Too Short a Season (S1 ep 16)

It’s funny – to date I’ve given two episodes of this first season a 0 star rating in what was supposed to be a scale of 1 – 5. But what’s ended up happening is that almost everything has been so awful that when I’ve already given half the episodes one star, and the other half two stars… well, you start to want to be able to play within that range. I may go back and change my scale to 1 – 10 so then we can really have the elbow room to play within the boundries and explore some nuance.

Except, of course, I’m not anxious to go back and muck around with all that stuff I’ve already done. So I don’t know, maybe, but probably not gonna do anything different.

The only reason I bring it up is because this episode stands out to me from all the rest. Not that it’s better- god no, it’s not better – but because it sits somwhere in that valley of so-bad-I-can’t-look-away and turn-it-off-my-eyes-are-bleeding. Yes, this is not only awful, but might be my least favorite episode of the season.

But here’s the thing. It’s nowhere near the top of the list in the episodes I most hate, it’s just that I like it the least. Wait, I’m not explaining anything, am I? I’m just repeating myself and hoping that you’ll just get what I’m trying to say. So let me try again. This episode sucks. Hard. But it also blows, hence the paradox.

You see, not only is it awful, but it’s painfully boring. There were other epsisodes where I couldn’t bare to look away from my screen because the next stupid thing to come up might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. But with this episode, it wasn’t like that. It was a different kind of awful, the kind of awful that fuels almost no contempt from me. Only overwhelming boredom.

The story can probably be summed up in a few short lines: Aged diplomat orders Picard to one final warzone where said diplomat can create peace. That diplomat is getting younger. He arrives as a cocky young man and promptly does stupid stuff in an attempt to repair stupid stuff he did when he was young the first time (during peace talks decades earlier, he secretly gave super-weapons to every party involved thinking that would assure peace, somehow) and Picard and the gang have to clean up his mess to avert a humanitarian crisis. Also, diplomat’s wife is pissed – not sure if it’s because she likes being old, or if it’s because he took all the fountain of youth stuff and didn’t share with her.

Eventually, he dies of an OD of being young. The end.

And it was boring as hell. I couldn’t remember the episode title, thought I’d skipped it by mistake in my rewatch, and overall think of it as one of the most forgettable moments of TNG to date.

How forgettable was it? My notes on the episode were just a single line:

• Is that one of the Russian dudes from Rocky IV?

That’s pretty much it. And look, that isn’t to say that this episode isn’t full of, well, I hesitate to call it ‘stupid’ but the whole idea that there exists a cure for being old and no one really cares about it...um, maybe this story is focusing on the wrong thing? I mean, sure, whatshisname died from it, but that was because he took a supply meant to last he and his wife several years in a single dose. Dude was a moron.

So old age is a choice in TNG. And it’s a choice that everyone, for the most part, embraces. I already have a pretty tough time connecting with these absurd characters, throwaway nonesense like this does frustrate me. But not enough to make up for all the boring.



My rating?

1 out of 5