Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch (oh god no)

[MojoJojo]

I've just watched the next episode - I think Lemming might have something to say about it.

[Lemming]

I've been workshopping my meltdown over it for the last 24 hours.

[Das Reboot]

Ooh, have we reached

Spoiler alert

Bev Fucks a Ghost

[close]

?

[Malcy]

Ooh, have we reached

Spoiler alert

Bev Fucks a Ghost

[close]

?

I thought that too

Spoiler alert

Looked at the episodes guide to make sure and it Nikolai and his undercover cave shit.

[close]

[Lemming]

S07E13 - Homeward

Picard wishes to let an entire race of people die in the name of the Prime Directive, but things are complicated when Worf's adoptive brother rescues a small handful of them.

- Oh god here we go.

- We're off to Baral 2, where Nikolai, Worf's adoptive bro, has sent a distress call. The planet's atmosphere is being torn apart and is facing cataclysm, with all lives on the planet to be lost. We've come to rescue him and leave everyone else to die in the apocalypse.

- Worf's scans reveal that Nikolai may have set up a deflector shield surrounding a cave. Worf asks to go down, which Picard agrees to on the condition that he go down in disguise and religiously observe the Prime Directive. While getting surgically altered, Worf hastily tries to fill Bev, and the audience, in on his never-before-seen bro. He's brilliant, but he's a rebel! A maverick! So we're told.

- Dressed in humiliating peasant garb, Worf beams down to the caves. He encounters some of the native people, who ask him what he's doing here and how he survived the storm. He's bailed out by Nikolai, also disguised as one of the natives, who tells the others that Worf is his friend and a Trustworthy Guy. Kasidy Yates is here, by the way!

- Worf takes Nikolai aside and chews him out for daring to save people from death by leading them into a cave. Nikolai hopes that the Enterprise will help, but Worf says there's nothing they can do, and that his actions have "only postponed their deaths". Nikolai tries to feed the people some bullshit reason as to why he and Worf are about to fuck off for a bit (they're actually going up to the Enterprise), and, despite the objections of Yates and a dude called Vorin, they're let go.

- Picard is deeply affronted that Nikolai has provided some people shelter from the storm. Picard thinks this is a "gross violation of the Prime Directive" and demands that Baralans be left to die. Bev, to her credit, gets stuck in and says that they should save small handful of Baralans who Nikolai's taken a liking to (but let the rest of the planet die). Picard is unmoved and says that the Baralans must die, and leaves Nikolai to start recording what he knows of their culture so it can be preseved ("culture" as an abstract idea is considered more important than people's actual lives being preserved, same as in Pen Pals etc).

- Three minutes to DOOM for the Baralans. Nikolai goes nosing around the ship's computer. He's got A PLAN.

- Picard orders that the destruction of Baral 2 be put on the viewscreen for all to enjoy. The atmosphere collapses, killing millions (billions?) of people and annihilating the Baralan race. Picard gives everyone the stock speech about how this is sad but a heroic upholding of our ideals, and makes a note to "honour" the Baralans. All the way back on like, the first or second page of this thread, I mentioned this as the one moment that always sticks out to me when I think of Picard. Absolutely demented. People have a go at Janeway for Equinox and Sisko for using chemical weapons, but fucking hell, look at this! It's bone-chilling!

- For anyone who's watching the new series, Strange New Worlds... in the second episode, Pike moves the Enterprise to divert a comet that was on track to wipe out pre-warp people on a desert world, and tells the aliens-of-the-week:
"The Federation doesn't interfere in the development of species, but we also don't just let them die."

- There's a power surge on the HoloDICK. Nikolai calls Worf in to reveal HOLOCAVES, which the small handful of Baralans from the cave earlier have been transported into.

- Alright, let's get absolutely real for a second here. Even if you support the "we can't show ourselves to people" aspect of the TNG Prime Directive, and even if you somehow think Picard was right to let Baral 2 be destroyed - surely the Prime Directive ends here. There's like, eight people left. There is no Baralan culture anymore, there's just eight refugees. The only thing you can do here that isn't horrifically cruel is to just tell them what's happened and offer them asylum on Earth or another Federation world. Even the spirit of the Prime Directive doesn't apply anymore, there's no "growing culture" left. There's eight people.

- Naturally, it's not enough that we just let their planet die - we'll have to really fuck with the heads of the scant few survivors. Nikolai's plan is to send them through the HOLOCAVES, relocate them to a new world, and tell them they've just emerged from the caves into a new area. What a fucking dreadful plan - a world with only eight people on it? They'll just die out slowly on the new planet. There's no other villages and they'll soon realise they're alone. Someone will eventually try to go back through the caves and realise they're different. And the more you think about it, the worse it gets - the new planet will have no fossil record, for example. They'll never discover their own evolution. What's the point of this? It's literally just torturing a group of people who've already lost everything because of our deliberate inaction.

- I'll say one and only one positive thing about the episode - this is one of those rare clever uses of the holodeck. It's in the service of psychologically torturing a group of scared refugees, which is a shame, but it's conceptually very cool.

- Worf and Nikolai have a go at each other in the turbolift while the last remaining survivors of a planetary cataclysm sit inside a hologram because nobody, including our hero Nikolai, respects them enough to tell them what's happening to them. Nikolai goes to Picard, who tells him his CAREER IS FINISHED and yells at him.

PICARD: What do you expect us to do now? You have left us with a colony of Boraalans who think they're still on their planet!

You could try telling them what's happened.

PICARD: What if it doesn't work? What if they become aware that something strange is going on?

Ooh, well in that case you might have to tell them that you intended for them to die but instead you're now keeping them captive in your videogames room and making them walk in circles around a pretend cave until you can dump them on another planet without their consent.

- Because treating these people as equals and showing them the absolute bare minimum of respect is just unthinkable, Picard's left with no options other than to support Nikolai's evil-but-marginally-less-evil-than-Picard plan. OPERATION TORTURE REFUGEES commences in earnest!

- While Data looks for suitable planets to dump the Baralans on without their knowledge, Geordi begins his unrelenting 24-hour sleep-free schedule to keep the holodeck running at all times. Nikolai prepares to return to the HOLOCAVES to continue his nonstop torture of the Baralans, but Picard insists that Worf go along to keep a close eye on shit.

