6.12 — “Ship in a Bottle”
Plot: Data and Geordi continue to play with Sherlock Holmes simulations, and discover a surprise: holographic James Moriarty, still sentient but trapped in the Holodeck matrix, ready now after four years to make a move. His escape from the Holodeck is shocking. Still more when he takes control of the ship!
Thoughts: This is a damn clever episode. We last saw Moriarty in TNG 2.3, “Elementary, Dear Data,” in which he took Doctor Pulaski hostage.
It’s nice to see a Barclay episode in which Barclay does not either do anything stupid, or come close to destroying the ship.
This episode creates folded realities that, in my mind, implicate the audience as well as the characters. What is reality? We are in 2016, watching a group of actors in 1993 pretend to be characters living in 2369, where they use a computer program to simulate life in 1890. All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players, and when our hour is done all will melt into air. The baseless fabric of this vision, the great globe itself, shall dissolve, leaving…?
When Picard warns him against resuming a life of crime, Moriarty says “My past is nothing but a fiction. The scribblings of an Englishman dead now for four centuries. I hope to leave his books on the shelf.” Yes, of course. The ultimate solution for Jim Moriarty is similar to Vina in “The Cage.” A pretty lie, preferred to reality, but then reality is what you make of it.
4 of 5 poison cigars.
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