_____________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.05
Remember Me
Wesley and his fairy alien godfather spend some quality time orgasming his mother out of the hyperspace sphincter he "accidentally" shoved her into. A sphincter conveniently furnished with her very own alternate universe.
Just as the Enterprise is leaving a space station, Wesley's science experiment suffers a minor glitch. What is that, like the fifth time? Who keeps giving this kid access to the toolbox? Their guest of honor, Beverly Crusher's old mentor, disappears, and only she can remember he existed at all. Crew members continue to disappear. And only she can remember they existed at all. Finally it turns out she's the only one who got disappeared by her son's glitchy hyperthingamajig. The bulk of the episode happened inside an alternate dimension which she... automatically... fabricated... somehow... unconsciously... complete with walking talking humpable illusions because apparently getting squeezed out of the universe gives you magic genie powers.
Wait, hold on. How exactly would a human brain even retain the information necessary to reproduce an entire starship plus crew? I can barely remember my mother's birthday!
But hey, that's certainly in keeping with the scientific rigor of The Traveler mentoring Weasley Potter in the finer points of post-technological wizarding. Apparently closing your eyes, arching your back and gasping in ecstasy doubles as a form of hyperspace travel. Aha! That explains why my favorite porn stars keep disappearing.
Gratuitous mysticism aside, this script also suffers from the utterly irrational behavior of the crew. Never mind that nobody bats an eyelash when the super-powerful alien teleports on board. Who needs security when you've got faith in the kindness of strangers, amirite? The most egregious example comes as multiple crew members keep disappearing when nobody's looking and Picard's reaction (I could not make this up) is:
"Have security confine all non-essential personnel to their quarters."
... Been reading horror movie survival guides, have you Jean-Luc? Oh noes! They're picking us off one by one! We gotta split up!
The rest of the crew fare just as poorly due to the ease with which they buy into their plight. As soon as someone comes up with an idea, it's adopted as the only possible course of action. It MUST be Wesley's experiment that's to blame. It MUST be the Traveler, that one rando' dude from three seasons back, that can save everyone. It's all so obvious! One might be tempted to excuse their stupidity as being merely Beverly's tulpas and not complete beings, but then she herself seems to have just fallen off the short bus:
"Wesley. Where's Wesley" and she tears off through the corridors to physically search for the boy wonder... after we've just spent several scenes asking the futuristic ship's computer to locate crewmates.
This, folks, is why everyone hated Wesley Crusher. He wasn't just a smarmy, whiny, overentitled little snot, which would've been bad enough in itself. Wesleyitis tortured entire plots into knots of justification for Mary Sue's specialness.
__________________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.08
Future Imperfect
Riker gets incapacitated on the planet of fog machines only to wake up sixteen years into the future, where he commands the Enterprise and is about to sign a peace treaty with the Romulans as represented by recurring villain Tomalak. Apparently he's contracted space amnesia thanks to a space virus and acquired a space son along the way for good space measure.
As convenient contrivances and suspicious incongruities mount, Riker figures out that he's being tricked, possibly into revealing the secret location of the Federation's advance base guarding the Neutral Zone. He challenges Tomalak, who reveals they've been inside a holodeck simulation all along, then throws him into a cell with his space-son from earlier, who's supposedly a captive just like him. A slip of the tongue tips Riker off to this being only yet another illusion, and his little Rikerling finally reveals himself to be...
... one of the cheesiest, cheapest, Dr. Whoviest rubber alien masks ever to gild the ignominy of TV SciFi. But aside from that, his entire species was wiped out, leaving him to survive inside a simulation apparatus which can read minds. Unlike the previous episode, this one kind of... works. Frakes did an excellent job conveying both consternation at being catapulted into the future, subdued anger and suspicion toward the Romulans, gradual acceptance of his situation and dawning realization of being trapped, and a perfectly modulated tantrum toward the plot's climax. The nested holographic deception was also pulled off quite masterfully, with plot advancement relying on subtle verbal cues as in Allegiance.
Unfortunately, we're still left with the fact that the bug-eyed boy was in possession of an undetectable, mind-reading super-holodeck capable of producing actual food to sustain its occupant for years on end, which the Enterprise just... abandons on the planet of fog machines, without showing the slightest curiousity.
Exploration vessel my ass.
