When the Captain says ‘Fire at Will!’, it’s time to GTFO of there. Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 12
Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 12 brings us character tropes aplenty as Geordi gets a visit from HR again while Lwaxana Troi tries to get married again and Beverly starts up another doomed romance.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E16: Galaxy’s Child
In which Geordi catfishes himself thank to his deepfake version of the designer of the Enterprise’s warp core. When Dr Leah Brahms visits the Enterprise, Geordi can believe his luck as he’s been literally Stanning her on the holodeck. Only the real thing is frosty and annoyed at Geordi’s under-the-bonnet tinkering (of the engines, that is). Things go from bad to worse for our incel engineer with severe boundary issues when she ends up checking his holodeck browser history. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew manage to seek out a strange new life form and promptly kill it only to find out it was heavily pregnant so they add injury to insult by slicing it open in a kind of space caesarean. This is an atrocious episode in which few of the characters emerge unscathed and the integrity of the series as a whole takes a hit. The story of the hitherto undiscovered lifeform is almost farcical and would fit better on, say, The Orville where it could be dealt with the deadpan irony the absurd tragedy requires but the hands-down worst thing about this episode is how it handles the whole Geordi/ Leah Brahms situation. What Geordi has done is tantamount to identity theft revenge porn and yet he faces zero consequences for it when in reality you’d expect him to at least be relieved of duty and forced to attend Counsellor Troi’s mandatory sexual harassment seminar and regular counselling before being allowed to work unsupervised ever again. Even worse, the episode somehow contrives to have Dr Brahms experience this #MeToo moment and end up *apologising* to Geordi and hoping they can still be friends. People say The Original Series hasn’t aged well in terms of its casual sexism but this episode has curdled more than the ‘sour milk’ metaphor it uses to rid itself of the orphan alien the crew themselves orphaned. This is some straight-up Harvey Weinstein apologist bullshit.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E17: Night Terrors
Fittingly spooky as we near Halloween, this episode has a lot of good ideas and chilling horror movie moments but ends up wasting them in service of a sci-fi story that’s kind of bland and trapping Troi in a nightmare of shitty special effects. Attempting to rescue the USS Brattain (or Brittain depending on whether you’re reading the script or the spelling error on the model shots), the Enterprise becomes trapped in a Tyken’s Rift. As the usually shiny, happy people of the crew begin to lose their tempers and hallucinate, Dr Crusher works out its due to a lack of REM. With only Data and Troi unaffected, the former having no need of sleep or dreams, the latter plagued by nightmares about whispering voices and one moon circles, the increasingly irascible crew work out there must be a conveniently undetectable ship of psychic aliens trying to communicate via Counsellor Troi’s dreams. It all ends with a big explosion freeing the trapped vessels, finally allowing the crew to get some much-needed shut-eye, joining the audience who likely nodded off about halfway through.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E18: Identity Crisis
Inexplicably unregistered sex offender Geordi LaForge remains on duty and is visited by a former crew mate from a previous assignment who has some concerns she wishes to share. Remarkably, it’s not a historic sexual harassment complaint against Geordi but instead is disturbing news that many of their other crew mates have deserted their posts, stolen shuttles and headed to Tarchannen III, site of a previous away mission. In what surely should have been a Riker episode, it turns out that this time LaForge was the one who contracted an infection on an away mission, this time a parasitical one which can rewrite DNA and effectively reproduce its species by rebooting its host. Despite its body horror premise, the episode keeps its creepiness quite restrained, preferring the suspense and mystery angles over the horror of the transformed man (not the album by William Shatner). There’s probably a joke somewhere about somebody with Geordi’s history being able to be tracked using ultra-violet light but I’m trying not to lower the tone any further.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E19: The Nth Degree
In which the makers of Star Trek The Next Generation miss an open goal of continuity which would have added a fun little connection to the original Enterprise crew’s adventures. When Reg Barclay (Dwight Schultz) is knocked unconscious by an alien probe during an inspection of the Argus Array, a federation deep space telescope, the crew are forced to destroy the probe lest it damages the Enterprise the same way it appeared to damage the array. However, the probe’s energy pulse has dramatically enhanced Barclay’s intelligence and he’s getting smarter by the minute. So smart, in fact, that soon the Enterprise computer can’t keep up and Barclay needs to take matters into his own hands. It’s another fun episode and a great showcase for Schultz as he gets to put a sci-fi spin on the old ‘humans only use 10% of their brain capacity’ myth. It’s also a classic example of Trek’s ability to tell a story where there is situational peril but no actual villain and to tell a ‘bottle show’ which still feels vast in scope rather than claustrophobic. It’s just a shame, though, that there’s not even a little effort to link the Cytherians to the plot of Star Trek V The Final Frontier with which this episode overlaps a lot. Both stories deal with people being compelled to bring starships to the centre of the galaxy through means never before discovered. I would have loved for there to be some reference to a Federation starship having been lured to the centre of the galaxy by a Cytherian renegade imprisoned on a planet some years before which piqued the Cytherians’ interest and they have spent the past 80 years or so searching for the lifeforms which made that journey themselves. Anyway, that’s my personal head canon and you’re welcome to it.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E20: Qpid
