Forest of Illusions

There came a moment while watching “Time Squared” when I was suddenly reminded for a brief moment of what it felt like seeing Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time over twenty years ago. Somewhere, in betwixt Commander Riker making breakfast, Geordi and Data trying to figure out how to get the shuttlepod operational, Geordi’s later tech briefing to the staff in the conference room and Deanna’s conversation with Doctor Pulaski in sickbay, this momentarily stopped being “the show I write about for work” and once more became “the show I remember”.

This might be partially because the central conceit of this episode, a causal time loop, reoccurs again a few seasons later in “Cause and Effect”, which is one of my very favourite episodes in the series. Not that the actual plot of “Time Squared” is any sort of precursor or that “Cause and Effect” is derivative; what happens here is far more oblique and mysterious than the time loop from the later story. It’s a bit more accurate to say that what we see here is an example of a branching dimension, and Troi even says as much at one point during the episode. One way to read this would be to roughly compare it with an actual physics theory called the “many-worlds interpretation”, which, put general, states that when witnessing the spin state of an electron, there are two possible observations: One where the electron is observed to have a positive spin “up” and one where it’s observed to have a negative spin “down”. Well, the many-worlds interpretation states that for every individual instance where the particle is observed to spin “up”, there is another world where, for that same instance, the particle is observed to spin “down”, and vice versa. This is frequently extrapolated to the level of physical actions by humans on the macroscopic scale in the pop discourse.

So in “Time Squared”, we have two possible worlds: One where Captain Picard leaves the ship in the shuttlepod in an attempt to save the Enterprise from the energy entity and one where he doesn’t. What would appear to be happening is a temporary intersection between these two universes, and the dilemma the crew faces is that they know from the log tapes that Picard’s attempt to save the ship in the “leave the Enterprise” universe proves to be futile, but they can’t figure out what the other observational state is. And here’s where Star Trek: The Next Generation shows itself to be better than other science fiction, because not only does it not stop here (it would be perfectly acceptable, after all, for a Hard SF work to make a big deal just about doing a story built around the many-worlds interpretation, leaving it at that and waiting for us to tell it how clever it’s being), but this gimmick isn’t even the real point of the episode: Instead, it’s a narrative device to tell a story about Captain Picard.…

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“The Royale” is another episode that nobody in particular is especially fond of and that I frequently see gracing any number of “Worst Of” lists. One is certainly not enthused by looking at its production history: Originally pitched for very early in the first season, it sat ignored in the slush pile of unused scripts until necessity required its exhumation in the second. It was also the subject of yet another one of writer Tracy Tormé’s trademark spats with then-producer Maurice Hurley, and apparently it was the straw that broke the camel’s back too, as the dispute finally led Tormé to walk off of Star Trek: The Next Generation at the end of the year.

Tormé claims his original pitch hinged far more heavily on surrealist imagery and symbolism. His primary influence while writing it was The Prisoner, and he wanted to bring the same kind of abstract and multi-tiered psychedelia that characterized that show to Star Trek: The Next Generation. And you can see at least some of that in the finished product, with the eery revolving door afloat in nothingness, to the guests who act in bizarrely programmatic ways and the way the hotel itself operates. Apparently Hurley objected to this as well as the very prominent role the astronaut character was going to have, the former for vague and unspecified reasons (which is troublingly something of a hallmark of Hurley’s tenure) and the latter because he felt it wasn’t good for the show to have big guest stars and couldn’t afford it even if it was. This, of course, does little to explain Billy Campbell and Howie Seago showing up earlier in the season. Another thing it doesn’t explain is why Patrick McGoohan was tapped to appear for three minutes in “The Schizoid Man” when offering him the part of the then-living Colonel Richey here seems like the most dumbly obvious idea in the universe. Sadly, another hallmark of the Maurice Hurley era has been its pathological aversion to sense.

Given its origins then, its unsurprising that “The Royale” feels so much like an Original Series episode: Like “The Naked Now”, “Code of Honor”, “Blood and Fire”, “Justice”, “Angel One” and “When The Bough Breaks”, this feels straightforwardly like the creative team cherry-picked some narrative structures and devices from the old show, shuffled them around a bit and changed the names. Unlike those episodes, however, “The Royale” as aired is actually surprisingly serviceable in spite of itself: It doesn’t feel like a reiteration of the abjectly terrible aspects of the Original Series or an embarrassingly tepid attempt to ape its better ones, it actually feels like something the Original Series could have done and done quite well. It’s got the campy, performative fun of episodes like “A Piece of the Action” blended with the haunting and disquieting surrealism of something like “The Empath”. Granting both that the episode as aired is not what Tormé wanted it to be and that, like so much of this season, it was thrown together at the last minute just to get something on the air that week, it does seem as if “The Royale” is coming perilously close to standing among the very best of the Original Series just from that brief alone.…

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At long last, Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s second season gives us its first inarguable, unqualified masterpiece.

