The Battle by: Herbert Wright from a story by: Larry Forrester and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“The Battle” is written by: Herbert Wright, from a story by: Larry Forrester, and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 110, was the 9^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on November 16, 1987.

 

There isn’t really a battle in “The Battle”, or at least there shouldn’t be.  It is Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first proper attempt at a psychological character study and the second episode of the series to actually be good.  Not, great, but “The Battle” is actually a solid episode and were it earlier in the season, say in the place of “The Last Outpost” it might have actually worked to make the Ferengi a credible threat.  The episode is close to a ship only style bottle episode, only a few scenes are set away from the Enterprise on the Stargazer, the previous ship to be captained by Jean-Luc Picard, found derelict by the Ferengi Bok and returned to Picard for mysterious reasons.  The episode is largely structured on Picard’s descent into not quite madness as he is forced to relive a battle where he destroyed an unidentified aggressive vessel (revealed to be a Ferengi vessel) by developing the Picard Maneuver, warping the ship so enemies detect a ship in two places at once.  This central descent for Picard really puts the focus on Patrick Stewart in the role and develops him further than the basic sense of diplomacy previous episodes have employed.  This is a man haunted by the past, something that would never have made it to screen were this the original series: Picard consistently questions his decisions and his own memories throughout the episode as evidence begins to pile up that perhaps that fateful decision to fire was not against an aggressive ship after all.

 

Now, “The Battle” as an episode does immediately tip the viewer off to where it’s going, Picard suffering from a headache that is steadily getting worse revealing essentially a Ferengi brainwashing technique.  The climax of the episode reveals that Bok, played by Frank Corsentino, is actually the father of the Ferengi in charge of the ship Picard destroyed all those years ago, clandestinely wanting revenge.  Bok is actually an effective villain for the first two thirds of the episode, the Ferengi in this episode having been largely toned down in terms of delivery under director Rob Bowman even if there’s still the established hyperactive way of speaking.  Making Bok the father of someone Picard killed makes the animosity personal, it’s pulling a trick out of the Star Trek films in reverse, putting Picard in the role of villain in someone else’s story and the episode is direct in its resolution to imply that there could eventually be an alliance between the Federation and the Ferengi.  Okay, the implication is a little weird with the fact that the Ferengi are even more explicitly capitalists driven only by profit here, but it actually would be an interesting start for a race of aliens to develop towards a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society as was Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity’s future.  Would be is the important phrase because “The Battle” as an episode is actively hurt by “The Last Outpost” being what established the Ferengi as a completely non-credible threat.  “The Last Outpost” treated them as a joke, so “The Battle” is attempting to do almost a season’s worth of heavy lifting to break a first impression in the viewer’s mind, one that doesn’t entirely come across.  There are still some comedic scenes with the Ferengi and again that style of line delivery is actively working against it despite the great attempts.

 

Bowman as a director is currently the best director Star Trek: The Next Generation has to offer, it’s clearly no accident that this and his previous episode “Where No One Has Gone Before” are the only two episodes that would qualify as good episodes.  Bowman both blocks and lights “The Battle” as incredibly dynamically.  While the actual camera angles are largely standard for late 1980s television, working around the sets quite well, Bowman actually blocks his actors in line with the emotions that the characters are feeling.  There is a soap opera blocking technique I’ve heard called backacting, where two or more actors are having a conversation largely while facing the camera.  The first scene between Picard and Beverly Crusher largely employs the technique intentionally (most bridge scenes in Star Trek have at least some backacting because of how the set is laid out).  It’s actually quite effective for allowing both Stewart and Gates McFadden to actually emote, likely again down to Bowman’s direction.  This is also an episode where Wesley gets a few genuinely effective scenes, especially early on allowing Wil Whaton to attempt to develop the character as learning to become an officer and form a relationship with both Picard and Riker.  Herbert Wright is clearly in a better element in terms of scripting here than he was in “The Last Outpost”, dealing with straight forward character drama instead of a comedic science fiction plot.

 

Overall, “The Battle” still has some problems, mainly with the way that it just kind of ends without a strong resolution and that it doesn’t undo nearly enough of the damage of the Ferengi’s first impression, but it’s still a solid episode of television.  After nine episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation the show should really be striving to have scripts of at the very least this quality, only the second episode to really work and come together as an episode of television and that’s enough to give me at least a little hope back that this show will actually work, at least until the quality inevitably plummets later in this season.  7/10.

