6.18 — “Starship Mine’
Plot: An evacuation of the Enterprise for routine maintenance purposes turns into a hostile takeover of the ship. Picard finds himself alone behind enemy lines with the only chance to stop the brigands and their plan to loot warp core booty.
Thoughts: It’s Die Hard in space.
The teleplay for this episode was written by Morgan Gendel, author of TNG 5.25, “The Inner Light.” While there is nothing so highfalutin or ambitious about this story, Gendel’s touch is evident in many subtle grace notes that make the episode compelling. The teaser is masterful, with Stewart’s small acting letting you know exactly where he stands emotionally without clumsy exposition. It’s full of comedy and trusts the actors to carry the scene. The music cue and performance when Picard leaves the ready room and emerges on the empty bridge is wonderful. If the episode ended there, five stars.
There are at least two other points where Gendel sets up big turns relying on performance and situation without underling the plot points with dialogue. One is when the reception suddenly turns to violence, and Hutchinson is killed. Great job putting us on the wrong foot with Data’s trying-to-lean-small-talk schtick, which is entertaining in its own right. The second is when Picard wordlessly realizes that something is amiss on the ship and turns the tables with an attack on Tim Russ (later Tuvok on VOY). Was that a Vulcan Neck Pinch? Did he learn that during his mind meld with Sarek?
The director does lovely unexpected things with light on the deactivated ship. According to Memory Alpha, shooting time was shortened by a day, but I’m still impressed what they were able to accomplish in an unusually action-oriented episode. It’s fun to break out of the usual Star Trek mold into something entirely different. Picard, briefly, is playing Liam Neeson’s character in the Taken series.
However… I just don’t buy it. This is our post-scarcity society? That trilithium must be pretty valuable. Are all the criminal conspirators in it just for money? It looks like there was cooperation from at least four alien races. Yet there’s still essentially no other crime in the Federation, right? And Picard seems so well prepared to respond. Neither the situation nor Picard’s reaction to it are realistic or true to the TNG mythos up to this point.
And how, exactly, did these pirates infiltrate and commandeer the whole Starfleet baryon particle elimination operation? Is that just an unimportant detail? What is the escape plan for the hostage-takers at Hutchinson’s cocktail party? Who were just there to, um, lower the shields for the escape vehicle or something? Because the station is controlled from that ballroom?Where are the other 1,000 people from the Enterprise?
From what we’ve heard previously about Data’s outstanding physical capabilities, he should have been able to disarm the hapless hostage-takers fairly easily without resorting to any nonsense involving Geordi’s visor. It would be interesting to explore Data as superhuman a little more.
These statements quoted on Memory Alpha sum up my feelings pretty well. I sympathize with Patrick Stewart, but agree a little more with Michael Piller:
“Patrick Stewart commented, ‘I enjoyed the episode enormously. It’s now in my top half a dozen episodes. It was wonderful to be out of uniform for an entire episode and to be on the ship without any of the other boring crew members.’ (Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 275)
[. . .]
In contrast, Michael Piller remarked, ‘It didn’t feel like Star Trek to me. I liked the show and thought it was very effective and well directed by Cliff [Bole], but I was worried that it was very violent, which troubled me. Picard slugging it out with the two women wasn’t silly, and Patrick did his usual fine job, but it was derivative.’ (Captains’ Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, p. 275)”
3.5 of 5 rungs removed from the ladder between decks. How did Picard do that? With a sonic screwdriver?
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