It’s not that “Contagion” is any less the product of the season’s incredibly troubled production history, but this is the first time the show has been able to fully rise above it and put out something triumphant in spite of it. Indeed, Beth Woods, one half of the brainchild behind this episode, was literally the creative team’s tech support: She ran a personal computer store near the Paramount lot D.C. Fontana and Dave Gerrold liked to patronize, and they turned Gene Roddenberry onto her place when he was looking to buy his first computer. Woods even taught him how to use it, and Roddenberry later asked her to set up a computer system for the Star Trek: The Next Generation creative team. Roddenberry even invited Woods to submit a story of her own after learning she was a struggling writer herself (and also probably because they had no scripts), so she teamed up with comic writer Steve Gerber to pen “Contagion”.

So it probably makes sense that Woods and Gerber’s episode would deal prominently with computer technology and hinge on an alien computer virus. As cliche as that probably sounds today, this sort of plot was still sort of a new thing to US audiences even as late as 1989. Furthermore, Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of the very few shows that can actually do a techno thriller, which “Contagion” definitely is, without coming across as banal. There are a couple reasons for this, the first likely being the show’s high-tech setting and focus on exploration gives it license to freely poke around mysterious areas of space and hyper advanced technology without being constrained too much by real world computer science. But the second is the sheer earnestness of the cast and crew that puts heart and soul into anything: None of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s techno thrillers look terribly exciting or innovative on paper, but in almost every single case the stories in question turn out to be incredibly memorable and captivating because of their unbridled imagination and creativity and the raw power and talent of the cast. And “Contagion” is the first time this all comes together for them, with a guest cast as passionate as the main one and a simple, yet incredibly gripping, central premise that helps bring it all together.

There’s no one thing that makes this episode as memorable and effective as it is, it’s simply that the combination of all the little individual factors that go into it make the whole a lot greater than the sum of its parts. All of the regulars seem to be doing exactly the sort of thing it feels right for them to be doing, from Worf’s loyalty to Riker and Troi looking out for the crew and handling delicate negotiations with Commander Taris, to Geordi’s race against time to solve the mystery of Iconian programming and even Data’s blatant, yet charming “New Powers As The Plot Demands” 133t skillz.…

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I’ll admit I have a tendency to approach some of these marquee episodes with at least a marginal degree of skepticism. Too often I’ve been of the mind there are bits of the Star Trek franchise whose reputations have been badly inflated or, alternatively, are good but are praised for what I consider the wrong reasons. That’s not always the case, of course, sometimes things are popular and well-loved for a reason, and that’s a truth that’s far too often overlooked in pop culture discourse and critique.

This though is one that’s never quite sat entirely comfortably with me. It is unquestionably a triumphant statement of purpose from Melinda Snodgrass (in fact it’s so good it landed her the position of story editor for the remainder of this season and the first half of the next) and definitely bears more of the hallmarks of an “iconic” episode than anything else we’ve seen this season (and arguably will see, apart from the inescapable “Q, Who?”), but there have always been niggling questions and concerns Ive had with “The Measure of a Man” that I’ve never been able to fully put to rest. And unfortunately, I have to say this latest rewatch did little to change my mind.

There are two main ways of going about looking at this episode depending on who you think the main character is. Classical fan logic slants Data into this role, as it’s his rights that are at stake and so much of the story hinges on his personal experiences and sense of self-awareness. From Data’s perspective, this would put “The Measure of a Man” squarely into the territory of “Elementary, Dear Data” and its Hard SF “what manner is a non-human?” A-plot to the point it almost feels like a bit of a reiteration. Indeed, this isn’t even the first time Star Trek: The Next Generation has tackled these issues: Back in the “Home Soil” post I even threw it in with a whole series of other episodes overtly looking at the rights and sentience of artificial intelligences. There’s nothing strictly new to be talked about there. “The Measure of a Man” similarly follows in the footsteps of a number of episodes this season examining who and what Data in particular is: The aforementioned “Elementary, Dear Data”, as well as “The Outrageous Okona” and “The Schizoid Man”. Not to mention any of the season’s earliest scenes featuring Doctor Pulaski.