Justice by: Worley Thorne, from a story by: Ralph Wills and Worley Thorne, and directed by James L. Conway

 

“Justice” is written by: Worley Thorne, from a story by: Ralph Wills (a pseudonym for John D.F. Black) and Worley Thorne, and is directed by: James L. Conway.  It was produced under production code 109, was the 8^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on November 9, 1987.

 

“Justice” may be the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that suffers from outright bad politics among other things.  It’s an episode that doesn’t really know what it wants to say and seems to not understand how story structure works.  Beginning at the ending, there isn’t actually a resolution to the episode.  The Enterprise crew just decide to leave the society because they are allowed to leave by the godlike entity that makes up the B-plot of the episode.  They don’t change the society, Picard just makes a speech amounting to the simple idea of justice not dealing in absolutes and needing nuance.  I suppose that could be seen as enough to change the society, or at least what writer Worley Thorne was intending to be portrayed but between a weak script and particularly static direction it isn’t properly communicated.  Not helping matters is that the lead in to what is the final scene is written and framed as if it’s a setup for something more, potentially even a second part of the episode which also feels like the wrong decision since there isn’t enough meat on the bones of the episode to justify a second part.  The actual plot of the episode on paper is one that seems fine: the Enterprise arrives on the planet Edo which has a rigid system of justice, a crew member falls afoul and is set to be put to death for the infraction and the rest of the crew have to save them.  The rigid sense of justice is where the political allegory falls apart: it’s ridiculous enough that the great crime of falling on some flowers is treated with death as every crime is, but only if it’s a crime committed in a consistently moving zone.  This idea is played 100% straight, by the way, and I have the sneaking suspicion that John D.F. Black intended the pitch to play it for satire and Thorne wanted it played straight.

 

It’s also Wesley Crusher who falls on the flowers and is going to be put to death, and for whatever reason Wil Wheaton is given little direction or material to work with.  Much of the script has characters talk over Wesley as a character, Picard getting the most pathos when it comes to the emotional fallout of the sentence.  The script describes Wesley as scared, an emotion that should be completely justified, but it doesn’t seem that much of the cast actually cares that this child is going to be put to death.  It’s also a script that tries to escalate that the rest of the crew would be put to death but the zone had been moved immediately following the infraction.  Wheaton as an actor can clearly give a better performance, he did two episodes prior in “Where No One Has Gone Before”, the focus just isn’t on Wesley and the way he deals with his own death.  Gates McFadden as Beverly Crusher is equally as poorly served by the episode, getting very little material to work with even though it’s her son that is being put to death.  Her delivery is particularly flat, lacking any emotion or urgency for saving her son.  Now I think part of this is James L. Conway’s direction being flat because in previous episodes McFadden hasn’t struggled with this type of emotional scene.  Yes, she might have underplayed it but never to the point that you didn’t believe she cared for her own son like this episode implies.

 

There’s also the portrayal of the sexual element of the episode.  “Justice” wants to make Edo a classic false utopia, fully open to displays of sexuality and peace which to be fair is progressive for the late 1980s in concept.  In execution, it comes across as awkward: Jonathan Frakes is honestly the only actor who seems to be comfortable enough with sexuality on display and everyone else, even the actors playing the Edoans, feel uncomfortable in the situations.  The society is just too over the top in everything, that the overexpression of specifically heterosexuality doesn’t actually fall in line with the society as created.  It reeks of a writer and a show that is really lacking confidence, something that honestly seems emblematic of where Star Trek: The Next Generation is as a show.  It’s very much trying to let Gene Roddenberry’s ideas go wild, Roddenberry was very much into portraying sex and sexuality even if it comes across as awkward when mixed with the standards and practices of the 1980s.

