“Commander – is it your intention to continue to grow your beard?”
Time for your annual reminder that Data is a person – by proxy this time, but the principle is the same. Data determines that a group of industrial mining robots called Exocomps have developed some of the criteria for life, and the usual moral dilemma ensues.
There’s nothing really wrong with the episode, except for the fact that it’s been done before (a lot). This one mixes up elements of “The Measure of a Man” and “Home Soil” to arrive at yet another iteration of “does this [non-human] have rights, or no?” Since this is Star Trek, we know the answer is always yes – which makes it all the more surprising in retrospect that the question of personhood was never firmly handled in the case of the holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. ‘90s-era Trek was nuts for this stuff, as though the various writers’ rooms over the years were perpetually terrified that their Windows 3 laptops were within a half-decade of standing up and walking around Los Angeles.
In the case of “The Quality of Life,” it doesn’t help that the episode’s core effect is, necessarily, idiotic. The Exocomps are required to hover and fly, which at this point in special effects history means floating the props around the room on little invisible wires. The wires don’t show through onscreen, thank goodness, but the puppeteering team still can’t disguise the telltale movement patterns: the stupid-looking robots bob along on strings, and look about as convincing as something I might have mounted in front of the family video camera when I was ten.
Back in the director’s chair, Jonathan Frakes creates a nice unspoken runner throughout much of the episode, where Geordi seems to have a crush on the guest-scientist-of-the-week, who – in turn – only has eyes for Data. Again, never raised aloud or even directly referenced, but accomplished through staging, reactions, and camera blocking. Nice trick.
The best thing about the episode is Beverly, who plays a supporting role throughout, and has fully matured into the best iteration of the character that Gates McFadden puts onscreen throughout the run of the series. Dr. Crusher has a complete life onscreen, from bat’leth lessons with Worf, to the casual, clever way she answers Data’s questions about the nature of life with a half-imparted story about Wesley. She’s three-dimensional in a way that, say, Geordi never becomes. Beverly also instigates the episode’s best scene, the poker game that opens the show: Beverly, playing against Geordi, Worf, and Riker (all wearing beards), suggests that beards are as much an affectation as makeup and nail polish – and lets the men react in instinctively patriarchal ways. Take that, men!
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is finally in stores.