“You are an ice man.”
This is such a straight-ahead idea for an episode that it’s somewhat surprising it didn’t turn up earlier in the run of the series: Data crashes on an alien planet, develops amnesia, and is adopted by a local pre-industrial society, where his android skill set allows him to solve the problem-of-the-week. (In a nice extrapolation of the premise, the problem-of-the-week is radiation sickness, care of the metal fragments Data has brought with him.) The alien community is handsomely mounted, and the guest stars are above average – particularly Michael G. Hagerty as the blacksmith, Ronnie Claire Edwards as a verbose local healer, and Kimberly Cullum as the (inevitable?) local child Data befriends.
It doesn’t entirely net out into a great episode, but it’s entertaining enough on its own terms while remaining puddle-deep in its broader considerations. Data doesn’t learn anything about himself or humanity in the process – I think we’re a couple of seasons past his last such insight – and the harm that Data visits upon the aliens is easily mitigated thanks to his android advantages. It might have been interesting to explore a natural idea built into the premise – that Data is basically a kind of superhero to his adopted community, thanks to his advanced intelligence and super-strength – but aside from a scene where Data rescues a blacksmith’s apprentice from an accident, that thread is left unexplored.
Instead, Data is more of a Galileo to a disbelieving crowd of heretics, who grow (entirely reasonably) more panicked as radiation sickness permeates the town. It doesn’t amount to much, but I like the fact (through Talur, the healer) that the aliens aren’t entirely presented as a group of idiots, merely a people with scientific reasoning whose reasoning has not yet reached Federation levels of knowledge.
Back on the ship, Troi happens upon Beverly in the command chair in the middle of the night, and decides to become a full commander. There’s a nice scene where Riker speaks to her solely using his trombone – Troi’s right, it’s an improvement over his normal methods of communication – but Will’s such a dick about things the rest of the time that the scenes are a bit unbearable. (To be fair, though, his “Congratulations, you just destroyed the Enterprise!” to Troi does foreshadow the fact that Troi would go on to destroy the Enterprise. Twice.)
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.