Like Encounter at Farpoint, this episode is actually two distinct plotlines that happen at the same time, but that only sort of interact with one another. The opening exposition sequence tells us the first plotline: The Enterprise is to deliver delegates from two warring species to a peace talk at a “neutral conference planet” called (I kid you not) Parliament.

Why they have an entire planet specifically for neutral conferencing, I don’t know. It serves an entire sector of Federation space, so maybe this kind of problem comes up a lot, and they needed a standard location?

The warring species are a reptilian bunch called the Selay and a primitive mammalian group called the Anticans.

The Selay are the cobrapeople. Yes, they hiss when they talk.

The Anticans are already aboard when the episode begins. We’ll see them later.

The Selay start their time aboard the Enterprise by demanding to be relocated farther from the Anticans, and “upwind.” Picard and Yar share a moment of concerned musing; it sounds like the Federation peacemakers will have their hands full. These groups really hate each other.

En route to Parliament, the Enterprise passes through a strange energy cloud and takes some sensor readings. Because when you’re a science vessel, you always go look at strange things when time allows.

Worf and La Forge are in the sensor bay when the Enterprise makes its pass. Worf pokes at something and gets zapped by some kind of blue lightning. He passes out, and a concerned La Forge comms for help. When Dr. Crusher arrives, Worf jerks awake and starts thrashing violently; it takes multiple redshirts and a knockout injection from Crusher to get him calm again.

This introduces Plotline #2. Right off the bat, we have an important distinction to make. We, the viewers, see the very obvious blue lightning effect at several points in the story. But La Forge describes it much more tamely – Worf jerked and there was some kind of “glow.” Now, if La Forge’s visor works differently than normal human vision, it may look different to him. It’s also possible that the blue-lightning-zap is intended as a visual clue for us, the viewers, and that the “real” effect is more subtle. The question of what the Enterprise crew actually see is relevant, because it’s a pretty obvious hint to the viewers.

Now we shift back to Plotline #1, as Yar is explaining to Riker that the Anticans have some…unique dietary requests. Apparently they not only eat meat, they want it delivered live. Cultural differences, one supposes; after all, they think materializing meat from a replicator is “sickening” and “barbaric.”

One of the Antican delegates. He is exactly as mean as he looks.

And then we jump back to Plotline #2, as in Sickbay the blue-lightning-thing jumps from Worf to Dr. Crusher.

I wonder what that helmet’s for.

Dr. Crusher immediately starts acting suspicious, as Counselor Troi notes. Worf wakes and Troi turns to Crusher to explain her diagnosis, but the good doctor leaves without a word. Very suspicious.

Dr. Crusher visits her son in Engineering, asking him about his studies. But when it becomes clear she’s not getting what she’s looking for, she mutters something about the helm being located on the bridge and leaves again. Now Wesley is confused, too.

Aside: why is Wesley studying in Engineering? Well, because in the last episode, Picard made him an Acting Ensign and asked Riker to prepare a study plan for him. Continuity! Character development! Yay!

On the bridge, Dr. Crusher (or rather, whatever is controlling her) hovers ominously over the helm and computer systems. Picard asks for the diagnosis on Worf, and she gives a vague and inadequate answer: “a temporary mental aberration.” Picard presses further, and Dr. Crusher goes to the bridge computer, ostensibly to cross-check medical records from the ship’s library.

Looking over Dr. Crusher’s shoulder, Data notices she’s on helm control, not medical records. Odd, but not odd enough to draw Data away from his work; he turns back to his own console. Humans are strange creatures, after all.

Then, the blue lightning runs down Dr. Crusher’s arm and into the computer. A moment later, she seemingly regains her senses, wondering aloud why she’s on the bridge, and excuses herself.

All of this is strange behavior, to be sure; but not enough for Enterprise crewmembers to immediately guess the cause. We, the viewers, have seen the blue lightning jump around, but no one except La Forge has been in a position to spot it and make the connection. Yet.

