“Conspiracy”
Teleplay by Tracy Tormé
Story by Robert Sabaroff
Directed by Cliff Bole
Season 1, Episode 25
Original air date: May 9, 1988
Star date: 41775.5
Mission summary
The Enterprise crew is excited about taking yet another shore leave on Waterworld Pacifica under the guise of a “scientific mission.” They’re goofing off and telling inappropriate jokes on the Bridge when a top secret communiqué rains on their parade: a Code 47 on the Starfleet Emergency Broadcast System, for the captain’s eyes only. Riker wakes up Picard to take the important call, which is from one of his oldest living friends, Captain Walker Keel of the U.S.S. Horatio. He has an ominous warning for Picard: Trust no one. They agree to rendezvous in person at an old mining planet, Dytallix B, which is almost as good as a planet of beautiful oceans and beaches, if you’re a Horta anyway.
The ship arrives to find three other Federation ships in orbit, the Horatio and two frigates, with their three captains waiting on the surface. Picard beams down alone to join Keel and Captains Tryla Scott and Rixx. Keel asks him a series of personal questions designed to prove his identity before disclosing that his secretive group is concerned about irregular orders coming from the highest ranks of Starfleet Command and mysterious, “accidental” deaths. Keel even suspects that his own crew has been compromised.
Picard is skeptical as he resumes their mission to Pacifica, but he assigns Data to a fun research project: reviewing all of Starfleet’s orders for the last six months. Keel’s talk of conspiracy gains some credibility when they discover the wreckage of the Horatio, and Picard is even more convinced when Data informs him that there is something hinky going on at Starfleet, potential signs of infiltration by alien invaders. Remembering Admiral Quinn’s warnings several episodes ago, the captain decides to return to Earth to sort things out personally.
At home, they get a lukewarm welcome from Admirals Savar, Aaron, and Quinn, but there isn’t anything overtly suspicious. Picard accepts a dinner invitation to share his concerns with them in private, and Quinn invites himself to the ship—which Picard interprets as an attempt to speak to him alone. Little does he know that Quinn is bringing a little friend with him, an alien bug-worm thing in a convenient carrying case planned as a gift for Dr. Crusher. Quinn is such a romantic.
Once the admiral is aboard, Picard brings up his previous conversation about a threat to the Federation, but Quinn backpedals and tells him he’s mistaken. Everything’s fine! Couldn’t be better. Yeah, Picard isn’t fooled though. He tells Riker that Quinn has been replaced somehow and orders him to watch the old guy while he beams down for dinner.
Riker watches Quinn as the admiral handily beats the crap out of him for asking “What’s in the case?” Quinn says it holds a “superior” life form that was discovered on an uncharted planet, which would like to get to know Riker better. You know, for his mind. Worf and La Forge rush to Riker’s aid. Quinn knocks out Worf even more quickly than he did Riker and flings La Forge around for good measure, but he eventually succumbs to multiple shots from Dr. Crusher’s phaser.
Meanwhile, at Starfleet headquarters, Captain Picard should really be picking up on the fact that he’s in trouble. When he tells the Vulcan admiral that Riker will join them for dinner shortly, Savar says in a very ominous voice, “Yes, I’m sure he will.” He also says “We’ve prepared a special dinner in your honor.” But Picard was more the Shakespeare in the Park type than a horror movie buff, so he takes him at his creepy, creepy word—until Dr. Crusher contacts him with the startling news that Quinn’s mind had been taken over by a parasitic alien wrapped around his brainstem.
Apparently you can detect that someone has been taken over by a “blue gill” protruding from the base of his neck—or by his strange appetite for mealworms. Starfleet should really fire their Ferengi chef. Picard is put off by the meal; the worms are a little rarer than he likes, and he had a big lunch, which he’s in danger of losing at the table. Foolishly without a phaser—after all, “one does not beam down to Starfleet headquarters armed”—he tries to escape, but he’s stopped by Riker, who not only beamed down to Starfleet Headquarters armed, but also seems to have drunk the mealworm Kool-Aid.
The admirals are surprised that he was chosen, but welcome him as their wormy brethren. Captain Scott soon joins them and they all chat about their plan to conquer the Federation from within, while Riker plays with his food. Then he pulls a phaser and shoots the nameless guy across from him. Riker was just pretending the whole time! He and Picard manage to disable everyone else quickly, sending their convincingly-animated parasites scuttling from their mouths.
