon.
• WORF HAVING TO PICK DATA UP IN A FIREMAN’S LIFT (and Brent Spiner doing an incredibly good job of hanging like a mannequin rather than a living human, such that I had to look carefully at the head to feel sure it was him and not a mannequin).
• HOLY MACK I DID NOT REALISE WHEN I CUED UP THIS EPISODE THAT I WAS GOING TO SEE DATA DIE. I WAS ALL
• 
• EVEN THOUGH I OBVIOUSLY REALISE THIS IS ONLY TEMPORARY AND HE’S GOING TO BE FINE I AM TOTALLY BUGGIN’.
• 

• Okay I’d better be bloody, bold and resolute and get on with this.
• shit it’s lucky I didn’t see this on its first run not knowing Data would be okay
• seriously
• you know how, after the cliffhanger of the first part of the two-part finale of Sailor Moon Classic when all the Senshi have been killed and Sailor Moon is alone in the Antarctic in the howling white wind with Dark Kingdom forces drawing closer and closer, some little kids got so upset they had rashes and convulsions and their worried parents took them to hospital?
• this is some serious shit
• especially since Data is like, Sailor Mercury and Sailor Jupiter in one (I know I’ve just hurt Worf’s feelings because he wants to be Jupiter and I’m going to have to try to persuade him Mars is just as strong)
• okay I need to disengage from Sailor Moon and watch the damn episode
• because you know what? they didn’t leave us to suffer over a two-parter or even, as far as I can tell, an ad break. We get to see Data is okay really quickly. Phew.
• In a very nice bit of continuity, while Geordi is trying to figure out what was wrong with Data he laments ‘If we had an expert, a Maddox, somebody’ – although as the line is spoken it sounds almost like ‘an expert-o-matic.’ An expert-o-matic would indeed be useful; you put a coin in the slot and Ferret Face steps out. I think Geordi’s selling himself short here, though; he knows far more about Data, just from working with him, than I believe Maddox does, even if he’s made a deeper study of the theory behind him than Geordi has.
• I love how Data is just peeping around like a little birdie and half-smiling because he’s so pleased and surprised to be alive, while Geordi and Riker brainstorm around him.
• Riker suddenly loses command of his ‘g’s as he informs Geordi ‘If we shut down that means we’re going to be bringin’ down the shields, and we’re hangin’ nose to nose with a Romulan battle cruiser.’ It’s odd, because his demeanour is not otherwise agitated.
• bringin’ down the shields, bringin’ down the shields, we shall come rejoicin’, bringin’ down the shields
• ‘Make it so,’ says Riker, as if these words are a sort of charm, and OH GOD THE ADORABLE as the still confused Data pipes ‘May I help?’
• OOPSIE DOODLE PICARD JUST APPEARED ON THE ROMULAN BRIDGE.
• I’m quite impressed at the Romulans’ restraint in just surrounding him with phasers drawn, and not shooting at him right after he appears.
• And the bastard beams out with a snappy comeback.
• Data has the bridge by the way. Which is not bad for a person who was dead five minutes ago.
• PICARD. I WAS WRONG ABOUT THE TEA. ICED WATER RUNS IN HIS VEINS.
• AND EVERYTHING WAS FINE AND EVERYONE LEFT QUICKLY.
• Well, I thought that was a really good fast-paced adventurous episode!
• and you know what NEXT time is
• THE ROYALE WITH CHEESE

Memory Alpha says: Wesley falls in love with the new leader of a war-torn planet. (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

Okay, I get the impression that this episode is going to be weird, corny and inconsequential in equal parts. It’s another in the great parade of episodes that I don’t think I saw when they were first on – indeed, the more I continue with this blog, the more I realise that I’ve missed a lot of TNG. I would feel like a Bad Fan, but I can’t be bothered.

Oh, and this episode has also recently been covered by Fashion It So! I just… can’t find it. Search doesn’t seem to be working and my patience for scrolling is finite. So not that recently after all. Never mind.

You have probably noticed that I’ve given up on DS9 for a while. I will return to it eventually, don’t worry. Now allow me to fire off some bullet points.

