6:19 Lessons – Time for another “Captain Picard falls in love” episode, which means time for my daughter to cry out, “Why can’t Captain Picard ever find happiness?!” Of the three main romances* Picard has had — Vash the archaeological thief, Kamala the empathic metamorph, and this episode’s Lieutenant Commander Daren — this one makes the most sense: a mature, intelligent, strong-willed Starfleet officer. (Never mind that the Enterprise‘s stellar cartography department has been night-on invisible up to this point, and will be again.) It also brings up the unspoken liabilities of an officer becoming romantically involved with someone under his direct command, a situation which Riker calls “Tuesday.”
*I’m not counting Picard’s wife Eline from “The Inner Light,” as Picard really wasn’t Picard there.
6:20 The Chase – There was an episode of the original series, “The Paradise Syndrome,” which suggested an answer to why there are so many human-identical species in the galaxy: a race called “the Preservers” who planted human(oid) colonies on several planets to maximize the potential for survival. This episode takes that up a level of magnitude, with Picard’s old archaeology professor Galen on the trail of a message literally hidden the base DNA of a bunch of separate life-supporting planets, something from the progenitor species of them all. It’s a nice idea, but it ends up being something of a shaggy-dog story; as other fans have suggested, it should have been the basis for a multi-episode arc, or even one of the feature films. (It also makes one wonder why Picard didn’t become a full-time archaeologist, even an amateur one, when he left Starfleet.)
6:21 Frame of Mind – “Riker with no product in his hair” = “freaked-out Riker,” and twice in one season, too! This is one of the few instances EVER (not just in the Star Trek universe) when a storyline about several mutually exclusive “realities” ends up making complete sense in the denouement. Also, the aliens look they have the McDonald’s logo on their foreheads.
My one problem here: Would the second-in-command of a starship let himself be seen as a crazy person on stage in the eyes of the crew? I think this tips too far toward “the big happy Enterprise family” and too far from the demands of maintaining a respected military command structure. But hey, I’ve never been in the military, so what do I know?