- In the HOLOCAVES, Nikolai tells everyone that their village has been destroyed by the storms. We're going "somewhere far away" through the caves. Vorin's already sniffing this out as a stack of bullshit, but then the water starts glitching out. Worf says that this is AN OMEN and it is the SIGN OF LAFORGE, promising a good journey. Alright, there's two good things in the episode, but that really is it.

- You could get a fucking ace episode out of this concept if you just had Geordi accidentally fuck the entire thing sideways. The HOLOCAVES having Skyrim-style glitches, Worf clipping through the floor in front of the terrified Baralans, the entire wall turning into a missing texture while Picard audibly shits himself in terror.

- Nikolai defends his decision to save the Baralans (and subsequently put them through this nightmare-level stuff). Worf's strait-laced by-the-book attitude is clashing with Nikolai's freewheeling maverick style!

- Bev, the only person here with a conscience, starts to think that the planet-shift plan is a fucking disgrace. Despite this, she gives the go-ahead to the planet Data's picked out, because it's too much hassle to think about it for long.

- In the HOLOCAVES, Worf sees Yates hugging Nikolai. Romance is in the air (between one of the last survivors of an apocalypse, and a man who's currently engaged in a mass psychological abuse program against her)! Worf also sees that Vorin is working on the Chronicle, a history of the village. It's a pretty bottom-of-the-barrel effort with little felt tip drawings and shit, but Worf is TOUCHED.

- Vorin's lost one of the Chronicle scrolls. Worf lets him go off on his own to find it. Unbelievable. There's holodeck walls like, five meters away in any given direction. While Vorin inevitably goes to walk off the holodeck, Worf interacts with more of the Baralans and finds that they have HONOUR.

- Obviously, Vorin finds the door and walks off the holodeck into the Enterprise corridor. Picard's really busy with other stuff today so nobody was posted to guard the doors or anything. Vorin finds his way into Ten Forward where Troi tries to reach out to him, and tells him that she's a friend of Nikolai and Worf.

- Picard's favourite standby, the nonconsensual mind wipe, won't work this time because of Reasons.  The situation's been explained to Vorin, who now waits in sickbay. He demands to know why Picard has brought him here, and Picard AUDACIOUSLY claims that "your planet was dying. We took you away from it". Yeah, we took you away from it, although it was really one of us while the rest of us were kicking and screaming about it. Vorin is devastated to learn that Baral 2 is dead, but Picard assures him that they'll dump him on a new planet and "your culture will have a chance to survive"! Hooray!

- Geordi's upgraded the holodeck to the Unreal Engine, letting him render vast and impressive outdoor areas. In one such area, Worf tells Nikolai what's happening with Vorin.

WORF: They have explained the situation to him. He must make his own decisions.
NIKOLAI: Wait. Are you saying that if Vorin wants to come back in here, they'll let him?
WORF: That is right. He is not a prisoner.
NIKOLAI: But if he comes back here and tells the others what he has seen on the Enterprise, everything we have done will be for nothing.
WORF: Then you should have considered that before you beamed them on board. But you never think about the consequences of your acts.

This is really amazing because both of these people are psychos in this scene. Our regular heroes, the Starfleet gang, are really moody that their usual watch-planets-die outing has been spoiled by the survival of a tiny handful of refugees. Nikolai, meanwhile - the ostensible hero of the episode - is a crazy lying fuckwit who treats said refugees with the amount of respect usually reserved for an infant.

- Geordi, awake for days and fueled by crack at this point, continues his 56-hour no-breaks-allowed shift in Engineering ensuring that the holodeck stays running. Yates comes over to speak to Worf about Nikolai, and reveals she's in love with him, and is pregnant with his baby. Alright, don't know about anyone else, this seems morally outrageous to me, possibly bordering on rape by deception. This prick shows up disguised as one of them, lies through his teeth 24/7 to everyone he meets, forces them all into this holodeck nightmare, etc. Yates doesn't actually know anything about Nikolai other than his name, because that's the one thing he's not lied about. This guy's meant to be the hero of the episode btw. Anyway, what the fuck happens when the baby's born half-human?? Will the "it's an omen" gambit work again?

- Picard considers Vorin to be "a problem to worry about". He goes to see him and asks him if he'd like to return to the holodeck or stay here. Vorin says he'd like to go back, but that nobody will believe him if he tells them the truth. Picard helpfully reminds him that if he tells everyone the truth, they'll probably think he's insane. Unable to live with being the only one who knows the secret, and unable to leave behind everything/everyone he loves and stay on the Enterprise, he kills himself. Another kill for the Prime Directive, we're on a roll! Already killed millions of these guys, one more doesn't mean much.

- Worf, correctly, yells at Nikolai and says he has "dishonored" Yates. They're about to get into a fight when the skybox breaks down because of Geordi's shoddy workmanship. Worf and Nikolai try to force everyone into the tents so Geordi can change the graphics while they're not looking. While they cower in the tents, they're all beamed down to this new planet (with no other people, no fossil record, etc).

- Picard astoundingly refers to the plan to relocate the Baralans as "our plan", and is delighted that our plan worked.

-

PICARD: But I wish that Vorin could have bridged the gap between our two cultures. I would have liked the chance to have known him better.

You spent the entire episode having a shitfit that he hadn't died along with everyone else on that planet.

- Nikolai prepares to settle here so he can keep lying through his fucking teeth to Yates for the rest of her life. Worf has come to respect Nikolai for his TOO-HOT-TO-HANDLE MAVERICK STYLE, and rejoices that (a fraction of a fraction of) the Baralans have been saved. Before Worf leaves, Nikolai gifts him with the Chronicle. Well, Vorin won't be needing it anymore.

Well I mean it's just a fucking shocker isn't it.

Alright, to try and review it fairly - "Pen Pals" worked despite the monstrousness of the crew because it felt like that was kind of the point, that these people in the future are strange, different, can come across as cold and uncaring. I dunno if that was Snodgrass' intention, but "these future people are weird" was a common theme in the early seasons, and "Pen Pals" works in that regard - Picard's so self-satisfied that he's prepared to let millions (again, billions? a whole planet) of people die, and has years' worth of stock quotes and mantras to recite about why he's definitely right, but the instant he actually gets confronted with a single one of those people calling for help, he can't do it. A single moment of reality cuts through years of bullshit and he realises they've got to try and save the planet.

