7:12 The Pegasus – My friend Chris contends that the Star Trek universe is actually a dystopia, as evidenced by all the insane admirals. This episode lends more weight to his thesis: Riker’s old captain, who lost an entire crew (except young Ensign Riker) to mutiny, is now an admiral, commandeering the Enterprise to find that lost ship, the Pegasus. Turns out that ol’ Captain Pressman was working on cloaking technology, forbidden to Starfleet by treaty, and he’s willing to go to great lengths not only to recover that technology, but to silence any leaks about it. And he’s played by Terry O’Quinn, which is rarely a good thing.
Although the main thrust of this episode is the ethical dilemma of “just following orders” in a military chain of command, the big question that stands out to me is: Who the yippee-ki-yay signed a treaty denying the Federation tactical technology that their rivals have had for a century? That’s both the Klingons AND the Romulans who have had it that long. Heck, the Cardassians might have it for all I know. And I think the Pakleds, too. Basically EVERYONE has a cloaking device except the Federation, who have it explicitly taken off the table by law? Sheesh!
7:13 Homeward – Worf gets another character episode! — which is also absolutely the worst “Prime Directive” story ever. Worf’s adoptive human brother Nikolai (has he even been mentioned prior to this?) is studying a pre-contact humanoid race on a planet that’s doomed because of some kind of atmospheric dissipation. Since the Enterprise can’t stop the dissipation, it’s going to let the whole planet die. Nikolai conspires to beam a survivor group with which he’s gotten cozy to the Holodeck, made to look like the caves where they were hiding. Picard is apoplectic, not just because Nikolai transported aliens aboard ship without his say-so (that’s reasonable), but because by saving them instead of letting them die, he’s violating the Prime Directive (which is such an incredible assumption of implicit moral superiority that it actually does damage to the character of Captain Picard in my eyes).
So Nikolai and Worf (disguised as one of the aliens) make to lead the survivors through the “caverns” to an exit that’ll be just like whatever habitable world the Enterprise discovers to deposit them on, but arbitrary technobabble from the dissipation beam-out has left the Holodeck unstable, and one of the survivors accidentally wanders out into the ship. (Never mind that they knew that the Holodeck was unstable, but still had no lock on the Holodeck door, or personnel stationed outside.) And so Picard explains exactly what happened to the survivor, and where he is, and who they are, and the alien kills himself because the shock to his paradigm was too great. Because Picard is okay with letting the entire planet died, but lying is a sin! Or something.
Honestly, the ethical assumptions here are so arbitrary that I’d rather just forget all this happens. Following the Prime Directive “just cuz” is as morally bankrupt as the “just following orders” mentality that the immediately prior episode was all about examining.
7:14 Sub Rosa – Crusher gets a character episode! Unfortunately, her character episode ends up being a paranormal bodice-ripper starring an incubus, set in a colony where everyone LARPs an ersatz Irish village and… um… There’s a reason that this is the lowest-rated episode of the season on the IMDb, by a significant margin.
So who really wanted to hear Beverly Crusher detail her sexual dreams and see her O-face? Would you please never speak to me again?
“Homeward” is one of those episodes that I have to pretend doesn’t exist if I want to retain any respect for the main characters (“Up the Long Ladder” is another). If I accept it as canon, I have to think we should ditch these genocide-enablers and spend the rest of the show following Nikolai and the villagers as they explore their new planet.
“Sub rosa” suffers from the same problem that the “Janeway’s Gothic romance holonovel” episodes did in Voyager: even if it were a fabulous example of the supernatural romance genre (I’ll withhold judgment on that), it’s not what the audience signed up for. Sticking this episode after the Star Trek credits is as bad an example of “False Flagging” as anything you’ve posted on the Lousy Book Covers site.
It did however, produce one of the great lines from SFDebris: “Technically, there’s more evidence for the existence of ghosts than there is for the existence of [the woman listed as the writer of the episode].”
Well, they didn’t until the Cardassians’ and Romulans’ secret police each put their heads together for a disastrous joint military venture into the Gamma Quadrant in Deep Space Nine, but you can tell those Cardassians would never have signed such an idiotic treaty, even if the cloaking technology is somewhat less effective as a weapon than you would think. (As the Federation learned from getting one “on loan” from the Romulans in that same series, it’s much more useful for diplomacy, particularly when you need to travel to somewhere you’re not particularly welcome in order to conduct some high-level negotiations.)
No, in my opinion, the absolute worst “Prime Directive” story ever was that whole “Let-the-entire-pre-warp-alien-civilization-die-even-though-we-have-a-working-cure-for-their-disease-because-we-shouldn’t-interfere-with-nature-taking-its-course” episode of Enterprise. This one comes in a close second, though.
“But seriously? Go back and watch the episode where Doctor Crusher bones a space ghost. It’s just… It’s… It’s amazing.”
You’re right. I should have qualified that “worst” with “worst from the original series, TNG, or DS9 (the three series I respect).”