The Neutral Zone

DVD, TNG S1 (The Neutral Zone)

I really like this one as a good cap to the season. It ends rather abruptly with no resolution of either of the two plots, but it doesn't seem to matter too much. Nor do the many, many mistakes and odd behaviour from the crew. So Data beams these people from (what? the 20th, the 21st century?), onto the ship and no one bothers to tell the captain when he comes back? Riker doesn't seem all that impressed that they've discovered people from a distant time, and is more concerned about having the ship ready to go as soon as Picard arrives! Later in the episode he muses it's a shame they couldn't take these people back to Earth on the Enterprise because it's like having a piece of history on board, so his character hasn't been all that consistent (something you notice in earlier episodes also).

The biggest suspension of disbelief is that the people died and were then frozen and shot into space... TO MAKE SURE THE POWER DOESN'T BREAK DOWN! What's safer: an underground complex with it's own generator, or a small capsule orbiting Earth, in the path of any stray meteor and where no technician can fix any problem that might come up...? And yet Dr. Crusher only needs to thaw out the bodies and magically they come back to life! That's as realistic as melting a snowman then having it turn into a real person. On later series' they'd be emphasising the remains of neural energy so you'd at least believe they had some kind of life in there somewhere, but they're clearly and utterly dead in this one.

Then there's the completely tactless way Picard allows these 'relics' to be woken up into a century several hundred years in their future. Let's get the biggest, scariest alien we can find (alright Worf, you'll do), to stand at the end of the bed and give them the fright of their lives! It gave his crew some amusement so maybe Picard was just trying to get a bit of morale-boosting in before a dangerous mission (Worf's morale didn't look boosted!). You can't complain that it's a cookie-cutter episode as it doesn't go the way you might expect. For instance, it's the end of the season, and although they started out with the decision to shy away from as much of the original series as they could, it's time to inject some interest by bringing back the third most famous race of that series (behind the Vulcans and Klingons). As Marc Alaimo, in his first ever appearance on Trek says, the Romulans "are back".

In fact the back of them is pretty much all we see. After all the build-up there's a gorgeous ship, a short glowering match, and then they're off, leaving only the mystery of who or what has been at the Federation bases along the Neutral Zone. Of course Picard is happy to believe them, and lets them go on their way happily having averted an incident or provoked a war, and looking forward to exploring again. You'd think he'd be more concerned about uncovering the real attackers (which would turn out to be one of the best races created for TNG)...

Despite the lack of satisfactory answers the episode has a lot of charm and 'what if?' interest. How would people from our time react in the 24th Century (see the reverse in 'Star Trek IV')? The answer is not that well, but it does create some amusement and sympathy. The only sad point of the episode is that it was to be Beverly Crusher's last episode for a while, yet there's no indication this will be the case. Likewise there's no Wesley, who has been forgotten in these last stories, and I've already mentioned the odd way some people react. It mirrors the season as a whole in many respects - the unfinished feel, the erratic character scripting, the sense of wonder and danger, and importantly the feeling that the flaws haven't eclipsed what is an exciting future for Trek, and overall, a great season to watch.

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