A follow-up to Captain’s Holiday and a frothy, fun-filled romp, Qpid – aside from being a solid pun – ends up being one of the lesser Q episodes mainly due to the fact Q’s not actually in it that much and when he is he doesn’t really get the opportunity to exchange the usual repartee. Jennifer Hetrick is a welcome returnee as Vash and easily resumes the 1930s screwball comedy chemistry with Patrick Stewart and while the Robin Hood costumes and concept are fun as an idea, in execution they smother the story and it all feels a little too silly for this Enterprise crew. Much of the comedy feels a little flat, mainly thanks to the humourless performance of Clive Revill as Sir Guy of Gisborne (although Worf’s protestations against being described as ‘merry’ is brilliant) and it has to be said that no matter how much Lincoln green you drape your cast in, the woodlands of California are never going to look even remotely convincing as Sherwood Forest.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E21: The Drumhead
Star Trek has oft provided a good setting for some courtroom drama and this Jonathan Frakes directed episode is another prima facie case in point as an explosion aboard the Enterprise and the discovery of a Klingon spy leads to the launch of a formal investigation of the Enterprise crew. The enquiry is led by retired Admiral Norah Satie, who we’re told was responsible for rooting out the infiltration of Starfleet which Picard and co uncovered in Conspiracy back in Season 1. Would have been nice to have an episode or two on that, wouldn’t it? Before Picard can hold a rally and yell ‘witch hunt!’, Satie begins to suspect conspiracy and treason at every turn and when her Betazed adjutant confirms that a low-ranking crewman is hiding something, her zeal to uncover a plot enters overdrive. Jean Simmons (not to be confused with the lead singer of Kiss although what an episode that would have been!) glides majestically through the show, poised and styled in a way that’s deeply reminiscent of the guest stars of the Original Series. It’s a tense and uneasy episode as we see how quickly Worf gets caught up in Satie’s seductive and selective prosecutions while Picard becomes more and more troubled. The only thing which keeps the episode from being a five-star classic is that it feels like it just kind of stops because the episode has run out of time and everything has to be wrapped in a rushed and unsatisfying finale following Satie’s explosive outburst in court. It certainly sets the scene, though, for the coming season finale as it reminds us of the ongoing Romulan efforts to destabilise the Klingon/ Federation alliance and suggests that if Starfleet abandons its core principles, it may well destroy itself without the help of an outside adversary.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E22: Half a Life
The tonal rollercoaster of Craggus’ Trek Trek Phase II Vol 12 continues with this powerful and poignant exploration of the arguments – both for and against – euthanasia powered by a incredibly nuanced performance from M*A*S*H* alumnus (and first ever live-action J’onn J’onzz/ Martian Manhunter, trivia fans) David Ogden Stiers as 59-year-old Kaelon scientist Timcin and a transformative turn as Lwaxana Troi from Majel Barrett. Look out too for an early appearance by Ensign Ro-to-be Michelle Forbes as Timcin’s daughter. Although there’s some technobabble MacGuffin around restarting a dying star to kick off the episode (they end up killing off a star, probably altering the course of the Nexus a bit and annoying Dr Tolian Soran wherever he is at this point) that’s swiftly discarded as the episode focusses on the morality play of a world where suicide is definitely considered painless. The episode’s real triumph is in taking the somewhat pantomime dame character of Troi’s mother and giving her depth, pathos and an existence beyond a flirty punchline. Barrett brings her a-game to the excellent script and although it ends on a sombre and downbeat note, it permanently changes the character of Lwaxana Troi for the better.
Star Trek The Next Generation S4E23: The Host
It’s romance time once again, and the Doctor is in…for disappointment as usual. When Trill ambassador Odan comes onboard, Beverley finds herself Crushing hard but as their romance progresses, she’s unprepared for his ‘little worm’. Just as their romance is blossoming, Odan is critically injured and, much to Dr Crusher’s disappointment, it’s Commander Riker who ends up with Odan inside him. Once again, The Next Generation introduces an alien race and a subject matter which Deep Space Nine would go on to handle much, much better. Yes, there’s a doomed romance angle, but it’s very much played straight and the twist at the end – where Odan is revealed to have been paired with a female body – prompts Beverly to react to the transgender development in a way which seems a little unenlightened now but nearly two decades ago was probably as progressive and inclusive as network TV would have allowed. It’s unfortunate that Dr Crusher expresses her personal feelings as those of her entire species but then again this is the woman who easily believed the entire universe revolved around her only a few episodes back so what are you going to do?
Craggus Trek Trek Phase II Vol 12 ends here, a mere 3 episodes away from the end of season four. See you in the next volume!
