TNG – Symbosis

Plot – The Enterprise hooks up with a bunch of aliens who are high as a kite. Could this be The Way to Eden, the Sequel?

Two cultures, one addicted to a substance by the other. The Onarans provide the others with the necessities of life, and the provide them with the necessities of living. An exploited race, commercially and medically, is a fascinating idea and one I would have liked to have seen explored with so much more depth than this episode is willing to. Early TNG has the pretension of being an in depth science fiction drama but you only have to compare how ham fistedly they deal with issues here and later in their run to see where the worth of this shows lies.

Picard and Crusher seemingly make up the Onarans past without a scrap of evidence, piecing together the plot without any real facts. It would be like Poirot starting a sum up with ‘I have no evidence to support this accusation but based on what I’ve seen and how I think it probably went down…’

The Prime Directive isn’t a series of rules that dictate a Starfleet Officers life. It is a series of dramatic rules that complicate plots needlessly and forces the characters to behave in morally reprehensible ways. Picard allowing this exploitation to continue to salvage his career conscience by completely dismissing a people in a perilous situation that isn’t going to get any better is just about the most heinous act he commits in seven years of TNG. There is no autonomous thought, he is a bureaucratic robot simply obeying the rules. No matter how many people have to suffer because of it. He’s essentially saying that if you want to stop suffering, sort it out yourselves, which is the least satisfying and most officious route the episode could have taken. ‘Let’s just get the hell out of here’ he says after bestowing his moral judgement on an entire race. I really struggled with this ending.

Character – Riker suggests that he has never seen eruptions of this size before, which I find hard to believe.

Listen to Riker and Yar talking about the electrical charge weapon. They just don’t sound like normal people. The dialogue is far too mannered and the performances stilted. This crew had a long way to go before they gelled into something more relaxed and natural.

Performance – Some great, twitchy performances from the guest actors. They sell the addiction plot far more convincingly than the writing.

This is a good juncture for me to bring up Gates McFadden, who hasn’t really featured much in the TNG episodes I have reviewed so far. Here’s my beef…I don’t think she is a particularly good actress. Often the material seems to trip her up. She has a penchant for staring vacantly out of the screen as if waiting for a pertinent thought to occur, talking like somebody who is just discovering language for the first time or alternatively exploding with emotion all over the screen. I think she gels well with the cast and bounces well off of certain actors (Stewart, Frakes and Wheaton in particular) but there are pitifully few Beverley Crusher episodes that I can recommend. She’s just sort of there, part of the wallpaper. It’s a shame because she is often written as a very competent Doctor. I just wish they had chosen a more dexterous actor to bring the part to life. Perhaps a classically trained actor could ignite the passion that Crusher’s indignation requires at the climax of this episode but McFadden really isn’t up to the task. I was patently aware of an actress struggling to find the moral righteousness that is required. Controversial as it might be, I think Diana Muldaur is a far superior actress and Pulaski a more interesting character. She would have brought some real spice to this scenario.

God bless Jonathan Frakes who has to act ‘electrocuted’ for a couple of minutes. It might be his finest performance in all of Trek.

Production – They try and suggest in these early episodes that this is a very busy ship. Later seasons focus far more on the regular characters to the exclusion of practically the rest of the crew but the opening few seconds of this story suggest a bustling atmosphere on every part of the Enterprise, from Engineering to the corridors to the Bridge.

Okay I’m just going to say this and get it out of the way. I fancy the ass off of Wesley Crusher, or Wil Wheaton specifically. It is something I was fighting in my teenage years and it is still something I find difficult to come to terms with now. It’s particularly distracting because at the same time I also loathe his characterisation for the most part and want to stove his head in with a mallet every time he vomits up the terrible dialogue he is frequently given.

The guest quarters on the Enterprise at this point are the height of eighties glam. Hideous patterned walls, comfy leather chairs and outrageous floral displays. You simply cannot disguise the era that something is made.

Best moment – I love the electric shocks these people emit from their hands. That’s something pretty unique in Trek and makes me wish we had seen more of. Trek ultimately heads in a ‘shoot em up’ direction with phasers and torpedoes being the weapons of choice. I would have liked to have seen more imaginative methods of inflicting pain (ala the Ferengi pain whips from the same season).

Watch out for Denise Crosby waving at the camera in her last filmed shot on TNG. It’s a very odd move and within the context of the episode looks very bizarre.

Worst moment – ‘Captain, the level of tension on the Ship is mounting’ No shit, Deanna, we’re approaching a sun. Later after it has been spelled out by both the events that have happened and by Riker who witnessed it, Troi mentions the survivors are more interested in the cargo than the people who have died. Seriously, what is the point of this woman? To re-affirm the patently obvious?

I wish they hadn’t done that – The opening 15 minutes are a painful sequence trying to rescue the people who are about to die on the freighter. ‘Number One, I don’t understand these people’ says Picard at one point. I didn’t understand why they were going to such lengths to save such a technically incompetent bunch. Honestly this sequence feels like it stretches on for an eternity. I wandered off to make coffee and returned and they were still struggling to transport them off and raising their eyes to heavens when I returned.

It takes Beverly Crusher 30 minutes of this episode to discover the truth about the drug being an addictive substance rather than a survival medicine. It has been signposted for half an hour and so when the camera rushes at her during her realisation I was ready to shake her for missing the obvious.

‘You have to understand drugs can make you feel good’ You might die inside as Tasha Yar (of all people) lectures Wesley Crusher on the evils of drug addiction. This is Playschool narcotics, written to warn a pre-school audience of the evils of drugs. Part of me wanted the story to take a turn where Wesley becomes addicted and spends the next two seasons trying to break that addiction. He could turn up in lots of scenes offering sexual favours and money to the crew in order to get his fix.

A reason to watch this episode again – This is halfway towards being a decent episode. It’s trying to juggle a sophisticated theme (drug addiction) and it just doesn’t have the chops to pull it off in as complex a manner as it deserves. A shame because both the performances and the direction are pretty good and convince that the situation on this world is both exploitative and hellish. Unfortunately, it all has to start with the script, a polished production and worthy acting can only add gloss. If the writing underneath is childish, repetitive and unresolved you are fighting a losing battle. With lines like ‘everyone on their planet is a drug addict!’ you can see the level of subtlety on display here. Some scenes hit the mark; others bomb spectacularly. That sums up season one of TNG very well.

** out of *****

Clue for tomorrow's episode: