Sub Rosa

DVD, TNG S7 (Sub Rosa)

Sub is the operative word, but in some respects this doesn't quite plumb the depths as much as might be remembered. Or perhaps I'm being too kind, and the embarrassing accents and cringeworthy moments were brought up a little by other parts of the episode. It wasn't Jonathan Frakes' finest moment as Director, but by the same token, he wasn't responsible for the writing, which has to carry the can when it comes to the ignominious story of Dr. Crusher (or 'Bev' as Deanna has never, ever called her before, that I can remember), falling for an apparent ghost from 1600s Scotland who happens to have an English accent (actually much better than Ned's Scottish one, or the governor's partial one, which strayed all over the place, sounding more Irish than anything else sometimes). Duncan Regehr made a great Bajoran farmer on 'DS9,' and he had the stature and bearing for an old-fashioned ghost-man, but he's never for an instant a sympathetic character, and was always going to be bad for Bev, so there's no room for mystery, except in how long it will take her to realise his true nature or intentions.

Although Frakes couldn't make a poor story good, he did bring his magic to bear in turning it into a beauty, cinematographically speaking - the opening is pristine, from the dress uniforms to the old-fashioned Scottish churchyard and the house; the roiling green effects of the planet; even that shot of the camera moving in front of the transparent screen in Engineering as Data and Geordi talk behind it and the warp core's illumination glides smoothly across the surface. There are even a couple of eerie moments, with Picard suddenly struck down after his warning to Beverly, or when Ronin inhabits her dead Grandmother's body and she sits up, eyes aflame with green, or Ronin's full-body launch at Beverly, phasered away in midair by her (after doing a Palpatine and force-lightning La Forge). The rain and the foreboding of the house created the mood, but it was the artificiality of certain points, such as Ned Quint, that stuck out and lost it an authenticity it might have worked better to achieve. For example, the time Ned enters her house and argues with Beverly over the lamp - a stranger barging in and brusquely threatening her in vague ways should have been the setup for the feel of horror the episode was attempting, but Ned's lack of menace makes Beverly look as if she's overreacting to the intrusion.

If that were the extent of the problems, it could still be a good episode, as authenticity and a strong atmosphere aren't the be-all and end-all. Regrettably, things get worse thanks to the girly chats Crusher has with Troi, going all gooey over this mystery man she's 'met.' I suppose we can be grateful they weren't wearing gymnastic outfits and touching their toes at the time, but even so… I wouldn't have thought Ten Forward the best place for private conversations, (where some of them take place), especially with Guinan a member of a listening race, but she wasn't in the episode so Crusher wasn't going to have a problem with that. They could have gone down a more justifiable path for her with Picard, but the episode returns to the earlier seasons of us never knowing whether it was her attachment to duty or attachment to Picard that began her breaking off from Ronin's influence. It was disturbing to see her acting like an addict when she's away from Ronin, and clearly she wasn't behaving normally to hand in her notice and head off - don't they have to give some notice? Why didn't her friends stop her? I'm sure they would have if they'd known, but by then it might have been too late.

To see such an old terraformed colony added some history to the science, this having been achieved a hundred years before - why, Kirk could have visited the planet himself! I didn't buy the story of the colonists who founded the place taking stones from actual Scotland and rebuilding there as I don't think the Scottish people would have been happy for their ancient buildings to be taken away - they also wouldn't have been happy to be called Scotch, as the governor does, but as Picard notes, he's evidently not Scottish himself! Michael Keenan would go on to better roles in 'DS9' and 'Voyager.' An appropriate use of the Transporter was to beam Felisa Howard's coffin out of the ground, but less wise was it to rematerialise it directly on top - the soil would have caved in, surely? Hearing more about Beverly's past was one idea that worked and added the episode to the tally of Season 7's family theme, but poor Beverly deserved much better than this. Not quite a shameful effort that everyone involved with should bow their heads over, but neither is it a ringing endorsement in the argument that Season 8 should have gone ahead.

**