Or: “To New Beginnings.”
Let us be gin, Richard often says. I like caesura‘s. They are opportunities. Spaces. Places. Moments of freedom. “Mind the gap,” they say (and not just the GAP™), but I like to think of it not as a warning, but as a call to action—”hey, we have a gap here … let’s take advantage of it!”
That’s overly optimistic even for me; that much I must admit. And now, briefly, to the “story.”
Something is wrong.
I don’t think it is the outside temperature or the inside. Not the sheets, the pillow (cases), or my health in general, but I’ve had a hard time falling asleep recently (past week?). I end up with an irritated, scratchy, dry throat and end up coughing for a long time as I lay there in bed, regardless of position, time of night, how much I’ve had to eat or drink, etc. But when I wake up in the morning I’m fine.
This is, however, annoying. My throat hurts.
I’ve never hated Dr. Pulaski as much as many Trekkies seem to, and I do not wish to imply that one ought to dislike her. I can sort of understand the antipathy many feel, as she replaced Dr. Crusher, who had chemistry of sorts with Picard, and in the first part of the season at least her main topic of interest is in discussing how Data is only an Android. Furthermore her distrust of transporters and frontier gruffness is reminiscent of Dr. McCoy.
“Unnatural Selection” seems like an opportunity to give her an episode, her own story.
“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.
Hey, it’s that guy from ‘The X-Files’!
That had never occurred to me before, since this was the first time I’ve watched this episode in nearly 20 years.
But first, the episode, in summary. The Enterprise finds a long-lost, hidden planet, make contact, after an initial visit have their best and brightest children stolen, and spend the rest of the episode scheming to get them back. A solution presents itself at the end, allowing the Enterprise and its crew not to have to engage in actual violence or difficult moral decisions.
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.
TNG often goes to the same well multiple times … and so it was when this time the Enterprise was getting a ‘check up’ and people were going on shore leave, I expected a different hijacking of this Galaxy Class starship. But this is not the one where Picard takes up a gun … this is the one where Riker falls in love with a computer simulation.
Which Geordi will do later.
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.
“Shut up, Wesley!” Picard and others shout this episode.
Even once Wesley is proved right—at the end of the episode for the other characters, from the get-go for us viewers—he gets to return to duty, but gets no “thanks,” or “sorry we didn’t listen to you” comments. Sure, you would not expect them from the Captain, who does not have to explain himself to a mere boy, but you’d expect his mother to say something …
But let us back up.
When it comes to television, movies, even theater, I maintain a rather great level of “suspension of disbelief” … rather, I grant said works a great deal of leeway, perhaps something appropriate when it comes to the motion of a starship. “The Big Goodbye” strained credulity for both me and Susie, but perhaps for different reasons.
