7.23 — “Emergence”
Plot: TNG’s Season Seven Nostalgia Tour continues with a Holodeck malfunction occurring while Picard and Data rehearse a Shakespeare play. The Holodeck malfunction seems tied to other unexplained malfunctions around the ship. The startling conclusion: the Enterprise seems to be developing an intelligence, and coming alive.
Thoughts: If you’re Brent Spiner, is it intimidating to do Shakespeare in front of Patrick Stewart? Stewart would go on play Prospero in The Tempest on Broadway the following year (1995). I know, I saw it. I also saw him give a public lecture/performance at Princeton University that Fall, consisting of spellbinding recitations of Shakespearean monologues. He must have been fresh off the filming of Star Trek: Generations at the time. I remember I was sitting on the aisle and he walked right past me.
I feel like “Emergence” is a couple of good plot twists/complications short of being a great episode. I could imagine the premise being used on TOS, but they would have squeezed more story out of it. As it stands, the episode runs out of steam, just like the Orient Express.
With only three episodes left, I was glad to see a classic Geordi/Data scene discussing problems on the ship. But after that the exposition machine never stops, with the technobabble just getting passed around.
When Data is lecturing in the briefing room about the ship coming alive, the officers seem both insufficiently curious and insufficiently alarmed. Picard acts as if perturbed by a mild convenience, and I have to ask “Isn’t he concerned about the ship? Does he not love it?” It’s been seven years.
The denouement, in which the newly born consciousness is ejected to the ether, is reminiscent of TNG 2.1, “The Child,” which was not TNG’s finest hour. I think I would rather watch that again, however, than this halfhearted slog. It’s okay, I guess?
Two more left!
2.5 of 5 shielded nodes looking like bendy straws.
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