1.7 – “Lonely Among Us”
Plot: En route to a peace parliament, the ship skirts a strange interstellar cloud, accidentally pulling a life form made of pure energy on board. The stowaway jumps from crewmember to crewmember and into the computers, causing anomalies and eventually overtaking the ship. Data gets Sherlockian as Riker and Yar labor to keep a subplot about warring ambassadors from hijacking the main drama.
Thoughts: My, my. Formal dress uniforms! They look like dresses. Besides having skirts, they don’t seem very different from the everyday uniforms.
Riker says he just can’t understand conflict based on custom, religion, or economics. Neither can the writers, apparently, because this episode is pretty dull. What is the point in having a Federation anyway, if not for defense or trade? Transporting delegates and ambassadors used to be important stuff in “Journey to Babel” and “Elaan of Troyius.” Here, it just seems to be an irritating chore, which Riker and Yar do badly with no consequences. One of the diplomats is killed, and no one, least of all the Captain, seems to care.
It’s disappointing that no one is able to stands up effectively to the Captain after he is obviously possessed by an alien. Picard actually develops some backbone for the first time under the alien’s influence–which no one can seem to handle. Sigh.
One of the things I find irritating so far about TNG is that nobody seems to know what their job is. We have all these characters, yet there’s no science officer, and no permanent Chief Engineer, both roles needed by the ship and in the scripts. Yar, ostensibly chief of security, at one point performs analysis of the sensor readings of the energy cloud, which was always Spock’s job in TOS. Geordi and Worf are shown performing maintenance work on a sensor array away from the bridge–why? Because there aren’t any engineers? At this point in the series, I can’t even tell you what Worf’s regular job is supposed to be (although he is usually shown sitting or standing on the bridge), which sets him apart from Riker and Troi, whose full-time duties are second-guessing the Captain.
The ultimate problem here is that the episode just isn’t challenging. While it mostly avoids being offensive (the low bar set by several of the previous episodes), no real mystery or suspense ever develops, nor does there seem to be anything at stake (maybe they’ll be late to a diplomatic conference that no one seems to care about). There are no interesting concepts, just the activity of chasing around a motivation-free, characterless energy being for the requisite number of minutes until the end credits.
There are three highlights: Data’s droll scenes imitating Sherlock Holmes, Picard’s long monologue under possession by the entity (Stewart still has a silver tongue!), and the lovely special effects of the energy cloud. Those are three elements I am happy watching even without a strong story underneath them.
I can’t grade this too much on a curve, however. I believe the plot of the episode is less singular, remarkable, or eventful than any episode of TOS Season 3, despite having a teleplay by Trek legend D.C. Fontana. Although it’s refreshing to avoid the sexism, I still have to give this a Grade: Fail. I wish I could be nicer!
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