And that’s when a subtle form of hell starts to break loose. Data reports the computer stations aren’t responding. Engineering reports problems with warp circuitry and transporter malfunctions. Picard checks with Data – what are the odds all this stuff goes wrong at once, on a new ship? Answer: really, really low.

As the crew struggle to explain the malfunctions, we return to Plotline #1. A couple of Anticans were found loitering outside the Selay quarters, armed with what appear to be oversized lightsabers. When Riker and Yar confront the Antican leader, he innocently claims the stick-things are merely the equivalent of kitchen utensils, for preparing their food. Riker and Yar, unimpressed, confiscate the weapons and warn the Anticans to behave.

And now, back to Plotline #2. The malfunctions are now bad enough that warp drive and subspace radio both fail. The Enterprise crew conclude that this is too much coincidence; someone aboard must be sabotaging their systems. The Anticans and the Selay are prime suspects. (I guess there is a reason for Plotline #1, after all!)

While discussing this, Riker makes an offhand reference to private eyes. Data asks what he means and Picard explains Sherlock Holmes. Data gets a thoughtful expression.

This will end well.

In Engineering, the ever-helpful Wesley notices a pattern to the failures, and suggests a solution to the on-duty engineer, who agrees and starts fiddling with the warp settings. He sends Wesley off to continue his studies. But just after Wesley leaves, the engineer gets zapped by the control panel. And his shirt wasn’t even red! (Yes, I know, I’ve used this joke already).

Worf finds the engineer’s body a moment later, and reports it to the bridge. While investigating, the crew are puzzled by the fact that the warp engines are now working fine. They don’t think the engineer was able to fix it before he died. So who did? (Answer: our mysterious lightning guest, covering their tracks.)

Meanwhile, Yar questions the Anticans about the sabotage. (Plotline #1 again!)

YAR: “I must ask where you were during this vessel’s Earth hours of 1800 last night and 0700 this morning.”

ANTICAN: “Eating.”

YAR: “Sir. We’re talking about hours here.”

ANTICAN: “It was a large meal, Lieutenant Yar. And a very interesting animal.”

Well, that’s disturbing.

And back to Plotline #2. Dr. Crusher, ever astute, has noticed that she’s missing a chunk of memory, and brings Worf in to diagnose his. I can’t resist sharing this little exchange:

WORF: “You wanted me, Doctor?”

CRUSHER: “Yes, concerning your memory blackout.”

WORF: “I still don’t remember having one.”

Well, duh.

Anyway, Troi offers to draw out both their memories using hypnosis.

Plausible? Eh, hypnosis can render people variably suggestible, it’s true, but I don’t know if it can bring out things they’ve forgotten. It’s at least plausible enough for a Star Trek plot. But then again, most things are plausible enough for a Star Trek plot.

Speaking of which…

I hear there’s no place like the Holmes’.

Lieutenant Yar reports to Riker and Data about the Anticans’ evasiveness. Apparently, Data has been studying Sherlock Holmes, because we find him smoking a pipe and using words like “indubitably.” The part I find even funnier is that this has somehow made Data a better sleuth. Data observes that the Anticans’ unwillingness to talk is, itself, evidence that they’re hiding something, and that the “crew locator” sensed them out of their quarters. He points to a screen when he does this, saying they passed “here” and “here”, but the screen he shows them looks nothing like a map. Television!

While Riker cracks up at Data’s earnest “private eye” impression, and Yar sputters over the disgusting tobacco haze, Data reviews the remaining evidence and concludes triumphantly that the Anticans and Selay were too busy trying to murder each other to have murdered the engineer.

DATA: “It’s elementary, my dear Riker.” (pause.) “Sir.”

Meanwhile, in Sickbay, Troi is hypnotically interrogating Dr. Crusher about her memory loss, and what happened when she was examining Worf.

TROI: “How do you feel at this moment, as you lean over him to take the specimen?”

CRUSHER: “I – I feel someone…else. There’s someone else who’s there. Not a – not alone. Get out. Get out of my mind!”

