Emergence

DVD, TNG S7 (Emergence)

The difficult third to last episode. Trek series' seem to have a thing about winding down. The finales are always superb (even for 'Enterprise' in my opinion), the final seasons (generally) less so, but, 'DS9' notwithstanding, they tend to feature some of the weakest episodes near the end. 'Bloodlines' wasn't terrible, but didn't go as far as it could or should have, and this story has the same ring to it. The ring that says they were hurriedly coming up with a few last ideas to fill up those episode slots instead of giving each character what they deserved: deep character moments and a drawing to a close of the series. But this wasn't 'DS9,' so it didn't have multiple arcs to wrap up, and they did need to fill the slots, and this episode sure has ideas that stand up at concept stage very well. Why does it not quite succeed then?

For one, it's one of those episodes that comes out rather dry thanks to a reliance on things being too techie. That isn't always a problem, and sometimes helps to enhance the futuristic nature of the drama. Here, it makes the story drag as the characters take so long to work out what's happening. Second, even though this is a Brannon Braga tale, he doesn't give us a Brannon Braga special. There's a bit of strangeness in the Holodeck, a little danger, but because anyone's free to walk on and off the train, the tension levels are easily dissipated. If there had been more oddness like that 1920s/30s lady clinking a glass into a knight's shiny armour, or the train's engineer squawking up a defence for the good guys, then getting shot for the sake of a brick, this might have qualified in the Braga canon. But it soon settles down, except for fun little oddities such as Data holding a motor car in place as he works in front of it, and having to talk loudly into his combadge over the squeal of the tyres and the roar of the engine.

Deanna actually has a wall fall on her, but is fine except for a tidy graze to the cheek. What if this emerging intelligence had posed a real threat to the crew? What if it was a choice between survival of the ship's created mind, and the people aboard her? It's far too easy a situation. It's a mystery without the quandary. Data even asks the Captain at the end why he didn't think it was a risk, and he replies that the intelligence was the sum of the people's interactions, and that the sum of their experiences had been good so that means the new life form was likely to be so too. I couldn't help thinking back to all the bad experiences the ship went through over the years! Thinking about it from that angle it makes me wish they had done it as an incredible recreation of the last seven years. It would have been difficult to pull off, but in an episode where they manage to have the Orient Express almost kill Data and Picard by steaming into their Shakespeare program, it doesn't sound such a challenge!

If the ship had been made up of different experiences down the years they could have recreated scenes from various episodes that the crew have to live through or explain on the Holodeck. It could have been a classic! But once again we come back to the fact that this was one of the lame duck episodes: the series is coming to an end, everyone cares about the finale so the money and creativity is going to suffer a bit in the preceding episodes. Visiting the gangster-era street made me think of old 'TOS' episodes and long for the 'TNG' crew to beam down to an alien planet to explore. It might be my faulty memory, but it seems like they hardly visited any planets in Season 7, and certainly not in an Away Team formation. Maybe it was considered old hat, but it makes me feel this is one of the most claustrophobic seasons of them all. Not that the Enterprise is cramped, and I'm sure people wanted to see the old sets a last few times before the series came to an end. And it is good that everyone gets included in the mystery to solve.

There are ideas aplenty that give much cause for thought after the episode. Multiple holo-programs meshing together to create an unpredictable (though predictably safeties-off!), situation is something I'd have loved to seen explored in more detail, though again, it would probably be a budget-buster zipping between fantasy locations and holo-characters. The inconvenience of starships blooming into new lifeforms at any moment is another undervalued concept that gets short shrift in the story but is so fascinating to ponder upon. What if all Starfleet's ships exhibited such behaviour? They'd have to reconsider what constitutes a life form, and whether they had the right to use such complicated machines. It's something that did eventually get an in-depth exploration thanks to 'Voyager' and the holographic Doctor.

It was unfortunate to find out starships had the capability to become intelligent at any moment, but not as unfortunate as learning that something can form around the ship in space at any time and utterly destroy them. And their sensors aren't even able to detect this phenomenon! They'd have to call it something like Instant Starship Death Syndrome. Why have we never heard of this possibility before? I'd guess because they  might not have so many willing recruits at the Academy if the enrolment included a bit about the possibility that your ship could explode at any moment, 'and we can't detect it, either.' At least the newfound growing sentience of the Enterprise saved them with a second or two to spare. Shame it hadn't reviewed the events of 'Force of Nature' and realised it wasn't ethical to travel at warp 9. There's a whole other moral quagmire: if starships took over, who's going to tell them they can't go at whatever speed they want to?

Something small that bugged me a little, but may have been fine, was the size of the arch in the Holodeck. We see them walk on, then they come into the train carriage, but the arch looked wider than the train. Unless they entered side on from the arch into the previous carriage. Thomas Kopache gets what must be his smallest role, as someone that went on to play Kira's Dad and was in every modern Trek series going - he appears as the engineer that gets shot by the gangster. The episode has a number of little delights (Data in a beard again and with raggedy hair!), but it can't disguise the fact that the majority of the happenings are as meaningless as Worf's coal-shovelling, and when the series was coming to its natural end it would have been nice if they'd used every available minute to create moments for the characters that would make them shine. This episode was not one of those.

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