The Enterprise is struck by a quantum filament, an interstellar phenomenon that wreaks havoc all over ship. With systems malfunctioning and everyone cut off from other parts of the ship, the crew faces a series of calamities. Counselor Troi finds herself in command on a bridge powerless to prevent an impending explosion in engineering. Captain Picard finds himself trapped in a turbolift with three children. Geordi LaForge and Beverly Crusher are sealed in a cargo bay with a dangerous plasma fire that threatens to detonate several deadly cargo containers. Riker and Data are struggling to get through the innards of the ship. And Worf is leading triage in Ten Forward, and suddenly thrust into the role of delivering Keiko O'Brien's new baby.
Ronald Moore took point in writing this script, bought from a pair of outside writers and then developed by the entire writing staff. Some of them had reservations about the finished product. Staff writer Jeri Taylor thought the fans didn't receive it well. Show runner Michael Piller thought it was fun enough, but didn't reach the "upper echelons" because it lacked a compelling mystery or science fiction element. (He also had issues with one of the story lines, but I'll come back to that.) Perhaps they're critical of the television tropes they used: "trapped in an elevator" and "delivering a baby in awkward circumstances." Or perhaps they're all judging this outing a bit more harshly than normal because this happened to be the final episode of Star Trek to air before Gene Roddenberry's death. (And admittedly, this isn't the sort of high-concept allegory in the classic Star Trek mold one might want to be perceived as Roddenberry's epitaph.)
Though criticizing those things would be reasonable, the fact remains that "Disaster" is still a very entertaining episode. In my view, there aren't many episodes that managed to make better use of all seven of the main characters. This one deftly juggles five storylines in different parts of the ship, each plot thread putting people in danger and/or outside of their comfort zone.
Picard, of course, is forced to deal with children. And, as we've seen before on more than one occasion, he's not at all as bad with them as he thinks. His smart handling of the children makes for a number of great moments, and several great lines ("I want you to know, this is mutiny."). The editors also find the time for a long but effective single shot -- without any dialogue -- in which Picard and the children finally escape from the turbolift shaft.
In Ten Forward (where Guinan's calming influence is appropriately absent), Worf is thrust into the job of delivering Keiko O'Brien's baby. This is undoubtedly the most cliche of the plot threads in this episode, but a healthy dose of deadpan Worf humor makes it well worthwhile.
Geordi LaForge and Beverly Crusher, a rather rare pairing, are thrown together in the cargo bay. They get some great moments, both as characters and actors. We're reminded of Beverly's theater hobby, and see Geordi's awkward forced audition. We see both of them bring their own skill sets to a crisis. And in a refreshingly good moment for a female character (one of several in this episode), it's Beverly who manages to save their lives after the two of them save the ship.
Data and Riker must crawl through the guts of the ship together, leading to a bizarre situation in which Riker must remove the android's head. The writers dreamed up this crazy idea while Michael Piller was out of the room, and were nervous to pitch it to him when he came back. Instead, he loved how wild a notion it was, though he was sure executive producer Rick Berman would have them take it out of the script. (Instead, Berman never said a word.)
Then there's the story on the bridge, where Counselor Troi finds herself in command -- an excellent writing choice. She finds herself butting heads with Ensign Ro, appearing for the first time since her introduction. The Bajoran stirs up exactly the sort of conflict her character was created to cause. O'Brien is aghast at the shortcuts and risks Ro is willing to take (but he'd learn the "spit and bailing wire" approach when he later transferred to Deep Space Nine). Both O'Brien and Troi are shocked at the callous way Ro wants to cut loose the stardrive section of the Enterprise to save the lives in the saucer.
Predictably, Ro's suggestion proves wrong in the end, and this is ultimately where Michael Piller had the biggest problem with the episode. For one thing, he felt like the story was covering similar ground as the season premiere, in which Data butted heads with a reluctant subordinate. Secondly, he felt that Ro was too new a character to be put in a losing situation -- she hadn't racked up enough "wins" to balance out looking so foolish here. Lastly, he hated the way Ro apologized to Troi in the end. He felt Ro should have said, "I still think I was right, and you just got lucky that it worked out this time." Instead, Piller felt Ro's intentionally hard edges were already being buffed out. I would concede that Piller was probably right on all three counts, though fortunately I think Ro's character wasn't hurt too much in the long run.
Other observations:
- At the beginning of the episode, Miles and Keiko talk about their child as though certain it's going to be a boy. Even now, in 2014, doctors can determine the gender of a baby with almost 100% accuracy. So, since I don't want to think Doctor Crusher capable of such a massive error, I'll assume Miles and Keiko didn't want to know ahead of time.
- Laws prevent the use of actual newborns in film and television. So in this case, as always, a pregnant woman gives birth to a distressingly huge baby.
- The names of the three children trapped with Picard -- Marisa, Jay Gordon, and Patterson -- kind of sound like a first name, a first and last name, and a last name only. But when we see the plaque they've made for Picard at the end of the episode, we can see all of the characters' actual last names. (Sort of. The names are just the last names of the actors playing them.)
- In a nice bit of continuity, Troi attempts (incorrectly) to compare the quantum filament that cripples the Enterprise here to the cosmic string fragment they encountered in the past.
- As an homage to the disaster movies that inspired this episode, Ronald Moore half-joked that he wanted to cast Shelley Winters in a guest starring role in this episode. Nobody went for the idea.
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