Apparently Worf had the same results. Troi reports this to the captain and officers, and also reports that she had sensed some kind of “duality” in both Worf and Crusher – which she had attributed, at the time, to normal humanoid mental variation. We “argue with ourselves” all the time, as it were. (True enough).

Troi’s hypothesis: Worf and Dr. Crusher were somehow “invaded.”

The real mystery here: Where did Data even find a pipe that big?

Of note: at this point in the show, the crew members know all the following:

• Worf and Dr. Crusher were briefly under alien control.
• This happened immediately before the malfunctions.
• The malfunctions were likely caused by a saboteur.
• The mind control effect can jump from one person to another.

The conclusion seems obvious. If I were captain of the Enterprise, I would immediately start making preparations for dealing with alien mind control. But unfortunately, the plot must go on, so the crew remains somewhat confused by this revelation for a while longer. Perhaps they’re distracted by the android pretending to be Sherlock Holmes.

Here, have a picture of Sherlock Data closely examining a fishtank. I swear I can’t make this stuff up.

Here We Go Again

On the bridge, helm control dies again. Captain Picard approaches La Forge at the helm console. This time, the blue-lightning-thing zaps the captain, giving his face a glazed look.

Uh oh.

La Forge notices something is amiss, having spotted the blue glow, but since he wasn’t present when the officers learned about the alien influence, he doesn’t put two and two together.

LA FORGE: “Sir, are you all right? I thought I just…saw…”

PICARD: “I’m fine. Everything is fine now.”

UH OH.

Fake-Picard orders the ship to turn around. The officers question him, but all he’ll say is that he thinks the energy cloud they passed is important. He evades further questions.

In another exquisite display of good acting, fake-Picard’s mannerisms change subtly. He smiles more, he moves and emotes less stiffly, and he sounds slightly less sure of himself, as if he’s only pretending to be captain.

The officers are getting suspicious.

Of course, this means it’s a perfect time to go back to the neglected Plotline #1! Some poor schmuck from Security tries to separate a pair of irate Antican and Selay delegates, who are upset about the delay.

Now that the show has reminded us that the delegates exist, we return to our regularly scheduled horror flick plot.

Back in Plotline #2, Riker, Dr. Crusher, La Forge, Troi, and Data discuss what to do about Picard. Troi senses that Picard has “closed part of his mind” and thinks he might be dangerous. But they can’t just remove him from command without cause, and turning the ship around is not, by itself, much to go on. Mutiny is serious business.

As a next step, Dr. Crusher and Riker approach “Picard” to ask him to come to Sickbay for medical and psychiatric exams. Picard demands to know why.

RIKER: “It is my duty to inform the captain…we believe he may be under some form of alien influence which may constitute a danger to this ship.”

Picard’s defense basically boils down to “No, you’re crazy!” He orders Dr. Crusher to arrange exams for herself, Riker, and Troi, kicks them all out of his quarters, and goes back to watching the starlines out the window. Not a very convincing act. But what does an energy being know about the subtleties of human interaction?

En route to meet with the other officers, Riker trips over Plotline #1. The Selay ambush him with some kind of glowstick noose, only to release him when they realize he’s not an Antican.

No noose is good noose.

SELAY AMBASSADOR: “Sssorry. Wrong ssspeciesss.”

Whose idea was this peace conference, anyways?

Riker, thoroughly fed up, calls Security to escort the Selay back to their quarters.

Dr. Crusher brings the results of the medical exams to Picard, who tosses the data file on his desk without looking at it.

CRUSHER: “You don’t care to inspect them?” (a pause) “Please. Are you Jean-Luc?”

PICARD: “He is here.”

CRUSHER: “The Jean-Luc I know?”

PICARD: “And more.”

CRUSHER: “The more frightens me.”

PICARD: “And elates us. We wish you could understand the glorious adventure ahead.”

CRUSHER: “You, and…?”

