Wanderlust

7.6 — “Phantasms”

7.6 — “Phantasms”

Plot: Data discovers that he is having nightmares, during a week in which the ship is installing a new warp core, and Picard is expected to attend an Admirals’ Banquet.

Thoughts: This episode has so little main plot that it sets a new record in quantity of subplots and filler. An ensign has a crush on Geordi, Picard wants to avoid the Admiral’s Dinner, we make fun of Sigmund Freud, a bunch of invisible, intangible alien parasites start eating everyone, AND there are three scenes featuring Spot.

In case you forgot, Data’s dream program was first discovered in TNG 6.16, “Birthright, Part I,” also scripted by Brannon Braga. This is the first time it’s been mentioned since then.

I’m not usually fond of dream sequences, especially when the best surreal scenes you can come up with involve… yellow cake? Pretty weak, guys.

The threat of the invisible parasites is that the crew will lose all their cellular cohesion and collapse into a few pounds of chemicals. That’s bad, I agree. I guess the chemicals will still have cohesion?

Data stabbing Troi in the elevator is, well, certainly a scene. It gives the impression that Brannon Braga might have his own issues needing analysis. sunny jim points out there’s really no way Worf, Riker, or Troi could have physically stopped Data unless he let them. The thin story reason given to support the scene does not explain how Data appears in the turbolift out of nowhere, the more to terrorize Troi, or why it always has to be violence against women. Why?

I look forward to Randi Cohen’s impressions of the therapy scenes and Freudian satire. What I see here is a mess, leavened by cute scenes with Spot.

1.5 of 5 black lights that reveal secret alien parasites you can’t see or feel until they eat your cellular cohesion.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Phantasms

Posted

in

by

krblack42

Tags:

Comments

5 responses to “7.6 — “Phantasms””

  1. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Ugh. Where do I start? There were some good moments. I loved the scene where Worf agrees to take Spot (“I will feed her!”). And I also had no problem with the “eating cellular peptides” idea… no more absurd than the usual technobabble, and certainly if someone started removing proteins from cells they would indeed lose cohesion. Weird that it’s apparently invisible that this is occurring but fine. I don’t know what it is about Riker’s temple that it is so appealing for the writers to have him be attacked there.

    I agree that the scene where Data stalks Deanna and stabs her is totally unnecessary… way too much violence occurs toward her character on this series in general (and no other characters get this type of personalized and often sexualized violence) and there are no lasting repercussions.

    I liked that someone has a crush on Geordi! Although I was annoyed that he doesn’t like her back, because how inappropriate have his other choices been? She actually seems to admire and like him and to be smart and helpful and not half as awkward as Geordi himself when he has a crush. Oh well.

    Most annoying scene was the one in which Data consults Deanna and she blithely says “Yes I think you should go ahead and run that program again, because you should explore your subconscious negative emotions”. Never mind that Data’s emotions recently nearly got Geordi killed (after similar negligent advice from Deanna). Never mind that Data is not a person but a computer who supposedly does not have emotions without the chip so it is a likely possibility that an alternate explanation such as a programming flaw, sabotage, etc. may be causing him to have these “nightmares”. Never mind that Data himself is freaked out by what happened. Deanna is completely confident and unconcerned. The Dunning Kruger effect comes to mind here. Honestly, her transparent lack of competency is so annoying to me… why does nobody else on the cast seem to notice it? She always seems to give the wrong advice. Do the writers not understand how a good psychologist/counselor has the potential to help people? I feel like she gives the whole profession a bad name. I guess maybe it is like Worf supposedly being tough but always getting beaten up yet nobody notices… if I were in the security profession perhaps I would be equally annoyed by that. I love that in DS9 the characters are more often displayed as being good at their jobs than as being terrible at them.

    Some of the making fun of Freud was kind of funny and on point I thought, like the part where he interprets Data’s logical objections as resistance and prescribes more of the treatment. But some was just dumb, like the “sometimes a cake is just a cake” joke at the end.

    Reply
  2. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    Yeah, I thought the response to Data’s complaints about nightmares was silly too, not just from Troi, but also from Geordi in the early scenes. “Sound perfectly normal to me” . It’s not normal when it’s an android, dang it! Or when it’s never happened before! To him, or to any other android! It’s scientifically interesting at least, besides being dangerous. It’s like they’re so politically correct about Data having the rights of a person that they can’t acknowledge that he isn’t human at all. I think people are more awake to the potential danger of AI now than they were in 1993. TNG’s recent guest star Stephen Hawking is concerned about it.

    Reply
  3. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Interesting. I am curious what his concerns are.

    Reply
  4. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    Pull quote from http://www.businessinsider.com/over-a-third-of-people-think-ai-poses-a-threat-to-humanity-2016-3: Billionaire PayPal founder Elon Musk, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, and several others have also warned about the impact super-intelligent machines could have on humanity.

    “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Hawking told the BBC in December 2014.

    Reply
  5. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Wow. I vote for “Center for existential risk” to win the “world’s most depressing workplace” award!

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Kevin Black Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *