1.25 — “Conspiracy”
Plot: Picard is summoned by emergency frequency to a rendezvous with three other Starfleet captains, who believe that something wrong is taking over Starfleet command. One of the captains, an old friend who introduced Jack and Beverly Crusher, is soon killed by the unexplained destruction of his ship. Picard leads the Enterprise crew back to Earth to confront Starfleet directly, and get to the bottom of this.
Thoughts: Well, this is a change of pace.
TOS did change tone frequently, often seeming to try out different genres week to week. It even found time to try out the style of 1950s xenophobic science fiction with its first season closer, 1.29 — “Operation: Annihilate!” I seem to recall that episode having more story, however. We learned details about the pod creatures’ home planet and the method by which they spread through space, and there was beautiful location shooting and ambitious scenes creating the illusion of hundreds of pod creature flying through the air. The introduction of Kirk’s nephew gave the episode a feeling of pathos. It’s not the best episode of TOS’ first season, but I guess I’m going on about it because re-watching “Operation: Annihilate!” would be more fun that trying to write about “Conspiracy.”
It’s not that the episode is flat-out terrible, it’s just that the ambition of the writers is so meager, you don’t get a crumb of story more than the minimum to get from point A to B. The result is an attempted pot boiler which consists of little more than a thinly disguised string of half-baked exposition, without any interesting concepts.
There are some interesting visuals. My favorite is the camera setup where Picard beams into the far distance of the shot on Dytallix B and walks slowly forward down the ramp into the field of red light. The alien creature makeup for Picard’s ally Captain Rixx was pretty good.
The second arresting visual sequence was the gruesome faceoff with poor Remmick and the alien queen. For a second there, I thought I was watching Dead Alive (1992).
I guess it’s worth pointing out that the resolution of the storyline where Picard and Riker shoot all the aliens to death without trying to talk to them or find out how they tick is very un-Star Trek. They decide to phaser the queen parasite because she’s ugly, apparently. I should be offended, but I can’t muster it. At this point, I don’t feel like TNG Season One has any integrity left to squander. Suddenly someone decides they should be making an action-adventure gorefest, and what could not be clearer is that the TNG writers room at this stage wasn’t really interested in science fiction.
I guess I’ll give the episode a low pass for being really dramatic. I hope the season finale goes out on a good note.
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