In which wedding bells almost toll for Deanna Troi, and Picard gets his gumshoe on.
Apologies first off for being a day late with this. The start of school threw me off a tad. Mea culpa to the two people who anxiously await these posts every Friday. Anyway, this is a mixed bag week of TNG, with one of my least favorites so far balanced by one of the best.
Episode 11: “Haven”
Ugh. Aside from the barrel-scraping “Code of Honor”, “Haven” has been my least favorite episode of TNG so far. The episode has some cool ideas floating around, but they never come together and wind up overshadowed by all the annoying stuff.
Part of the problem (aside from Worf being absent, which is balanced by the absence of Wesley Crusher: Boy Wonder [TM]) is that the episode focuses on Counselor Troi without really adding anything new to her character. Troi is still one of the most problematic characters on the show for me – aside from Martina Sirtis’ distractingly wooden acting, she has not been as well developed as characters like Data or even Geordi. She’s around to sense feelings (and, thanks to her revealing outfits, cause them in adolescent boys) and make doe eyes at Riker, and that seems to be about it.
At first it seems like “Haven” might add some layers to Troi’s character. As the Enterprise heads toward the planet Haven, where some R&R is in order, news comes that Deanna Troi is expected to get married to a guy she’s never met. See, a long time ago she was pledged to the son of her father’s best friend, and now the family has come to collect on that debt. This entails a wedding aboard the Enterprise, complete with naked ceremonies a la Betazoid tradition. Deanna’s mother Lwaxanna beams aboard to “help”, AKA be as overbearing as possible in an attempt to illustrate how “truthful” (read: tactless) Betazoids can be.
Meanwhile Deanna’s intended Wyatt winds up a bit disappointed, since Deanna is brunette and the woman who has been haunting his dreams for years is a blonde. They get over that awkwardness and seem to be heading towards a pleasant enough arranged marriage (he’s a kind soul, a doctor who loves curing disease), but then a silent and sinister starship hurtles (well, it’s at sub warp speed, so… crawls?) toward Haven. Everyone’s pretty sure it contains the last survivors of a humanoid race infected by biological warfare.
If you don’t see where this is going, you need to gain a sense of reMorse so you can pick up on the telegraphing: the blonde woman visiting Wyatt’s dreams is one of the people aboard the infected ship – and she’s been dreaming of him too. Wyatt goes to Lwaxanna for advice, and she tells him that this is not surprising since – I’m not making this up – everything in the universe is connected. He decides to beam aboard the ship and devote his life to curing others of the disease and/or dying when his true love infects him. How touching.
Added to this jumble of groan worthy cliches the grating performance of Majel Barrett as Lxwanna. Granted, she’s supposed to be grating – one of the simmering tensions of the episode is how smothering a presence she is – but Barrett misses the lightness of touch that would make those qualities bearable. She has the bluster but not the comic deftness of a Margaret Dumont. The only plus of this episode is that Lxwanna’s manservant is played by the giant from Twin Peaks. Which is awesome. The rest of it can disappear.
Episode 12: The Big Goodbye
I am almost always a fan of shows exploring past eras. TNG, conveniently featuring a Holodeck, comes preloaded with this sort of scenario, and it makes great use of it in this fun episode. Picard, stressed about an impending diplomatic greeting with a touchy insectoid race whose language is only slightly easier to pronounce than German, decides to relax in the Holodeck by playing out a scenario as Dixon Hill, a hardboiled P.I. in ’40s Frisco. After a test run, Picard returns in costume, with Data and some noob an “Enterprise 20th Century/fiction expert” named Whalen in tow. Even Dr. Crusher comes along to fulfill the necessary femme fatale role.
Unfortunately an insect probe screws up the Holodeck, and the crew gets stuck inside an increasingly sticky scenario, as the police grill Picard over a murdered woman and some gangsters show up to take possession of “the item”. Eventually Wesley Crusher: Boy Wonder [TM] swoops to the rescue, allowing the crew to reenter reality, but not before the main gangster (a snarling, perfect Lawrence Tierney) and his sycophantic lackey (Harvey Jason as a poor man’s Peter Lorre) attempt to walk onto the Enterprise and wind up vaporized.
Maybe it’s just my love for noir and hardboiled crime, but this episode really worked for me. Though it attempts to create some stakes, it’s mostly just a fun romp through virtual reality. Patrick Stewart gets to strut around as a tough guy detective, and of course Data doing anything silly with gusto is inherently amazing. The episode even gets a little touching near the end, as the Holodeck characters realize they are not real. The police detective who helps Picard asks if he and his family will still exist after the captain leaves. Picard almost approaches actual emotions when he replies that he does not know.
Noir trappings aside, the best thing about the episode is the simmering sexual tension between Crusher and Picard. From the beginning TNG has suggested that something lingers between them, either a real or longed for past. This episode highlights those desires without making them explicit. Considering how long the show lasted I am glad they adopted a marathon-not-sprint attitude to the relationship, but it’s nice to see a little simmer between two people not named Troi and Riker.
Wesley Crusher Hideous Sweater Fan Club Weekly Notes: As noted Wes is not in “Haven”, and he sadly sports the same olive/rainbow sweater as last week. I mean, I love that ratty thing, but do some laundry sometime, kid.