The thing about giving the lead to Data here though, as intuitive as it may seem, is that the entire dramatic weight of the episode is a foregone conclusion. Nobody watching Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1989 needed the show to diegetically state Data is a person or even needed to see an in-universe assessment of that. We travel with Data and can gather everything we need to know about his personhood from narrative subtext. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing when a story’s resolution lacks any sort of suspense, I think people place far too much emphasis on things like surprise, twists and plot originality anyway.…

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I have a fascination with stereoscopic 3D as a creative medium. I know in film, TV and video games it is, or at least was, cool to complain about 3D being a pointless and expensive gimmick that just makes things look fake, but I find most of those sorts of arguments to be made out of ignorance about how the process works or how our brains process images. Done properly, stereoscopic 3D has the unique capability to remove the crutch of artifice while counterintuitively adding an entirely new level of immersion at the same time.

As a kid I loved the View-Master line of toy 3D film reels. If you don’t remember them, they were these miniature plastic reels that had tiny strips of film inside divided into pairs that were slightly offset. If you put them into a special View-Master viewer (that kind of looked like a clunky pair of binoculars) and held them up to the light, the effect was that you could scroll through a slideshow of 3D images. I was always really, really impressed with the 3D effect of View-Masters: Once you put those on, it was immediate and noticeable, and the reels always seemed to have a vibrant and lush colour scheme that just made everything pop even more. My favourites were always the ones based on live-action and animated television shows: Because you were looking at raw, actual film, View-Master gave you a look at your favourite shows that was strikingly different from anything you could see on TV unless you had a really expensive and high-end set, and even then it wasn’t quite the same.

“A Matter Of Honor” was the only Star Trek: The Next Generation episode to be adapted for View-Master, and yes, of course I had it. This means that, while my recollection of the second season as it originally aired is hazy at best, this episode is permanently burned into my memory because I looked at those View-Master reels *constantly*. I have an innate understanding of this episode’s beats, highlights and pacing at a very deep-seated level, because the View-Master adaptation dutifully cataloged every single scene, which I promptly memorized because I thought this thing looked bloody *gorgeous* and would click through it over and over again. So, even though I’ve only actually watched “A Matter Of Honor” maybe a couple of times, I likely know it better than any other episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Which actually proved to be surprisingly off-putting for me this time, as it turns out there are subtle, yet very noticeable, differences between the episode as aired and the episode as rendered in 1980s consumer-grade stereoscopic 3D.

The first thing I noticed was that the effects shots used in the View-Master version of “A Matter Of Honor” are completely different. The TV episode, like a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation did, understandably relies mostly on reused stock footage for exterior shots of the Enterprise with new footage being filmed whenever it was supposed to interact with the Pagh.…

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Like “The Outrageous Okona” before it, “Loud As A Whisper” is another episode inspired by an actor instead of a pitch. Howie Seago, who plays Riva, is deaf himself, and he and his wife (an enormous fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation) approached the producers with the idea of doing a story about deaf people to dispel common misconceptions and to tell a story from that perspective. Even Riva’s chorus comes from Seago, who had famously played the lead in Peter Sellers’ adaptation of Ajax where the play’s Greek chorus had been reconceptualized as a team of translators.

Seago jokes he only got into the producers’ offices because they were once again out of scripts thanks to the writers’ guild strike and had nothing else to do, but I’ll bet they bought the pitch because it was a really good story too. The deaf community themes are as good as you’d expect, and are quite successful in showing Riva to be a person who, while different from others in ways that gives him unique advantages and disadvantages, is no more or less then them as a result. My favourite scene here is naturally the one with Geordi on the bridge, where he and Riva bond over the commonality they share. But this isn’t just a story about hearing, it’s also a story about listening, and the rhetorical pirouettes the show does to meld the two themes are truly elegant.

Most obviously, we have the two warring factions of Solais V. Riva believes that the source of all conflict stems from a lack of communication and understanding, and his negotiation method involves helping both sides realise they share some sort of common ground. And yet Riva too is unwilling to listen: He arrogantly dismisses the crew’s attempts to fill him in on the centuries-long war, declaring that all conflicts all over the galaxy are the same, and that he has the tools to resolve any conflict anywhere it might crop up. From the moment he sees her, Riva immediately starts hitting on Troi, and their “dates” consist mostly of him talking at her and trying to impress her with sickeningly faux-poetic platitudes. This episode is a terrific showcase for Marina Sirtis in general, but I particularly love the way she has Troi constantly roll her eyes in exasperation at the camera whenever Riva starts acting particularly obnoxious: The script feels like it wants the affection to be mutual, but Sirtis makes Riva’s advances come across as pompous and silly as they are. Which just makes her scene with Captain Picard at the end all the more sweet.