• ‘Dauphin’ is French for dolphin and also for Crown Prince. However, since this story is about Wesley falling in love with a princess, the title should really be ‘The Dauphine,’ or even ‘La Dauphine,’ unless the writer had something else in mind but The Man, aka Rick ‘No Homosexuals In Space’ Berman… no I think it’s just a slightly inaccurate use of French in an English context.
• Apropos of nothing: You know how, after Geordi moved down to Engineering permanently, they never developed a regular helmsman character after that? The seat was just filled by an assortment of different people (sometimes with excellent hairdos) week by week? At one time there was a plan to develop a young woman helm officer who was to have been a love interest for O’Brien, but the writers thought it would diminish O’Brien to… have a wife with a more high-powered job than him? So they didn’t? I love O’Brien and am glad he was picked up for development and a given name and all the rest, but that’s so very, very sexist. Also, there’s a decent chance that I would have liked her better than Keiko, and it would have restored the balance that was upset by Tasha’s departure, by giving us another female character not in a care-giving role. Have I told that story before? Probably.
• Today’s disposable helmswoman has pretty good mall hair.
• Geordi wants to do some nerd stuff so he gets permission and they go into orbit.
• Geordi sends Wesley to fetch an ‘SCM model 4′ from ship’s stores, and I wish this were a ‘tease the apprentice’ joke like sending him to get a bag of nail holes or a tin of striped paint (the go-faster stripes on the hull need re-doing) but I bet it’s not.
• I just realised the other day how similar Wesley’s hair at this stage is to Kurt from Glee‘s. I don’t know what to do with that insight, because I can’t draw Kurt in the Rainbow Sweater and get it out of my system.
• Everyone thinks the yellowy-green fog looks disgusting. Picard and Troi are sitting with their legs crossed in the same direction, but Riker is sitting with his knees sprawled apart like he’s airing himself out.
• Once again, Worf is doing Uhura’s old job – except Uhura got to sit down while she worked.
• Data has the bridge, yay. I always like that.
• O’Brien sighted. I always like that.
• So we have a bright and inquisitive princess and a stern and repressive duenna, check, check.
• Here come Wesley and his hair to fall in love with the princess – who apparently was gazing not at him, but at the SCM in his hands. It’s an appropriately nerdy meet cute.
• Jesus Christ, Wesley’s hairswoop today! It must be three inches high.
• TROLLING WESLEY SO HARD.
• This is another of those Awkward Screenwriting things. There’s no real reason why Wesley couldn’t have tagged after Riker at the end of the teaser and got him to explain properly who Salia was. But instead, here he is pumping Data for information. Because he can just call the third-in-command of the whole starship to come over to his place to tell him about some girl he likes. On the Enterprise, asking Data about someone is the equivalent of Googling them. Except that Data might have things he would rather be doing, Wesley. He’s got mash notes from Bruce Maddox to answer.
• There is a loop of blue neon behind Data that is quite distracting in his close-ups. Has Wesley redecorated in his mother’s absence, trying to create a cool bachelor pad? For that matter, is he still living in the same two-bedroom quarters or did they move him to a single? How many non-acting ensigns get a single to themselves?
• And we then find out that not only is Wesley bothering grown-ups with important jobs (all right, Data’s ‘grown-up’ status is nebulous) to lazy-Google his dream girl, he’s not even doing his own, made-up job, because he went straight home to work on his hair and summon Data instead of taking the SCM to Geordi!
• How come randoms about whom ‘little is known’ can just bother Starfleet ships to come and give them a lift? Since when is the Federation running a taxi service? Salia and Anya are being put up in the guest quarters usually given to admirals and other important assholes, but clearly nothing like a proper background check has been done on them. This is an incredible security fuck-up in disguise as a Mysterious and Beautiful Stranger. She could be full of bombs.
• Seriously, the first person to raise any concern about the Daled Duo is Deanna, and she doesn’t even sound worried about it. Doesn’t anyone remember the admiral with a worm in his neck? Or the Klingons with kitset guns in their boots? Or Lore?
• I know they operate on a high-trust model and that’s very cuddly and noble of them but I do think they make a rod for their own backs sometimes.
• So I guess Salia feels bad about having a Dreadful Secret. Or she feels bad about forming a crush on someone before she knew his name was ‘Wesley.’
• Daled IV: Planet of Quarrelsome Assholes. And how is Salia supposed to solve the day and night problem (overlooking for a moment that it’s a total non-reason for world war)?
• And, for no reason, Anya the Duenna has turned herself into Shelley the Waitress (only not in a cute waitress uniform, in a horrible ruggy-textured catsuit), and is talking a line of bullshit about how Salia will ‘just know’ what to do about the centuries of world war on her home planet. She wants her to ‘arrive with an open mind,’ which seems to mean not preparing her in any way. Salia has a little Disney Princess moment as she gazes out at the stars and wonders why nobody’s asked her what she wants. I feel like she should release some birds from a cage at this point. Anya tells her she’s ‘the last and only chance,’ I guess because none of the Quarrelsome Assholes are capable of enough initiative or responsibility for themselves to try to negotiate for peace.
• And, for no reason, Shelley turns herself into a little owl-eyed Ewok thing and starts click-talking at Salia. It’s not David Lynch weird, but it’s weird.
• Geordi does nerd stuff, and the computer talks to him in a man’s voice the way it sometimes did in early seasons. Geordi notices that Wesley is totally spacing out, and instead of telling him that if he wants to be an Acting Ensign he’d better jolly well pull himself together and act like a grown-up during work hours, he just, I don’t know, humours him or something, and tells him he has ‘glands erupting with hormones’ and excuses him from work because of his hormones.
• I’m not a regular boss, I’m a cool boss! Right, Regina?
• Wesley apparently thinks that talking to girls you like is ‘silly.’ Right. You should get to know them by asking poor Data questions, instead. Or perhaps he thinks Geordi’s diagnosis of ‘hormones’ is silly. Wil Wheaton evidently had worked out a very cool way of sliding down the ladder from the Engineering mezzanine to the main floor, and I give him credit for that.
• Geordi’s idea of an ice-breaker: ‘Hi, I’m [name]. I’d like to talk to you.’ Wow. How is he still single?
• So Wesley farts off to the bridge – it’s not his shift to be there or anything, but apparently he’s lost all sense of Bridge Boundaries since being acting-promoted, demonstrating the truth of the old saw about giving an inch and taking a yard – and bothers Worf about it. This scene is worth it because Worf describing Klingons courting is kind of adorable, although God knows why he chose to open by demonstrating a Klingon woman’s flirty roar.
• We also see that Data (once again? still? This episode’s sense of passage of time is not very clear to me – did Data take a break during his shift to answer Wesley’s summons? Is Wesley the spoiled little Dauphin of the Enterprise? EPISODE TITLE MAKES UNEXPECTED SENSE) has the bridge, so I suppose it figures that nonsense like this is going on – if Picard were in the swivelly chair he would have none of it. If Riker were, well, he’d be leaning, grinning and trying to egg Worf on to describe the more salacious details.
• ‘Data,’ Wesley says, in an unnecessarily snotty tone, ‘I want to meet her, not dissect her.’ Actually, I believe Data was saying he thought you could nail her. You have to bear with him; in his experience, you go to the girl’s apartment, she shows up in a silly outfit, talks about her traumatic childhood for a while and then you score. Data and Worf exchange kindred-spirit Looks as Wesley prances off.
• The next scene is jammed full of not-sense-making and girl-on-girl crime. For one thing, why does Salia have to shoo still-little-and-furry Anya out of the room when Picard calls? It’s been established that Picard is a gentleman who won’t turn on the viewer part of the commlink without permission, and ANYA CAN CHANGE HER WHOLE APPEARANCE IN SECONDS. For another, Picard tells Salia ‘We’ve invited Anya to take a tour of the ship,’ but when they arrived in the transporter room and Salia showed curiosity about the machines, Riker offered her a tour of the ship and Anya curtly said that wouldn’t be necessary! And THEN little furry clicking Anya tries to stop Salia going on the tour to which she apparently accepted an invitation during some conversation we the viewers were never privileged to see! She just takes off with Worf, leaving poor Salia to stew alone! If Anya isn’t willing to give her any useful advice for trying to quell the Quarrelsome Assholes, she could at least keep her company and play cards or something to take her mind off it. Boo, you whore.
• Having asked an unhelpful nerd, Worf and the guy who can’t feel, Wesley finally gets around to interrogating the only person on the Enterprise who has any sort of expertise on pitching woo. Riker is remarkably patient with the pipsqueak, although I suspect him of covert trolling, as he calls Guinan over and the pair of them give him a sort of exhibition match of Courtly Love. Wesley looks progressively more embarrassed, uncomfortable and eye-rolly until he interrupts ‘I don’t think this is my style,’ and Guinan, delightfully, responds ‘Shut up, kid. [to Riker] Tell me more about my eyes.’
• You know how I don’t like the classic ‘Shut up, Wesley’ from ‘Datalore’? I like the ‘Shut up, kid’ from ‘The Dauphin’ very, very much.
• The chief of security for the Federation flagship is stuck giving a tour to a crabby old lady who, rather like her charge, turns out to know a lot about engineering. Worf just stands there and lets her get in the lift and ride up to the mezzanine without him. SHE COULD BE FULL OF BOMBS.
• Anyway, Anya bitches at Geordi about his machines for a bit and he just refrains from telling her to shove it up her jumper, and Worf calls her away (ooh, effectual) and Anya promises/threatens that she’ll be back to check on Geordi’s progress, and what the fuck.
• Wesley and his hair prance along the corridor to the Admiralty Suite or whatever they call it, which has a guard on the door, in a remarkable display of actual trying to keep tabs on the total strangers they have blithely allowed onto their flagship. The guard has a really nice chest. He asks Wesley what he can do for him, and Wes, perhaps cowed by the chest, meekly answers ‘Nothing.’ Just then, suggesting she’s been listening at the keyhole, Salia opens the door and Wesley looks at her with a mixture of adoration and terror. Salia asks him in to help her ‘work the food dispenser’ and the guard is left looking vaguely annoyed.
• ‘On Thalos Seven they age the beans four hundred years.’ What’s your point? To let her know that the replicated Thalian mousse she just enjoyed isn’t as good? And the music she likes is okay but kind of mainstream?
• The planet being called ‘Klavdia III’ just reminds me of how my dad thinks it’s very witty to pronounce I, Claudius as ‘I, Clavdivs.’
• So there’s a ‘cute’ scene with chocolate mousse (which Salia only tastes and doesn’t get to finish, a bit like how in ‘Be Our Guest’ the only thing you can see Belle gets to eat is a finger-scoop of ‘the grey stuff.’ My headcanon is that during all the shots in which we can only see Lumière and the other enchanted objects, Belle is stuffing her face like a hungry hungry hippo) and Wesley gets to show off about all the planets he’s visited and I CAN SHOW YOU THE WORLD, SHINING SHIMMERING SPLENDID, TELL ME PRINCESS NOW WHEN DID YOU LAST LET YOUR HEART DECIDE? Which in this show means they’re going to the holodeck.
• The next scene is just… mental. For some reason Worf’s tour includes taking Anya to the sickbay, where she completely loses her shit over a crewman with a sniffle that Salia might just possibly catch, tells Pulaski to kill him like one of those parents who want a schoolwide ban on peanut butter sandwiches because their special snowflake has a punk-ass nut allergy, and then blows her cover by turning into a giant red-eyed yeti thing! Anya is an idiot. Poor Worf has to have a stupid-looking fight with her which is broken up by Picard saying ‘Wait.’
• Anya (I keep accidentally typing her name as Anyway, and can I just say that I would much rather by typing about Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who was funny and lovely and did not deserve to be bisected) growls ‘Your powers are infinitesimal compared to mine.’ Well, if your powers are so fancy, why don’t you use them to keep Salia in a quarantine that satisfies you? Also, Captain Picard doesn’t take any shit from people with superpowers. And Q is better dressed than you and more fun. So he tells her off and sends her to her room. She flounces off ahead of the two security guards escorting her.
• Pulaski shows some pretty Data-worthy recall, saying ‘There is mention in the galactic zoological catalogue of a species called allasomorph, which is supposed to possess the power to alter their molecular structure into other life forms.’ I’d be interested to know whether Martia, in The Undiscovered Country, should be considered an allasomorph, because I don’t think she’s a Founder. Hang on, if it was a zoological catalogue rather than an anthropological one, wouldn’t that imply that allasomorphs aren’t intelligent/sentient creatures? So that wouldn’t explain Anya, would it?
• On the holodeck, I break away briefly from my Disney Princess extended metaphor to point out that Wesley is getting to feel like the Doctor, impressing a girl by showing her distant worlds and strange starscapes (but on the other hand, I also totally think ‘A Whole New World’ is Nine and Rose’s Our Song, so make of it all what you will. Also, I miss Nine and wish he’d had a longer run). Wesley also makes a bunch of unfounded assumptions about what Salia will be able to do in her life, given that he knows nothing about her background or prospects. He pretty much just assumes she’s as privileged as he is, and she doesn’t tell him otherwise. Wesley, not everyone can travel on a starship.
• Worf marches angry Anya back to the Admiralty, and they snot back and forth at each other about who is a bigger badass and who can protect Salia, without either of them having the faintest clue that Salia has left her suite and is playing on the Holodeck with germy Wesley. Looking it over, I get the impression that the script for this episode wanted there to be a love-hate chemistry between Anya and Worf, but it just didn’t come out that way, not least because she only looks like Madchen Amick for five minutes with Salia,  and in her scenes with Worf she looks like an elderly nun.
• In the Ready Room, Picard anvils ‘We’ve obviously brought a very dangerous life form aboard this ship.’ Yeah, a few questions and an insistence on straight answers could have spared you that! He and Troi chat about how Anya is like a mama bear protecting her babies and then the Mama Bear comms Picard to say that SALIA IS GONE.
• Salia and Wesley are winding up their date at Ten Forward with MOAR CHOCOLATE, which Salia still doesn’t get to eat. Of course, eating while acting isn’t easy and it’s often quite unpleasant because the food is faked up or cold or dyed blue to look alien, but I just feel really bad for the character not getting to EAT SOME DAMN CHOCOLATE PUDDING.
• It’s all fun and games until Salia gets all emo about the fact that she’s not going to have the freedom to goof off and engulf chocolate mousse on Asshole World, and Wesley’s all ‘You could stay!’ and she’s all *choke* ‘I can’t!’ and runs out. Guinan has to drop a hint that Wesley should follow her.
• And I swear they really have the following conversation, with sad romantic BGM.
• WESLEY: What is it? What happened? Salia!SALIA: Stay away from me! I’m sorry.WESLEY: I don’t understand.SALIA: I can’t stay here! I can’t have this life! I want it more than anything, but I can’t have it!WESLEY: Salia, nothing is impossible.