But here, it's hard to view it in the same way - the Starfleet crew are demented and Nikolai is really just as bad. "Pen Pals" had Pulaski and Troi arguing against Picard's bullshit, "Symbiosis" had Bev objecting to the Prime Directive, "Who Watches The Watchers?" had Bev refusing to let a man die despite Picard's pissing and moaning about it. Who do you side with here? They're all bastards! Nobody even learns anything, either - everyone vaguely comes around to Nikolai's way of thinking (right at the last minute, after having a go at him for the preceding 44 minutes), but whether Nikolai's plan is any more or less morally frightening than Picard's is really up in the air, for me at least. Which is really saying something, considering Picard's plan was to let them die.

They're not even bastards in a way that makes much sense to me though - the Prime Directive in TOS is a (flimsy) guideline against interventionism, while in TNG it doubles as a way to "protect cultures". Alright, but there isn't a culture anymore, nor is there anything resembling a society to intervene with. There's a gaggle of survivors who have nothing. Like, surely even people who subscribe to the version of the Prime Directive in "Pen Pals" would agree that this is insane, and that the only thing to do here is just offer everyone asylum. Instead they go through the holocave funhouse.

There's a lot of Star Trek episodes that have the heroes acting badly, but there's usually always someone voicing the opposite view - in addition to the TNG examples above, in "Equinox" Chakotay ultimately refuses to allow Janeway to continue with torturing the guy, in that episode of Enterprise where Archer puts a dude in an airlock, Reed shuts it down after a certain point, etc. There's nobody voicing an opposing view here, we just get two variants of "let's obey the Prime Directive by acting hideously and cruelly towards these people". The best we get is Bev briefly realising the entire thing is an awful idea but not bothering to do anything about it.

And it's even worse than other episodes of the same style, because it's not just one nightmare scenario, its two. "Pen Pals" is about whether or not to let an entire planet of people die needlessly, "Dear Doctor" is about much the same, but "Homeward" is special because it cuts right to the chase by having the planet die in the first act. The rest of the episode is about our heroes' various attempts to fuck with the few survivors, while complaining loudly and repeatedly that there are any survivors at all.

I'll say that Dorn gives his usual top performance and really goes for it here, and Sorvino portrays Nikolai with equal skill.

I might be wrong about the episode, maybe it's another "aren't these future-fuckers weird and frightening" plot a la Pen Pals. Maybe you're meant to gawk in absolute horror and dismay at everything that happens, but I don't think that's the intent.

It's tough to rate, because despite all that, the episode isn't a boring piece of television. A lot of Star Trek can be quite dull, but this is very engaging, in the sense that it sends your blood pressure through the roof. I'm bad at rating things on a scale of 10 to start with, and it's even harder in cases like this. However, just because of the episode's morals, I'm following Keith DeCandido's lead and going 1/10. Perhaps an unfair rating given that the episode has good acting, decent pacing, a creative use of the holodeck, etc, but virtually every line in the script repels me. Don't worry, these ratings mean nothing anyway!


The good news of course is that we are now truly onto Bev Fucks A Ghost, one of the top episodes of the series and, indeed, the franchise.

[daf]

164 | "Homeward"



Prime Defective

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Picard's Prime Decision : "Death to the Peasants"
• Worf Sugically Altered = Moustache & Hoodie
• Glitchy Holo-Wreck = "The Sign of Laforge"
• The Plywood Chronicle Scrolls
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Butt-heading Bickering Bro's
• Useless unlocked Holo-doors
• Crime Destuctive : Picard's First Contact Suicide
• Picard's Prime Revision : "Our plan worked out well"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Blumf]

Could really do with separate marks for execution and moral concept.

I'm still in favour of the PD in general, maybe bend it for a natural disaster, but there's no way that handful of survivers can do anything with what's left of their society. At best they're going to be inbred to fuck within a century. Should have just come clean and delt with the culture shock. There's a good story in that too, complete open goal, although better suited to a long form show like DS9.

Then you've got all those other alien races, many with godlike powers, who do diddle in primitive cultures in a protective manner. They seem to think it's okay and they can twat the Enterprise right up. Maybe they're right.

Still, liked the holo journey idea, perhaps the best thing they've done with that jumped up Xbox.

[earl_sleek]

Picard's dogmatic adherence to non-interference makes a lot of sense when you consider how often Q fucks with him.

[MojoJojo]

Random other bollocks -

-Worf arguing with his brother, apparently Worf was a goody two shoes obsessed with duty when they were kids. Doesn't this contradict other descriptions of Worfs childhood?
-when Vorin dies, Bev says "he would have died even if we hadn't interfered". To which Picard responds "but he wouldn't have died alone". Peak psycho Picard there - knowing everyone you know is dying at the same time you do is comforting apparently.

-Worf takes a souvenir - the chronicle of the village, an act of cultural theft that would make the British Empire blush.

To those saying not enough rescued to survive, I just assumed it was supposed to be a village's worth (100-200 people maybe) and they just skimped on the extras.

[daf]

According to Dorn in the extras, the actor who played his brother was a bit of a dick - refusing to wear the hoodie.

[Lemming]

I'm still in favour of the PD in general, maybe bend it for a natural disaster, but there's no way that handful of survivers can do anything with what's left of their society. At best they're going to be inbred to fuck within a century. Should have just come clean and delt with the culture shock. There's a good story in that too, complete open goal, although better suited to a long form show like DS9.

That struck me as the more interesting potential plot too, with two potential versions of the story:

- Nikolai could have done it by just beaming everyone straight into a cargo bay as the planet died instead of to the holodeck, forcing Picard and the crew to explain everything to them directly. Cue some of the aliens being pissed off that no attempt was made to save more of them.

- Picard/Starfleet could have rejected Nikolai's holodeck plan and just gone with offering the people asylum themselves. There was something potentially very interesting there in the Kasidy Yates character (who's name I never caught), finding out that her husband has lied about absolutely everything to her. Presumably he's even had to make up some bullshit backstory for his persona and everything. There's definitely a plot in how she might deal with that revelation, plus the knowledge that she's carrying a half-alien baby.

