“The light in this room would make colour selection exceptionally problematic.”
DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE! DIE HARD ON THE ENTERPRISE! Man, remember the early ‘90s, when every ten minutes someone was doing a “Die Hard on a [something]”? It was probably inevitable that Star Trek: The Next Generation would get around to it (and as I recall, Star Trek: Voyager took an Aliens-inflected pass it too, in their third season), but “Starship Mine” is a minor pleasure nevertheless. Especially given that they didn’t give the Bruce Willis role to Riker, or Worf, or anyone equally obvious; they gave it to Captain Picard.
The result plays unintentionally like a grad paper on how completely the writers’ room has reconfigured the Captain in the space of six years. This is not the Picard of the middle years of the show, when even Patrick Stewart was complaining that all he ever got to do any more was sit on the Bridge and occasionally conduct diplomatic negotiations. Nor is it, really, the Picard of the first couple of seasons, who had a rugged European physicality and charisma to him even though his first officer was prohibited (in the series bible, if nowhere else) from letting Picard beam down anywhere.
No, this is something like the first instance of the final version of Picard, the one who would carry into the Next Generation feature films (especially First Contact and Insurrection): Picard as superhero. He’s essentially capable of anything at this point, a one-size-fits-all heroic character for science fiction adventure stories of any stripe. It’s not my favourite incarnation of the man by any means, as it’s both lazy and simplistic, but it’s a little late in the game to be worrying about such things anyway. Even Patrick Stewart must be getting bored by now, and yeah, blockbuster-style feature films need action heroes. So here we are.
It’s not the most amazing action episode ever, and budget constraints shut down the visual possibilities considerably. Still, it’s fun to watch, and a deadly energy beam moving across the Enterprise from stern to bow makes for a nice schematic upon which to structure the story. Plus, we get to see Picard use a crossbow. And I like how Stewart affects a slightly glassy-eyed look (and a stammer) when pretending to be a barber instead of an officer. It’s also fairly neat that Tim Russ turns up for his first time on Star Trek, and gets dispatched with a Vulcan neck pinch. Enjoy your future, Vulcan-no-one-likes.
The secondary runner, in which Data learns about small talk, makes for some surprisingly effective comedy in the first fifteen minutes, as the android follows base commander Hutchinson (call him Hutch) around and mimes his body language as Hutch bores various members of the crew. When Data takes Hutch on directly, and Riker wonders “How long can two people talk about nothing?” I immediately flash to George and Jerry in the coffee shop, and wonder if the line was intended at a direct query towards Seinfeld’s longevity.
Three Enterpises? Three and a half? I’m thinking three.
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 in stores. Season Seven will conclude the blog in early 2015 – you can pre-order the final season now.