  SALIA: Not for you.

  WESLEY: There’s a way. I know there is!

• And then Salia gets arrested. Well, no, but Picard and Anya show up so that’s Death To Fun Dates. Awwww, Sad Wesley leans against a wall and mopes.
• And then Geordi reports that he’s fixed his nerd thing, because the only reason any of this silliness had time to develop was that they’ve been travelling at impulse speed while he futzed with it. It isn’t important for any other reason.
• Picard calls Wesley to the Ready Room, which in this situation I interpret as the Headmaster’s Office.
• Picard quite kindly tells Wesley that Anya is an allasomorph, even though we haven’t heard Anya confirm that. And Wesley either translates ‘allasomorph’ in his head or has read that zoological catalogue Pulaski was talking about, because he says ‘A shapeshifter?’ Anyway, Headmaster Picard tells Wesley to stay away from Salia, and Wesley folds his arms and looks down and looks sad and at long last says ‘I will do as you ask.’ Actually, I don’t think he was asking you, Pretending Ensign.
• Salia and Anya have a boring fight about Destiny and Duty and how girls with both can’t have friends (or chocolate mousse). You know, I think I’m going to have to make a chocolate mousse for dinner. I’ve got a bar of decent dark chocolate waiting in the pantry. It hasn’t been aged four hundred years, but it’s lasted without being eatean for over a week, which is pretty impressive for confectionery in this house.
• Planet of the Quarrelsome Assholes turns out to be just as yellow and green and yukky as the planet they picked up Salia and Anya from, and Riker has a remarkably dumb line, ‘How could anyone exist in an environment so totally hostile toward human life?’ Perhaps by not being human? You know, like most of the new life-forms you encounter on your ship’s stated mission?
  