They follow one of them to a control room, where Quinn’s assistant Remmick is studying a star chart. They try to warn him as the parasite crawls into his mouth… for shelter? Ew. He rises from his seat, neck pulsating, and reassures them:
“You don’t understand. We mean you no harm. We seek peaceful coexistence.”
Spoken like a true parasite. Picard and Riker fire on him. His head explodes and a large mother alien bursts from his chest, which they also blow up, leaving a grotesque, headless corpse. Well, they never liked this guy anyway.
Back on Enterprise, Admiral Quinn is recovering, his own parasite now gone for some reason. Everything is awesome again, and boy could they use shore leave now. But Data has some chilling news.
DATA: Captain, I have attempted to trace the message Remmick was sending. I believe it was aimed at an unexplored sector of our galaxy.
LAFORGE: Any idea what the message was, Data?
DATA: I believe it was a beacon.
PICARD: A beacon?
DATA: Yes, sir. A homing beacon, sent from Earth.
Dun dun dun.
Analysis
I’ve always loved this episode, perhaps because it’s so different from your usual Star Trek episode, but that is admittedly one of its drawbacks as well—it doesn’t quite fit in, especially with TNG, and this time around I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.
The first half of the episode effectively builds a compelling and ominous tone that there’s a major threat to the Federation, working from within, but it really isn’t all that different from what was already accomplished in its precursor, “Coming of Age.” In pre-DS9 days, any hint that anything dark was going on at Starfleet was intriguing but anomalous; I’m kind of surprised that this plotline was approved at all, although of course, the darkness comes from outside our perfect Federation. It seems very ambitious, like it’s all building to something dire and important, but not only does the episode fail to deliver on that promise, but the dangling plot threads are never picked up again.
It’s somewhat disappointing when the enemy ends up being bug-like critters that have to be carried around in boxes, and badly rendered ones at that. These things are almost as bad as the puppets in the original series episode “Catspaw.” I like horror movies in this vein, like Night of the Creeps and Slither, and I also like stop motion animation something fierce, but there is nothing convincing about these creatures—unlike, say, the Ceti eels in Star Trek II which are very similar in form and function. This is campy B-movie schlock at best, and the episode goes for cheap horror movie tricks, like the alarming POV on Dr. Crusher in Sickbay when Riker approaches (a clumsy bit of misdirection for the viewer) to the frankly gratuitous exploding Remmick at the end, which did hold some appeal to the 13-year-old me during his campy B-movie phase.
The episode is just plain sloppy. Why do they show us Quinn with the parasite in the transporter room, when it only undercuts its later reveal? Why does Quinn tip his hand and attack first Riker, then Worf and La Forge, with only the mildest provocation? Picard and Riker have a private conversation about Quinn being replaced—while a transporter tech is in the room with them!
Also, and this is a big ALSO, those Starfleet regulation haircuts should make the tails protruding out of their necks so noticeable, but we only see them once the plot mentions that they exist. And I know we pick on Counselor Troi a lot, but why the hell didn’t she notice any of this going on around her, not when they talk to the admirals onscreen or when Quinn comes on board. Is identifying alien mind control above her pay grade?
The admirals on Earth are generic, ludicrous, obvious villains who also choose to reveal their plan to Picard for some unknown reason by serving him a bowlful of wriggling worms. This little exchange is pure wishful thinking on the part of the script writer:
SAVAR: Patience is one of our virtues, Captain. We didn’t go after you, we allowed you to come after us.
AARON: More dramatic that way, don’t you think?
TRYLA: Yes, the one thing both races share is a love of theatre. And you’ve put on a fine show.
No, this isn’t more dramatic, and this isn’t a fine show. And the whole matter of the parasites just begs all sorts of other questions. How did these bug things learn to love theater? Why do they all die or disappear or whatever when their momma parasite is killed? I know the ending makes them seem like some terrible threat, but how dangerous are they really? They need host bodies and can be killed pretty easily, it seems. For all their strength and cunning, Picard’s response to Data’s announcement should have been, “Bring it.”
Basically, all this episode does is make Starfleet look inept and present the Enterprise and her crew as better than pretty much everyone. At the same time, I applaud the diversity in Starfleet: We see a Bolian captain—before we know who the Bolians are—as well as our first woman captain on TNG, and they even go so far as to elevate her above Captain Kirk, as the youngest captain in history. That’s bold. Speaking of bold, Riker is particularly brazen, bluffing his way into a dinner hosted by enemy parasites, though I don’t know why he waits until he nearly has to eat worms to fire on them. I also like that it takes Dr. Crusher to bring down Admiral Quinn and essentially figure everything out in a couple of minutes.
