Haven (S1 ep 11)

I never noticed this until I was way into this rewatch, but Troi looks pretty much exactly like my first wife did. No wonder I'm not thrilled with her character. The disastrously awful portrayal of Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher to date has probably taken a lot of the venom away from Troi in my mind, but when the whole episode is about her, well, it's hard to hide her character in the background.

And listen, I liked Troi just fine when I was watching the show when I was younger. But I never paid that much attention to how much nonsense her character is capable of spewing forth. I'm thinking this got toned down in a major way over the 7 years of this show's run.

I don't have very many strong memories about the first time I saw this episode, but I do remember thinking it was funny that Picard couldn't carry the suitcase at the beginning of the episode, then being really tickled when Lurch... um, actually, the Valet, picked it up as an afterthought after Picard nearly threw out his back trying to drag that thing around.

So it very quickly became clear that Picard and Data where far and away the most charismatic characters on the show early on. Worf became a fan favorite later, and Geordi and Riker and the rest certainly had their moments. But there is no denying that Picard and Data were going to be the core of the show, even in these very early episodes. This one, obviously, hammers that point home, because while it's an episode all about Troi, it's jammed packed full of Picard and Data stuff too.

And this episode appears to have been an attempt at outright comedy. God, I hope this wasn't an attempt at a dramatic one. The B story in Lonely Among Us was amazing, but the A story was such a mess that it ruined the whole episode. In this case, the A and B stories were tied together a bit more tightly. But the whole thing seemed to be played for comedy.

My synopsis, I guess, is that Riker was watching, what I believe to be, the early portion of a holgraphic porn video. It was two inordinately pretty ladies in fine evening wear playing the harp. There is no way that his ear to ear grin was because he was stoked about the harp concert. I'm thinking in a few minutes he would have been watching something much different.

But alas, he was called away. A wedding party was beaming up. Turns out it was for Troi's wedding!!!

That's right. Troi was going to get married and retire from Starfleet. She's kinda forgotten about her arranged marriage and now it was time to go ahead and take care of it. So her mom shows up, reads everyone's mind, brags about how awesome she is, and insults the Groom's parents, a lot.

In the meantime, a mysterious alien vessel shows up with the dying crew of a doomed civilization. They carry a disease that has killed everyone, on every planet, that the disease has ever made it's way to.

So Picard throws a party for Troi and the rest of the Wedding crowd. Troi freaks out, knocks things over, and goes to pout on the holodeck, just where Riker was pouting. He loves Troi but not as much as the thought of being a captain, which is much easier when you aren't married. I guess that means you can't date people either, I'm not real sure. Either way, he's pouting, she's pouting. Then her fiancé shows up, oblivious. Riker leaves and the fiance makes out with Troi - despite confessing that he's really not that into her because he wanted her to be someone else. Or something.

After a whole episode of not communicating with the Enterprise, the aliens, who are totally human, show up on the FaceTime app on the view screen and Wyatt (Troi's finance) immediately is in love with the hot girl in the bikini top hanging out in the back. He grabs his stuff and beams over to their ship, leaving Troi at the alter and condemning himself to long and painful death thanks to the disease he just exposed himself to.

Everyone is pretty happy about that decision. The end.


Some thoughts:

• Future TV sucks. Riker's holoset is showing a harp concert? Ick. Well, unless it was porn, then it makes more sense. 
• Someone stuffed Quark in a suitcase! Actually, that was the actor that later played Quark. It was just a very strange visual. It was a suitcase with a face sticking out of the side. It talked. 
• Lurch is Lwaxana's personal servant! And I mean Lurch from The Adams Family. That was him, right?
• I like seeing Picard so uncomfortable. Lwaxana is a mess of a person and thrusts her will upon anyone nearby. Picard did not enjoy that. But his 24th century notions of being super evolved won't allow him to complain. It's great.
• Picard says personal disputes are prohibited on the recreation decks so, uh, he just went ahead and declared them all resolved. Thanks, I guess. I mean, was that a joke?
• Troi's freakout at dinner was awesome. She slapped that little gong like it was a misbehaving toddler.
• Imzadi! I read the book! Great to see that so many throwaway lines from early episodes were seized upon and used in novels. I think the Imzadi stuff spun-off into more than one novel.

  

  Sigh. Yes, I read it.

• Good lord. The split sleeve fashion for boys and men in the 24th century is atrocious. Please make it stop.
• I've been noticing this for a while now, but it really has been notable how many aliens are just humans. I know it's a budget thing, but so far even the 'bumpy headed' variety of alien is a rare sight.
• So, Lwaxana explains how psychic stuff works. Finally, a definition: "All life... all consciousness, is indissolubly bound together. Indeed, it's all part of the same thing." Well, that cleared all that up.
• I bet Wyatt's shirt with the huge triangle in front must catch all sorts of food when he eats. It's just a huge pocket.
• Despite the whole psychic thing being explained to Wyatt as to why he knew the woman on the Terellian ship it still made no sense at all to me. Of course, I say something similar in almost every episode about some plot point or another, but that a human and something that is clearly human, except not, neither one has any psychic ability at all (it's strongly implied that the aliens (Terrellians) sorta thought Wyatt was a fantasy of whatshername, so they have no real expectation of psychic stuff to work for them either. So that means that sometimes it just happens. It's just so weird to me. I know that things like ESP and the like were seriously studied by governments and the like in the 70's, but by the time the late 80's rolled around it had sorta had it's day in the sun as part of serious SF, it had been largely debunked and so was relegated to fantasy. So having such psychic heavy episodes sort of date this as a show that has it's heart in the 60's or 70's moreso than in the late 80's when it was produced. I really wish they'd tone that sort of stuff down).
• For some reason, the Production number on this episode is 105, which means it was produced much earlier than the rest of the episodes here in the mid-season timeframe. I wonder what's up with that.

So, to sum up, this episode sucked. But at this point, they pretty much all have. I can't really give each one a 1 star review and be done with it, I'm looking for some nuance here. So because there were a few moments that made me actually laugh (again, Troi knocking shit over as she storms out of the room just struck me as fantastic) makes this worth a bonus star.

My advice, to anyone in the far future that may be tempted to use this as a recommendation engine for whether or not to watch a particular episode, I'm not sure there has been anything to date worth wasting your time on. Maybe the pilot, but even that is if you're already a fan and want to see how it all started. This series had a very rough go of it to date.

My rating?

2 out of 5