 

Overall, “Justice” is an episode that doesn’t really work with the whole concept of justice as a theme.  The messaging is shallow, likely because of three competing voices behind the scenes (while not credited it’s clear Gene Roddenberry as showrunner brought his own eye to the script).  John D.F. Black demanding a pseudonym should have been a sign that this script is not working.  As an episode it feels like such a step backward for what the show was doing in terms of writing and especially performances.  After three episodes of mixed quality that at the very least had the cast start to click, “Justice” is an episode that is already weak in terms of scripting but nobody seems to have chemistry.  It’s a sharp downturn in a show that with each week amazes me in terms of how successful it became on the weaknesses of this first season.  2/10.

The Stormlight Archive: Wind and Truth by: Brandon Sanderson

 

Wind and Truth ends the first arc of The Stormlight Archive.  That might just be the best summary as to what this massive tome of a novel is.  It’s Brandon Sanderson’s longest book thus far by word and page count, breaks with the previous four installments’ general formula, and feels like it is meant to be a proper ending.  This is technically the place in the series where if someone wishes to, could jump off because while the final 50 pages or so wind things down for what is coming next (and partially what came in The Sunlit Man).  As a novel it’s a lot, it’s possibly got some of Sanderson’s best and worst tendencies in one novel creating somehow an incredibly satisfying conclusion.  Unlike my other reviews for The Stormlight Archive, I have only read Wind and Truth once since it only just came out and as of writing I only just finished reading it.  This review will contain at least some spoilers for where the characters end up, but I will be avoiding discussing everyone’s eventual fate outside of in perhaps the vaguest terms so if for whatever reason you need convincing to read this you can go in largely unspoiled.

 

The general structure of Wind and Truth is ten sections, each corresponding to a day leading up to the contest of champions between Dalinar and Odium.  There are at least three plots happening in this novel as Sanderson is jumping between the most point of view characters for the longest time.  One of these plotlines, that focusing on Dalinar and Navani is actually split into arguably three subplots with completely separate groups of characters also going along with the plot, in a way to fill in the history of Odium, the Heralds, the cosmere as a whole, and the personal tragedies of each of our characters.  There is an argument that that makes this have five separate plots being balanced throughout in ten sections, and for the first time the balance is one of the aspects of the novel that feels off.  It makes sense, because of the amount of characters involved some have already had four books worth of story arc getting close to completion, much of Kaladin’s arc for example really came to a head in Rhythm of War and his arc in Wind and Truth doesn’t have nearly as long to go as say Szeth’s arc, Szeth getting the flashbacks and being ironically paired with Kaladin in this one.  Kaladin’s arc is actually becoming comfortable in his role as a therapist and essentially being in charge of bringing mental healthcare to Roshar.  Being paired with Szeth makes for an almost buddy cop dynamic that after a particularly slow start becomes fascinating as Kaladin has to pull Szeth from the depths that he was in earlier in his development.  Sanderson plays this revelation of how Kaladin and Szeth are paralleled as a reveal that the reader should see coming a mile away, even if for Kaladin it’s played completely straight.  It’s certainly a good reveal and then informs Kaladin’s approach to Szeth in an interesting way, but it is the obvious approach.  In retrospect, much of the major cards Sanderson plays in Wind and Truth are obvious ones, the end of Kaladin’s story is an ending that Sanderson has kind of done before though here it is refined.  Partially because of the prologue to The Way of Kings coming full circle before the resolution really helps tie it together and make it distinct from the similar ending.  Perhaps the oddest thing about Kaladin’s plot is that the language surrounding mental health feels too close to Earth language when much of The Stormlight Archive has struck this balance between English and fantasy speak for things, making it awkward when Kaladin muses on being a therapist and using the word therapist.

 

Speaking of repeating ideas, the actual conclusion of Wind and Truth with the contest of champions thematically feels similar to the way The Wheel of Time ends, something that shouldn’t be as surprising as it was since Robert Jordan has influenced all of Sanderson’s work, and of course Sanderson finished The Wheel of Time after Jordan’s death.  Dalinar in particular comes to a revelation that leads to the ending of the arc in an interesting way, but a way that feels entirely like setup for where The Stormlight Archive is going.  Sanderson uses Dalinar and Navani catapulting through the visions in a way to reveal exactly how Dalinar can win a no-win scenario and who Dalinar is as a person.  I believe at one point the plan was to have the flashbacks of Oathbringer be Szeth’s backstory and Wind and Truth to be Dalinar’s which slightly holds back this plotline for me because the reader already knows the different facets of Dalinar, but I also do not see any way Sanderson could have written this book without Szeth’s flashbacks either.  The time travel vision sequences also are largely where Shallan’s plotline in this book takes place, a plot where we finally resolve what the Ghostbloods have been doing on Roshar, get one final really big reveal about who her mother is that has fascinating implications.  Sanderson leaves this large group of characters, including Renarin and Rlain who also view flashbacks and get the romantic arc of the novel (kind of, Sanderson already kind of struggles with romance and same sex romance is an even bigger struggle).  It leaves everyone in a very interesting place for where the series is going while concluding their arcs.