[Chairman Yang]

Yeah an infinitely more palatable version of this episode is about the folly of Nikolai's plan and how unworkable saving a planet full of people is.

Either have the planet be *about* to explode and make it a silly bugger holodeck episode or have the planet be on its last legs and they hang out of the planet, come to empathise with the locals, and in the end make an appeal to the Federation to evacuate like... a few hundred thousand people.

Just don't have our heroes getting a chub on at the thought of an entire planet being wiped out in PLASMONIC RADIATION STORMS.

[MojoJojo]

You could almost turn it around with Vorin plot - have him really fucked up by the wider universe and driven mad by it. Show why interacting with primative species is a bad idea.

But I don't think TNG could pull it off. I'm quite open to the idea that medieval people wouldn't be able to cope in the future, believing devils to have infested everything, but TNG is too cuddly and familiar to us for that to be effectively portrayed on screen. It wouldn't be like when Jerry leaves the day care centre in R&M. Everyone, both the federation and prewarp cultures are basically late 20th century, and that's what screws up the PD. It's easy to imagine a future where it is a good and noble thing, but it's not in TNG.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Nikolai had already moved them to a shielded cave to save them by the time the Enterprise had arrived. So does that mean everyone else is already dead? Or at least all population groups on the planet have already taken a severe battering?

It might have been too late to save the Boraalan culture as it existed, in which case could you violate away on the Prime Directive? Culture's already FUBAR isn't it?

I really didn't like Vorin killing himself. It's supposedly to show why the Prime Directive exists. Except he didn't kill himself over meeting more technologically advanced people, did he? He killed himself over having a choice between never going back to his people, or going back and keeping what he saw a secret forever. Plus the knowledge that his entire species bar his own 'tribe' or 'village' or whatever are dead.

More generally, while I don't disagree with much that has been said here specifically about this episode, for some reason Prime Directive episodes don't piss me off nearly as much. Accidentally or not, this and "Pen Pals" show that the Prime Directive was probably not written with a planetary cataclysm in mind. My head canon is that whilst the Federation Council shunt it from committee to committee to working group to work out what to do in such situations, Starfleet captains just dogmatically adhere to non interference cos they don't want to be sacked.

Although it's obvious that Picard supports this interpretation on a personal moral level. That's fine I suppose, but maybe don't waffle about honouring them as you watch their planet die. The idea, I presume, is to show that letting them die isn't something that Picard is blasé about doing, but it falls flat.

The best they did justifying the Prime Directive in an episode was 'Friendship One' imo where they accidentally let an alien species reverse engineer anti-matter technology from their probe and then the aliens irradiated the shit out of their planet.

[Lemming]

Troi's not taking the Prime Directive seriously enough.

[Lemming]

S07E14 - Sub Rosa

Bev is nearly lured to her doom by a ghostly admirer.

- Bev's grandma has died. The flagship of the Federation has made the time to fly out to a colony specially designed to look like the Scottish Highlands (???) to pay respects. At the funeral, Bev's eye is caught by a MYSTERIOUS MAN with HAIR.

- The delivery of this kills me:

TROI: That was beautiful.
BEV: Oh. Thank you - Deanna, did you notice a strange man at the service?

DEAD GRAN's in the ground, fuck her, dead and buried, time to look into this handsome stranger.

- The guy in charge of this insane fucking colony asks Picard for help because the weather systems are shitty. Picard decides the flagship can put everything off for a few days to stay in this peculiar place. The mayor or whatever he is says that the actual bricks used to build this freaky place were brought over from Scotland.

- Bev and Troi enter DEAD GRAN's comically shit house. This is a colony in space, but you wouldn't know it, for DEAD GRAN's place looks suspiciously like some kind of pre-Victorian farmhouse with no computers or holograms or shit like that anywhere. It's time for some Bev Backstory - she was raised by DEAD GRAN (pre-death, obviously) after her parents died. There's a candle in here which DEAD GRAN always kept lit no matter what. Troi suggests bringing this fire hazard back to the ship.

- Finding DEAD GRAN's diary, Bev ascends the (creaky, wooden) stairs to read it in bed. Right as this happens, a weird Scottish guy walks into the living room and extinguishes DEAD GRAN's beloved candle!!! Bev tries to stop him and he says he's NED QUINT, and that the candle must be destroyed for it is CURSED. Bev and NED QUINT get into a little melee over the candle, before he storms out and tells her that he won't be responsible when THE CURSE OF THE CANDLE dooms her.

- The idiot mayor is up on the ship, in Engineering with Data and Geordi. The weather control systems are acting up now and creating storms, so Data goes to piss around with it to fix it. The mayor's having an outdoor tea party tomorrow, so this is time-sensitive!

- DEAD GRAN's diary makes for fascinating reading. Bev discovers that, at the age of 100, DEAD GRAN had a lover! Patrick Stewart is made to deliver the line "well! it would seem that the Howard women have exceptionally vigorous libidos!" Get this - her lover was 34 years old! Age gap nightmare! His name was Ronin, and Bev concludes this is the HANDSOME STRANGER from the funeral.

- Bev bones up (phwoar) on the saucy details in bed that night, reading more of DEAD GRAN's erotic anecdotes. As she goes to sleep, the candle flickers to life on its own! A mysterious invisible force pulls down the bedsheets and then Bev's nightgown! She jolts awake when a croaky-ass voice says BeVerLeeEeeEey.

- This is really exciting stuff so Bev invites Troi to Ten Forward to tell her about this insane sex dream she had. Gates McFadden is made to deliver the line "he knew exactly how I liked to be touched. it was the most physical dream I have ever had... the sensations were very real, and extremely arousing" while looking Marina Sirtis in the eyes, who I can only imagine was corpsing like never before.

- Let's recap the plot so far, because it's so wild that I feel like we need to keep reviewing to stay on top of it. On a colony designed to emulate the Scottish Highlands, Bev's grandma has died. Bev has recovered a cursed candle and an erotic diary from her grandma, and was reading about her grandma's explicit sexual encounters with a man 70 years her junior in bed, when the ghost of her lover arrived through the candle and nearly made her explode then and there. She's recounting all this to Troi, who thinks this is a really thrilling topic of conversation and not bizarre as fuck.

