6.26 — “Descent”
Plot: Data’s poker game with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking precedes more trying times for the Enterprise when it finds itself under Borg attack. In the midst of the ensuing chaos Data finds something unexpected: an experience he interprets as his first emotion, anger.
Thoughts: Nice one! Overall, wicked good.
I have to nitpick about the all-too-ubiquitous “electromagnetic interference” which prevents the ship’s sensors from scanning the outpost, or working whenever it would too convenient for the characters or inconvenient for the writers trying to rely on fog-of-war to extract tension and surprise. It’s magnets! We should sew them in our clothes so the space aliens won’t be able to scan us, either. Better yet, tinfoil hats.
Yes, TOS deployed “ionic interference” a number of times to defeat the scanners (starting in “The Galileo Seven?”), but I’m sensitive because of all the bullshit technobabble lately.
It’s shocking to see gore deployed (makes me think of Wrath of Khan), and even more to see Data killing with his bare hands. Gene Roddenberry had to pass away for this to happen on TV. We have previously observed in this community that Data has the potential to be extremely dangerous (exhibit one: Lore, hello!).
“Descent” gets a lot of mileage out of exploiting anxiety over TNG’s innate optimism: that trusting an emotionless superhuman mechanism as third-in-command of your vessel is more than likely to work out, or that giving the benefit of the doubt to an innocent like the the Borg Hugh is not just going to backfire huge. I hope this optimism is not lost in the development of Star Trek: Discovery (forthcoming as of this writing in May 2017), despite the proliferation of antiheroes and moral bleakness of nearly everything that passes for popular entertainment these days. It’s okay to question the provenance of optimism (questioning, too, is the essence of Star Trek), but the optimism is essential, and defensible in my view.
I have a feeling Part II may not live up to the first, but as of now, count me as anxious to learn: a) how the Borg have adapted their mission and identity; b) the whereabouts of Hugh; c) the plans of Lore; and d) how Data can be redeemed from this mess (since as far as I can remember he’s a good guy again in the films, right?).
5 of 5 planets that look strangely like Southern California.
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