“I’m just not overly thrilled at the prospect of my innards being made the subject of Starfleet gossip.”
“Samaritan Snare” is one of those rare instances of a premise so oddball it actually works, or at least, is really memorable: it’s the one where Geordi gets kidnapped by the race of… really dumb guys. The Pakleds, who are one makeup flourish shy of being a full-on hate crime against differently-abled people, are sold with commitment enough to overcome the general implausibility of the idea. I think this is largely down to Christopher Collins (returning after his appearance as a Klingon in “A Matter of Honor”) as Grebnedlog, and Leslie Morris as Reginod, both of whom give solid Pakled performances and basically tell you everything you need to know about the species with line delivery and body language. I doubt there’s much more gas in the tank on the Pakled concept after “Samaritan Snare” (and the series never returned to them as a featured species), but it was still fun to see them referred to occasionally for the rest of the series, or turn up in the back of Quark’s bar on Deep Space Nine. They made an impression.
The real winner of the episode, though, is the B-plot, where Captain Picard takes a long shuttlecraft ride with Wesley to Starbase 515. As usual, scenes between Stewart and Wheaton resonate nicely, and if Picard’s a right dick for most of this one (and Wesley an irritatingly yappy teen), they meet in the middle quite brilliantly for some heartfelt discussion of the choices and philosophies that go into becoming a career Starfleet officer. There’s something nice about Wesley bursting Picard’s bubble about the Captain’s hopes to keep his discomfort around children a secret from the Enterprise community; and given their complex history, it’s quite touching to hear Wesley tell Picard he’d have made a good father.
Most memorable, of course, is the central scene – over a prim lunch of tea and sandwiches – in the shuttle cabin, where Picard tells a spellbound Wesley of his encounter, as a recent Starfleet graduate (y’know, back when he looked like Tom Hardy), with a pack of surly Nausicaans – a bar fight which resulted in him being impaled through the heart from behind. It’s a terrifically performed monologue from Stewart (of course), and also a piece of the Captain’s personal mythology that becomes so resonant as the series goes on that it eventually gets the full episode treatment (and quite nicely too) in Season Six’s It’s a Wonderful Life episode, “Tapestry.” Picard is a multi-faceted man to a degree that outstrips most, if not all, of the other Star Trek captains; that he has had more complicated ups and downs over the course of a long career (and that those ups and downs are revealed piecemeal over the course of the series) makes the character Stewart is playing feel “earned” in a way that a higher-concept initial character design (Sisko’s, for example) might not have. I love episodes like this one, for that exact reason.
The Nausicaan incident resulted in Picard having his heart replaced with a biomechanical device, something which has always stuck in the back of my mind – remember when Tasha described Picard as having the heart of an explorer? I can’t tell if it’s better, or worse, to know that the heart she was describing was a cybernetic replacement for the one our crisp, charismatic Picard lost as a callow, ruthless young man.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season 2 is available now.