Tracking a stellar core fragment as it drifts through space, the Enterprise discovers an isolated colony of humans on an otherwise uninhabited planet. Menaced by the fragment, the colony is in great danger. But an equally great danger may come from the ship contacting them at all -- the colony represents the end result of two centuries of genetic breeding, a closed society meant to have no contact with the universe outside. As colonists work side by side with the Enterprise crew to stop the core fragment, they become disillusioned with their limited, predestined existence... and Troi strikes up a ill-advised romantic relationship with the colony's leader.
Like many episodes of the fifth season, "The Masterpiece Society" had been conceived of long before. It had been through a year-and-a-half of development, and five different writers, before show runner Michael Piller took a run at it himself. I gather it was a pet favorite of his, as he spoke highly of the story in subsequent interviews. He felt that rescuing this concept and making it work was "the beginning of me feeling better about the season." He also liked the classic tragedy structure of the plot, a series of events where everyone had the best of intentions, but still end up making a ruin of everything.
But Piller was alone among the staff in these feelings. Producer Rick Berman thought the episode was "slow and talky." Jeri Taylor hated the concept from the beginning, and thought the result one of the weakest episodes of the season. Director Winrich Kolbe felt the the inherent premise of "perfection" made for bad drama, resulting in low energy and a flat episode. And Ronald D. Moore was perhaps least charitable of all, saying: "We sort of show up at a genetically perfect colony – which in and of itself is starting to bore me – and when we get there, it's 'Gee, Troi falls in love with one of the people.' You can't wait to get up and get a beer."
But the problems run much deeper than that. In a nutshell, this "perfect colony" isn't something worth fighting for. Eugenics has nothing but a dark history in Star Trek, putting this world of selective breeders on the wrong foot from square one. And none of the main characters are about to defend such a way of life. Picard thinks their society saps people of free will. Geordi thinks they're morally reprehensible, preventing disabled people like himself from ever being born. And one of the colonists herself, scientist Hannah Bates, points out how their supposedly advanced colony is in fact quite technologically backward compared to the Enterprise. It feels like this story is supposed to be the loss of the "New World" to 15th and 16th century Europeans, but no one in this episode is really making the case for wondrous purity of what's being lost. Troi and Picard suffer moral whiplash at the end of the episode when they give it a try, but their efforts are truly half-hearted.
Rick Berman, Winrich Kolbe, and even Michael Piller all alluded to "casting problems" with this episode, though none were specific about what they meant. Certainly, none of these guest stars look like the Adonis-like products of 200 years of selective breeding. But to truly embrace that concept, they could not have used the multi-racial cast they did -- and having a colony full of Hitler youth would hardly have made them more sympathetic. Were Berman, Kolbe, Piller alluding to that conundrum? Or did they have problems with the actors who played the main roles of Aaron Connor, Hannah Bates, and Martin Benbeck? That seems unlikely, as John Snyder had previously played the Romulan Bochra in "The Enemy," while Dey Young and Ron Canada would appear again in later Star Trek series. I mean, there's no denying that all three come off rather wooden in this episode, but I lay blame more on the script than on the actors.
And yet another problem with this episode: it managed to step in a controversy it didn't even intend. When Geordi talks about how he would never even have been born in a colony like this, his choice of words leads you to draw an analogy between this situation and the issue of abortion. Rick Berman insisted that such a reading of the scene was "nonsense," noting that "there are very few people on our writing staff who would be involved with something that would be a non-choice outlook." That may be true, but such a lack of awareness in the writing would be just one more example of where it fell flat, wouldn't it?
Other observations:
- Actually, I don't have any this time. There's just not much more to say about this episode.
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