 

The dark horse, at least for the larger fandom, is actually Adolin’s arc.  While Adolin hasn’t gotten his own book of flashback chapters since he doesn’t have a particularly hidden cast, he has been one of my favorite characters of the series and his arc here comes to the conclusion of discovering what it means to be a proper leader.  His role in Wind and Truth is holding Azimir against Odium’s forces in the ten days leading up to the contest.  This is where Sanderson gets some of his best material in anything he’s ever written, at least in my eyes redeeming much of the weaker aspects of the novel.  This is the classic small force holding against impossible odds, following the story arc beats almost exactly, but Sanderson uses it to really give Adolin his own sense of identity and pair against what he had done with Renarin in Rhythm of War.  It could very easily been a novel on its own and I would still be very happy with how things go.  It’s this plot that also helps make the contest and the climax work the best, something that Sanderson was clearly attempting to have done through the several hundred pages of lore that makes up a lot of this book.  Also Jasnah gets a single chapter near the end of the novel that is honestly devastating and again goes to tie everything together.

 

Overall, despite some missteps and some issues with the language not quite fitting the rest of The Stormlight Archive, Wind and Truth is still fantastic.  It very well might actually be the weakest installment of The Stormlight Archive, and hints in places at an author who needs to recharge, but it’s still an incredibly satisfying ending to this first arc and potentially could be an ending if books six through ten never come.  9/10.

Lonely Among Us by: D.C. Fontana from a story by: Michael Halperin and directed by: Cliff Bole

 

“Lonely Among Us” is written by: D.C. Fontana, from a story by: Michael Halperin, and is directed by: Cliff Bole.  It was produced under production code 108, was the 7^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on November 2, 1987.

 

“Lonely Among Us” is a weird episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation, it’s coming immediately after the series’ first properly good episode and is coming from the pen of a writer who penned some of Star Trek’s original series episodes, but somehow D.C. Fontana seems to have forgotten how to balance an A and B plot.  This episode is split between a plot about the Enterprise taking delegates from two warring species, the Antican and the Selay, to the planet Parliament in an attempt to establish some sort of peace between them and a mysterious entity possessing crewmembers and machinery on the Enterprise for its own mysterious purposes.  The latter plot is actually the A-plot even though it doesn’t really have the material to fill an episode of television, especially as it is presented in this episode where the entity is revealed to the audience first as blue lightning jumping from person to person diffusing any real tension as to if there is something going on that could be blamed on the delegates because the audience knows it is an unrelated, outside force. 

The B-plot of the Antican and Selay takes its general ideas from the original series episode “Journey to Babel”, one of the strongest episodes from the original series and one written by Fontana.  Fontana in converting the original story outline by Michael Halperin into a script, added the B-plot whole cloth in an attempt to fill out the runtime of a story that was underrunning.  Halperin is a writer who doesn’t have a Wikipedia page and the little research I could find shows that he wrote a few episodes of television in the 1980s, though for whatever reason scripting duties were passed fully to Fontana.  The B-plot being underdeveloped is clearly coming from this, Fontana is attempting to fix an episode premise in the writing process that was likely not working.  As a last-minute addition to the episode, the B-plot makes sense especially in terms of how poorly integrated it is.  It’s a B-plot that only really comes up once or twice before the final scene of the episode where it gives us the closing zinger.  At least the makeup on both species is good, the Selay looking better as snake aliens while the Antican are essentially dog aliens, but director Cliff Bole shoots them well.

