“If you would overlook this incident, I would like to continue to consider you my friend.”
Oh hey – what the fuck is the “gambit” of the title, anyway? Picard going undercover with a bunch of loser space pirates? My theory about these episodes having been written by the chess club is gaining ground.
Let’s talk about how bad Patrick Stewart is in this episode! The series’ original performance stalwart really can’t work out a convincing tone or body language for Picard-playing-Galen-the-shifty-son-of-a-bitch. Is it possible the comfort of a steady TV gig has finally broken that Shakespearean passion? I think he’s going for a kind of half-drunk stoop, but Stewart doesn’t look anything like a stooping half-drunk, so it’s awkward. Frakes on the whole does better as double-agent Riker, but many of his scenes are with horrible Richard Lynch, so it doesn’t amount to much. And since we know for a fact that double-agent Riker is never going to kill Picard-playing-Galen, there’s no tension in the internecine strife on the pirate ship.
The tension is more effective between Worf and Data back on the Enterprise, and Data’s scene in which he dresses the Klingon down for inappropriate First Officer behavior really crackles thanks to a fine performance (across both episodes) from Spiner. Data as Captain of the Enterprise is a fine runner, and one I’m surprised the series didn’t address more directly, as the A-plot of a better episode. The intentions are backwards here: the archaeological WMD plot on the pirate ship doesn’t have the weight to support the episodes, and the B-plot isn’t given the room to run. Instead, we’re given a ten-minute gag featuring an extremely tall Klingon man, played (poorly) by James Worthy.
Now, I was somewhat interested in the telepathic abilities of Vulcans and Romulans when I was watching Next Gen, so the idea of the psionic resonator appealed to me – as would any “I kill you with my brain!!” plot involving the green-blooded folk. If I’d written my own fan-fic, I might have come up with something like an Ark of the Covenant-style Vulcan relic that can blow apart peoples’ heads. But the writers here take the Raiders-relevance a bit far, having Picard solve the puzzle with the Power of Archaeology and then literally peacing his way out of trouble by thinking calm thoughts. Silly.
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.