As much as I still overall enjoyed this one, it’s really just a whole lot of tone and style over substance, just a pale Invasion of the Body Snatchers ripoff with special effects on par with a 1950s SF flick and no lasting consequences.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: This is tricky, because pretty much everyone in this episode is wearing a Starfleet uniform. The only exception is when Picard is out of uniform–way out–and we get to see more of him than we have before. (Still nothing on the order of “Chain of Command,” of course.) Really, is this any way to answer a video call, especially one that could potentially be from one of your superiors? I get the feeling his BFF Walker Keel has seen it all before. And by the way, who designed a communication station that flashes a pulsing bright orange light in your face while you’re talking? Or is this the equivalent of a VCR blinking 12:00 and Picard just hasn’t figured out how to change the settings yet?
Best Line: WORF: “Swimming is too much like… bathing.”
Trivia/Other Notes: The original plot of this episode, as set up in “Coming of Age,” concerned a military coup within Starfleet to parallel the Iran-Contra affair. Gene Roddenberry insisted that the alien parasites be introduced to explain the inconsistencies within the Federation, thus protecting its spotless reputation.
This episode was censored in the UK, cutting several minutes of the show, including Remmick’s grisly death. It is also the only TNG episode to receive a viewer discretion warning in Canada.
The star chart Remmick studies was reused in many later TNG episodes and even appeared in another series: the BBC’s The Sarah Jane Adventures… perhaps suggesting a link between the Star Trek and Doctor Who universes?
Astonishingly, this episode received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup for a Series.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 24 – “We’ll Always Have Paris.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 26 – “The Neutral Zone.”
Hey, everybody. Remember that totally boring and pointless B-plot from a few weeks ago? It was mysterious and intriguing and you were totally invested in it and want to know more, right? No? Ummm…
Eugene is incredibly generous here. The plot makes no sense, there was no real tension and the parasites are a really weak diablus ex machina. Trek universe writers seem to have really wanted to do a corrupt government arc. It happened a lot in DS9, between the Founders’ infiltration and the unresolved Section 31 arc. This is just ham-fisted and clearly shows Roddenberry’s grubby fingerprints all over it. Heck, even the signal the bad guys manage to send off never comes to anything. That and a couple of throw away lines in the next episode were supposed to foreshadow the Borg (who were supposed to be insectile until they realized the budget couldn’t handle that), but all that got abandoned and it took Q to bring them in. At least they realized the Ferengi weren’t cutting it as major villains.
I can’t give this more than a 1. It might be slightly better than that, but Warp 2 is far too generous and we don’t do fractional warps.
I remember liking this episode, but time has not worn well upon it. I don’t have th excuse of being 13 when it aired, but I have always been a horror movie fan and anytime someone tries to do horror I will pay attention.
Sadly, I have to agree with mnost of the faults of this episode and toss in a few of my own. So, after the alien Quinn (Sort of like the Might Quinn but not as cool) starts fighting with Riker ’cause it was missing a good wrestle, Riker calls for a secuirty team. Apparently now that Yar is dead Secuirty figures that they don’t have work at all, cause all Riker gets for his emergency distress call is 1 klingon and a helmsman, neither armed. Who does show up, and armed? the doctor, does that seem right to you? I do wonder just how likely it is that a parasite could remain hidden in a transporter equipped society. I mean would it show up on the logs. (Sir? Captain Jansen seem to be two life forms.)
All that said I adore the alien final line, throwing backthe Federation’s ideology into their face.
All in all a substandard but not horrid episode.
Hey, in a season of thin gruel, this is porridge with fruit in it!
I raised this point in comments on “Coming of Age,” but to what extent did Picard’s refusal to “help out” by accepting the assignment as Superintendent of Starfleet Academy lead directly to the deaths of the admiral, his adjutant, and the crew of Walker Keel’s boat and others? I’m assuming they had a reason for wanting to install him in that position, and from what we know of Picard, he would have been vital there and might have preempted a lot of needless deaths.
When told a grave threat faced the Federation, Picard never gave the request a second thought….
One thing I really liked about this episode, then and now, was the idea that some analytic process like Data’s could examine a complex system of transfers and movements and uncover a conspiracy that made sense of it all. Like you could watch all the puts and shorts on the stock market and suddenly understand and anticipate its manipulations. It was an intriguing idea (as is, frankly, the vaguely unsettling idea that Starfleet could be so subtly manipulated and corroded from within its own ranks), and one that really showcased the peculiar gifts of Data. Pinocchio has his uses, and here he shines.