 

The A-plot, despite Fontana’s attempts to bolster it with a poorly integrated B-plot, is somehow more underdeveloped than the B-plot despite being the main thrust of the episode.  This is especially apparent in the first half of the episode which is saddled with the issue of an uncompelling mystery.  The entity jumping through crew members is an interesting enough order: it finds its way into the ship through Worf, then jumps to Crusher when Worf is examined in sickbay, before making its way to the computer systems causing havoc, before making one final jump into Picard leading into the back half of the episode.  That is where things improve by having Riker, Crusher, and Troi contemplate a mutiny because Picard, controlled by the entity, turns the ship around.  It doesn’t entirely work, so much of that mutiny preparation is contemplating if there is enough to successfully pull it off even though turning the ship around delaying arriving at a peace conference should be enough, but it certainly beats the first half of the episode.  Because the audience already knows that something outside has entered the Enterprise it was incredibly easy to notice that despite Fontana’s ability to script compelling dialogue, “Lonely Among Us” has a script that suffers from over-exposition.  Once again Tasha Yar is used for exposition dumps, Data spending the “investigation” doing a slight pastiche of Sherlock Holmes as quite effective comic relief.  Luckily Yar’s past isn’t brought up in this episode, but poor Denise Crosby really has nothing to do but act like an idiot and repeat plot points back to other characters.  Brent Spiner as Data is perhaps given his best performance thus far, the comic relief of him imitating Sherlock Holmes is not particularly strong material but he more than rises to the occasion and is clearly itching to develop the pastiche further.  Again there is actually very little plot here to fill the rest of the runtime so everyone is going after the scraps that are there.

 

Picard being taken over in the back half of the episode does mean that Patrick Stewart actually gets to relax a little bit with his performance.  When confronted by Crusher and Riker, Stewart is clearly having a ball balancing this light giddiness and threatening nature of the entity.  Again, Stewart is outshining a script giving him scraps, the entity itself is given the motivation of wanting to become energy and take Picard with it, for some reason.  It’s never made clear as to why the entity made its way onto the Enterprise, I think Fontana intended it to be an accident and it just wishes to go back home which would be an interesting angle, but it just isn’t explored or made clear.  Stewart does get to really have a lot of fun when initially infected too, shifting the pitch of his voice up ever so slightly in a way to get close to going over-the-top and loosening as Picard who has been uptight even when his character dynamic has actually clicked in the previous episode.

 

Overall, “Lonely Among Us” is an episode that can be described as underbaked.  While not the worst thing ever, the cast is at least largely clicking and Cliff Bole’s direction makes it quite dynamic in places showing that everyone knows the script is weak but are still trying their best, it is an episode that is likely to be immediately forgotten because little makes an impression.  The best thing I can say about it is that it is largely inoffensive, unlike most of the other bad episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation thus far, it’s just a below average experience which is too shallow to really show even missed potential.  4/10.

Where No One Has Gone Before by: Diane Duane and Michael Reeves and directed by: Rob Bowman

 

“Where No One Has Gone Before” is written by: Diane Duane and Michael Reaves and is directed by: Rob Bowman.  It was produced under production code 106, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on October 26, 1987.

 

Let’s not beat around the bush, with a title like “Where No One Has Gone Before” there was a very big chance that Star Trek: The Next Generation was going to remake Star Trek’s second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, like “The Naked Now” was a completely inferior remake of “The Naked Now” (and to a lesser extent “The Last Outpost” remade “Errand of Mercy”).  Thematically, there are some similarities, mainly in introducing the Enterprise to going to a very distant setting and encountering an alien that is vaguely godlike, but “Where No One Has Gone Before” is a very different style of plot written by a pair of writers very much in touch with modern writing trends.  This is an episode that uses its plot to really dig deep and explore how the characters interact with one another and form relationships.  Each cast member credited in the opening titles in this episode gets at least one real moment to shine with perhaps the exception of Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi, she is sadly used as an exposition machine to make sure the audience understands the mysterious nature of the character of the Traveler, though she does get a few moments early in the episode playing off Riker.  Now, the plot is definitely in the same vain of an episode from the original series, though the opening act to get us there feels like the 1980s.  Starfleet sends a technician called Kosinski, played by Stanley Kamel, to the Enterprise to perform some improvements on their brand new warp drives, these improvements going wrong and catapulting the ship millions of light years away.  The rest of the episode is getting to the bottom of the why the ship was thrown to the edge of the known universe and how to get back, before reality at this point warps and forces the crew to live their thoughts.

