“Allegiance”
Written by Richard Manning & Hans Beimler
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Season 3, Episode 18
Original air date: March 26, 1990
Star date: 43714.1
Mission summary
Picard’s chillaxin’ in his quarters, reading a book (or rather, sleeping with one) when a probe enters his room, scans him, and beams him away. When Picard awakes, he finds himself in a locked room with two others: a Bolian Starfleet cadet named Mitena Haro, and a milquetoast Mizarian named Kova Tholl.
They explain that they, too, are prisoners. Their captors seem to have provided food pucks but any attempts to escape–say, by messing with the door–are punished with lasers. No one has seen these captors, though, so Picard attempts to communicate by tapping out some prime numbers on the console. Maybe they’re listening, maybe not, but a fourth guest beams into their cozy little prison: a hairy, violent Chalnoth named Esoqq.
Back on the Enterprise, Picard has been replaced by a doppelganger with a little bit more style than the usual Picard. With no explanation, he has the crew set course for a random pulsar. They’re going to be late for an important date, but no matter: pulsars! Later, he stumbles into the crew’s poker game to tell Troi he’s worried the crew won’t follow or respect his unpredictable behavior. She assures him they’re all slaves to his authority and he shouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over the prospect of mutiny. Did I say mutiny?
Meanwhile, Esoqq discovers he can’t eat the food pucks, putting them all in the dangerous position of being potential food to a starving beast-like humanoid. Picard suggests they work together to dismantle the door, but a) that never works! and b) Tholl wants no part in it because he’s from a race of passive losers because that’s totally a thing that would ever exist. But he was right, and as soon as they seem to get the door open a crack they are all hit with lasers. Of course, at this point they all turn on each other. But realizing again that they have no choice, they decide to work together to disable the laser mechanism and get the door open again.
The crew starts to turn against the fake Picard when he leads Ten Forward in a rousing drinking song, invites Crusher to his quarters for an intimate dinner for two, and then finally orders the ship to approach the pulsar, where the shields will deteriorate and fail in just under 18 minutes. By now everyone knows something about this guy is a little off (not key, though–that’s pretty good), and the doppelganger suspects that they’ve been plotting something, too. He tries to relieve Riker from duty but Worf won’t obey. In fact, no one will obey! Damn anarchists! Riker takes command of the Enterprise and gets them out of there before the ship and all its crew are destroyed by the pulsar, and doesn’t at all seem to be worried about a court martial because hey, at least he’ll still be around.
Out in space prison, the four manage to successfully open the door only to find….another door! It’s doors all the way down, people. That’s it, Picard’s had enough. There is no escape, because it’s not really a prison–it’s a laboratory maze!
PICARD: It’s the only explanation. Look at the four of us. We do have something in common. We all react differently to authority. You, the collaborator, defer to whoever has control. You, the anarchist, reject authority in any form. I, a Starfleet Captain, trained to command. And you, a Starfleet cadet, sworn to obey a superior officer’s authority. Our captors have placed us here and have devised obstacles for us to overcome. They give us food which Esoqq can’t eat, to make him a threat. They give us a door we can’t open until the four of us co-operate. And each time we succeed, they deal us reverses to set us against each other again, while you observe our reactions.
The secret scientist aliens finally reveal themselves. It’s an experiment! And the guinea pigs don’t even get a lousy $10 for their time! Evil scientist aliens transport him back to the bridge and whine that he’s ruined their little experiment. They’re all identical and have no sense of authority and wanted to figure out what that was like. But Picard does NOT like to be kidnapped, cloned, and imprisoned, so while the aliens are blathering on about their problems, he silently indicates to his crew to trap the aliens in a forcefield.
PICARD: Imprisonment is an injury, regardless of how you justify it. And now that you have had a taste of captivity, perhaps you will reconsider the morality of inflicting it upon others. In any event, we now know about your race and we know how to imprison you. Bear that in mind. Now get off my ship.
They beam away, and then everyone gets in their nudge, nudge at the True Picard before the credits roll.
Analysis
Someone is clearly exacting obligatory college reading vengeance against Sartre by giving that setup a resolution, as flimsy and unsatisfying as it is.
I hate this episode. I hate that someone wrote this and thought it was anything other than an insipid, boring mess. I hate the four stupid prisoners that are only different enough to feel like an uninspired D&D campaign. I resent the monologue at the end that This is About X and You are a Symbol of A, and You are a Symbol of B. And I especially loathe that this is followed by “Captain’s Holiday,” but I guess on reflection I’d rather be trapped in a crappy existentialist ripoff than have to watch Picard and Vash again. (Speaking of: happy birthday, Eugene! Have a drink or five on me and Vash.)