What was the ultimate purpose of those transfers and reassignments? And how did Starfleet go about unwinding their deleterious effects?
@1 DemetriosX
Shackled as they were to the Roddenberry vision, this was probably the fruit of the forbidden tree.
Say, is this the first episode where Picard bares his chest? He does that a lot, not like Kirk for the purposes of half-naked man wrestling, but for lounging. It seems like just about anytime he’s being casual, he’s wearing a short robe tied so that it shows off his chest down to just above his navel. It’s probably worthy of its own tag.
I seem to recall there being a viewer warning here in the US, as well.
Basically, all this episode does is make Starfleet look inept and present the Enterprise and her crew as better than pretty much everyone.
This isn’t new. Every Trek offering seems to take great pains to show Our Heroes in a better light by making sure everyone else in Starfleet apparently got their positions by merit of perfect attendance, or something.
I kind of love this episode–not because it’s good, but because it tries something totally different. It’s actually a little tense because you’re not sure how things are going to play out, and the whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers plot is just plain creepy. The “dinner” scene especially sticks with me, years after seeing it. But I think Eugene really hit the nail on the head here: it just doesn’t fit. The tone is all wrong. It’s schlocky but it takes itself too seriously.
I am also having a difficult time wrapping my head around some of the events. If Remmick is the queen mum alien, does that mean that Quinn was taking him around infecting the universe in “Coming of Age”? Why does Parasite!Quinn show his hand, like, immediately? And why do the parasites take so long to go after Picard?
Like Lemnoc, I really enjoyed the use of Data as a pattern-spotter. It’s clever and interesting, and shows that every conspiracy has a plan, somewhere. Re: the purposes of the assignments/transfers, I assume they were slowly setting their own people up in positions of power, so that they could take over in concert later.
I’m giving this a Warp 3, for two reasons: I still really enjoy watching it, and it still seriously squicks me. The night I watched this I had nightmares that I was in a Conspiracy/The Tommyknockers crossover involving chest-bursting worms. Yeeeech.
@ 1 DemetriosX
I wonder: how did you like the whole changeling arc on DS9? DId that also not work for you?
@ 2 bobsandiego
The transporter issue also really bugged me. It’s not like this was even a virus–it’s a physical worm wrapped around his spinal cord.
@ 3 Lemnoc
Seeing as Quinn has drunk the mealworm Kool-Aid, I assume that if Picard had accepted the transfer he’d be one of them, too.
@ 5 DemetriosX
I’m sure he’s done it earlier in Season 1. But you’re right, it deserves a tag. Suggestions?
@ 6 S. Hutson Blount
I dunno, maybe they’re all really good at analogies and algebra…
@torie 8
Oh I can retcon the transporter issue *as shown* in this episode. We only see Quinn being transported by Starfleet’s systems. We can assume the transporter crew is compromised and not reporting passengers. Arriving in Enterprise’s transporter room is just social convention for a poliet way to beam over. But I think on a wider scale this would quickly break down
Also what about Code 47, don’t you just love that any captain can send orders and transmission off the grid and starfleet will be totally in the dark? Man they trust their officers !
@8 Torie Atkinson
Not our Captain Picard! He drinks nobody’s Kool-Aid!
He shrugged off the effects of the Borg… and curiously afterward [in First Contact] seemed intent on killing everyone in his command before they might have a chance to do likewise :-(
Man Boobs? ‘Bro-sierre’? Camel—er, Captain’s Toe?
@8 Torie:
No, I really liked the changeling arc in DS9. It worked, it made sense. The Founders had ample opportunities to scout things out before replacing someone, since they could be a bird or, I don’t know, a wall hanging or something. More importantly, the arc was less about the actual infiltration than it was about Starfleet’s reaction to it. That made it a story and not just an action flick stretched out over a couple of weeks. This was just a really weak Body Snatchers imitation that had no real connection to the rest of the universe.
On the Picard tag, I’m not sure. “Half-naked Picard lounging” parallels nicely with “half-naked man-wrestling”, though I’m not sure he always lounges. “Picard bares his chest” lacks snark. I’m afraid I got nothing.
The only suggestion I have for Picard’s chest-baring tag is “make it show”.