 

It's clear from his very first scene that Kosinski is a fraud, Kamel is playing him as a delightfully over-the-top self-important antagonist throughout, and director Rob Bowman shoots many of his scenes in tighter shots to emphasize this.  Bowman’s direction overall is actually the first director to really attempt to be dynamic in terms of shooting, several tracking shots and wide shots are used to make the weird aspects of the second and third act of the episode really work.  The script also does an excellent job of establishing the episode by establishing Kosinski as a fraud and the Traveler as responsible for whatever improvements to warp that had been performed on other ships.  The episode does struggle with making Kosinski a necessary character after the halfway point when things shift to exploring the Traveler and getting the crew home which is a shame because he really could have been the episode’s antagonist which it lacks after a point.  The Traveler isn’t an antagonist, sure Eric Menyuk is giving a slightly sinister performance but he’s also portrayed as extremely empathetic.  The character strikes up this interesting relationship with Wesley Crusher, Wil Wheaton getting what is essentially another outcast to play off and an episode focused on what Wesley actually brings to the table for the series.  Wesley is the one who actually notices what the Traveler is doing and is continually ignored, something that Picard and Riker both have to learn to except.  The ending of the episode actually gives Wesley a rank, something that I’m sure fans at the time and today actively despise because Wesley’s reputation as a character is the annoying boy genius, but I actually think this is an interesting development for the character with storytelling potential.

 

The idea of the edge of the universe and the Traveler being from a plane of existence where science is magic is a classic use of Clarke’s law in action, and something standard for science fiction as a genre.  In terms of ideas, the reality bending is the unique aspect that “Where No One Has Gone Before” has to offer, though is slightly hit and miss, many of the misses coming when we see what the non-recurring crew members see.  There’s a random crew member menaced by fire which feels like a scene meant to just fill time and is the least interesting of these (there is a ballerina and a violinist that fill time but are at least interesting enough to watch as they fill time), but the main crew members actually get interesting visions.  Picard sees his mother offering him tea in the corridor and guidance, for the first time allowing Patrick Stewart to play into some under the surface insecurities of the character.  This scene is perhaps why this is the first episode where Picard as a character has really begun to click for me, he is still stern and uptight but having a scene like this allows Stewart to adjust his performance in these earlier scenes accordingly.  Worf and Tasha Yar each get visions of their own, Worf’s being an image of his pet, described in the dialogue as the Klingon equivalent of a cat.  Michael Dorn, like Patrick Stewart, is able to a lesser extent use this to show something deeper to Worf as a character, he had a pet that he clearly cared for in his own Klingon way.  It’s the first time we’re actually given some depth to this character in particular while Tasha is forced to revisit the colony where she grew up.  Unlike the callous mention of her past in “The Naked Now” during a comedic scene, Denise Crosby gets one brief moment to really show that Tasha as a character is traumatized by being in that situation and how the threat of violation and assault is under the surface.  It’s still not perfect, it’s very brief and isn’t focused on enough, but it’s certainly a start to improving her character.

 

Overall, “Where No One Has Gone Before” is genuinely a success of an episode.  It slightly loses its way with the fact that there really isn’t an actual antagonist to fight after the halfway point in a way that doesn’t really get strong resolution, even if that is from a great performance.  It's also the first episode to be directed properly and look like it was filmed with intention.  The episode works when it’s focused on creating character relationships and dynamics, laying a particularly strong foundation for Wesley Crusher as a character and giving the rest of the cast an opportunity to click into place for really the first time.  8/10.

The Last Outpost by: Herbert Wright from a story by: Richard Krzmeien and directed by: Richard Colla

 

“The Last Outpost” is written by: Herbert Wright, from a story by: Richard Krzmeien, and is directed by: Richard Colla.  It was produced under production code 107, was the 5^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on October 19, 1987.