PICARD: “Soon we’ll both be home.”

Shudder. Mind control is horrible stuff. Maybe this is more of a gestalt-consciousness thing, but when it’s unwilling, it amounts to the same thing.

There’s nothing more to say; Dr. Crusher departs.

Clouded Thoughts

The Enterprise reaches the energy cloud – or the edge of it, at least. On the bridge, Picard++ explains what happened. When the ship passed through the cloud, they accidentally snagged a sentient energy being, who’s been trying to get home ever since.

As motivations go, not particularly sinister. In the entity’s defense, it was alone, seemingly imprisoned by species it could barely understand, and it claims the engineer’s death was an accident. As in the last episode, there’s no real villain here, just a desperate and trapped entity with a lot of power and few options.

Riker and Troi, of course, ask the obvious question: who are we talking to, the captain or the entity?

Rather than answer directly, Picard++ says that the entity and the captain had much in common, including the captain’s passion for the unknown, for exploration.

Data is the first to realize the attraction: as an energy pattern, one could go anywhere! (Okay, Star Trek physics).

The crew learns that Picard++ plans to beam himself into the cloud, energy-only, and become a combined energy pattern. But of course, they’re not going to let him go through with it. He’s not in his right mind; that much is clear to everyone, now.

Wait, so…we’re looking for an incorporeal being that can control technology and possess people, that doesn’t belong in our world, and that gets most of its ideas from other people and then announces its master plan to the entire room?

“Now I, Technus, master of all things mechanical, will use the technology in this room to take over the woyld!”

It all makes sense now.

Anyway. Now comes the part where the crew restrains Picard and finds some other way to get the entity out. Right?

Wrong.

Picard touches the console, and more blue lightning emerges from his fingertips to stun the entire bridge. He escapes to the transporter room…and beams himself out.

Picard is gone.

Well, that’s all for now. We’ll continue next week with Episode 8, as newly-christened Captain Riker deals with the twin challenges of grief and command…

AHAHAHAHA, no, this is episodic television, nobody important ever dies for real.

After Picard has been floating in the ethereal void for an hour or so, Troi can sense his mind – and only his mind, absent the entity. Apparently they couldn’t actually stay combined.

In the last five minutes of the show, the crew head over to the transporter room, lock onto Picard’s energy pattern, and beam him back aboard. There’s a bunch of hooplah about how wild and unorthodox it is, how the captain might come in through the ship’s circuitry, blah blah blah, we all know it’s going to work and it does.

"He's Not Really Dead, Jim" Counter: 4

A glad but cautious Riker asks Picard to head to medical, since Dr. Crusher is worried.

The emotional reunion lasts all of two seconds before Lieutenant Yar shows up just in time to resolve Plotline #1. There’s a puddle of blood outside the Selay quarters! And a delegate is missing!

YAR: “…the problem is, is that one of the cooks has just been asked to broil reptile for the Anticans. And it looks like the Selay delegate.”

Man, I hate it when my peace delegations eat each other. I bet the U.N. doesn’t have this problem. Apparently these species are prone to aggressive negotiations.

On the other hand, I guess those lightsaber things were cutlery after all! Who knew!

Picard takes this excuse to hand over command to Riker, who gives Troi and Yar a long-suffering look before the episode ends. Some days you just can’t catch a break.

Postmortem

So, this is what went through my head, more or less, thinking about this episode.

