“Ugly bags of mostly water” … yay!
At first I did not recall this episode, but once they were on the planet it came back to me. But that aside, even if I hadn’t seen it, I could have predicted many of its twists and turns. The leader of the terraforming group is stand-offish and secretive? Nope, couldn’t be anything wrong. The terraforming group asserts that everything is going great. Nope, couldn’t be anything wrong. One of them goes off-stage on his own to do some work? Nope, nothing could go wrong. Even after that Data turns the computer and drilling laser back on while alone in the room? Nope, nothing could go wrong. Beam a potentially intelligent recently ‘discovered’ ‘life form’ to the Enterprise and put it in a containment field? Nope, nothing could go wrong, etc.
But to summarize: a planet has been categorized as sterile / void of all life, so a terraforming group of only about four people sets up camp there to do their work. The Enterprise shows up to check in, but because the group leader is so secretive, Picard more or less forces his way onto the planet, at which point, after the lone woman on the terraforming expedition waxes rhapsodic about the science and technology, things start to go wrong, and one of the group members is killed by a wayward drilling laser. The Enterprise crew, after dismissing computer or mechanical error (especially after Data is almost killed by the reactivated drill) conclude that someone decided to kill the other group member … that they have a murder to solve!
Meanwhile Geordi and Data discover sparkling crystal ‘thing’ down a mineshaft, think it might be alive (albeit inorganic), take it to the Enterprise, after after it responds, reproduces, and tries to communicate, they learn that it controlled the drill that killed the terraformer.
The new lifeform reproduces, is much like a miniature computer, resists attempts to quarantine and/or send it back to the surface, and, after declaring war on the Enterprise, takes over the ship. At the last minute the Enterprise discovers the life form’s energy source (light and/or the infrared), shut down the lights in the room it occupies, and starve it into submission. A truce is reached, the life form agrees that trust might be established after three centuries, and as Picard & Co. leave he leaves a log note that the planet is under indefinite quarantine.
At first glance this resembles a TOS episode in which miners on a planet have antagonized an living-rock beast, with which Spock eventually mind-melds, averting further disaster, and both have an element of ‘mystery’ to them with the not-quite-explained deaths, but where ‘Home Soil’ differs—as a positive development—is in this being a mostly ‘hard SF’ story.
It’s not about warp speeds or humans in masks. It’s not about space opera and galactic wars. It’s not an obvious allegory in which a ‘contemporary’ or historical Human situation is transferred to the fictional future. Instead we have three story features that make this episode ‘hard’. First, instead of excessive techn0-babble, the scientific dialog (and monolog) is both matter-of-fact and to an extent extrapolated from ‘current’ science, in particular the dicussions of terraforming on the planet below. Geology, timetables, stages … they’re all present, and ‘terraforming SF,’ as in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, is a true SF sub-genre. This resembles in a way ST:II and ST:III, with the Genesis Project and such, but there we just deal with handwaving, a clear plot MacGuffin, in the first film something Ricardo ‘This is really my chest‘ Montalban (Khan) can seek, and in the second it helps provide a set for the Enterprise-Klingon showdown and a way to bring back Spock, but outside of the movie’s special effects, the spectacle of a beautifully realized fictional world, ‘Genesis’ plays little role in story or plot, and definitely not at the level of plausible science. Secondly we see Crusher & Co. explicitly invoking the ‘scientific method’ and in the middle part of the episode we see them attempting experimentation and observation as a way of learning, of exploring and developing the story. They debate definitions of life and whethe alien glow fits it. Finally the alient itself is treated as a scientific extrapolation, is treated in scientific terms, and its interaction with the Enterprise and its crew, along with its planetside ecosystem, are considered in scientifically plausible (not necessarily ‘probable’) terms. Not since V-ger (and even there there was handwaving about machine planets, perhaps a wormhole it fell through, etc.) have we had something close to a hard SF alien on ST.
