[One man. One exercise bike. One surgery. 139/178 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.]
I love a good mystery full of red herrings, cross purposes, and shadowed motivations. I love investigations, too: gathering evidence into a coherent representation of the truth, however flawed.
So I should like this episode. But I don’t.
Here, the Enterprise comes upon a communications relay station with its crew missing and a suspicious stain of organic matter fused to a deck plate. Geordi views the logs of a female crew member and comes to like her, which works out well when they find her alive at the beginning of the second act. Various accusations and investigations ensue, and the perp turns out to be a malevolent Shmoo-like creature that absorbs other organisms and takes on their characteristics.
Huh. Okay.
See, a satisfying mystery is about human motivation. As fascinated as we are by the ingenuity of the crime or by the brilliance of its solution, we’re still most curious to know why someone did it — to know how the murder, murderer, and motive are all intertwined. It’s crime gossip, really: how is this murderer like me? How is he or she different?
But in this mystery, we learn that the murderer is a motivation-less monster just trying to survive. It’s a force of nature. And that is as exciting as discovering that a tornado did it.
My grade: C-, because it’s still better than the whole second season.
[Time on bike: 20 minutes.]