(I’m not a huge fan of Riva’s chorus being so transparently the id-ego-superego model, even though it does help add to the episode’s theatrical performativity, but the one area where this does help us is by noticing that Riva speaks mostly either through the id-guy, when he’s lecherously hitting on Troi, or the ego-guy, when he’s rambling on to Picard, Riker and Worf about the diplomatic pop philosophical worldview he’s developed through his years of experience as a mediator.)…

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For a run of episodes that inspired the phrase “growing the beard”, a troubling portion of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s second season has been pretty dreadfully uninspiring so far.

These two episodes hinge entirely on hard SF concepts the show has already worked into the ground, despite how early in the year we are. They both prominently feature Data, or matters pertaining to Data, and I can’t actually talk about this in any sort of detail lest I risk “The Measure of a Man” post ending up being about 200 words because the show is going to come back to them *yet again* in that episode. They are both mediocre retreads on every level, this time not just of the original Star Trek (c.f. “Unnatural Selection”) but of Star Trek: The Next Generation *itself*. Even more obnoxiously, I can already foresee this being far from the only set of episodes I’m going to have to address in this manner this season.

One thing that unites “The Schizoid Man” and “Unnatural Selection” thematically is their shared exploration into posthuman speculation about humanity’s future. In “The Schizoid Man”, Ira Graves wants to transplant his consciousness into an android, namely Data, so that he might live on after his body’s biological death, while the scientists in “Unnatural Selection” hoped they might get to decide humanity’s future forms through their genetically engineered children. Both schemes are definitely of the techno-futurist, Machine Singularity type of transhumanism, and Star Trek: The Next Generation comes down pretty decisively critically of this in both cases. Or, well, it *tries* to, at least: In “The Schizoid Man”, this is basically an excuse plot for Brent Spiner to play a psychopath again, and if you remove the (creepy) details about Graves and his (creepy) fixation on his assistant, what you’re basically left with is another banal Evil Twin story. Yes, “The Schizoid Man” is just “Datalore” again (or perhaps it’s a gender-swapped “Turnabout Intruder”). Meanwhile,“Unnatural Selection” being basically a plagiarized knock-off of “The Deadly Years” means its moral about transhumanism essentially amounts to “don’t try to strongarm evolution with technoscience or you’ll evoke the plot of a shitty Original Star Trek episode”.

I really don’t have anything to add here that I haven’t already talked about in regards to posthumanism in other blog posts. We’ve looked at this theme a billion times already, and these episodes bring nothing to the table that hasn’t already been addressed in the context of Dirty Pair, whose deft blending of science fiction, mythology and spirituality Star Trek: The Next Generation eminently lacks at this point in its history, and even in the context of Star Trek: The Next Generation *itself* (go re-watch “11001001” or “Home Soil” for a far more nuanced handling of these issues). Although that said, while nothing here is a patch on “We’re Not Afraid of Divine Judgment. It’s Like Magic?!”, which is probably the definitive statement on posthumanism, Dirty Pair is an interesting point of comparison here for a number of reasons: Firstly, because after Ira Graves uploads himself to the Enterprise computer at the end of “The Schizoid Man”, he prints out several equations that contain the variables “Kei” and “Yuri” and something called a DP (Angle).…

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The Agony Booth famously called “The Outrageous Okona” one of Star Trek’s single worst hours, almost “And The Children Shall Lead” bad, in fact. Like most things involving The Agony Booth, I disagree pretty strongly with that assessment. I can’t understand why this episode has the reputation it does: It’s not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s nothing unfathomably offensive here either.

(Well…actually I *do* know where the majority of the criticism comes from, but I want to avoid talking about that for a bit.)

