“We cannot interfere in the natural course of your society’s development. And I’d say it’s going to develop significantly in the next few minutes.”
An intense and focused thriller, “The Hunted” is another highlight of a season full of highlights. The presumed allegory – Vietnam vets weren’t treated well by America upon their return home, or something – isn’t very sophisticated, but as a simple science fiction adventure story, “The Hunted” thrives on the performances of its lead guest stars and a seemingly endless supply of inventive action set pieces.
Jeff McCarthy plays Roga Danar, a super-soldier from the peaceful planet of Angosia. Per Matty Price’s dictum, creating a race of super-soldiers simply never goes well. The Angosians developed their military using a combination of brainwashing and drugs, to respond to an external threat for which the nominally pacifistic society had no defense. He’s terrific – effortlessly physical, wryly comic, and touchingly grave all in one. After leading the crew of the Enterprise on a merry chase around the Angosian star system in a stolen transport craft, Danar finds himself under lock and key in the brig, where he develops relationships with both Troi and Data – and both characters come away stronger for it, a rare compliment. (Data, in particular, really works for me in this story, rather than the more obvious Data episodes. His sympathy for Danar – both are programmed beings – is second in my esteem only to Data’s nearly fannish admiration of Danar’s strategic skills.)
It’s a great Worf show, too, showing the security chief actually being a security chief. His five-man brawl with Danar to conclude the first act is exciting, and Worf’s methodical tracking of the fugitive prisoner through the decks of the Enterprise once Danar inevitably escapes the brig is a great game of chess. The episode also packs a lot of “cool” factor – phasers on overload, the reveal of the Enterprise-D’s Jefferies tubes, and all of the myriad ways in which Danar repeatedly eludes capture… including forcing his way out of a transporter beam in progress!
James Cromwell, that magnificent stalwart, plays the Prime Minister of the Angosians, in his first Star Trek apperance; he would go on to play (among other things) Zephram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact. Picard leaves Danar and the Prime Minister in a wonderful pickle at the end of the episode, by matter-of-factly refusing to solve their problem for them, casually rejecting Angosia’s application for Federation membership and beaming the away team out of the middle of a Mexican standoff between Danar’s troops and the Angosian parliament. “The Hunted” is a consistent run of surprises, right down to its last moment. Four and a half Enterprises out of five.
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 Three is available now.