 

Star Trek introduced the Klingons late into its first season in the episode “Errand of Mercy”, establishing them as already having an intergalactic Cold War with the Federation through their empire and in an episode that saw them coming to blows, already aware of what the other side was capable of.  Star Trek: The Next Generation, in developing a future post-Klingon empire, wanted to recreate a long-running enemy to match the pop culture status of the Klingons and Gene Roddenberry came up with the Ferengi, mentioned in “Encounter at Farpoint” before appearing proper in “The Last Outpost”.  This episode was produced as the seventh episode, but shown fifth for whatever reason and it’s the closest Star Trek: The Next Generation has gotten to producing an episode that is actually good.  This is an episode of two halves: buildup to the reveal of the Ferengi’s actual appearance and the fact that the trouble the Enterprise finds itself in is also affecting them, and the payoff of it being the remnants of a third, godlike empire of aliens turning it into a remake of “Errand of Mercy” with much less charm.  The back half of the episode is really where things fall apart: the Ferengi almost immediately stop being a threat and reveal themselves to be sniveling capitalists and particularly boring ones at that.  When given any real pushback they begin to lie to the godlike alien apparition trying to make humanity look bad, Armin Shimerman playing the Ferengi leader on the planet as especially over-the-top.  This is an episode that also ends in a complete anti-climax, almost rushing to fill the runtime and sidelining the Ferengi as any sort of threat, though allowing Jonathan Frakes as Riker to show off his own philosophy.

 

There is the possibility that this is an episode is attempting to be more comedic when the Ferengi are involved: this has a running gag with Data being trapped in a Chinese finger trap that ends with a box being sent to the Ferengi as a way to annoy them.  A charitable reading is that screenwriter Herbert Wright wants to directly make the Ferengi look pathetic as a way to show the outdated nature of capitalism in the far future, which seems in line with Star Trek in general.  Wright does become another writer who decides to write Tasha Yar as being sexually harassed, this time by the Ferengi who for whatever reason have a culture where Ferengi women are naked and clothes on women make the men wish to assault Yar to strip her.  This is the third episode in a row where something uncomfortable like this happens to Yar.  There are some good things in the back half of the episode however, mainly the few scenes on the Enterprise as the power is going out, Picard, Troi, and Crusher ensuring everyone stays warm as death looms.  There is a particularly interesting scene between Picard and Crusher, Crusher reflecting on the danger and the fact that she’s keeping Wesley in their quarters and contemplated sedating him so he didn’t have to suffer.  It’s quite a dark scene, and is just left hanging in the air that both Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart play incredibly well, Stewart for the first time in the series really feeling like he’s getting how to play Picard.

 

The first half of the episode is all buildup, but it’s quite good buildup.  The decision is made to start the episode with a chase between the Enterprise and a Ferengi ship, taking nearly a third of the episode before hearing from a Ferengi, and a further five minutes to actually show the Ferengi, the leader on the ship being played better by Mike Gomez going less over the top than those on the planet.  It takes cues from the original series episode “Balance of Terror”, the best episode of the original series, though it lacks any parallelism between the two captains and crews at play.  It is, however, the setup for a good episode even if the setup is derivative, the derivative nature allows the crew to actually begin to gel slightly, though this could be because this was the seventh episode produced.  It is not until getting to the planet that the Ferengi become incompetent villains, the initial discussions are largely played straight and that is for the best.  The design is also quite impressive, if a bit silly which adds to the question if the Ferengi were ever really meant to be taken seriously like the first half of the episode attempts to make them.  Some of this also may be down to director Richard Colla, once again a director who only did a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and he doesn’t really set up a whole lot of interesting shots.  At best his direction is incredibly flat, and at worst it actually is quite poor at framing a lot of things in the episode, making this one slightly more difficult to actually watch, especially on the bridge viewscreen where the Ferengi leader really needed to be framed as intimidating.

 

Overall, it’s actually quite surprising that “The Last Outpost” is heralded as one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, because it’s actually the closest the series has come so far to being good.  The main cast is finally starting to click or at least understanding their roles with even the weaker material given to them and the first half of the episode is a fairly enjoyable watch.  The back half lets it down completely as things devolve into an incredibly inferior, almost poorly comedic remake of “Errand of Mercy”, simplified and rushed, but it is more an average hour of television instead of anything all that bad, and after the streak it feels like maybe something good could be on the horizon.  5/10.

