“He transformed into a spider and now he has a disease named after him.”
In the “so bad it’s good” files, few delight me more than “Genesis,” which isn’t just a bizarre attempt to do body horror on the USS Enterprise, but is also Gates McFadden’s sole directorial credit on Star Trek: The Next Generation. No idea how they landed on this particular piece of content for that particular newbie director, but whatever. McFadden cribs from Ridley Scott and David Cronenberg and lands on something that doesn’t make a single bit of sense from a scientific perspective (excised bits of our pre-evolution DNA come back to life and turn us into random human-animal hybrids!) but is spooky, gross, and a lot of silly fun.
And McFadden turns out to be a surprisingly visual director, who blocks for onscreen reveals, and leans on long takes to move her characters around their space, rather than framing for tableaux. Her dance choreography experience might have been helpful too, with movement-related direction for the actors: watching Frakes begin to walk on his knuckles as Riker de-evolves into an ape is amusing, and we get terrific body language-based performances out of Schultz, Yasutake, Sirtis and Dorn, too.
As ideas go, having Worf turn into the ultimate threat on the ship – as a de-evolved Super-Klingon – is bloody gorgeous, and results in one of the episode’s most terrifying beats, as a mute Worf suddenly and violently sprays Dr. Crusher in the face with a newly-manifested acidic venom. (This has the added bonus of putting McFadden out of commission for the rest of the episode, so she can focus on directing.) Later on, when Worf has gone full-monster, I somewhat regret the fact that “Genesis” appears to forget that Alexander exists. It might have been even more fun to have Monster Worf chased around the ship by a pint-sized Tween Monster Alexander, spraying acid on people and trying to mate with every female that moves.
Right: that. “Genesis” does indeed play by the laws of the jungle, being an altogether steamier and more bestial take on our characters than is generally permitted on Star Trek. Worf spends the first act looking like he’s ready to mount anything with boobs that passes his way, which gets taken to its natural end-point when he heads over to Troi’s quarters and bites her. After so much beige storytelling this year, it feels shocking and subversive to see everyone letting their freak flag fly like this, and it drives the episode’s surprisingly successful horror motif to a more visceral place than the nominally cerebral Next Gen ordinarily allows.
The episode is Dwight Schultz’s final appearance as Lt. Barclay (not counting a cameo in Star Trek: First Contact and a brace of terrible Voyager episodes). Fortunately, it’s not a Barclay-focused episode, although he does turn into a spider. Instead, Barclay is used credibly as part of the Enterprise’s extended family, without suffering the burden of trying to wedge a “Barclay is neurotic!” storyline into the A-plot. In fact, “Genesis” is a great ensemble effort across the board. The whole gang, extended to include Nurse Ogawa and Barclay, gets great airtime here, and the episode succeeds on the cast’s willingness to play the ridiculous concept for as much juice/venom as they can get out of it. The result defies reason, but appeals to a more carnal place in my heart.
Four Enterprises out of five.
Blogging The Next Generation is winding down to the end, as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. The final season is in stores now.