The short recap:
Ancient alien computer programmes kill the Enterprise’s sister ship … and nearly take down our heroes.
The long recap:
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Real life, man. Gets in the way of the really important things, like snarky recaps.
Don’t get too excited.
We’re teased with the promise of a return to the Romulan plotline which still hasn’t really gone anywhere as the Enterprise invades the Neutral Zone in pursuit of its sister ship, the Yamato, which has encountered difficulties. The Yamato promptly appears, downloads all its records to the Enterprise, and explodes, rather traumatizing poor little Wesley who’s never seen hundreds of people die before.
Romulans show up and are dicks, but that’s Romulans for you, and the longed-for galactic conflict which got teased at the end of season 1 still ain’t going anywhere. Instead, they cloak away in a huff and Picard leads the Enterprise deeper into the Neutral Zone in search of Iconia, the planet the Yamato was exploring. Iconia is basically Magrathea: ancient, abandoned, guarded by mighty and fully-functional defence systems. Picard decides to lead the away team down to Iconia in search of answers – because that’s always a great idea – while Riker and Geordi remain on the Enterprise trying to fix its own rapidly-breaking-down systems.
Geordi diagnoses the problem: basically a virus from the Iconian defence probes is trying to rewrite the Enterprise’s entire computer system. How to remove it is another matter.
Now you’re thinking with portals.
A half-hour’s work is all it takes for Data to decode the millennia-dead alien language, open a portal to other worlds (including the Enterprise’s bridge), get zapped by the electronics, and leave Picard with enough instructions to set the entire structure to self-destruct. You’ve got to love ancient and all-powerful civilisations who only used, like, three separate buttons on their command consoles to do everything.
Back on the ship, Geordi sees Data “die” and then come back to life with no memory of what happened, and thus he finds the solution: turn it off and turn it on again.
Seriously?
Picard is saved after a brief sojourn on the Romulan ship, after escaping the exploding alien building through a magic portal, and seems entirely happy to just bug out and leave the Romulans to self-destruct. In fact it’s Riker who says “um, or we could transmit the instructions for saving their ship to them. What’s Romulan for “turn it off and turn it on again”?” … and then they bug out, with Picard cracking a rather mean joke about not waiting around to see if the Romulans’ engineers are as good as Geordi.
Bit of a weird one, that. And still no epic Starfleet/Romulan war! How many times have you got to trespass in the Neutral Zone before someone takes a shot?
Additionally:
- Why does no one ever, like, update Starfleet on what they’re doing? Even as their ship falls down around them neither the Yamato nor the Enterprise’s crew think “hey, the higher-ups should probably know about this long-lost planet guarded by massively destructive tech.”
- Data mentions Pulaski using the “access tunnels” to get around the malfunctioning turbolifts. Given the size of what we later come to know and love as Jefferies tubes, this must have been a serious ordeal.
- Pulaski has to lecture one of her subordinates about how to splint a broken bone. I don’t care how advanced your society is, surely that’s still a good basic medical skill?
- O’Brien kind of saves the day with his awesome transporter abilities, but at this stage he’s still basically the “chevron 6, encoded” “jumpgate opening” guy.
- Planetary design/matte painting has not evolved much since Original Series.
- The Iconians are basically Vorlons, and while I’ve got you thinking about Babylon 5, it must be said the first-season episode Infection did this whole “dead world, cursed artifacts” story way better.
Turn it off … and turn it on again?
Points scored:
- Deanna: for noticing super-important things like “the Romulan captain who’s found us in the Neutral Zone is anxious” and “the people on the dying starship are tense”.
- Geordi: for fixing everything with the magic of magnetic coil phase variation antimatter SCIENCE.
- Picard: I’ve finally figured out Picard’s thing for season 2: the Wise and Intellectual Man. Which is basically his “I’m so French!” trope only without actually being French. In this episode, he muses about Marco Polo and how sufficiently advanced forms of science are indistinguishable from magic.
MVP: Geordi
LeVar Burton puts in some mighty fine stunt work in this episode, gets a bit of dry comedy with Data, and manages to save the day. Nice one, Geordi.
