“I have an open wound. Right here. It hurts like hell.”
God, this one is the worst. The actual worst. And they made two of them.
I hate “Gambit,” an idiotic two-parter in which Picard has faked his own death to go on a secret mission with a band of space pirates or something. I haven’t the first clue what it’s doing in the first half-dozen episodes of a new season, nor what on earth anyone was thinking when they ran it out to double-episode length. This is the sort of premise Star Trek: The Next Generation never did well, requiring a dive into a Star Wars-style underworld in the Star Trek universe. Grunge is so contrary to the basic Next Gen design aesthetic that the art design, cinematography, and even performances always seem to be actively working against the intention. Stick to the hotel-lounge interiors, guys.
The primary offense: Richard Lynch as Baran must, beyond question, be the worst designed and performed guest star in the history of this series, and that’s a long list with a bunch of whacky hairdos on it. He’s the leader of the pirates in glam makeup and a fright wig, and he looks preposterous, sounds like an aging New Jersey drag queen with a serious smoking problem, and is maybe five feet tall in his stompy space-boots. He’s astonishing to look at, provided you feel like laughing at how categorically un-menacing a TV villain-of-the-week can actually be. Hey guys: remember when villains on this show were, say, Q? Or the Borg? Hell, the time-frozen Americans from “The Neutral Zone” were more interesting than this putz.
Second problem: this show has done “one of the crew is believed to be dead” a few times before, but they just don’t pull it off this time. Hell, they even did Picard before (in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II”) and hit these same beats harder and with more emotional resonance. Riker and Troi’s argument about how/if to grieve Picard is a monstrosity of bad writing and worse characterization, and while sending Riker on a private eye mission to solve the Captain’s murder sounds like a nice premise on paper, it’s not the plotline the episode ends up playing out.
And third: just like the last several two-parters (“Unification,” anyone?), the pace is just way, way too slow. There isn’t enough story here to support the structure. Scenes like Riker grilling an Yridian (for the second time in the space of ten minutes!) about the bar fight where Captain Picard was theoretically killed is the sort of scene that would have been dropped in a script-breaking session back in Season Three. Some of the action beats work well enough, especially when (with Riker also abducted by the pirates) Data takes command of the ship. Data as a battle commander is always a fascination for me, but it’s nowhere near enough to redeem this mess.
Anticipating Alien Resurrection and Firefly in absentia by categorically failing to accomplish a workable band of outlaws on a spaceship, which the Joss Whedon-scripted antecedents would later nail, there’s something sweetly naïve about “Gambit,” as if the chess club had tried to write an action movie. In fact, a lot of this plays like some kind of weird fan fiction – “what if Picard and Riker were pirates instead of Starfleet heroes?,” complete with cosplay opportunities for everyone who ever wanted to design their own mercenary space clothes. Oh: and it’s about archaeology. Go chess club!
A few casting notes: Sondra from The Cosby Show is the ensign at the conn this time around. She’s terrible. Robin Curtis, the second Lt. Saavik from the Star Trek feature film series, plays her second Vulcan/Romulan hybrid here. And my sister’s namesake, Caitlin Brown, is on the pirate crew as well. Actress Caitlin Brown always creeped me the fuck out.
One Enterprise out of five. And apologies for the screenshots for the last few B:TNG entries, my nominal screenshot source has run dry this season.
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.