Some consider this worse than the Space Blacks of ‘Code of Honor.’ The Space Irish are yet to show up. We’ve met the Ferengi … at least they jumped around like monkeys on crack. We have yet to get to sexual-orientation-inversion world … so for now: It’s Planet of the Man-Haters! Welcome to being clubbed over the head with obvious allegories and analogies!
‘Angel One’ is evidence that TNG does not have an absolute minimum, but rather several local minima over the course of the first few seasons. Whenever you think that “now, the show can only go up!” it surprises us with tone-deafness.
And, really, a lack of any real sort of irony (dramatic or otherwise) is perhaps what makes so many early TNG episodes so bad … a real lack of context, an inability to see how others might view what they’re working on. It’s all quite earnest, even the humor. But let me, instead, return to the episode at hand and its many bad, bad decisions.
In short, the Enterprise vists Angel One (yes, who names their planet—when you only have one of them!—Something One … there is no Angel Two, is there?), a planet they’ve not visited for most of a century, because they think the survivors of a wrecked freighter have landed up on it. It’s Rescue Time™!
Ah, but Angel One is ruled by women … it’s Gender Reversal Time™. Men are smaller and weaker and have no political power … it’s the Bizarro World Madmen of the Star Trek Universe! Find them and take them away, the unfriendly ruling class rules! The Enterprise tracks the survivors down, but they don’t want to go. *Sigh* … but the Enterprise crew promised! That means we’ll just have to capture the men—Sulky Smurf, who overcompensated in her hatred of me, was secretly married to one of them and accidently led the leader right to them!—and execute them and their followers … unless, perhaps, you can convince them all to go (are we not merciful?)
The death penalty, you say? Then let’s beam them away, Prime Directive be damned! (these space pirates are not in Starfleet, so Riker & Co. cannot command them to leave). Oh, wait, we can’t because there is a contrived infection upon the Enterprise and it might kill everybody? Darn. Oh, and the Enterprise has to leave anyway because it appears the Romulans are up for a fight, so now we have a contrived deadline, too? Excellent.
But eventually a real man, Riker, makes the leader of Angel One see the error of her ways … killing them all would just make martyrs of them. It’s evolution you see … sexual equality is a teleological evolutionary principle that cannot be denied … you will lose, women of Angel One! (Riker hints) … perhaps, their leader contemplates, but even if we cannot stop this strange evolution of which you speak, perhaps we can, at least, slow it down. A win for reactionary gender politics!
We have some problems, the biggest one is … women on the Enterprise. There are really only three of them: Crusher, Troi, and Yar. Crusher comes off the best … she’s the doctor and she has some authority, but mainly she’s a foil for Picard and an emotional mother figure. Troi is “intuitive” and overly emotional. She states the obvious, at the best of times, and throughout the series she’s a target for psychic rape … because they can! Oh, and Yar … real rape gangs in her past. She’s emotional and unstable. Notice a trend?
I am reminded of The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller. Without reviewing that book, I’ll just point out one of Eller’s points … that a common and misguided tactic is to accept gender differences and traits as essential (nature, not nurture) and just invert the associated values. Women are emotional and weak, they only have intuition and not higher reasoning, say the misoyngists. Women are emotional and their emotions put them in touch with their true nature; they are physically weaker but less prone to violence and more likely to cooperate as a result; their intution is an alternative or even superior ‘way of knowing’, whereas ‘reason’ is a logo- and phallo-centric error, say those Eller criticizes. Women should be barefoot and pregnant say the fundies and Nazis; motherhood is a sacred calling so we should make home our sacred sphere, etc. comes the inverted reply.
Even when Star Trek, at this phase, portrays women positively, it does so from within the same framework … the qualities stay the same, only our valuation of them changes … and the system is perpetuated. TNG only seems ‘enlightened’ by comparison with what came before. There is nothing radical or challenging here.
And here is Angel One, a planet—once again—with but one society, one culture. The episode is played as a ‘gender reversal,’ which is a great idea, but is how Riker experience Angel One how women do / did experience Earth or the U.S.? Are they not in their ‘reversal’ giving us a mere parody? This is less a thought-provoking reversal than a fearful “what if women ruled? Oh, the horror!” situation. They overcompensate and are overly emotional … as if they know they are being compared to Earth’s patriarchy. As with earlier episode, the Federation is played as “more advanced/evolved,” but in 2011 we live in a kind of post-cultural-studies world, and TNG is still set in a “liberal colonialism-paternalism” mode … it’s painful but an interesting document of the 80s.
Then … we have the male costumes. Oh my. Sure, there is Riker’s silliness, but the other men’s costumes are similar and flamboyant. Yet they actually do a good job of needlessly sexualizing and infantalizing said men. This, I think, works pretty well as a reversal, where the men are put in the submissive, sexualized role, and it is a give, background situation. We shouldn’t have to think about it … it’s how that society is. Note how all but Riker have shaved chests.
But then they had to go and show the refugees as rugged, individualist types, traditional males from Earth’s perspective. Living in caves … a planet of paleo-MacGyvers. Once again remember: this is/was ther era of Murphy Brown and single-motherhood!
Now my asides/lone-comments:
- …48 to 47 … the first reference to 47 in TNG? 48 minutes remain (to keep the Enterprise around the planet), but after talking, only 47 minutes before Data must fly to the other destination to thwart the Romulans!
- … what else I like? Picard and Worf walking around and encountering Wesley and his friend … it seems like way of just ‘adding character,’ little moments that fill in the details of life on the Enterprise, not especially plot related. And mention of the Romulans. (alas, it turns out to be a plot point, not just ‘adding atmosphere’ … and then we have the ‘plague’ … which hinders both going to see the Romulans and to finishing the ‘rescue’ on the planet below)
- … the ‘virus’ is a handy, deus-ex-machina hindrance in a way that slows the plot and supposedly introduces tension … it’s a VERY non-organic approach, but it has one ‘virtue’ here … it hinders our characters from making the WRONG decision … taking the refugees and then the refugees and their wives & children away … instead, they were forced to remain on Angel One and work through their problems …
- … the damaged/lost freighter? ODIN … one of its officers/crew? RAMSEY (as in: the pharaoh … so hyper-masculine characters?) Okay, I don’t really like this part.
- Beata lacks even Lutan’s scheming nuance … she is not complex or multi-faceted … she and her fellow female leaders are clear and direct to read and have straight-forward motivations. Even the Ferengi first officer had nuance (not questioning his captain, but doubting in a sense the mission, and finding a way to ‘solve’ the problem by taking command and relieving the captain for engaging in an unprofitable venture …)
- … so they let Trent, a completely subservient male, be the executioner? Does not scan …
- … speaking of: it seems clear that the ‘men’ of Angel One are all male gymnasts or such (based on their physiques …)
- … A.V. Club gave it an F … I doubt I would do that
- has Geordi & Worf comic relief
- Picard comic relief when he loses his voice
- Riker in a strange outfit