- Troi tries to do the personnel reports while Bev enthuses about the possibility of having further hot dreams. That night, she enters the colony's graveyard (in a cloak???) to lay flowers at DEAD GRAN's grave. NED QUINT is there and Bev apologises for the earlier to-do they had, because DEAD GRAN's journals mention what a Top Bloke NED QUIN was. NED QUIN warns Bev to stay out of the house, for it is haunted. "DINNAE LIGHT THAT CANDLE! IT'LL BRING THE GHOST!"

- The storms caused by the weather control system are, according to NED QUIN, actually the wrath of THE GHOST, who is furious at being driven out of the physical realm when the candle was extinguished. The thunder and lightning pick up, so Bev hauls ass. On the bridge, the crew see the thunderstorm getting crazy big from orbit. Bev seeks shelter in the haunted house, and finds it filled with flowers!!! Just like the one Ronin threw on the grave!!!

- There are tons of scary sounds, like creaking and rain on the windows and such. Bev (a Starfleet Commander) walks around gasping in terror and shivering with fright. She briefly sees Ronin behind her in a mirror, but turns to discover that he's NOT THERE!!! Ronin speaks as a disembodied voice, and says he visited her last night and got her absolutely soaking wet, and is here for more. She tries to call Worf's rapid response security team, but is struck by ghostly energy which makes her dizzy. Ronin says he loves her, just like he loved her century-old gran before her. "Are you Ronin?", the forensic Bev asks. Unmissable television now, as Gates McFadden walks around having a series of ghost-induced orgasms, moaning and grabbing onto furniture for support, while Ronin gives his backstory.

- Here is a representative screenshot of the episode:

Next time someone tries to claim Star Trek is "hard sci-fi", just show them this image.

- Ronin, as astute readers might have noticed, was born in 1647 in Glasgow on Earth. He became a ghost and floated around for 800 years, meeting a woman called Jessel Howard and then forming relationships with each of her daughters. This leads us to Bev, the latest in the line. No, this doesn't make sense. His motivation is that they are THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN I HAVE EVER KNOWN.

- The next day, Bev decides to skip her awful aerobics class with Troi to put loads of flowers up in her room. Troi says she can tell that Bev's IN LOVE and wants to know who with! Bev tells her about Ronin and Troi, for the first time ever, realises how fucking weird the plot is. Bev says it's fine because Ronin is PASSIONATE. Troi can't quite break throguh decades of funky-groovy-progressive "anything goes" 24th century social conditioning, so falls back to saying that this is fine and she's happy for Bev.

- Let's recap: Bev's gran died on a colony designed to resemble the Scottish Highlands. She kept an erotic journal detailing her sexual exploits with an 800 year old ghost called Ronin, who has engaged in deep romantic relationships with every woman of the HOWARD DYNASTY for centuries. Bev has now been entwined with Ronin and is hopelessly in love with him. He lives in a special cursed candle.

- The bridge is covered in spooky fog. This is caused by a malfunction on the ship's system that occurred when the power transfer beam they set up with the colony's weather control system got weird data sent up it. Data and Geordi go down to fix it from the colony's end. They discover NED QUINT trying to dismantle the weather control system by shoving his hands into electric wires. He's struck by GHOSTLY LIGHTNING and killed!

- Detective Geordi reckons NED QUINT just died as a result of sticking his hands into plasma conduits, case closed. Bev takes a closer look and finds out that he was killed by something else actually. Nobody can figure out what it is, but they discover it's the same energy signature that's fucking around with the Enterprise's systems. Bev decides to skip work to go to the haunted house and talk to Ronin. BEVERLEH, DID YOU MISS MEH?

- Bev tries to battle through the ORGASMIC EXPERIENCE of standing in Ronin's presence long enough to talk to him, but it's too hard, and she ends up panting and stumbling around. Ronin takes the physical form of Man With Hair again and tells Bev she's got to light the candle, for he lives in it and weakens if he's away from it for too long. She says she'll have to go back to the ship to get the candle, and he says he'll come with her by travelling up the power transfer beam.

- In her quarters, Bev locks the door and lights the candle, then sits on the bed in a weird pose waiting for Ronin to emerge. He arrives in physical form, with renewed strength and power. WE'RE GOING TO BE ONE. I'M GOING TO BECOME A PART OF YOU, BEVERLY.


- Ronin turns into green mist and enters Bev, who collapses back on the bed going "ooooh". The next day, she hands Picard her resignation from Starfleet and prepares to go down to the haunted house to live there forever. Picard confronts her in the transporter room and gives her a stern look, but he can't legally do shit so he lets her beam down.

- Troi and Picard discuss the situation in the ready room. Troi, who's absolutely on the ball, says she thinks something weird is up with Ronin. Picard fears that Ronin is exerting some kind of influence over Bev, and decides to investigate. While he goes to set Bev straight, Geordi and Data go down to the cemetary, where they've discovered an energy signature just like the one that killed NED QUINT.

- Geordi and Data find that the signatures are coming from DEAD GRAN's grave, and get ready to dig it up. Meanwhile, Bev's changed into a silk nightgown and is lounging around in the haunted house with Ronin, who turns into green mist again and gives her a BONE-SHAKING ORGASM. "We're nearly merged now!" he says. Picard knocks at the door and ruins everything, and walks in to see Bev writhing about in the chair. He asks her if he can meet Ronin. He also notices that her eye colour has inexplicably changed. Ronin appears in physical form and tells Picard to leave Bev alone.

- Picard tries to catch Ronin out on details of his ultra-suspicious backstory. Geordi calls and asks if he can dig up DEAD GRAN's body. Picard's got the commbadge on speaker phone so Ronin hears and goes "nooo you must not". Picard gives them the go-ahead despite Ronin's objections. He's caught out, so he just gives up on the act and ghost-ifies in front of Picard's eyes. Picard tries to leave and is STRUCK BY GHOSTLY ENERGY. Wouldn't it be fucking great if he jerked Picard off next, and Patrick Stewart had to act out the nonstop ghostgasm combo?

- Seeing Picard in danger is enough to briefly break Ronin's hold over Bev, and she stays behind to save Picard while Ronin goes to the cemetary to do evil.