I give Eugen the trophy
@ 13 Eugene
Done. What were the other bathrobe episodes? I’m sure it’s come up before.
I’ve been to Pacifica. It’s really foggy, though I guess it’d be all right for shore leave if you’re there in the afternoon once the sun comes out.
Beyond that, yeah. This is a very, very, very poor man’s version of The Puppet Masters and every other brain-invasion plot that’s ever been done, and they didn’t even have the guts to kill off most of the possessed folks.
At least we get to see Riker and Picard having utterly no remorse about gunning down a fellow Starfleet officer. Glad that moral decision carried a lot of weight.
@15 Torie
I thought this was the first time we’ve seen his chest, but it will happen many more times later. I could be wrong though. My best bet would have been “The Battle,” but no. I feel like up until now, he’s always slept in his uniform. I guess we could re-watch them all again, just to be sure…
Never liked this one. Stupid bugs, cheap knockoff of the Khan worms, bad animation, stupid conspirators. Why does the stupid admiral-worm go all asskicking? if he’d waited til Riker got close, he could have just held him down and fed him the worm, no call for security, no armed doctors and useless ops and helm officers, then Riker helps him feed Crusher the worm, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on, a la the stupid Game episode and too many Clairol commercials. He takes the only thing that makes him a danger, the stealth aspect that we don’t know he’s been compromised, and throws it away well before it would have been useful to do so. Hell, he could have just told Riker it was a personal present for Crusher from a relative, and that he didn’t feel he could open it. Duh.
Gawds, I’ve become the grumpy old curmudgeonette of this rewatch, huh?
But really. These early seasons are just so uneven, so HORRIBLE when they’re bad, and only decent when they’re (all too rarely) good. Nothing we’ve looked at has made me have any regret for not watching this show when it came out, but waiting for reruns and DVDs to catch it. I know there’s better coming later, I’ve seen it, but wow. This one’s got more loose threads than my Super-Friends towel.
@ CaitieCait #18
He takes the only thing that makes him a danger, the stealth aspect that we don’t know he’s been compromised, and throws it away well before it would have been useful to do so.
Well, to be fair, this one does have an easy answer — he’s got worms for brains! : )
Seriously though, these conspirators execute their plans so awfully that you wonder how they ever got this off the ground. Starfleet cannot help but come off looking bad through this exchange, in spite of Roddenberry, because they’re so perfect they don’t suspect they can be compromised. Their perfection falls apart on its own self-contradictions.
I saw the dinner scene here as a takeoff of the dinner scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. At the same time, I was bothered by the concept that this was what the infected/infiltrated people ate. Did I miss something – did those people also eat normal Human foods but ate the worms when the parasite needed food? If not, then two things. Why didn’t anyone notice? Can the Human body survive on a diet of just worms and liquids?
I can’t help thinking that they missed a bigger storytelling opportunity by going with the new race alien invasion rather than using this episode as the second act leading to the next episode. You have the suggestion that something is amiss in Coming of Age, evidence falling into place in Conspiracy then the reveal in The Neutral Zone. That could have led to an interesting series of developments in the next season. Political/economic battles rather than open warfare between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Though, they at least went with a more interesting invader with the Borg. Going with these bugs would have just been stretching The Pod People / Puppet Masters story out much longer than needed.
The only thing this episode was missing was Deanna in the transporter room while Riker & Co. were getting their heads step-kicked in by Old Man Quinn, observing, “There’s menace behind his smile!”
I still enjoy this episode. As everyone said already, it’s not the best ‘Body snatcher’ rip off ever, but for TNG at this point it was pretty daring ( enough to get some viewers up in arms sending letters of protest over the gore ).
I liked it because it was the first TNG episode to give me the uneasy feeling that some of the creepier TOS installments did. “Where No Man…” “Lights Of Zetar”, even “Charlie X” have some unsettling moments that used to give me the shivers as a kid. This was probably the first episode I saw that I felt that there was a real threat to the characters and the fabric of the Federation.
I also think I liked it BECAUSE it was so different from what they’d been doing up to this point. It may have been a half-baked retread, but at least it wasn’t a half-baked retread of TOS (“cough’…The Big Goodbye/ A Piece Of The Action…Homesoil/The Devil In The Dark ).
“Also what about Code 47, don’t you just love that any captain can send orders and transmission off the grid and starfleet will be totally in the dark? Man they trust their officers !”
In a sense, this too was almost a throwback to an original series idea: The ships of Starfleet on the frontier, out of communication with Earth ( at least until they can just turn around and head home every other episode of this series…starting with this one ).
