1X25- CONSPIRACY
The short version: We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
Really, this one gets the nod for its climax, which is the most unexpectedly violent and visceral thing you could get from Star Trek, of all things. There's 40 minutes of episode leading up to that, though, so let's get to it. We have an aura of paranoia and distrust brooding within "Conspiracy", as Picard is contacted by an old friend who doesn't seem to trust anyone. He has good reason to, as even one of the people he calls in to discuss the problem in secret is in on it. The titular conspiracy is a backdoor invasion of the Federation, a body-snatching plot by a bunch of alien bugs in need of hosts. They work strategically, of course, controlling key members of the Federation and giving secret orders to shuffle around personnel so those already infected can spread the control of these bugs. The alien bugs are a metaphor. The alien bugs are systemic abuses of power and corruption within the enlightened Federation, and once Picard's old friend has his ship blown up for snooping around, the Enterprise heads back home to check it out... at which point they get targeted. The show's clever about how it plays the fakeout, and you really do think for a while that Commander Riker has been infected. Sure, the host of the mother bug says they only seek peaceful coexistence, but look at how they revel in it. They invite Picard to dinner and dinner is fucking worms in a jar. HA HA HA ASSHOLE WE GOT YOU GOOD, WE EAT WORMS BECAUSE WE'RE BUG PEOPLE! YOU'RE GONNA BE BUG PEOPLE TOO, FUCKER! How do Picard and Riker deal with this? They blow the whole goddamn thing up. In the shocker "HOLY FUCK!!!" moment of the episode, they blast a man's head off with their phasers at max, his chest caving open to reveal the alien worm inside. The corruption at the core... and they cauterize the wound. This is, after all, a show about healing... as we're going to get to in a moment. All of this? Only a taste of what's to come. These bugs, from what I understand, were supposed to be vassals of the Borg. Now the Borg decay enough from their original conception as dark mirrors to become just a bunch of technozombies, so I very well could have covered, say, First Contact here. But no, this will be our start. A glimpse at the darkness at root in the Federation, and a taste of what's to come. Assimilation, you see, is inevitable... and when it occurs, the Enterprise will be there to heal it. Much like they do for another soul on board their ship, which leads us four years into the future with...6X02- REALM OF FEAR
The short version: Fucked up a perfectly good lieutenant is what you did. Look at him. He's got anxiety.
Oh, Reg Barclay. I was going to write a whole thing about him at one point, after I finished watching the show. That never happened and now I have to give you the short version. Barclay is part of the engineering staff, and he's basically an introverted and anxious mess. So, Big Mood Right There. Unfortunately his first episode doesn't paint him in a sympathetic light, and even worse it has the Enterprise crew fucking making fun of him behind his back for being such a weird loser. Yeah great that's what someone who can relate to anxiety needs to hear, that everyone you work with actually does feel the way your darkest thoughts tell you they do about you. Fucking thanks for that. Still, that episode does take steps to try and help Barclay along, and he's much improved in his second appearance. Which brings us to perhaps his finest hour, his third episode: Realm Of Fear. In it, Barclay grapples with his anxiety and phobias over using the transporter. As written, I believe this was meant to be a sci-fi parallel with the fear of flying and how someone might take steps to overcome it. It being about the Star Trek transporter adds in some fun metacommentary, almost acknowledging that old nitpick about how the transporter actually kills you and reconstitutes an exact duplicate of you at your destination. Then Barclay starts seeing space worms in the transportation field, and he gets real anxious about that. The scene in his quarters where he's asking the computer about "transporter psychosis" and its symptoms, all while checking himself for them with a look of horror on his face? BIG FUCKING MOOD RIGHT THERE. I've done that! I've fucking done that! In the end it is a story about healing, as I've said. The crew helps heal Barclay of his fears and anxieties, and Barclay's insistence that he's seen something in there eventually saves the lives of several people caught mid-transport. All in all, this is a wonderful episode that's really relatable and one of my favorites in the show. It doesn't have any visceral spooky elements, but it's very much an episode about fear and so I feel it fits for this marathon. You want something a little more haunted though, don't you? Don't worry. I got you covered, with...7X18- EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
The short version: If these walls could talk-- oh shit wait we got empaths in the future, the walls are going to chat away about their dark secrets!
The Enterprise-D is haunted. That's the twist end of this story, and it's the reason why everything happens here the way it does. During her construction, a terrible crime of passion happened. A jealous spurned lover murdered two people in a heated moment and killed himself, hurling himself into a plasma field. This death left a psychic imprint, a haunt of a wound in the very heart and soul of Enterprise-D... and when the panels containing that haunt are opened for maintenance, it gets out. Our cold open is an engineer committing suicide by plasma, and the rest of the episode is an attempt to find out why he would do that. An attempt to heal from this very real wound to the Enterprise family... and that's where Deanna Troi comes in. I quite like Deanna Troi. I just wish the writing staff had liked her more. Still, she does get some killer episodes of her own, and this is one of them. Deanna, as a partial empath and ship's counselor, is perfectly equipped to handle a story about healing like this. She got one hell of an episode to that effect in the earlier "Dark Page", but I went with this one because the former has one hell of an emotional gut punch that I don't feel up to handling right about now. Instead we have Deanna encountering a psychic imprint, and having an elaborate mental experience which combines important elements from her own life with the events of the terrible crime which occured eight years ago. Is it malicious? I'm not sure. There's a creeping sense of paranoia as Deanna first shares an intimate experience with Worf and then sees him getting cozy with another lady ensign... culminating in her own crime of passion and panicked rush to the plasma field. There's no way out from murder, except to leap through the field. "I know what I have to do.". Of course, Worf is there to pull her out of it, and we can move onward. The crime has been known. The wound can be healed, and we can continue boldly going. It's a great little episode that ends up being a psychic ghost story in the end, so that's how it gets the nod. With that, I think we're good on Star Trek again for the time being. See you next year when I talk about... I dunno, the TOS Halloween episode. And the Borg. Until next time.
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