“The Outrageous Okona” has a rather unique origin as far as Star Trek episodes go. Instead of being built around somebody pitching a central concept or idea, it hinges on one character. The titular Captain Okona is explicitly a thinly veiled stand-in for a real person, namely his actor, William O. “Billy” Campbell. Campbell had actually auditioned for the role of Commander Riker and almost got the part, were it not for a last-minute intervention from Paramount higher-up John Pike, who felt Jonathan Frakes was more commanding and that Campbell didn’t have an onscreen presence that would compel viewers to “follow [him] into battle”. But the production team apparently still had affection for Campbell, and this episode feels very much like their attempt to show the audience how he would have interacted with the rest of the main cast. Okona is certainly written as the dashing, roguish, womanizing romantic lead Commander Riker has the reputation for being, particularly, and admittedly excruciatingly, near the beginning (and yet also note how Riker is in many ways depicted as Okona’s foil here: Indeed, in spite of his reputation, Riker actually does vanishingly little of this sort of thing anywhere on Star Trek: The Next Generation).

But the part of Okona that comes most directly from Campbell is his wanderlust. Okona’s entire character is built around never settling down and always feeling compelled to travel from place to place and Campbell himself is much the same way: When offered a role on Ira Behr’s The 4400, Campbell flatly said he’d accept, but only if the show could accommodate his schedule, for he was planning to sail around the world soon after the show was set to begin production. As a result, Behr had his character temporarily killed off while Campbell was on his journey, and brought him back once he returned to the United States. It seems very much as if Star Trek: The Next Generation was trying to pay tribute to the actor through his character here, and it’s a textbook example of how real life is far more wondrous and exciting than anything anyone can consciously invent, and how actors as so frequently so much more interesting and fascinating people than the characters they become famous for portraying.

Campbell-as-Okona is the limit case for Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s actor-driven form of characterization and character development: We’ve already seen this cast bring their roles to life by infusing them with so much of their own personalities and interests, and this is only going to continue as the show enters its next phase of life over the course of the coming year.…

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If “The Big Goodbye” was the archetypical holodeck malfunction story, than “Elementary, Dear Data” can only be called the archetypical “holodeck characters gain sentience” story.

The plot and basic thesis are pretty simple to explain here. The episode is straightforwardly about artificial intelligence and what constitutes consciousness and sentience. It’s the same basic kind of speculative robot story Hard SF has played with since forever and that’s going to be a reoccurring theme this season, and there’s not a whole lot else to talk about with this brief other than that. Star Trek: The Next Generation does add a distinctive narrative elegance to the proceedings here by mirroring Professor Moriarty’s personal revelation with Data’s bet with Doctor Pulaski and displays its heritage by pretty overtly invoking Descartes and his “cogito ergo sum”. Data proves to Doctor Pulaski that he is capable of independent thought and deductive reasoning, and Moriarty declares to Captain Picard that if Data is to be granted full personhood status because of that than so should he. I don’t really want to introduce a debate on Cartesian philosophy here, so let’s just say I find the whole things pretty damn questionable and suspect and try to read this episode in a way other than the rote and obvious.

In lieu of this, “Elementary, Dear Data” is probably the pinnacle of Doctor Pulaski’s character as originally conceived and this pretty much marks the point where her big character arc should have ended. She bears witness to not one, but *two* artificially created life-forms pretty incontrovertibly proving their personhood status according to both her and the show’s diegetic standards (and notice how even in the beginning she refers to Data as a “he” instead of an “it”). Diana Muldaur is great, but she’s always great so there’s no news there. The only objection I would raise is the fact this isn’t tied off quite as neatly as would really have been nice (in particular, Pulaski and Data needed a scene together in the denouement) and, of bloody course, the kidnapping. To that, all I have to say is “Come on. Really? This is 1988 and that’s Diana Fucking Muldaur.”

(Data himself is, predictably, outstanding and Brent Spiner really doesn’t need commenting on by this point, but do take note of how he plays Data here: The “emotionless” android very clearly bluffs, panics several times and is obviously having a hell of a lot of fun playing his fictional idol.)

Then there’s the Sherlock Holmes setting, which is of course good campy fun. London (and 221b Baker Street in particular) is realised in a lovely, sumptuous manner, and indeed so much so it’s one of the things that necessitated closing off the year with a clip show. Certainly with the as of this writing recent astronomical popularity of Sherlock Holmes as a franchise in pop consciousness, “Elementary, Dear Data” is probably a terrific episode to introduce people to Star Trek: The Next Generation with on that merit alone: It’s a veritable Sherlockian’s dream come true, from the beautifully rendered Baker Street apartment to the copious nods to the sacred “Holmes canon” to Brent Spiner’s grandstanding, Jeremy Brett-inspired turn as Data-as-Holmes.…

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