______________________________________________
Seriesdate: 4.14
Clues
After a holodeck prelude in which Picard explains to Guinan the human appeal of hunting down clues to solve a mystery, the Enterprise gets wormholed away from a planet it was investigating and its crew (minus the android <(important plot point)) is incapacitated. For thirty seconds. Or so they think. Just as in Remember Me, Beverly's the first one to point out their missing memories.
Her pet pink space mold grew an entire day's worth. Also, Worf's wrist was broken and healed. Also, the ship's clock's been tampered with to mask that an entire day has passed. Also, Data seems to be going all HAL9000 on them. Finally, as they return to the scene of the crime, Troi gets daimonically possessed (as one does on Star Trek) by a super energy being and declares in the voice of the legion that the Enterprise is to be destroyed for stumbling upon some reclusive super aliens a day prior. The amnesia was induced to give our heroes a chance to escape with their lives, with Data as accomplice, but they've screwed themselves by nibbling at the forbidden fruit once again. Cue another reset and a happy anti-intellectual ending glorifying willful ignorance.
Like any good detective story, this one is delightfully self-contained, making use of existing Star Trek justifications to both present incongruities as illogical, and to explain them. Much hinges on the dawning realization that Data, the crew's most honest representative, has been lying to his superiors, and of upping the stakes on repercussions to his lies, culminating in a callback to his brush with vivisection in season 2. However, we do have to wonder what gives the godlike aliens, the Paxans, such faith in the probity of our heroic androic. Maybe they're just robophiles?
Also, please don't ask what's going to happen when the ship's computer synchronizes with the nearest starbase and discovers its clock/calendar app's three days off for no particular reason. Or when anyone tries to timestamp an e-mail or text their grandmother. Back in 1991, the popular mental image of the word "clock" was still a round dial on which you could physically move the minute hand.
______________________________________________________________________________
Godlike super-aliens were a dime a dozen in the 1960s original series. Producers love them. They can take human shape (i.e.: don't require much make-up) they can manipulate their environment with force blasts (i.e.: don't require much props budget) they can communicate by telepathically controlling existing crew members (i.e.: don't require hiring new actors) and establish clear superiority without the need for complex technological precepts (i.e.: keep things simple; the audience is a bunch of morons.) Amnesia plots, in addition to ramping up the pathos for a particular character and justifying a bit of overacting, are similarly budget-friendly and light on new information that might confuse the moronic masses.
Nevertheless, it's odd to find three episodes so close together in season 4 (which otherwise boasted some of TNG's best content) abusing the stupidest gimmicks from the first season or original series. Was 1991 a good year for amnesia? I forget. But they do provide a great reminder that art is as much about execution as ideas. Remember Me probably has the best basic plot hook and denouement of these three, but as a Wesley episode... it's a Wesley episode. 'Nuff said. Clues, on the other hand, was widely praised and remembered as a fan favorite despite lacking in technobabble or special effects.
Remember Me's plot twists are entirely dependent on overblown mysticism, completely out of frame with the mechanics of the Star Trek universe. Both the older Crusher fabricating her own pocket universe and the younger Crusher yanking her out of it via seance had simply zero relevance to anything else aboard the Enterprise. They shed no light on futuristic life, do nothing to expand on either the crew's modus operandi or the politics of the galaxy, present no new ideas or discoveries.
Future Imperfect suffers from a slight deus ex machina problem toward the end, but otherwise it does a much better job of centering the action in the physical universe, with Riker's perspicacity latching on to actual clues in order to break the magic spell. The plot twists fit well into the audience's existing knowledge of Romulans, with the mind reading clue priming the audience for the Mind's Eye episode toward the end of the season and thus building continuity instead of shattering it.
Clues fares best for keeping its action within the show's purview. The Paxans are an advanced civilization but nowhere near the reality-warping divine power of the Traveler. The clues to the crew's missing day are actual physical events, measurable and verifiable, with no telepathy necessary to fabricate an alternate reality. Leaving aside the two major glaring plot holes mentioned above, the story is driven by sentient, purposeful, independent actors with rational agendas, up to and including Data's initially inexplicable deception.
I've been told more than once that I tend toward "high concept" stories (hence my preference for SciFi) and I'm much likelier to praise a story for a good idea than for its production values. Yet here is proof that even if you're going to start with a cheesy old idea like amnesia or deals with the devil, it can at any point be further doomed or salvaged by proper execution, by either building a logical framework around it... or handing it over to Wesley Crusher.
No comments:
Post a Comment