- Geordi and Data open the coffin. DEAD GRAN's corpse jolts to life and kills Geordi and Data. Not making this up.

- Bev appears from out of nowhere and demands that Ronin stop piloting DEAD GRAN's corpse. BEVERLEH! FORGIVE MEH! Ronin shouts as he materialises as Handsome Man again.

- MY LOVE...  I COULD NEVER HARM YOU! I AM HERE TO PROTECT YOU!

- Just utter rubbish.

- Bev knows what anaphasic energy is, and has realised Ronin is a weird parasite who needs to feed off biological lifeforms to sustain himself. The candle is a plasma candle (that was first lit in Scotland 800 years ago?!?!), which nourishes Ronin when he's not leeching the life energy off some random person.

- Ronin desperately professes his love for Bev, and asks for the candle back. She refuses, and Ronin tortures Geordi with AGONY WAVES. She places the candle on the ground... then draws her phaser and melts it!

- Look at Ronin just standing there inertly, going NOOOOO!.


- Bev calls the ship and orders Riker to shut of all the plasma control conduits in the weather system. Ronin is trapped in physical form in the cemetary. His only hope to live now is to MERGE WITH BEV. She blasts him to oblivion as he leaps towards her like a fucking vampire bat yelling "BEVERLEEEEEEEEEEEE"!


- Data and Geordi are fine, everything worked out just off-screen. Bev and Troi meet up in Ten Forward to try and make sense of the plot. Bev concludes that no matter how you slice it, Ronin was a great guy who made DEAD GRAN really happy with his mind-warping ghost shit.

Has to be one of the worst things ever created. Batshit nonsense. You can tell all the actors know as well, every other line is delivered with a barely-disgused smirk. Even the direction seems to go to hell on this one, with people popping in and out of scenes and there being no sense of place or distance with people just magically appearing where the script needs them at any given time.

I don't think there's a single element in the plot that makes sense, and that's no exaggeration. Putting aside the big ones like the 800-year-old plasma candle, the impossibility of this ghost sustaining himself on "the Howard women" for eight centuries, the crazy colony and all that... who made the candle? Did Ronin become physical and make it himself - if so, how? What happens when you "merge" with Ronin? How does he take a physical form at all, let alone when the candle's not lit? Why does the merging process induce orgasms in humans? Why did he specifically pick this family to leech from (I'm guessing his "YOU ARE ALL SO BEAUTIFUL" line is not the actual reason, given that he's really just a green electronic mist). Can he merge with anyone, or does it have to be them? Do "the Howard women" have something in their DNA? If so, what? Can he merge with any organic life? If so, why not live off plants or animals? How did he get to Earth? Did Gran know Ronin was an 800 year old ghost - if so, why did she write that he was a 34 year old man (the actual reason is because Bev can't know he's a ghost yet for plot reasons)? If Ronin "merges" with all "the Howard women" like this, how are any of them having any more children in the first place, when their minds are consumed with Ronin? Does it have to be women? Can he "merge" with Geordi by making him cum buckets? Where are we? What's going on?

Whereas "Homeward" was hard to rate because it was a tight, well-paced episode with horrific content, this is hard to rate because it's a terrible pile of fucking dogshit that's easily one of the most entertaining episodes of the season. 8/10, with every single one of those points being given ironically.

It's actually bliss to watch, there are entire sitcoms that don't have as many laughs as this.

I think Ronin is my favourite Star Trek antagonist of all time. I hope Alex Kurtzman stumbles across the episode and makes the first correct decision of his career by deciding to create a 13-part series, STAR TREK: RONIN. Maybe the fucking Borg find his scattered energy floating through space and remake him or something, I don't know.

[Zero Gravitas]

You didn't make any of the right gifs!



Also very poor erotic sensibilities on your part:







Big gaelic arse fumbling under a console, not even knowing he's about to get it, does it for me every time.

I always assumed this and 'Remember Me' were the price the producers paid for getting Gates McFadden back into a blue lab coat.

[daf]

165 | "Sub Rosa"



There's a Ghoost Loose Aboot This Hoose

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Scotland in Spaaaaaaaaaaace!
• Over the Shoulder Eyeball Smoulder
• Century-spanning Spectral Serial Shagger
• Bedtime Bev's Physically Arousing Erotic Nana-Chapter
• Sherlock Droid Investigates : "The Coffin Exhuming Mysteries"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Flummoxing Flower Festooned Floor
• Nana-Nana-Nana-Nana-Nana-Nana-Nana-Nana's Bad Man!
• Exciting Weather Malfunction Mcguffin
• Scheduled Caber Toss Cancel Crisis
• Filled Foggings - Some Jacket Required
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Score :

[Attila]

I've been following this thread from the beginning and enjoying the heck out of it -- and waiting and waiting for the review of this episode (and the one where Troi turns into a lizard who goes 'bloop').

The review, the gifs, Daf's summary -- excellent stuff.

[Chairman Yang]

This really is peak Season 7 TNG, complete absence of fucks to give all round.

INT. HOWARD HOME - DAY

BEVERLEY and TROI walk in painful silence across the clattering wood floor of the entry hall. Crusher begins mindlessly titting about with a fireplace. Apropos of nothing, Troi begins to sensually caress a PHOTOGRAPH of Beverley.

TROI: Your grandmother had remarkable green eyes...

Notwithstanding the cum powered alien candle ghost, by far the most insane idea in this episode is that one of the Federation's first terraforming projects was a Scottish theme park world!

We can only hope that at some point the Jem Hadar brutally executed the population during the weekly caber toss.

[Zero Gravitas]

More confusing that it's Scotland in 1880, a theme which Ronin seems to jollily go along with despite his origins.

This 'perfect replica' nonsense is clearly all a cover story for a sleeper ship full of scotch history buffs wanting an ethnostate.

[Blumf]

Why not a recreation of late-C20 Glasgow on a Friday night?

[Chairman Yang]

The fact that he doesn't go through a traditional 'This is my true form!' twist ending suggests to me that he actually looks like a handsome gothic figure and Scotlandworld being fucking ridiculous is just an extremely helpful coincidence.

[daf]

I absolutely loved this one!

