“Parthus à la Yuta!”
Strongly into the gooey middle of the endless run of “The _______” episode titles in the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we find “The Vengeance Factor,” which I’ve never really liked much. I guess it’s an attempt at a Riker romance-of-the-week type episode of the sort that Kirk always got, but a) Will+Deanna4EVR, and also the lead characters – Will and his love interest, Yuta of the clan Tralesta – are really fucking bad.
I mean, amazingly bad. Lisa Wilcox (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) vacillates between wide-eyed naivete and shrill over-reach; she also never seems to notice that she’s playing a character who’s about a century old, preferring instead to play Yuta like a shy twelve-year-old. Against her, Frakes is unbearably off-key as Riker. It’s one of those instances where some elements of the Riker characterization that tend towards the unpleasant, but are usually held in check by getting the balance right in other episodes, tip in the wrong direction and come off really ugly. Let’s start with his interest in Yuta in the first place – even leaving aside how creepy it is that he’d go in for a docile servant girl in the first place, his doing so seems completely off-plum for the character; whatever kind of womanizer Riker is, he’s always been into strong women.
Oddly enough, the only element of the Riker/Yuta throughline that I enjoy is its climax, where Riker is forced to kill Yuta rather than let her touch the leader of the Gatherers – which will kill him instantly and complete a decades-old blood feud. There’s some genuine pathos as Riker shoots Yuta twice with his phaser set to stun, only to have her keep coming; he then dials it up to ten and vaporizes her. It’s an ending in search of a better beginning and middle.
Set design on the episode is top-notch, though, from the fluoride-green Federation survey station in the prologue to the red-and-rock Gatherer encampment. The Gatherers themselves, though, are one of any hundred instances of the endless ‘80s/’90s fascination with biker gangs as the default icon for roving badassery. It’s insanely dated, and the Gatherers – even Joey Aresco as Brull, who’s otherwise pretty good – can’t help but come off silly as a result.
Marc Lawrence pops up as an elder Gatherer for a single scene, and it’s always a treat to see him.
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.