Only room for one Klingon on this ship!
The short recap:
Riker goes on one hell of an exchange trip.
The long recap:
A surprisingly slowly-paced episode, given how dramatic and tense it’s meant to be, with the Enterprise on the verge of utter destruction.
Riker goes on an exchange mission aboard the Pagh, a Klingon bird of prey. For someone who’s been rampantly xenophobic in past episodes, he’s surprisingly on board with Klingon culture, trying their food before he transfers, knocking out the first crewman to challenge his authority, suggesting threesomes with the Klingon women officers.
But it all goes horribly wrong when a weird space bacteria starts eating through the hull of the Pagh – and the Enterprise – and the Klingons assume it’s all a Starfleet trick designed to destroy them all, because that’s the kind of thing that makes sense to Klingons. Riker indulges in some thoroughly human trickery – giving the captain an emergency transmitter Worf had equipped him with – so the captain is beamed aboard the Enterprise, Riker gets to take over and stop the Pagh opening fire, and everyone lives happily ever after.
What is this guy even doing?
Meanwhile, an alien from the same species as one of Wesley’s testing buddies comes aboard the Enterprise, with only two purposes: set the scene for a really awkward “you all look alike” joke at Wes’ expense, and to completely screw everything up vis-a-vis the space bacteria, scanning the Pagh (which feeds the Klingons’ paranoia), trying to butter up Picard. He is, of course, never to be seen again.
It should be a tense episode, but it’s not. It does provide some really good ground-laying for the TNG/later Trek movies’ interpretation of the Klingon Empire. The food, the ship interiors, the random acts of violence all contribute to the really deep sense you get of their culture, even though DS9 definitely has the time and luxury of being able to explore it in much greater detail.
But what lets it all down is the great Klingon Paradox. You’ve got your fascinating, well-developed Klingon character characters like Worf, Gowron, Martok, even Kang, Kor and Koloth, who manage to balance the aggression and brutalist code of honour with depth. But apparently the other 99% of the species are total muppets, eternally one wrong computer scan away from blowing up everyone in their immediate vicinity. The aggression’s taken to an impractical level which has to make you ask how their society even functions.
Also, this weird training montage happens.
Additionally:
- You can’t really tell under the makeup, but the Klingon officer who buddies up with Riker by the end of the show is played by sci-fi icon Brian Thompson, aka the Alien Bounty Hunter from X-Files and the Brujah from Kindred: The Embraced.
- Still love seeing Colm Meaney on my screen.
Points scored:
- 2 to Riker for being the manliest man who ever manned. No one else on this crew is saying “sure, I’ll serve aboard a Klingon ship, no one’s done it before!”
Now … kiss!
MVP: Riker
Well, he’s really the main character of the episode. But we’re really starting to see TNG getting into its stride, really embracing the idea of exploring new worlds and civilisations, being mind-bogglingly open and accommodating of alien weirdness. He acquits himself well in a Klingon fist-fight, which not many humans could boast, and also honestly does a much better job integrating with a Klingon crew than even Worf will manage further down the line.
