The trouble with TNG at this point is that it running on
empty a little bit. Voyager was having exactly the same problem at the end of
its sixth season but at least it had some kind of continuing narrative with the
Borg that was trying to weave into the fabric of the show. TNG has had six
years now where the show has bounced from one story to the next and built up
quite a picture of the Alpha Quadrant. The problem is it hasn’t tried to do
anything particularly innovative narrative wise with those building blocks. So
here we about to head into the last season of the show there is a suggestion
that Lore is attempting to create a new race of Borg to bring down the
Federation. It’s not exactly compellingly presented but it is a bold idea
(albeit total fanwank) and if the show had grabbed hold of that as the premise
of the final year and had an ongoing narrative in place dealing with this new
threat we might have had a show with real focus. Instead it is another idea
that is tossed up in the air and completely dismissed at the beginning of
season seven. In comparison, DS9 is firing on all cylinders at the end of
season six (the invasion of Cardassia, the death of Jadzia, the destruction of
the wormhole) with an episode that has devastating consequences for the final
year. I don’t understand why this show (which had the capacity) wasn’t making
bolder creative decisions like that. The one positive here is Picard’s decisions
regarding Hugh being questioned and criticised. It’s about time somebody took
him to task about that.
A fleet of fifteen Starships to take on the Borg. Fifteen?
I’m glad those shipyards are at full capacity before the Dominion War.
Character – The idea of Data experiencing negative emotions
is a really interesting one, but something that would become a bit of a crux
(and not a positive one) in the movies. However, at this point it is a
fascinating exercise, especially when the consequence of his anger is to murder
and attack. He’s technically one of the strongest lifeforms in Starfleet and so
the thought that he might enjoy inflicting harm on people is quite a tense one.
The suggestion that Data has been looking at extreme pornography to try and
turn himself on is amusing, although I am pleased that we never got to watch
those exploratory scenes. Brent Spiner really leaps on the opportunity to show
real emotion after repressing them for the past six years. He’s typically
excellent.
Picard’s anger about the Borg remains one of the best things
about TNG, and shows that Roddenberry’s approach to characters in the future is
a flawed one because he did not want ‘perfect’ humans to experience negative
emotions like anger or hatred. And yet this is the best of Patrick Stewart’s
performance as Picard; that fear of assimilation, his shame at committing
murder and his newfound anger towards a species that used him as an instrument
of war. It only comes up in one scene here (it is far more pronounced in I,
Borg) but it is just as riveting.
Performance – Brent Spiner is superb in this. He has been
given the chance to emote before on the show but never the chance to show such
a range of powerful emotions. He proves to be quite sinister when that
childlike façade drops and he gets to play angry. This is his chance to cut
loose and play human in a way that he never has done before. Season seven would
see these opportunities come up time and again – and with a frequent
misunderstanding of how the character works. Masks is an especially egregious
example, and the movies would take it to an absolute extreme.
Great Dialogue – ‘Not the apple story again’ moans Stephen
Hawking as he is forced to listen to Newton bang on about his achievements in
science in a very witty opening that sees Data playing poker with some of the
greatest scientific minds that the human race has ever conjured up. It does go
to show just how frivolous the show has become at this point because there is
little plot or character point to this frippery but that doesn’t really matter
when the resulting scene is as enjoyable as this. ‘The Uncertainty Principle
will not help you now, Stephen’ chides Einstein as he is about to clean Hawking
out.
Production – When the Away Team beam down to the output and
discover the crew manning the outpost dead I was surprised by the lack of
tension, atmosphere and, well, blood that was on display. Alexander Singer
(whose praises I sang recently for his direction of The Adversary) directs this
with a casual abandon that surprises me. We’ve seen scenes like this play out
countless times over TNG’s last six seasons and there have been times when it
has been terrifying (think exploring the Borg Cube). Even the shock appearance
of the Borg is wasted and lacks punch. It’s like opening a cupboard and finding
a child standing there playing a game. The aesthetic of the entire episode is
so spotless and bloodless. TNG needed to get a lot dirtier.
Worst moment – The cliffhanger. Once upon a time TNG dared
to suggest that it would kill off the Captain at the hands of the First Officer
and send a mighty fleet of Borg ships to sector 001 and invade the Earth. It
was insidious and dramatic and unforgettable. Now, the show is pushing camp to
a new level by having Brent Spiner play the super villain and command his own
army of dreary robots. ‘The Sons of Soong have come together…and together we
will destroy the Federation.’ He’s even made Data sound like a dreary super
villain.
A reason to watch this episode again – You’ve got two plots
in play in Descent and one is infinitely more interesting and less embarrassing
than the other. Data’s newfound anger manages to create some tension and
uncomfortable moments that befit a season finale and capitalises on the
chemistry between the crew that is the best of this show. The return of Lore
and his new collection of individual Borg drones is standard science fiction
drivel of the sort that TNG would normally avoid (or at least portray to such a
pretentious level that it would elevate the b movie ideas to something
resembling drama) and it leaves the season on a particularly sour note that
this is how we are heading into the final season. I have said before that TNG hit
its zenith with the climax of season three and every subsequent finale is worse
that the last after that. This is the one of the weakest of all because it does
have some potential but the writer and director seem to squander any attempt to
create tension, excitement or drama and instead this leaps from one functional
plot point to another until the episode throws in a truly schlocky cliffhanger
at the last minute. Descent is not TNG’s finest hour and it has taken the one
truly terrifying element of this show (the Borg) and reduced them to a bit of a
joke. There’s no momentum or pace to any of this, no real drama. It feels like
TNG has lost its pulse.
** out of *****
1 comment:
Ah...
I have never forgotten, after the first repeat of this finale and the subsequent trailer for the premiere, grabbing a sheet of paper and an envelope. On it I wrote down, "Crusher takes Enterprise into the star's corona and destroys the Borg with a solar flare generated via tachyon beam. The aliens do nothing interesting. Lore dies and his last words are 'I love you brother.'"
Sealed the envelope, handed it to my friend, Bob, told him to open it after the premiere.
A week later he called me and asked" How did you know?" All I could say was,"the writers ran out of anything interesting to say over a season ago - it's just that predictable. Anyway, they used a 'baryon' beam, not tachyons, so I wasn't quite right."
I then repeated this for all of season 7. Sealed predictions based on the trailer. Waaaay too often the predictions were correct. Actually stopped watching partway through the season as, if I could tell you everything about the episode from it's trailer, why bother?
Did this with Voyager as well. Started "Year of Hell." They revealed the bad guy weapon wiped things from the Timeline. I *turned off* the TV and wrote down "at 845 PM next Thursday Janeway herself wil, alone, pilot Voyager into the timeship and none of this shit will have happened." Wrote on the front "Open 843 pm, Thurs."vThe next day I gave that to my friend Hugo. Hugo was hanging with me the following Thurs (we were gonna watch Babylon 5).At 843 Hugo opened the envelope. At 845 we turned on the TV and beheld Janeway's death dive.
At least DS9 had surprises.
Boring story, but it does underline that Berman, Pillar and team had hit some serious burnout.
Post a Comment