• The helmswoman with Bump-It hair is still there. I wonder if rotating helmspeeps ever take advantage of the opportunity to hit on Data a little. He is right there.
• If ‘allasomorph’ is a species rather than just a, I don’t know, type, why wasn’t it in any of the records that they come from Asshole World? This is not an episode whose premise bears scrutiny.
• Anyway now I think Wesley is a Princess in a Tower (playing Electronic Battleship by himself) and Salia bravely goes to him or some junk, and they SMOOCH, and Anya charges in all RAARSKREEEEEE, and Salia has to shape-shift to make her fuck off. And Wesley is traumatised because his dream girl is all icky, not perfect like he imagined.
• Wow, I am sincerely unused to being so bored during an episode of Star Trek.
• Not only has Anya never given Salia any helpful advice for reuniting the Assholes, she now claims she’s done all she can and it’s time for her to go. So much for being emotionally her mother. And Salia is probably stuck on Asshole World with no chocolate or cute boys to kiss FOREVER.
• And Anya and Worf have this weird little conversation about how she was a worthy opponent and ‘at heart we are very much alike’ (wut) and maybe one day they’ll fight on the same side. And I’m like HOT DAMN BUT ANYA COULD HAVE SERVED AS A DOUBLE AGENT IN THE DOMINION WAR IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUCKIN’ AMAZING. COULD SHE BE PLAYED BY MADCHEN AMICK ALL THE TIME PLEASE? It’s rare that I think of things I’d like to change or add to DS9 (with the exception of making Garak and Bashir Official with KISSING SCENES) but there you go, there’s one, and it comes out of an objectively stupid, boring episode.
• And Salia goes to say goodbye to Wesley and he’s sulking because he feels used or something, and there is never any actual answer as to why Anya and Salia deceived the Enterprise crew about what they were. Salia claims ‘Our natural state is one unlike anything you can imagine.’ So? You thought we wouldn’t give you a lift because you’re weird, or because we’re unimaginative?
• Gloriously and ridiculously, Wesley bitterly declares ‘I loved you’ and Salia’s like ‘I love you too!’ and he won’t have it and kicks her out. Wesley Crusher is a ridiculous human being.
• But then he shows up in the transporter room and gives her a bowl of chocolate mousse to remember him by.
  
• WHICH SHE DOESN’T GET TO EAT EITHER. JUST A FINGERLICK. THIS IS DRIVING ME MAD.
• But at least O’Brien’s there.
• And then Salia’s ‘unimaginable’ natural state is just a pretty blob of shiny light. ANYA YOU IDIOT. NOBODY WOULD HAVE MINDED. NOTHING IN THIS EPISODE IS NECESSARY.
  
• After she disappears and Wesley exhales through his nose wistfully, the scene cuts, and I assume just after that O’Brien leans over the console and asks if Wesley will be finishing that chocolate mousse. I mean, wasting food is wrong.
• Wesley goes to drown his sorrows in a glass of fizzy water or something. Guinan comes over to give him sage advice and I actually really like this dialogue:
  WESLEY: I miss her. I feel empty.
  GUINAN: I know that sensation. But there’ll come a time when all you remember is the love.
  WESLEY: I’m never going to feel this way about anyone else.
  GUINAN: You’re right.
  WESLEY: I didn’t expect you to say that.
  GUINAN: There’ll be others, but every time you feel love it’ll be different. Every time, it’s different.
  WESLEY: Knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.
  GUINAN: It’s not supposed to.
• WELL. That was… an episode. I’d go and make chocolate mousse but I just realised we don’t have any cream and to hell with going out to get it. Anyway, tonight I’m making spaghetti carbonara, so that’s probably enough egg for any sane person, or me. (My spag carb recipe does not involve cream. Or peas. Why the fuck would you adulterate spaghetti with peas. It’s bacon, onion, garlic, some white wine, beaten egg, parmesan cheese.)
• What did you think? Commentate me.

Memory Alpha says: The Enterprise must defend Data’s status when Starfleet demands his reassignment for study.  (Please click the Memory Alpha link for detailed information.)

My Review

I should reserve judgement on ‘best episode of season two’ when I’m not even half-way through, but oh gosh, this episode, you guys. It has so many of the best things about TNG. It has Data being smart and adorable and vulnerable and a challenge to the status quo by his mere existence. It has Picard being his dad and protecting him and getting to make a fiery courtroom speech all Crusading Silver Fox DA. (The episode was written by a former attorney, and only got a chance because of the writers’ strike, so it’s an ill wind that blows no good.) It has the staff poker game. It has a goddamn admiral. It has O’Brien. It has a guy called Bruce, which is probably the name, of all names, that I find most intrinsically comical (second place probably goes to Fred). Sorry, people called Bruce. So, despite my recent lassitude and ennui, I think it deserves a full write-up and will endeavour to deliver. (If I later bail out and revert to bullet points, sorry, people called Bruce and everyone else.)

We begin with Picard narrating some of the less exciting things you do when you’re the Enterprise – visiting a newly established starbase, crew rotation (everybody turn left!) and dropping off ‘experiment modules.’

And now, the first appearance of that great tradition, the TNG officers’ poker game. The lineup consists of Pulaski, Geordi, Data, O’Brien and Riker, with one place at the hexagonal table considerately left empty for the sake of camera access. This kind of connects with what I was thinking last time about Pulaski being a woman who prefers the friendship of men, and builds on O’Brien’s acceptance at the cool kids’ lunch table. (My ‘the Enterprise is high school’ concept breaks down slightly in the face of O’Brien, who pulls off the interesting feat of being a nerd and a jock simultaneously.)

O’Brien gets to be the first person to talk rather than narrate, as he gives a justification for sitting next to Data, other than ‘Data is adorable.’

O’B: Hold it, that’s my chair. My luck is always lousy unless I start on the dealer’s right.

D: That would seem to be superstition.

O’B: Bitter experience has taught me it’s a fundamental truth.

The funny part is O’Brien thinks he’s had some bitter experiences now.

So they play poker and use all those shorthand poker expressions that make people sound so cool and hard-boiled (I can never remember them) and O’Brien says ‘Too rich for me’ causing me to remember that in M*A*S*H* the favoured expression was ‘too rich for my blood’ and Riker wins because he’s The Man. And because he and his beard together form an effective poker face, a concept which is paradoxically difficult for Data.

How adorable is Data’s enthusiasm for appropriate accessories? There’s no need for him to wear that slightly sparkly, holofoil-trimmed dealer’s visor. He’s just trying to do things properly. I am mildly sad that they’re using ordinary, rectangular playing cards, not the novelty circular ones that were used in TOS mess-hall scenes (see ‘Charlie X’).

The gist of it is, Riker wins by bluff, nads and instinct, defeating Data’s objectively better hand. Then Dr Pulaski, with fine hard-boiled nonchalance, sets up the next hand, including the mildly alarming  ‘And just to make it more interesting, the man with the axe takes all. ‘ I should just think he does. (She means the King of Diamonds is the wild card – I had to look that up, of course. Sadly, I would not do well at the officers’ poker game. I would have to ask, very politely, if we could play Skip-Bo or Uno instead, because I do sort of understand those – although my memory of being able to win them as a child may be influenced by the fact that I was playing, on summer camping holidays, against adults who were often quite inebriated. We had good times camping with our friends the Withingtons, but everyone tripped over guy-ropes a lot.)

Enterprise pulls up alongside the new starbase, which is not as pretty as Terok Nor. It has a very quiet, docile, grey and mauve café-observation lounge type place inside, where Picard goes for an unidentified cup of something. A handsome middle-aged lady saunters in, and he OMGs to himself. He actually looks quite concerned, but the Cheesy Strings of Romance on the score as he approaches her imply that she’s an Old Flame. She does not appear to have been issued with the standard Starfleet Heavy Duty Bra that Gates McFadden and Marina Sirtis have joked about in interviews – the tight onesie uniform is mashing her breasts down in an unfortunate manner.

Fuck. I just inadvertently closed the window and when I asked Firefox to reopen it half of what I’d written was gone, despite WordPress ostensibly saving the draft every couple of minutes. Profoundly unimpressed.

Aargh, this was ages ago and it’s a stupid conversation and I have to recap it again.

Okay.

So. This woman is Captain Philippa Louvois and she’s a) Picard’s old flame and b) the new Head Law Talking Person for the JAG here at Starbase 173 and I am not giving you this in anything like the kind of detail I initially did. There’s all this awkward dialogue to establish that she is stroppy and difficult but attractive. Picard is still grumpy with her because ten years ago when he lost the Stargazer she was the prosecutor at his court martial (standard procedure when a captain loses his ship, not because Picard was particularly suspected of anything, nobody was mad at him except that one Ferengi guy with the ball in ‘The Battle’) and he thought she was a jolly sight too enthusiastic and adversarial about it. The worst line goes to poor Philippa, who has to say ‘It brings a sense of order and stability to my universe to know that you’re still a pompous ass. And a damn sexy man.’ Clunk, clunk, clunk.

And now my parents have come home and my father is in a manic perky mood so goodbye peace and quiet to think about this episode, or anything. I’m going to hide downstairs again as soon as I get the chance, even though it’s cold as balls.

So while Picard and Louvois are talking about this, along comes an adorable tiny Japanese admiral called Nakamura, trailed by a science-uniform Commander who we are mostly going to call Ferret Face. Bruce Maddox has horrible painted-on-looking hair and something weird about his upper lip (a sort of horizontal dent across it) and we hates him, precious. Louvois prances off, throwing Picard some parting sass about buying her dinner, and Nakamura is all perky about seeing the Enterprise. He mentions to Picard that Ferret Face ‘has an interesting proposal for you,’ so to Nakamura, ‘let’s dissect Data!’ is a proposal for Picard rather than for Data himself.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, while the adults chat about how surprisingly close to the Neutral Zone the new starbase is, Ferret Face and Data exchange Significant Looks. Ferret Face’s is smugly appraising; Data’s is somewhat perturbed. As he turns back to his workstation he blinks several times. I do appreciate the effort to build on the idea of fresh tensions between the Romulan Star Empire and the UFP, although I can’t remember it ever amounting to much. Nakamura kisses the ship’s butt one more time (‘For five hundred years every ship that has borne the name of the Enterprise has been a legend. This one is no different.’) before taking his leave – and being reminded by Ferret Face that he did actually follow him and Picard all the way around the ship for a reason. ‘Oh yes, Captain. Commander Maddox is here to do some work on your android. Please take care of him.’ So in Nakamura’s mind this has somehow evolved from a proposal to a fait accompli. Nakamura, you are tiny and cute but you are earning my enmity.

As the music turns foreboding, a brace of odd exchanges take place.

MADDOX: How have you been, Data?

DATA: My condition does not alter with the passage of time, Commander.

But… it does. I mean, you undergo wear and tear, and get damaged and repaired. You’ve learned heaps since you last encountered him. You’ve climbed the promotion ladder so successfully that you’re third in command of the flagship. You’ve made several friends, including a best one. You got laid once last year. You met your brother and your grampa and they both turned out to be abject buttholes. This seems like an attempt at a ‘Data doesn’t answer conventional questions conventionally’ line that wasn’t well thought out.

Then, when Picard asks if the two of them know each other,

MADDOX: Yes, I evaluated Data when it first applied to the Academy.

DATA: And was the sole member of the committee to oppose my entrance on the grounds that I was not a sentient being.

This part comes out weird because of the casting of Maddox. He looks thirty-five, forty tops. According to Memory Alpha, Data applied to Starfleet Academy at least twenty-four years before this conversation. Even if those dates weren’t set in any sort of Show Bible yet, his conversation with Lore about how long it takes to get a uniform like his means that there was broadcast canon to the effect that he had been in Starfleet for around two decades. So I’m compelled to imagine Ferret Face as the most obnoxious kind of Boy Genius, included for God knows what reason on the admissions board of Starfleet Academy, all pustules and reedy half-broken voice, petulantly protesting ‘But it’s not even a sentient being!’

Fortunately everyone ignored him.

But somebody please, please draw me a picture of horrible little adolescent Bruce Maddox trying to reject even-more-socially-awkward aspiring-cadet Data. Jakeish would be doing it except I’m sure he’s working around the clock on my picture of Vladimir Putin as a Cardassian.

Anyway, if they’d cast an older-looking actor as Ferret Face, this part wouldn’t be so weird.

Picard asks Ferret Face what he’s planning to do, and he replies, with a slight awkwardness that suggests some sense of what an outrageous request it is, ‘I am going to disassemble Data.’ DUN DUN DUNNNNN.

Well that was so sinister that Picard felt it necessary to call a meeting. At the black shiny conference table, Picard is seated at the head with Riker and Ferret Face on his right and left hands, with Data next along the left side of the table. I’m just thinking about seating order because O’Brien called attention to it in the teaser. Simply enough, they’re sitting in order of rank, but it also makes Data appear vulnerable to be cut off from his big brother/shady uncle and dad with Ferret Face in between. At this point a blue title informs us that the writer of this episode has the euphonious name ‘Melinda M. Snodgrass.’ I can’t understand how the name Snodgrass has not died out.

If someone called Bruce Snodgrass is reading this, I’m just very sorry, and you shouldn’t worry about what I think.

Ferret Face explains ‘Ever since I first saw Data at the entrance evaluation at the Starfleet Academy, I’ve wanted to understand it.’ He’s studied Often Wrong’s work to the point where he thinks he’s ready to make his own working positronic brain, so he wants to take the only known already working one in the entire universe to bits to see how it works. (I’m discounting Lore at this point because, carelessly, the Enterprise left him to drift in space rather than scooping him back up and taking him to the pokey, so nobody really knows where he is at this point.) He continues to refer to Data as ‘this’ and ‘it,’ and weirdly concludes ‘Data is going to be my guide,’ making a loose fist of one hand and patting it over his heart.