I think what bothers me most is that I spend the entire episode thinking: I know what you think you’re doing. The aspiring winks, nudges and nods are more like slaps and blinking arrows. It’s like a big middle finger to anyone who likes thoughtful, literary science fiction. “You like metaphors? HERE! CHOKE ON THIS!” Granted, it’s supposed to be a fun character piece for Picard, but it’s not fun. It’s stupid. If a sultry flirt and a macho braggart are buried deep in Picard, it’s only because those things are buried deep in everyone, and that is a stupid revelation that no one over the age of thirteen should have put to paper. If that’s what they were going for–look at the secret thoughts of Picard!–they could have done it with a lot less swagger and a lot more subtlety. Instead, it seems like a long bender, as if he had encountered another space pox that dropped his inhibitions. Not only have we seen that before, but it was bad the first time!
Maybe I wouldn’t be so harsh if this hadn’t followed “Sins of the Father,” a great example of how to do a character piece. (Hint: Worf never says “You are all symbols of corruption and the destruction of immature idealism! I will not play your stupid game and look now it is all better, let’s lulz!”) Picard learns absolutely nothing, about himself or the universe, or anyone else in it. He doesn’t have to confront any aspect of himself, good or bad. The crew does, a little–but that’s not really Picard and it’s going to take more than a wink to get me to bridge that fake alien clone gap before I believe the clone’s actions mean much about who Picard truly is. Finally, the whole episode ends when Picard acts the sniveling child and does the same terrible thing to his enemy. Yeah, you actually get, hm, ZERO moral high ground for that move, Picard.
Oh, and on a world-building note? The Mizarians make no sense. If your people have been endlessly conquered, your actual culture is going to have been so subsumed by generations of conquering peoples that the “true” Mizarian culture would be… well probably something with slightly more complex notions of pacifism and cooperation than “Fighting bad! Meditation good!” Not that the alien scientists make any sense, either. Collective decision-making isn’t the absence of authority–on the contrary, it means deferring absolutely to the authority of the majority and making decisions based on that majority’s best interests. Even bees have a strong sense of hierarchy. And if these guys really didn’t understand the concept of authority, how did fake Picard imitate it so well?
Ick ick and blech. Your move, Vash.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 1 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: I thought about going positive and featuring Crusher and Picard’s date night outfits (which I love), but who can resist these scaly jerks? Poor actors, having sequined spandex vacuum-sealed to their all-too-human rears. The best part is Picard’s and Riker’s reactions. I feel ya, buddies.
Best Line: ESOQQ: My given name is Esoqq. It means “fighter.”
THOLL: I’ll bet half the names in the Chalnoth language mean fighter.
ESOQQ: Mizarians, your names all mean surrenderer!
Trivia/Other Notes: The song that the fake Picard sings in Ten Forward is “Heart of Oak,” the official march of the Royal Navy.
Esoqq’s costume was eventually altered–unrecognizably–into Morn’s getup on DS9.
The actors who play the surprise kidnappers in the end are real life twins. Can you tell? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 17 – “Sins of the Father.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 19 – “Captain’s Holiday.”
Torie, I suppose all you can do is console yourself that this is the price you had to pay for not getting stuck with “Captain’s Holiday”. This is really awful,like first season awful. Did they find the script stuck in the back of a filing cabinet?
And why is it that our oh so French captain is so very, very English? Not only does he prefer Earl Grey tea to wine, he sings British naval songs commemorating victories over the French. I can only conclude that the Academy has a club that really goes for that starships = tall ships thing (probably founded by Kirk). That would also explain why some of the puzzled people in Ten Forward seem to know the words, and also Worf’s promotion hazing in whichever movie that was.
And why no “space douches” tag?
You know I thought about that, and decided they weren’t really space douches. They’re not doing this for kicks. It feels more like “The Mark of Gideon” that way.
As for the British/French interbreeding, maybe there’s just a robust commercial trade? Yeah, I don’t know.
I think I would have actually preferred to get “Captain’s Holiday,” because at least with that one I have something to snark at. This is just… bleh.
Hell is Star Trek people.
As has been noted, what struck me was how much the Faux-Picard behaved like First Season Picard. Apparently, some biblewriter thinks there’s a naive and secretive, preening authoritarian living inside the captain that peeks out in moments when he is weak. That’s never been the aspect of Picard I’ve found intriguing.
This is one of those episodes that I had forgotten, and I’ll be happy to forget it again.
