1.8 — “Justice”
Plot: The Enterprise is investigating shore leave possibilities on a planet full of fit, young, blond models wearing skimpy outfits, who like to hug strangers and have sex all the time. Riker thinks this is TOTALLY AWESOME! Wink, wink, smirk, smirk, let’s start beaming everyone down. Don’t forget that foreign planets can have strange customs, however. One of theirs is that they like to put people to death randomly for merely technical violations of arbitrary laws. Wuh-oh! Guess who’s in trouble now? It’s Wesley. All of these shenanigans are somewhat complicated by an all-powerful, disembodied, patriarchal alien being orbiting the planet, who calls the inhabitants his “children.” It looks like a space station and is worshiped as a God. No, we never learn anything else about it.
Thoughts: This episode is embarrassing. It just begs to be mocked. So. Many. Easy. Targets. I actually found watching it to be demoralizing (only 170 more TNG episodes to go!). I purposely watched a documentary afterwards about the pains taken to remaster all of TNG’s seven seasons into high definition, to remind myself that millions of people really love this series, so hold on.
There are some good things, which are almost ruined by poor execution. Wil Wheaton claims this episode pushed network boundaries with its frank depiction of sensuality and free love. Okaaaay… but the crew looks so awkward! By God, if Riker does not learn to stop smirking inappropriately, I will lead the stampede of torch-waving villagers out for his blood myself (I realize this strategy might not be effective, since he is a fictional character in a series that ended in 1994).
The production design, and costuming, is at least… highly memorable. Blissfully cheesy? They manage to get a bit of the flavor of Logan’s Run (1976).
I find it strange that the crew can’t keep from awkwardly pulling faces in the interminable beam-down scene, but a few scenes later Riker and Worf manage to have a frank discussion of Worf’s taste for rough sex. Were they less embarrassed because there were no women on screen?
The thing that bothers me most, again, is the writers’ deep confusion about what the Prime Directive means. It’s about not interfering with the normal development of primitive cultures. It has nothing to do with being forced to follow all local planetary laws, no matter how stupid.
An example of a prime directive violation would be to beam a planetary native onto the starship, tour her around, show her the ersatz face of her “God,” and then hand her a Starfleet communicator device before beaming her back down to the planet alone. Bad idea. Also, it is a PD violation to make first contact at all, absent some kind of native disguise and cover story, as in “Return of the Archons,” “A Piece of the Action,” and “A Private Little War.”
If someone bothered to think about first contact issues from a realistic perspective, it might occur to them that the Edo would probably be surprised, confused, and alarmed to meet the Enterprise crew, instead of polite, bemused, and indifferent. These are aliens from outer space to them. Do these people have an economy? Agriculture? How do they eat? The writers studiously ignore all of the issues that might have made the episode interesting.
They make a point of telling us that the future has no capital punishment, which would qualify as daring and progressive, if it wasn’t undermined by lame execution, which seems to assume that’s what everyone expects the future will be like, anyway.
One last gripe–what happened to the tradition of cool episode titles? “Justice” is no “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield.” Grade: Fail.
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