"Lonely Among Us" is one of the most ridiculous episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season. It's also one of my favourites. Not of the series, because trust me, there are plenty of episodes that are way better than this one is, but I had this episode on VHS when I was a kid, along with most of TNG season 1 and I watched it all of the time growing up. I even remember either taking the tape with me when I had to go to the hospital for an extended stay, or I asked my parents to bring it in for me. Along with the Collector's Edition VHS tapes for "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Naked Now"/"Code of Honor". And then there were the numerous viewings of the tape at home too.
Of all of the first season episodes, this one is the one that I feel is the most like an episode of TOS rather than a TNG episode. A) because the way they use the Transporter to recover Captain Picard at the end is the way they would've used it on TOS in a few of the earliest episodes of TOS before they'd established the definitive way for the Transporter to operate, and B) transporting two sets of delegates amidst a shipboard crisis is also a TOS thing that they did a couple of times. Oh and the captain being invaded by some alien being is also something that has happened on TOS at least once.
Which brings me to the first thing that I wanted to bring up in this quick trip down memory lane. Why did the energy entity attack Worf and kill Engineer Singh but only invade Doctor Crusher and Picard? Was there something about Worf that made it attack him? At least when it inhabited Captain Picard, it expressed it's sorrow at having accidentally killed Singh during it's speech to the bridge crew, but made no apologies for attacking Worf. Hm, it must not like Klingons very much.
When I was a kid and it got to the few scenes in the corridors of the Enterprise, I assumed that the lights were out because of the random systems malfunctions that were occurring, because even as Picard was escaping, the lights in the corridor outside the Transporter Room were off though they were on when the Selay beamed aboard at the beginning of the episode. But as I grew older I realized that the lights were off in the corridors in the areas where the Selay and the Anticans were located, which makes sense, because the quarters that the Anticans were in, were also darkened and the corridor scenes happened to include the Selay and the Anticans in them. So that would make a little more sense than my thoughts as to why the lights were off in the corridors, but not in places like the bridge, sickbay, engineering and Riker's quarters in a scene that I'm going to be talking about momentarily. It was just the corridors and the quarters of the delegates.
So when the senior staff was planning their possible mutiny should Picard prove to be dangerous due to his sudden change in behaviour and demeaner, why wasn't Yar there? She's the ship's chief of security and ship's safety is her job. I know why Worf wasn't there, but I'll get into that in a bit, but it's weird to me that Yar wasn't there. Especially since La Forge is a lower rank than Yar is, but he was there, as were Troi and Crusher, even though neither of them are part of the ship's command structure at this point. It makes sense for Crusher to be there though since she is Chief Medical Officer.
This is the first episode where it's established that Worf, despite his position being backup bridge officer, isn't actually a member of Picard's senior staff as he's considered to be a junior officer at the rank of Lieutenant (junior grade). Yet, La Forge is also a Lieutenant (junior grade) is considered to be a senior officer. Which is strange to me, because despite Geordi's seniority in rank, when they're chatting in the sensor maintenance room, Worf calls him by his first name instead of calling him "sir" as he does any superior officer that he is talking to. So naturally, as a kid I just assumed both La Forge and Worf were junior officers. But nope, that is not the case at all.
One of the things that I found interesting about this episode is that during one of his briefing sessions with Picard, Riker mentions that there's a saboteur aboard the Enterprise and that all it would take is for the Ferengi to bribe a member of one of the delegations to sabotage the ship and that would be it. Both in production order and airdate order this episode takes place after "The Last Outpost" which is the first appearance of the Ferengi, where Picard had beaten them and so it would make sense for them to want to take out the Enterprise. This is also when the Ferengi were being written as being more of a threat than they would be portrayed as later on in TNG and on DS9. Which is something they'd been building on since "Encounter at Farpoint".
Final Thoughts and Rating: "Lonely Among Us" is never going to be the greatest episode of any Star Trek show ever. However it is one that I grew up watching on VHS all the time. I'm going to give "Lonely Among Us" 5/10 stars. It's not great, it's not horrible, but it is pretty bad, which is kind of how I'd describe most episodes in the first season of TNG.
No comments:
Post a Comment