Code of Honor by: Katharyn Powers and Michael Baron and directed by: Russ Mayberry

 

“Code of Honor” is written by: Katharyn Powers and Michael Baron and is directed by: Russ Mayberry.  It was produced under production code 104, was the 4^th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and was broadcast on October 12, 1987.

 

The two-part pilot and third episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation came directly from minds that worked on the original series with Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana, two writers very much from the 1960s for better and for worse.  “Encounter at Farpoint” and “The Naked Now” are both episodes that feel as if there are from the original series to their detriment.  “Code of Honor” is the first episode to be from a writer not connected with the original series: Katharyn Powers and Michael Baron are the ones who write their only episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation, although Powers would write an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  Likewise, this was the only episode of Star Trek to be directed by Russ Mayberry.  It is also an incredibly racist and sexist piece of storytelling, and somehow nosedives the already rocky quality of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The bigotry on display is something that is really indefensible, something that the cast and crew were clearly aware of when making it as director Russ Mayberry was fired during production and replaced with an uncredited Les Landau.  The entire aesthetic of creating an alien race of humanoids entirely played by black actors costumed in tribal gear, defined by a culture of honor and domination of the few female characters there are is just blatantly a caricature of cultures.  The dialogue given to the Ligonians, mainly in their leader Lutan, played by Jessie Lawrence Ferguson, is delivered in this clipped style, their culture is seen as primitive but they have a necessary resource for the Federation.  The conflict of the episode is getting that resource, a vaccine that the episode goes to great length to say is impossible to replicate so it must be traded, but Lutan becoming impressed with a mere female as Chief Security Officer kidnaps Tasha Yar.  She is held hostage as a potential mate for Lutan and forced to fight his previous wife to the death (through a weird and roundabout challenge that is part of Lutan’s plan), to get the vaccine and in the process transferring her lands to Lutan.  Read that back and tell me it’s not racist.

 

The sexism of the episode really affects both Yar and Yareena, Lutan’s current wife, both reduced throughout the episode to sex objects.  “Code of Honor” is clearly an episode that is focusing on Yar as a character, but doesn’t actually give her any real agency or character.  She becomes a plot device, made worse by Denise Crosby really struggling with a script full of weak dialogue.  For whatever reason Powers and Baron decide that Yar as a character actually has attraction to Lutan deep down, something that Counsellor Troi reveals through dialogue and a trick that both Marina Sirtis and Crosby are overacting.  It’s also incredibly annoying when before this point, in the previous episode both in terms of production and broadcast, Yar was established as having her own sexual trauma due to her upbringing.  Yes, that was established in a bad comedy scene, but as a character the entire premise of “Code of Honor” should have Yar facing her past trauma.  It is only made worse when the focus of the episode is not on Yar, but on Picard trying to get her back through diplomacy as well as getting the vaccine.  It’s trying to be an ensemble episode when it really should not be an ensemble piece, we are focusing on the men and how the Enterprise crew can’t treat this backwards culture with any real aggression for what is essentially crimes.  This is not some great commentary on hesitancy to act in dangerous situations and how that can lead to worse outcomes, instead everything in the episode turns out absolutely fine and there is no danger.  The only casualty in the episode is a no-named Ligonian extra and technically Yareena, who is magically brought back to life through science at the end.  The only other thing “Code of Honor” does is attempt character development for characters like Wesley and Beverly Crusher which is ancillary while Data is used for comic relief with Geordi and Worf outright doesn’t appear.

 

Overall, while I don’t know if the assessment of “Code of Honor” as the worst piece of Star Trek ever made is correct, but it certainly is the worst episode of Star Trek that I have seen, somehow worse than the worst of the original series in “The Omega Glory” and “The Savage Curtain”.  This is an episode that should have been stopped in its tracks before making it to air, even the script should have been stopped when every Ligonian except Lutan was specified to be black and then Lutan was also cast as black taking a script with heavy racist undertones and putting it into racist overtones under Russ Mayberry’s incredibly poor direction.  The sexism feels worse than anything Roddenberry wrote in the 1960s.  None of the regulars are having a good time or even giving a good performance making Star Trek: The Next Generation batting zero four episodes in in terms of good episodes.  1/10.