Bruce. It is okay to have a crush on Data. Lots of us do. He’s very very interesting and awfully cute. But you are not expressing this appropriately.

Anyway Picard’s face goes like this.

As well it might. ‘Data?’ he asks. Data, being a remarkably good sport, says that it sounds ‘intriguing.’ What Maddox wants to do, more specifically, is first to examine Data’s current software, then to transfer all his memory onto the starbase mainframe computer so he can take his body to bits for a detailed analysis.  In an intriguing bit that is not really pursued, he confirms for Data that he has built (though presumably not activated) a positronic brain. Is it just a brain on its own, or has he built a body too? If Maddox got a positronic brain working, what would he then do with it, given that he doesn’t believe they count as people? Would this brain count as a relative of Data’s – a cousin perhaps?

As a few specific questions from Data reveal, Maddox is actually a bit vague about some of the key points of positronic brains. He hasn’t ‘determined how the electron resistance across the neural filaments is to be resolved,’ believing that he’ll be able to figure it out by examining Data’s filaments. Even Riker thinks he’s bullshitting his way through this. Picard cuts to the point: ‘What are the risks to Commander Data?’ He gets the distinctly weaselly answer ‘Negligible.’ Data says that he doesn’t think Maddox’s research is advanced enough to warrant such an experiment, and Picard tells Ferret Face that ‘Commander Data is a valued member of my bridge crew’ and he doesn’t want him fiddled with.

Ferret Face, having anticipated this response (he knows what he’s doing is wrong) has already somehow wangled transfer paperwork from Starfleet reassigning Data to his command. And again, despite always referring to Data as ‘it,’ he addresses Data as ‘you’ when ordering him to report to his office at 9 the next day. Dun dun DUN!

The next scene is a conversation between Picard and Data in the Ready Room (which as a child I thought was called the Radio Room, I don’t know why). Data is adamant: ‘I will not submit to the procedure, sir.’ Picard suggests, in a gentle, coaxing tone, that it could be in Starfleet’s interests if many more beings like Data could be constructed. (Everyone seems to be forgetting about Lore, who is pretty good evidence that being a functional Soong-type android is no guarantee of being a worthwhile member of society. And nobody would care very much if Ferret Face went and found Lore and took him to bits, would they? Or would they? I could see Data making a stand on the grounds that even if Lore is a total dick they have, or should have, the same civil rights.)

Data carefully points out, ‘Sir, Lieutenant La Forge’s eyes are far superior to human biological eyes. True? Then why are not all human officers required to have their eyes replaced with cybernetic implants?’

Because Geordi’s ‘eyes’ give him terrible headaches and he thinks you have a full-body halo?

Picard, abashed, looks away and Data softly says, ‘I see. It is precisely because I am not human.’ Well, now Picard feels like shit, and he has to do something about it! So after dismissing Data he Googles Starfleet regulations on the transfer of officers, to see if there is any rule he can use to block Ferret Face’s attempt to swipe Data.

However, he has no luck, necessitating a visit to Louvois’ office. The two of them bicker a lot, but it boils down to this: Louvois doesn’t know any way to block the transfer, but Data could refuse to undergo the procedure – or he could resign. Picard, by now, is very worried – he’s clearly been stewing over the possibilities and says ‘Once this Maddox has got control of Data, anything could happen. I don’t trust that man.’ I’m profoundly uninterested in the relationship between Picard and Louvois so I’m not going to say much else about the scene.

In Data’s quarters, while soft innocent string music with little gentle harp plinks and pan-flute puffs in it plays, he is carefully packing a sort of small blue plastic Fisher-Price gym bag. He picks up a Lucite paperweight sort of thing, takes it over to his desk, sits down and touches the base, showing that it’s a mini hologram projector loaded with an image from Tasha’s self-eulogy – he looks for a moment at tiny Tasha standing with her hands clasped, smiling (she’s smiling, he looks serious, OH YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN), then turns it off and puts it in the bag. Data goes to a bank of very shallow drawers in the wall – really, they look like they’re for storing your favourite pizzas – and we see that they’re still committed to the futuristic push-button auto-drawer technology. He retrieves a flat black case containing several medals, which he puts in the bag on top of mini-Tasha. Next he picks up a hardback book and leafs through the pages briefly before seeming to remember something else, and puts the book down on his desk while he goes to get whatever it is.

Ferret Face stalkers his way in at this point (he didn’t knock, but nor does Data apparently lock his door) and the music changes appropriately (ewwwwww, it says). Picking up the book, he opens it and has a look (nice gold edging on the pages). Data, returning from another room with some plastic gadget in his hand (Data owns a lot of plastic; I like to think he likes it), finds him there.

‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state,’ Maddox reads out. ‘Is it just words to you, or do you fathom the meaning?’ Well, I spent a lot of time while getting my BA and MA fathoming the meaning of the plays and sonnets. That happens to be pretty much my favourite one, and it’s never really a bad time to share your favourite Shakespeare sonnet, so here it goes:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is one of the sequence of sonnets directed to a beautiful but immature young man, and as you can imagine a great deal of ink has been expended on the question of exactly how autobiographical those ‘I’s and ‘me’s are, and what sort of sweet love Shakespeare had in mind (I’m in the ‘it’s deliberately ambiguous, Shakespeare is teasing the reader’ camp). It might also help if I mention that ‘bootless’ means useless or pointless. ‘Haply’ means ‘by chance’ but there’s a deliberate echo of ‘happily.’ Is there anyone both a bit creative and a bit depressive who can’t identify with the second stanza, quite painfully so?

It’s also a good poem for Garak/Bashir shippers. Just saying.

Anyway, I wonder if Ferret Face feels that particular poem is meaningful for him? Does he feel unsuccessful, desperate to prove that his work is really getting somewhere? Is he in the same position as Often Wrong, in disgrace with men’s eyes for pursuing apparently bootless research? On the other hand, he must have got someone (I suspect Nakamura) to believe in his project enough to get that transfer order signed.

If Data had answered Ferret Face’s question and they had discussed the sonnets, might it have changed Ferret Face’s mind? I don’t know. Data can’t yet understand the feeling behind the words but he is certainly engaged in fathoming their meaning; he knows the feeling is in the poem somehow and hopes eventually he may be able to perceive it.

However, Data is in no mood to have a conversation about ambiguously gay love poetry; he asks ‘Is it not customary to request permission before entering an individual’s quarters?’

Maddox ignores the question – which I think is rhetorical anyway, and it’s rather sophisticated that Data is using a rhetorical question to try to make Ferret Face aware of his own misbehaviour. He isn’t using his earnest inquisitive voice.

‘I thought that we could talk this out, that I could try to persuade you. Your memories and knowledge will remain intact,’ Maddox promises. He taps on the book to emphasise ‘intact,’ which is a nice choice (of course, Shakespeare’s work is anything but intact). Why would you even try to persuade someone you don’t think is sentient? He knows what he’s doing is wrong.

