Again we strain credulity … though this time perhaps because it is quite character-centric and so we must somehow smooth over plot difficulties.
First: bad makeup.
There are Federation hostages on a planet, negotiations are required, says the leader of that planet, and only a certain Federation negotiator, a retired admiral who previously led negotiations on that planet, can do the job. So the Enterprise picks him up, and he informs Picard that while Picard runs the ship, he, Admiral Jameson, is in charge of every aspect of the mission. Of course things go wrong.
Jameson is an 85-year-old or so confined to a wheelchair due to cryptic-sf-babble-disease. Then he has seizures. Then he starts getting younger! And the old-man-makeup starts to come off. Midway through the episode he is played by Anorexic Tim Robbins, or his Mexican Non-Union Equivalent. Later he Harry Hamlins it up. Of course whatever is making him young will kill him …
… years before he conducted negotiations on some other planet, a planet that has a rumored fountain-of-youth-elixir, but they don’t give it to outsiders. Unless they owe him or her (or it) a huge favor. Our admiral got two doses, one for himself and one for his equally old but not old-age-makeup-encrusted wife. Feeling the pressure to perform, he takes both doses at once and for himself. He keeps saying that he did this for them and for her (his wife), but to have taken both, leaving nothing for her, puts the lie to that claim.
Of course, it’s never really questioned.
And, of course, things on the planet are not as they seem. It appears that the current leader used to be just one of many petty sons-of-warlords. After his father was assassinated, he wanted weapons to wipe his enemies off the face of the planet, but Jameson, liberally interpreting the Prime Directive, gave weapons to all sides. As a result the conflict on the Planet of the Week (PoW) continued for decades and said planetary leader has not forgiven Jameson. He is the hostage taker … there are no rebels. And he wants to see Jameson dead. It does not help, however, that Jameson now looks like he’s just out of puberty, and only Picard beaming down with the dying admiral, along with Dr. Crusher and the admiral’s wife—into a hostile zone with a guy who doesn’t care about pissing off a multi-system military power!—eventually convinces him that a) yes, it’s Jameson, b) yes, he’s dying and it’s not a ruse, and c) yeah, well shucks, hee, too, bears some responsibility for the 40 years of bloodshed. Jameson dies, the hostages are set free, and the Enterprise flies away.
So the Federation conducts legitimate negotiations with people who are obviously, blatantly, and with acknowledgment are jerking them around? How stupid is this Federation? How stupid is Picard for going along with it?
I get the non-violent route, I get having principles, I get not taking revenge or just being punitive. But if you send in the Federation’s biggest, baddest ship with a crapload a weapons to a planet where the Prime Directive does not really apply and where you face hostility, not even bringing the threat of violence into play just because you have a silly plot/story to execute is … well, stupid.
Chekhov wants his gun back.
When it comes—later—to a rock-star-haired artistic terrorist who kidnaps Crusher, at least there we have technological barriers to Picard & Co. just ‘rescuing’ her … but there is no such excuse here. Bad acting, bad makeup, bad plotting … really, people? This is the best you can give us?
Links:
- Too Short a Season (Wikipedia)
- Too Short a Season (Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki)
- Too Short a Season, at. al. (A.V. Club)