1. It’s funny to watch the writers jump through all kinds of hoops to avoid saying “He’s possessed!” We all know what’s going on.
2. You know, that makes sense to us, but it might not make sense to the crew of a science vessel like the Enterprise. Maybe they read different fiction in 2300. They might not even have a concept for possession or mind control. Humans certainly don’t need one. It’s not a real thing. Maybe it died out or something.
3. So in fact, the writers are actually doing us a service here. They’re showing how, given just the evidence we see, a scientific crew might go about a) not jumping to conclusions, a vital and often-overlooked skill, b) forming a hypothesis about mind control, based on very little information, c) testing their suspicions, and d) justifying a very serious action based on what they learn.
4. Wait a minute. That’s bogus. Starfleet has totally seen this sort of thing before.
5. In fact, the last series was full of it!
6. Given the ridiculous quantity of shapeshifters, bodysnatchers, mind controllers, illusionists, and mischievous gods that Starfleet has encountered over the years (scrupulously recorded, of course, this being science) they ought to have a friggin’ protocol for it by now!
7. On my starship, every single crewmember knows that if I utter the phrase “Stranger protocols are in effect”, it means:
   1. There is a potential doppelganger aboard,
   2. Report suspicious or out-of-character behavior,
   3. Treat any weird but seemingly innocuous requests as possibly hostile,
   4. Double every guard post and shoot to stun,
   5. Ask identifying questions of your colleagues or anyone acting suspicious, to catch shapeshifters, and
   6. For the love of all that is holy, watch out for unusual orders!

There. Now we’ve successfully resolved the plot of about one in ten Star Trek episodes and half of Battlestar Galactica’s. Doesn’t that feel good?

An Alternative Negotiation

It occurs to me that the crew of the Enterprise didn’t exhaust all of their options while talking with Picard++ on the bridge. If I were present, I might have offered some kind of compromise to the entity. For example:

“If Picard really wants to turn into an energy being, he does have the right to resign his command and do that. Unfortunately, we have only your word for this, and as far as we know you’re just possessing the captain and lying through his teeth. So, how about this: the entity swaps bodies from Picard’s to mine, and we let the real, uninfluenced captain decide whether he wants to accompany the entity out into space. If not, we can probably find someone aboard who would love the opportunity and who isn’t as irreplaceable as our captain. Failing that, we look for a way to transmit just the entity back to its home cloud. Failing that, I volunteer to go instead, because it’s more important to keep our captain around than me, and we do need to get the entity home. Fair?”

There are plenty of things that could go wrong with this or reasons it might not be viable, but I would at least try it.

The Metaphysics of Transporters

The final sequence, while something of an asspull, does have interesting implications for the metaphysics of Star Trek. At one point, Data notes that the captain’s physical pattern is still stored in the transporter – because he only beamed out as energy, see. They then use this pattern, plus the captain’s energy signature channeled through the ship’s circuits, to reconstitute Picard. The manner of his resurrection suggests that Picard has both a physical pattern and an energy one, and that he needs both to be a whole person.

Real-world scientists ought to be scratching their heads over this, because they know that humans don’t have “energy patterns” that are distinct from our physical bodies. The closest thing we have is the electrical activity in our brains, which might be considered a form of energy pattern if you squint. How that translates into a cloud of pure energy, I dunno.

The next obvious hypothesis is more intriguing: namely, that the Star Trek universe is dualist. In other words, Star Trek beings have souls, distinct from their physical bodies, which take the form of an “energy pattern.”

This may seem like bunk – and in our world, it totally is – but I note one important thing about how Star Trek handles this revelation. Namely, they treat it as part of science.

If, in fact, the Star Trek universe is dualist, this fact has clear and measurable effects on the world. Starfleet scientists have studied energy patterns, and there’s enough accumulated knowledge that Data was able to use that knowledge to reconstitute Picard. If souls exist, they are a part of the universe, just like any other. And they’re legible enough that even Data-The-Perpetually-Confused-By-Humans can work with them.

What the writers don’t do in this episode is treat the “energy patterns” as some kind of mystical force, eternally beyond human knowledge. Why should they? If it exists, if it affects the world in any way, then it can be studied and understood. It’s just another branch of science, another opportunity to learn.

In fact, this kind of incident could be exactly what the Enterprise and its crew are for. They exist to explore the edges of the possible. And it could well be that missions like this one and the encounter with the Traveler are the sort of thing that help humanity learn how the Star Trek universe really works, and eventually become as powerful as the Q. (Though hopefully less obnoxious).

Until then, onward we boldly go.