But all is not well … to my mind there’s at least one critical problem in the episode, one that relates to continuity of sorts, and which undermines much of the middle-section hand-wringing: the notion that they’ve never before encountered inorganic life. First of all, within the series itself they’ve encountered lifeforms like (the) Q that exist in a non-material way (but able to take material form), bypassing organic/inorganic entirely (though one could argue that the Q and similar evolved from organic origins and in a StarGate sort of way ‘ascended’, but that’s neither here nor there). Furthermore, just a few episodes earlier they encountered the space-traveling, clearly intelligent and malevolent, Crystal(ine) Entitity. Again, perhaps one could argue that it was at some point created and was not in any way ‘biological’ (organic or not). And then we have Data, though this is sort of a cart-before-the-horse issue, as so far Data is considered an android and certainly intelligent, and in possession of a ‘will’ as well as a desire to be more human, but is not treated as a living being for a while longer, when his legal status as a ‘person’ will be debated (plus there is the ‘reproduction’ matter, but then we get Lal … but I digress). Then you have TOS and the previously mentioned rock-lava monster. In short, there is no reason for the Enterprise crew—insofar as each episode in some way relates to previous episodes and what has happened before—to even possess an “organic-only” definition of “life.”
Kirk and Spock deduce that they may be dealing with a silicon-based lifeform, rather than the normal carbon-based found throughout the galaxy. This would explain why the creature does not show up on sensors and why it was impervious to Appel’s phaser. Kirk summons Giotto and a security team, and has Spock adjust their type 2 phasers to be more effective against silicon. The security team is dispatched to level 23, which was opened just before the attacks began. (‘The Devil in the Dark‘, TOS)
I can’t say I was particularly taken by the guest roles/actors this week, all of whom seemed to have a single expression or tone. That is, the ‘alien’ was more lifelike than our muppets. The lone woman from the expedition was almost constantly sad and let her hairdo do her acting: up and professional, down and mourning, yearning for Riker’s sweet touch. Mr. Mullet was constantly trying to think but never really mastered it. The Boss scowled.
Two more things … one that I liked, one that I found a lost opportunity. This was not a Troi-centric episode, but this was the first to smartly use the Troi-Picard dynamic. In practically all other Troi situations whatever she ‘felt’ was obvious to the other senses. Here, for example, she set Picard upon the right trail with Mr. Suspicious Boss … Better, though, was a scene in Picard’s ready room, in which he provoked The Boss, and in reading his denial Troi was able to tease out what he knew and didn’t … it was a relatively smart Good Cop, Bad Cop scene. This was a ‘hard SF’ episode (as for as TNG goes, that is), and one of the more interesting aspects of science, or of practicing science, is curiosity. Here the Enterprise crew was curious, which got them on the planet. Mr. Mullet was curious about Data. Crusher & Co. exployed a TV-friendly version of the scientific method. But what got the terraforming crew in trouble in the first place was their lack of curiosity … a curiosity that at least Mr. Mullet expressed elsewhere. In short, the trouble with our tiny, alive, inorganic computers could have been averted with a mere hint of curiosity. The aliens see themselves as more ‘advanced than the ugly bags of mostly water, mainly because of the latter’s immature arrogance … but accept for The Boss’ ‘arrogance,’ which was more bluster and denial, we don’t have arroganc as a developed trait or flaw this episode.
In short, this is in my view one of the strongest TNG episodes to date. I also enjoyed Data’s terse and to the point dialog and responses to questions. I found the writing overall to be quite tight and with few exceptions the actors had few truly cringe-worthy words to spew. It was a nice ‘first contact’ kind of episode, and I only wish it had done more with some of its themes … I wish we could have seen how the life form had tried to communicate before (not just hear about it later), and I wish—while on the topic of curiosity—the potential connections between this kind of crystal entity and previous ‘interesting’ crystal structures had been at least brought up if not explored.