I’m with those who like this episode more than they should because I was in junior high when I saw it first and, even with the crummy stop-motion animation and the cheesy exploding-Remmick effects, I thought it was creepy and disquieting. But, yeah, it’s full of holes. Not much more for me to add there.
Well, there is this. The episode conveys the odd impression that Starfleet employs, like, a half-dozen people. I know that the limitations of the television format (and television budget) makes it difficult to convey the sense of a huge organization using (say) enormous sets and dozens of extras milling about. And I suppose that the emptiness of the Starfleet sets adds to the creepiness.
TNG Trek would eventually do more effective horror episodes; they were never *really* great at it–this wasn’t “X Files”–but they successfully creeped me out a couple more times.
“Well, there is this. The episode conveys the odd impression that Starfleet employs, like, a half-dozen people. I know that the limitations of the television format (and television budget) makes it difficult to convey the sense of a huge organization using (say) enormous sets and dozens of extras milling about. And I suppose that the emptiness of the Starfleet sets adds to the creepiness.”
I didn’t actually re-watch this before commenting ( I’ve seen it enough times that I have pretty strong memories of it ), but didn’t one of the characters ( Picard?) actually make a comment on how empty the halls were?
Probably one of my favorite episodes of season 1. Yep, that’s not saying much. I too felt a creepiness even on the re-watch but something about the entire thing felt forced. Oh really?! The 1701-D comes half way across the Alpha quadrant back to sector 001; probably the only hope the Federation has and just happens to save the entire, vast Federation. Again. Great.
Something tells me they should have targeted the Klingon empire. They wouldn’t have noticed any hostile takeover bid. Down with Kempec!!
Warp factor 4. A really sliding asymmetrical curvy season 1 grade mind you.
—-a good episode for the first season—why didn’t we see those bugs again?—their bigger cousins were in starship troopers—
@20 Ludon
The question of food really, uh, bugged me too. I finally decided that I guess the worm things were able to catch the food from the back of the mouth before the humans swallowed them, not that this makes a whole lot more sense.
@24 Dep1701
Yes, Picard wonders where everyone is and Remmick comes up with an unconvincing excuse, something like, “It’s a slow night. There were a lot of people here before.” But hey, that does still beg the question: Where are they? Have they been killed? Eaten? Imprisoned? Taken over?
@24 ShameAndFailure
I came close to giving this a Warp 4. I still think it’s up there among the “best” episodes of the season, but as so often happens, it falls just short of being completely satisfying.
@26 lane arnold
The only good bug is a dead bug!
@27 Eugene: Maybe they gave them all the night off. Only kept compromised personnel to run the shop. Still, you are correct. Wouldn’t some of the people who haven’t been taken over start telling friends and comrades that there was something screwy going on with the scheduling at Starfleet HQ?
@26 : I too thought it was a shame that there wasn’t a sequel building on this episode. Just as there were other much better episodes which built on the events of weaker ones later in the series, this one had the potential to be really special ( think “Alien and “Aliens” ). Especially with the improved effects and writing of the 3rd and 4th years.
@29 Dep1701
I once plotted out a script for DS9 where a bunch of those alien wormthings would have slipped onto the station in a shipment from the Gamma Quadrant, thanks to Nog and Jake. I never got around to writing it, but it would have been interesting if they had picked up the storyline on DS9 or even Voyager at some point. Ah well.
This episode is one of the things that kept me from watching Star*Next. It wasn’t just that it seemed to be a rehash of Alien, a film I had assiduously avoided because I know what gives me nightmares. It was Captain Scott.
I started out being deeply impressed that a woman of color was shown to have outdone James T. I was looking forward to seeing her kick ass in this and future episodes. I forgot that there’s these patterns by which such characters are expendable … well, fan blogger Avalon’s Willow says it better than I do.
“My historic strong female captain is Tryla Scott. She appeared on screen long before Janeway, was highly respected by her peers; was in fact the youngest officer to gain the post of Captain in quite a while. And ends up possessed, controlled, shot and never heard from again.” From “Open Letter to Elizabeth Bear“, on the blog Seeking Avalon, 2009-01-13.
The biggest issue I had with this episode was that, knowing Starfleet Headquarters has been overrun with freaky neck parasites, why would Riker beam down to rescue Picard BY HIMSELF? Didn’t Picard tell him to come down “in force” if necessary?
Otherwise it was alright.