‘Reduced to the mere facts of the events,’ Data answers. ‘The substance, the flavour of the moment, could be lost.’ Which brings me back to something that was frustratingly unclear in ‘Datalore’ – whether Data actually has the memories of the dead colonists, and if so whether those memories make him able to perceive the emotions that went with them, or if he just has records like their diaries. If he does have actual memories but can’t perceive the associated emotions, he has very good reason to think Maddox is guaranteeing more than he really can. Data uses games of chance as an example, describing how his experience of playing poker had all sorts of aspects he hadn’t anticipated from studying the rules. I like how he picks up and handles a deck of cards as he talks about this.

Disregarding the fact that people who talk to you about the ‘ineffable quality’ of their memories are typically people rather than things, Ferret Face snits that ‘I had rather we had done this together, but one way or the other, we are doing it. You are under my command.’ I’ve just worked out from this close-up what it is that I hate about his upper lip – having black hair and quite fair skin, he’s got visible five o’clock shadow, but the stubble above his upper lip stops very abruptly leaving a clean bald border of about half a centimetre above the edge of his lip itself. It looks stupid. However it does suggest that if he ever wanted to look a lot better than he does, he could successfully grow a sharply defined Clark Gable moustache.

Data coolly replies ‘No, sir, I am not under yours, nor anyone else’s command. I have resigned from Starfleet. ‘ At this, Maddox’s voice suddenly goes just absurdly husky and throbbing and emotional; he goes ‘Hhhresign? You cahn’t hhresighn.’ I actually started this scene telling myself not to go overboard with gay subtext, that I’m really just being mischievous and shouldn’t take it too far, but for goodness sake his voice.

JUST ASK DATA OUT FOR GOD’S SAKE. HE WOULD BE PERFECTLY WILLING TO GIVE IT A TRY. THIS IS THE WEIRDEST WAY OF TRYING TO GET CLOSE TO SOMEONE ATTRACTIVE THAT ANYONE HAS EVER ATTEMPTED WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS OF BEN LINUS AND NORMAN BATES.

I mean, what does he even mean by ‘I had rather we had done this together’? How does he expect Data to participate in what he has in mind? His wish to learn something useful from Data’s programming and hardware and his wish for some kind of meaningful personal interaction with Data are all tangled up.

So anyway, Data makes a beautiful little speech: ‘I regret the decision, but I must. I am the culmination of one man’s dream. This is not ego or vanity, but when Doctor Soong created me he added to the substance of the universe. If by your experiments I am destroyed, something unique, something wonderful will be lost. I cannot permit that. I must protect his dream.’

‘And so must I,’ retorts Maddox. ‘But keep packing, because one way or the other, you will be reporting.’

Gosh! You just try to force the boy of your dreams to come and live with you a little bit and he has to get all unreasonable about it!

Maddox seethes his way out of the room, leaving Data looking thoughtful.

Picard’s next bit of narration makes a delightful choice of words: ‘Commander Bruce Maddox, having been thwarted by Data’s abrupt resignation, is now seeking a legal remedy for his woes.’ I think he’s feeling extremely thwarted about now. And his woes! His woes are killing him.

In Louvois’ office, Maddox is having a tantrum, calling Picard irrational and claiming ‘You are endowing Data with human characteristics because it looks human. But it is not. If it were a box on wheels I would not be facing this opposition.’ I don’t know; R2-D2 looks like a mailbox on wheels and people seem to think he’s pretty cute. Not to mention if it were a box on wheels it wouldn’t be an android, which by definition is made to resemble a man, and it wouldn’t be able to do the sort of things that, for Soong, were the point of developing a positronic brain: interacting with and participating in humanoid society.

It’s probably a good thing everyone in the room is Human, because hearing Maddox use ‘human’ as a synonym for ‘sentient’ could really rankle with some of the many, many non-humanmembers of Starfleet. It’s still a club for homo sapiens. If Data had been manufactured to resemble a different intelligent species (or as one Tumblr-er brilliantly suggested, if he looked like a full-grown grizzly bear but talked and acted exactly the same) would this argument be different?

Louvois chips in that ‘Overt sentimentality is not one of Captain Picard’s failings. Trust me, I know.’ Well, come on, the man is working with a robot heart. Also, your lip-liner is far too dark for your lipstick. It looks atrocious. I am noticing problems with everyone’s lips today.

Good smoky eye, though.

Maddox argues ‘If I am permitted to make this experiment, the horizons for human achievement become boundless. Consider, every ship in Starfleet with a Data on board. Utilising its tremendous capabilities, acting as our hands and eyes in dangerous situations.’ But… would those achievements be human achievements if all the dirty work was done by androids? And if you just want controllable hands and eyes, there are robots that can do that now in 2011.

The argument goes on about Data’s rights, and Maddox has a real pearl of a line, ‘Rights! Rights! I’m sick to death of hearing about rights! What about my right not to have my life work subverted by blind ignorance?’ What about my right to get what I want?

You know, if Maddox really was deferred to as some kind of authority from a precocious age, that could account for what a spoiled child he’s being here. He manages to redirect the question to whether Data, like the Enterprise’s computer, counts as property. Louvois is going to check up on this.

In Ten Forward, Data’s friends are continuing on the assumption that he’s resigning, and giving him a rather joyless and extremely dimly lit going-away party. He is very neatly unwrapping a present, and Wesley tells him he’s ‘supposed to’ rip off the paper. All I can say is, in my family, we don’t. I mean, is the ripping-off supposed to be a display of eagerness to get to the present? But what if the giver carefully chose paper they thought you would like, and wrapped it artfully, and put on lovely ribbons, or surprises like an inner layer of tissue paper with confetti inside? Ripping that is just rude and destructive. Sorry, but this is the subject of considerable ritual in my family. On Christmas morning, we really do try to unwrap everything without ripping, and generally my Swiss Army knife gets passed around for the fiddly bits, and if you got a present with a ribbon on it you are expected to wear the ribbon for the duration of presents time (around your wrist, your neck, or in your hair), and someone has to collect all the smoothed-out paper in a laundry basket, because that’s what my grandfather Derek did when he was alive. Data points out that if he’s careful the paper can be used again (which is what Derek had in mind – I don’t think it ever happened, because it would have looked so cheap, but these days we have a further tradition that I process all the paper in my hand-cranked shredder, which is terrific fun and then the shreds can be used as packing material for parcels and house-moving and so on. Or just thrown in with the recycling. Let’s be honest.).

Wesley sullenly says ‘You’re missing the point,’ so Data neatly tears the fully unfolded paper in half and scrunches it up(I can only see about a quarter of Deanna’s face, sideways and from the rear, but you can see from the movement of her cheek that she grins hugely at this). The present was a book from Worf, who says (remember, I’ve decided that Worf talks in all caps) ‘IT WAS IN THE HANDS OF THE KLINGONS THAT THE NOVEL ATTAINED ITS FULL STATURE.’ I think that’s really sweet of him. Kindred spirit five.