Reminded me of the rose-tinted 'Fantasy Ireland' episodes of Murder She Wrote (I swear one of them had an actual Leprechaun as a prime suspect!)

[MojoJojo]

These "lets have loads of stereotypes" episodes have pretty much died out now haven't they? Wonder when a big US show last did one.

[The Culture Bunker]

I do agree it would have been better if Planet Scotland had been based on, for example, Govan, with Granny buried alongside a load of Buckfast.

[Lemming]

S07E15 - Lower Decks

Four lower-ranking crew members try to figure out what the senior staff are hiding from them during the build-up to a secret mission.

- Riker and Troi discuss sensitive personal crew information in the crowded Ten Forward, for all to hear. On another table, four losers are sat - Sam, a career-obsessed wanker, the legendary Nurse Ogawa, Sito (the Bajoran from Tom Paris' flight squad back in "The First Duty"???), and some Vulcan guy, Taurik. Sito and Sam find out they're both up for the same job. TENSION

- Later, on the bridge, a security drill is run under the watchful eye of Riker. Naturally, he takes the opportunity to be a prick to Sam, but it's easier to swallow than the usual Riker weight-throwing-aroundism because Sam's also kind of a knob. After Riker clears off to do something really important elsewhere, Sam and Sito take the opportunity to shit-talk him behind his back, likely a hobby for the crew.

- In Engineering, Taurik SINGLEHANDEDLY REWRITES THE RULES OF WARP TRAVEL. Geordi looks at Taurik's findings agog, made to look like a slowpoke behind-the-times fool in his own department yet again. Taurik wants to discuss this genuinely amazing discovery further, but Geordi brushes him off, because he's got to go get scratched by Spot or complain about dating woes or look for his dead mum's ghost or something.

- In Sickbay, Bev tells Ogawa that she's recommending her for a promotion to LIEUTENANT OGAWA. She also takes the opportunity to be a nosey fucker and shove her BIG NOSE right into Ogawa's business, asking her how it's going with her boyfriend. Ogawa admits she's worried that he's becoming distant, and Bev tells her not to worry about it and that everything'll fix itself if you ignore it and pretend it's not happening, advice to live by. Bev also says she's not sure what it's like to rush into a relationship. THE CANDLE, BEVERLEH! I DRAW POWER FROM IT! BEVERLEEEEEEEEE!

- Sito reviews her training with Worf in Ten Forward. She's being prepped for a SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT, recommended personally by Worf. There's a guy in Ten Forward called Ben, by the way, who is not Guinan. You might think he's Guinan but he's actually a different wise and calm civilian bartender who's able to flit effortlessly between all different groups of people on the ship. Guinan's somewhere else, this is Ben, our new character.

- GuiBen encourages Sam to go talk to Riker to engage in some major-league no-holds-barred brown-nosing. He tries to have a drink with Riker but it falls through because Riker is such a fucking arsehole about everything for no reason.

- On the bridge, Data announces that we're near the Cardassian border. There's an escape pod in Cardie space that Picard says they need to recover. Sam, who is on the conn, doesn't know what the hell's going on. Down in Engineering, Taurik works to bring the pod in, but Geordi warns him off trying to get readings from it. At the same time, Bev throws Ogawa out of shitbay before transporting the survivor from the life pod in. Sito and Ogawa bump into each other and both realise they're being kept in the dark.

- The real crew arrives and takes control of the bridge, kicking Loser Sam off. Picard tells Sito to come to his ready room, where he just instantly has a go at her for being on the Tom Paris "Oh Fuck We've Killed Our Friend" Daredevil Team. Picard pisses and moans at her and says that she has a WEAK CHARACTER. "Quite frankly, I don't know how you made it on board this ship", he concludes, seriously overestimating the average quality of officer on board this ship.

- In the shuttle bay, Taurik is being made to shoot a shuttle with a phaser rifle, just for a laugh. He's catching onto the fact that Geordi's covering something up along with the rest of the senior staff. He realises the point of this weird shuttle-shooting exercise is to make the shuttle appear that it's been attacked. He challenges Geordi directly, who gets in a huff and tells him to fuck off because he's NOT A SENIOR OFFICER.

- Ogawa gets hauled into sickbay by Bev for emergency surgery work, and is told that she's under a MAJOR NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT from this point on. There's a Cardassian patient on the biobed.

- The Lower Decks Wankers (plus Ben) play poker. At the same time, the regular senior officers clique play a much more boring and wooden game of poker. Sito tells everyone about Picard's cuntery and Big Swinging Dick Sam tells her she's the BEST OFFICER IN THE FLEET or something. The audience get whiplash as we cut back to the wooden poker game, where Riker is whining about Sam to everyone else. Troi tells him that Sam is basically him (she's on the right lines, but this is a grave insult to Sam). Just to make Riker look like an especially big knobhead here, it cuts back to Sam breezily agreeing with his friends that maybe he's misreading Riker, demonstrating that he's got 300 times more self-awareness than his bearded counterpart, who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to a similar revelation by Troi, his girlfriend-cum-caretaker.

- Ben - who is NOT GUINAN - leaves the Lower Decks Wankers poker game and goes to the senior officers game, where he is welcomed eagerly by his main cast chums. He receives the kind of welcome that, say, Guinan might, which is odd, because he's not Guinan - she's somewhere else, doing something.

- The next day, Worf is doing his yoga Honourbound Combat class. He calls Sito for a special exercise, where he blindfolds her and then throws her over a few times. Eventually she gets pissed off and snaps at Worf, saying this is impossible bullshit. Worf smiles, overcome with HONOUR. The point of the exercise was to take the blindfold off and call Worf a prick, showing that you're prepared to stand up for yourself. He tells her that, next time she's judged unfairly, she should put Picard in a blindfold and then knee him in the nuts, I think that's the lesson.

- Sito strides into Picard's office and gives the weediest speech ever, saying "p-please sir please d-don't j-judge me unfairly sir, if that's okay with you sir, please". Picard says that he was being a shit to her because he was priming her for the ULTIMATE SECRET MISSION, and reveals that he personally requested her presence on the Enterprise, so that he could call her into the ready room and bully her as part of some insane management strategy he read online she could redeem herself for her Tom Paris related crimes against humanity.