“Mark of Gideon” is an interesting analogy. But as convoluted and inane as the Gideon experiment was, you could kinda see how it miii-i-ight work, in a Rube Goldberg. Warner Bros cartoon way. These folks are more like the Vians in “The Empath,” where there’s NO WAY their experiment could ever actually possibly manifest into empirical results. Reminds me of a documentary I once saw on vivisection where they asked the scientists point blank what the purpose of the particular experiment was, and all they got back was glum silence and dumb looks. Like pulling the legs off a fly to see if it could walk.
What’s most interesting about those TOS examples is I can’t recall Captn Kirk, for all his reputation as a barbarian compared to Picard. ever turning the tables on a foe just ’cause he could, deliver a tit-for-tat, as Picard does here rather cruel and petty. Kirk talks both the Vians and the Gideons off the ledge, suggesting to both a more circumspect approach to their problems. Might be missing one, but the only instance that comes close is how TOS resolves the Tribble trouble with the Klingons… and that was Scotty’s idea.
I’m glad someone else thought it strange that notre capitaine was singing the Napoleonic Era Royal Navy Theme Song/Fight Song. Did they make Stewart come up with which song to sing himself, or are the writers just that ham-fisted?
The other striking thing to me here is all the ways this episode undercuts its own 20-pound-finger exposition. Picard declares that Esoqq is an anarchist, that Kai-Winn-Hood-Lizardman is a subservient follower… and yet which one of them spends all his time in the cell cooperating with whatever Picard suggests? Which one of them is pointlessly, petulantly defiant, Eeyore-the-Teen-Years, no matter how sensible Picard’s suggestions? And Torie noted that for people who don’t understand authority, these space scientists seem able to mimic a commanding captain pretty well…
Also, if these guys are constantly in contact, how do they even count as a separate race? They’re just one mind that happens to share a bunch of different bodies, Vernor Vinge style. My fingers and toes never felt obliged to kidnap a group of strangers to understand authority among them. Are the space scientists just, like, part of a unitary race that can’t conceptualize the existence of any other sentience in the Universe? I’m dubious.
If anything, they seem to have been experimenting with trolling: having Picard yank Crusher’s chain, teasing Geordi about efficiency, giving moronic and transparently pointless orders to the crew… what exactly are they trying to determine? It would’ve been better for them to say that the folks in the prison are just in prison to keep them from interfering with the experimentation run by the clones.
I actually like the setup for this and enjoyed some of the interactions in the room. It kind of evokes 12 Angry Men and The Twilight Zone‘s “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” and William Sleator’s House of Stairs and a bunch of other things. I dig putting characters with different perspectives into a room and forcing them to work out their differences or die, and having been on a hung jury, I can attest that emotions do run high. I was engaged for a good part of the episode, admiring that dialogue could be enough to carry an episode–except that it isn’t, here.
I had completely forgotten the whole clone element, which seems superficial anyway. I joked when the aliens scanned Picard at the beginning that they were photocopying him, and it turns out they kind of did. Mostly, I figure that if they can read his mind and know everything about the ship and its crew, then there’s no need to experiment at all–and they certainly shouldn’t affect the results by intentionally sabotaging them.
I think Lemnoc’s observation that this is a first season Picard is spot on, and the episode suffers from the same thoughtlessness that many of those early efforts did. Having remembered that the Bolian was the mole, this episode steadily lost my interest. I also hate the ending, but largely because it’s strange that such advanced aliens could be trapped so easily, or seem so naive and helpless at the end.
Warp 1 from me, too.
Here’s the thing: this whole “experiment” thing would’ve made perfect sense, in fact the entire episode could’ve made perfect sense, if the experimental subjects are not the people in the room, but rather everyone around the folks who got replaced.
There are hints of this–Picard giving bizarre orders to his crew to find out how far they will trust his authority and what behavioral strategies on his part reinforce bonds of trust (praising Geordi, making Troi feel important then ignoring her, doing some weird PUA crap with Crusher, etc…)
Then the “cell” should just be a holding chamber where they’re keeping the real folks out of the way while the doubles (mis)run their lives and test on their friends. You’d also want to eliminate the “mole” in the imprisoned group.
This is all salvageable. They just got the plan backwards.
I’ll give this episode one thing: at least the crew is more on the ball when it comes to fake-Picard’s crazy behavior. It’s a refreshing contrast to the 1st season episode “Lonely Among Us” where fake-Picard’s behavior is far more dangerous but the crew wrings their hands interminably wondering whatever to do until it’s too late.