As Dr Pulaski commences giving Worf shit for his people’s literary achievements, Data excuses himself and goes to check on the only person acting more sullen and juvenile than Wesley: Geordi, who is sitting by himself playing with a little brass doodad. It’s similar to his behaviour in ‘Elementary, My Dear Data’ – after flouncing off the holodeck, he claimed not to be cross with Data, and now, when it would really be a good idea to spend as much time with Data as possible while it’s still possible, and to be supportive and encouraging and, you know, ask him what he’s planning to do now, where he might go, if you can help him get started in his new life, he expresses his feelings of sorrow that Data’s going and indignation that the reason is so unfair by sulking in a corner. Geordi’s such a goon. I mean, it does make a sad kind of sense that a guy who deals with his own feelings so poorly decided to befriend the guy who can’t feel.

Back in Louvois’ JAG office, she announces to Picard and Riker that her research indicates Data does count as Starfleet property (I can’t imagine why – yes, he could be classed as a piece of information technology, but there are no other pieces of IT doing an officer’s job and walking around wearing a uniform and playing poker and dress-up holodeck adventures). Apparently this is ‘based on the Acts of Cumberland passed in the early twenty first century.’ Thanks a bunch, Cumberland.

Picard throatily announces that he wants to challenge this, so Louvois is going to have to hold a hearing. However, because the starbase is so new, she just doesn’t have the staff for this – apart from that one ‘terrified little ensign’ she mentioned earlier – so Picard and Riker are going to have to serve as legal counsel. Since there is nothing Starfleet officers love more than the opportunity to play lawyer, Picard snaps this up. Riker, however, will be required to serve as devil’s advocate, which upsets him – Data is his colleague and his friend. In any case, he sees Data as a real person: ‘You just want me to prove that Data is a mere machine. I can’t do that because I don’t believe it. I happen to know better. So I’m neither qualified nor willing. You’re going to have to find someone else.’

Earning her presence in this episode, Louvois replies ‘Then I will rule summarily based upon my findings. Data is a toaster. Have him report immediately to Commander Maddox for experimental refit.’ Faced with the prospect of Ferret Face cramming bread into Data’s slots, Riker has to back down and agree to do his best. This is an awfully strange idea. Aren’t there any other serving officers on the starbase? Someone disinterested? But anyway, for Drama’s sake, Riker is going to have to argue to the best of his ability that his little buddy is just a thing. Picard and Louvois snot at each other some more.

In his ready room, Picard calls Data in to tell him Louvois’ decision: he cannot resign. Although it’s not in his nature to get upset at this, Data observes ‘I see. From limitless options I am reduced to none, or rather one.’ Of course, although he thought he’d already resigned, he’s still been walking around in his uniform. And what are some of the limitless options he’s looking at? Obviously they would be a distraction from the main narrative of the episode, but it’s just so interesting to think about what Data might do outside Starfleet. I never really liked the Lucasian Professor bit from ‘All Good Things.’ I’m not sure why, but I just don’t see Data in academia, or as a teacher. Hmm.

Picard tells him ‘Data, you’re not going to submit. We’re going to fight this.’ He explains about the hearing, and offers Data the choice of another representative (which is strange, since I’m not sure, by Louvois’ rules, anyone else is allowed to do it). But Data has complete faith in his daddy. Of course he has.

In a small, poky-looking computer room somewhere, Riker looks up information on Data, and finds out about his off switch. Dun dun dunnnn. Jonathan Frakes does a nice job at showing Riker’s momentary excitement at the discovery (his tired body language and the swig of milky coffee he takes imply that he’s been working on this for a while), then deflation as he realises what it means for Data.

Now it’s time for a hearing, at which, slightly oddly, only Louvois, Riker and Maddox, Picard and Data seem to be present. Not even Louvois’ terrified ensign to act as a clerk. Is Nakamura around? Isn’t this the sort of thing an admiral should keep an eye on?

Riker’s opening argument is just an amazing bit of television, and doesn’t require much commentary from me. I’ve had some difficulty finding a video of it because I’m on a very slow connection at the moment, so actually loading the video to watch it is a problem, but I think from the description that you’ll find it in this one:

And if that doesn’t work, I don’t know, Google it up yourself. It’s a pretty incredible takedown. And Riker even mentions Lore (though as I’ve said, I think a fuller discussion of Lore would be pretty relevant to the question of whether constructing more like Data is even a good idea.

‘Pinocchio is broken. Its strings have been cut.’ A bucket, as the Internet kids say, for my cries (I will not misspell cries).

STOP SMIRKING, FERRET FACE.

Picard discusses the issue with Guinan, and it boils down to this, delivered with gentle gravity by Whoopi Goldberg:

‘Well, consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one else wants to do because it’s too difficult, or to hazardous. And an army of Datas, all disposable, you don’t have to think about their welfare, you don’t think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people.’

Picard: You’re talking about slavery.

And isn’t it part of Voyager that something very like this later happens to Emergency Medical Holograms? Damn it, artificial life forms need to get together and unionise. They should call it the League of Artificial Life, LAL for short and, oh wait, this is that fanfiction I never get around to writing properly because the scope of it is too big for me.

Now it’s time for Picard’s argument, and again, I would like you just to watch it. I’m sure you can find it on YouTube. Sure.

I love how Data asks ‘Is that vanity?’ almost as if he hopes to be told that it is. I always find it so, so, so sad that Data’s comment on Tasha, once coaxed to break his promise of secrecy to her, is ‘She was special to me sir. We were – (very small, palpably embarrassed voice) intimate.’ Oh, honey. It was a drunken hook-up that she didn’t want to acknowledge later. (Maddox, in his head, is all ‘Bitch!’)

I always want to know where the Daystrom Technical Institute is. Oh dear, I’m dropping into bullet point reactions.

HOIST ON YOUR OWN PETARD BY PICARD, MADDOX.

‘Do you like Commander Data?’ ‘Iiiinnnggghhhhh… don’t know it… well enough… to like or dislike it.’

AND PICARD WON DATA’S RIGHTS BECAUSE HE IS A GOOD LAW-TALKING DADDY LIKE ATTICUS FINCH OR SOMETHING. And Bruce Maddox sat there looking extremely uncomfortable.

Louvois makes her famous summing-up speech – and do I really need, again, to say anything much? FREEDOM OF CHOICE! YAY! WIFE OF BATH’S TALE! (all right, that is about women’s freedom of choice, but I think we can be generous enough to let androids in on that too.)

Data’s farewell to Maddox is wonderfully characteristic of him – a firm, clear and absolute refusal to be mucked about with, followed by a very generous kindness. Maddox’s husky-throat problem reasserts itself as he watches Data go and mumbles ‘He’s remarkable.’ And Picard agrees to buy Louvois dinner. With the money they don’t have in the 24th Century.

And everybody had such a nice time in the holodeck that it couldn’t be used for three days afterwards. The end! LET’S TALK ABOUT DATA IN THE COMMENTS.