- In the ready room, Sito is introduced to the guy from the escape pod, a Cardassian double agent who's brought BIG INFO from the Cardies. He'll be sent back to Cardie space in the shuttle Geordi was fucking up earlier. Sito will go along pretending to be a captured Bajoran terrorist, adding to his absolutely airtight cover story, after which she'll be shot back to them in the escape pod. Picard makes her sign another ultra-casual verbal NDA before sending her off to Bev. The Cardie double agent expresses distress that they've paired him with someone so young. He's right - surely if we need a Bajoran at all (and can't just make Riker into one with plastic surgery), this is a job for Ro...

- The shuttle takes off with Sito and CardieMan inside it. She asks him what's up with the whole double agent thing, and he says he's a patriot and doesn't like militarism and fascism and all that. They both become Non-Racist towards each other's races, and share the Meaningful Mutually Respectful Glare of Exorcised Race Hate.

- Sito's friends meet up in Ten Forward to panic about what's happening. Sam's on the ball and has pretty much got the whole thing figured out. He realises Taurik and Ogawa know about the mission already, and gets in a mood and leaves.

- Later, the Enterprise goes to the rendevouz point and Sito isn't there. They panic for 30 hours (not my usual hyperbole, they do actually sit there for 30 hours fretting), after which she's still not there. They still haven't told anyone what's going on, just that they're looking for a pod, which makes Sam even more moody. They launch a probe which goes directly to SITO'S CORPSE. Picard goes to his ready room to give the shipwide announcement that Sito has been gibbed and her bits are floating through space.

- Worf sits alone at the 3D Chess Board of Sadness in Ten Forward, all the honour drained from his body. Sito's friends all meet up and Sam announces that he's been promoted, but doesn't give a shit anymore, esepcially since he may have only got the promotion since his only competitor is now a trail of blood and gore orbiting the nearest moon. The ever-wise Guinan all-original character Ben tries to encourage Worf to go and sit with them. Worf, being the BEST MEMBER OF THE BRIDGE CREW by far, closes the socially constructed gap between Glorious Senior Officer Ubermensch and Lower Decks Shitsam and Flotsam.

The idea here is pretty cool, an episode told from the perspective of random people aboard the ship. Makes half the senior staff look like dickheads, but they were kind of always like that.

Forgot what the episode was, but I remember saying ages ago, back in like season four, that TNG sometimes works best when the focus character(s) is someone from outside the usual cast, and the main cast are essentially the antagonists of the week. It works here, especially with Bev and Worf's attempts to bridge the rift between the senior staff and the low-ranking staff which adds a bit of texture to the whole thing. I also like episodes that knowingly cast Starfleet in a more negative light*, hence why I liked "Pen Pals" (with the usual caveat that I'm not 100% sure what Snodgrass' intentions actually were there) and all that. My favourite episode of TOS is "Errand of Mercy", which really makes Starfleet look like shit.

*within reason, obviously, not PIC's general insanity or DS9's Section 31, which I always thought was an awful addition

I don't know if Starfleet is portrayed in an outright negative light here, as such, but the Enterprise is portrayed as very cliquey and potentially unpleasant place to be, and the plan to offer Sito up as a sacrificial lamb (I know, she's not forced into it) comes across as pleasingly cold and uncaring, the machinations of a militaristic organisation that sees people as "officers" rather than people. When Sam gets upset with Ogawa and Taurik, they even say it themselves:

LAVELLE: I can't believe this. We're friends.
TAURIK: We're also Starfleet Officers.
OGAWA: I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Being friends is positioned as opposite to being good obedient Starfleet officers, I love that.

Sito is pretty much the central character here but I think Sam is the more interesting one - he's some kind of hilarious yuppie careerist who desperately wants to become Riker, but over the course of the episode, he realises Riker's a dick, becomes irritated and outraged by the way Starfleet works and treats its people, and ultimately realises his promotion hasn't made him happy at the end. That seems like a nice arc to really focus in on - obviously we need plenty of Sito screentime to feel the impact of her loss at the end, but she's a bit of a wimp who gets shoved around by everyone and then snaps back at them in the most "respectfully, sir, please don't hurt me, sir, if you don't mind, sir" way possible. Taurik, Ogawa and Sam don't really get their arcs seen through to conclusions (though with only 45 minutes, there's probably no real way to do it) - Taurik challenges Geordi but he's ultimately too docile to go anywhere with it, Ogawa doesn't really have an arc here to start with, so we're left with Sam, who seems to be building up towards realising something but doesn't quite get there, or at least, never spells it out. More Worf would be interesting too - he's the only one we see really feeling guilt and unease over the plan even before it ends with Sito's death. They might have taken him on a journey parallel to Sam's.

7/10

That's seven Bens out of ten, there.

[Solid Jim]

The Cardie double agent expresses distress that they've paired him with someone so young. He's right - surely if we need a Bajoran at all (and can't just make Riker into one with plastic surgery), this is a job for Ro...

I thought the same thing when I saw this episode. My inference was that perhaps they already asked Ro and she refused point blank to accept what was clearly a suicide mission. Which set them to thinking, we need a more naive Bajoran whom we can manipulate and bully into doing this without fully understanding the risks.

Sociopathic.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Ro is presumably not aboard the ship at this point. She hasn't been seen in just over a season, and only comes back aboard having been on an 'Advanced Tactical Training' course in about 10 episodes time.

My headcanon is that Ben is Guinan and that El Aurians can shapeshift (not much weirder than the shit she could pull in PIC S2 after all). So every now and then she poses as Ben for a week to see is anyone shit talking her behind her back.


This is one of two episodes where I find Riker to just be a dick for no real reason (Double Riker being other one), and I don't get what the writers are thinking. Yeah, Sam's being an annoying little lick-arse, but all they had to do was have Riker tell him that they don't have to be besties for him to get a promotion and to calm his shit.

[daf]

My headcanon is that Ben is Guinan and that El Aurians can shapeshift (not much weirder than the shit she could pull in PIC S2 after all). So every now and then she poses as Ben for a week to see is anyone shit talking her behind her back.

Obviously they were working around Goldberg's availability, but I think in this case, Ben's appearance works fine - as he's the 'lower deck' version of Guinan - so fits in with the theme of the episode.