“Geordi, I cannot stun my cat.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation’s paean to the dangers of air pollution is one of the series last, and most syrupy, Message Shows. The episode’s hook – that warp drive is destroying the fabric of space, but no one in Starfleet wants to take the science seriously – must have been so irresistible to the writing room that they dialed the self-importance up to eleven before they even got to camera. The result is an episode that is basically bang-on the money, concept-wise (it anticipates the entire climate debate we are currently dying in), but which can only be described in a single word: insufferable.
Among the many things that “Force of Nature” gets right (and is less enjoyable as an episode as a direct result) is that really passionate environmentalists are so fundamentally offputting that even if you agree with them, you sort of don’t want to look them in the eye. So here, we have a pair of alien siblings who sabotage the Enterprise to stop them using warp speed near their home planet. The brother is the more reasonable of the two, probably because he’s male; the sister is a flat-out lunatic and nobody wants to listen to her, definitely because she’s female. It’s among the most sexist beats the show has played since the “Angel One” / “Code of Honor” days, and that’s saying a lot. Serova ends up blowing herself up in the space rift to prove that what she’s been saying is true, permanently damaging subspace and making warp speed bad for everyone.
For an episode so over-written, the latter point is the only piece it really drops: although there are some structural hints along the way, there’s actually no scene in “Force of Nature” where the crew gloms to the fact that what is initially presented as a localized problem – “don’t use warp speed in this solar system, it’s bad” – is actually a universe-wide ecological disaster. But by the end of the episode, the Federation has immediately ratified a Warp 5, No Faster treaty and is encouraging its allies to do the same. And it’s here where the episode’s patent naïveté spills over: if only actual environmental activism were ever this effective!
I hate this episode. Its heart is obviously in the right place but it’s condescending, pedantic, and dull as fuck. There’s a half-episode-long B-plot about Data trying to train his cat that makes me throw up my hands in disgust: seriously, what was the fucking fascination with Spot in the last season of the show? Surely no one involved thought these scenes were funny, charming, or halfway interesting? It’s all just an attempt to kill time, which is what the whole season is starting to feel like, and I’m bloody fed up with it.
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.