Suspicions
Another enjoyable season six episode... if you don't think too hard
about all the various holes in its mystery plot. I particularly like the role
Dr. Crusher plays early on which she calls "scientific diplomacy".
That alone seemed worthy enough to catapult this episode
into the very competitive higher ranks of this season of Star Trek.
But this episode couldn't maintain a position in the stratosphere of high opinion
for long...
The story caught my attention in another way though,
when it seemed it was trying to play on both sides
of a certain Prime Directive / non-interference coin. Really,
what arrangements does the Federation have with the Ferengi
at this point? In season one of TNG, they were a mysterious group
that had had little contact with anyone in Starfleet, the kind of
people we might only know through interaction with their spaceships.
Obviously,
that was no way for writers to exploit the capitalism theme that
the Ferengi were intended to represent, so a change sort of morphed
its way onto the series, and Armin Shimerman's Quark has no doubt
just begun to deliver the definitive take on Ferengi
and their Federation relations on Deep Space Nine by this point,
and quite rightly too.
In this episode, the non-interference aspects hindering Dr. Crusher
seem to want to revert back to that season one Ferengi situation,
where they really are the mysterious others. Yet, if the Ferengi
are getting pally enough with the Federation and Klingon races
to have open scientific exchanges with them (and since Ferengi
are all about financial exchange, why not?), it just seems a bit
far fetched that Crusher's actions would trigger an
"interstellar incident" in which the "Ferengi government"
would get involved. It's a family issue for sure, but a government
issue - that's going a bit too far to be believable.
As the story's plot holes later piled on, I noticed
that it plays it pretty loose with the concept of autopsies
in several ways. First of all, I thought it was a given that 24th century
medicine was much less invasive than what we currently put up with
in the 20th and now early 21st centuries... So, why aren't scans from tricorders
and other devices enough to give Beverly her answers and keep the Ferengi
families happy?
Secondly, if she wanted to establish cause of death through the autopsy,
how is it she has only "nothing" to report after the autopsy? Why isn't
she coming out and saying at the very least, "yes (or no), the weapon found in his
hand is (or is not) what killed him"? Loose scripting. It's almost as if
this part of the story was added last minute, as a way to establish
the episode's wrap-around framing device suspending Crusher's duties, for added tension.
The gross-out factor of all this autopsy business eats heavily into
the points earned for the early scientific diplomacy bits.
Anyway, the numerous plot holes can almost disappear during a
casual viewing, if you don't think too hard about it all,
leaving a fairly decent mystery episode and an enjoyable viewing experience.
The episode does give us this rare visitation from Guinan - if I remember
rightly in her only appearance between "Rascals" near the beginning
of the season, and the seventh feature film "Generations". Sadly,
she seems to be putting Troi out of work for the adventure, but
as this has become so rare now, we can easily forgive it.
Not my favourite episode, but still interesting and entertaining enough
to look forward to repeat viewing enjoyment.
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