TNG Flashback: The Survivors

In reviewing the third season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I noted that its new show runner, Michael Wagner, would be in place for only a few episodes before leaving and handing the reins over to Michael Piller. And that's a very good thing when you take a look at the lone episode of the series solely credited to him, "The Survivors."

The Enterprise responds to a distress call to find an entire planet utterly wiped out. The surface is scorched, the water boiled away, and all life exterminated... save for a single house on a tiny plot of land. An old human couple, Kevin and Rishon Uxbridge, live there, and are unable to explain why the vicious alien ship that destroyed everything else spared them. Meanwhile, Counselor Troi's empathic abilities are being blocked by a strange music box tune she hears endlessly in her head, building in intensity to the point of threatening her sanity. Picard and his crew attempt to unravel both mysteries, and must contend with the aliens themselves when they return to the planet.

There is an intriguing science fiction conceit at the heart of this episode. Kevin Uxbridge is revealed in the end to be a super-powerful but peaceful being who renounced his powers to live a life with an unknowing human wife. In a moment of grief at her death by the alien Husnock, he retaliated by killing them. All of them, a universal genocide of an entire species. The final scene in which this is revealed is a strong one for all actors involved. As Crusher and Picard, Gates McFadden and Patrick Stewart are utterly aghast and unable to comprehend the magnitude of this; as Uxbridge, guest star John Anderson is equally anguished at the loss of his true love and the irrevocable compromising of his principles.

But there are a lot of moments that are not nearly so good before we get to that. Picard's deductive powers in this episode are impossibly sharp. Not only does he come to realize the godly abilities of Kevin, he somehow concludes that the Rishon he now sees is simply a recreation of the original. Picard is also incredibly annoying in his revelation of what he knows; for hours, he forces his crew to follow nonsensical orders without explanation, all just for transparently dramatic purposes. Sure, captain's prerogative and all, but in some other episode (one later this season, in fact), this would be the sort of behavior that would make the crew suspect he'd been replaced by an alien doppelganger or something.

Another unexplainable inconsistency in the writing is the character of Kevin Uxbridge himself. He's omnipotent enough to find every member of a specific race in the entire universe and kill them with a thought, but he can't tell when the Enterprise is orbiting above his planet... except when he can, and is making them fight a phantom Husnock vessel. We're also asked to accept that Kevin lived an entire life with a woman who never learned his true nature, even though he leaves so many clues that Picard can figure it out in around 30 minutes. Does Uxbridge really think no one will come to investigate the distress call from the planet, or that no one will think it suspicious that just his one house survived? If he can conjure up a whole spaceship, why not the rest of the planet's population, or at least a village in which he could appear to be one of many survivors?

But the worst writing is the impossible demands made of Marina Sirtis as Counselor Troi. The premise here is reasonable -- that hearing music over and over again, getting louder and louder, would be a form of torture that would gradually drive you insane. (Though there are some who would call it "enhanced interrogation" instead.) And yet asking an actress to writhe around, clutching her head and screaming (at a wooden extra who gives her absolutely no reaction)? There's no way that's going to come off credibly.

Other observations:

• A lot seems to have been poured into the budget of this episode. The scenes outside the house are actually filmed on location in a rare outdoor Star Trek shoot. There are some impressive matte paintings of the surrounding devastation. And the Husnock ship was, according to one source I found, a new model built from scratch (despite its similarities to the Sheliak ship feature in the previous episode). It's too bad, because I think this episode wouldn't have been made appreciably worse had the money been saved here.

• Worf's comical curtness is back in this episode, having not been seen in a while. "Good tea. Nice house."

• Troi gets a new costume in this episode. The bright blue dress seems more dignified than her other outfits, but would just become part of a rotation.

• Nope, thought I was done on this, but I'm not... Picard is just too good a sleuth in this episode. Seriously, is the universe so littered with omnipotent, powerful aliens that his mind just jumps right to that solution? And if the universe is populated in such a way, one wonders how it continues to be here.

There are things that save this episode from being a total loss: a solid guest star performance by John Anderson, a powerful final scene, and some striking visuals along the way. But there's also an anchor of hokeyness weighing down the entire thing. On the whole, I'd say it just barely makes it to a C-.