TNG Deathmatch Episode 6: Lonely Among Us vs Phantasms

For me, Lonely Among Us is probably the worst episode of the first season. It tends to slide under the radar because it’s not wildly racist or sexist or even especially memorable, but it’s just dire. (It does give us, IIRC, an Asian chief engineer named Singh, who I remember as being quite likeable until the show up and kills him, which isn’t wildly racist, just subtly so.)

 

The characterisation is completely wrong even compared to the rest of this season, as though the episode was written before anyone had a clue who these people were. Worf snarking about Picard wanting his junior officers to “learn, learn, learn”, as though he’s bored with the busywork he’s been made to do; the crew hemming and hawing over whether they could remove Picard, even though he was clearly acting way out of character and they knew there was an entity on board and taking over other crew members; Picard apparently choosing to become one with an alien being and attack his own crew with force lightning before leaving the ship; Picard immediately changing his mind and coming back (and signalling his return by spelling out “P! FOR PICARD!” on a console… it’s all so badly done, and so boring to watch. The characters all seem like idiots for being unable to figure this mystery out. I think Troi even hypnotises Worf and Beverley to find out what happened to them when the alien took them over – hypnosis, in Star Trek? Shouldn’t there be a neural analyser or an ancient Betazoid technique or something more…Trekky than that?

 

The gag ending – at least I think it’s meant to be a gag ending – where Yar breathlessly tells her superiors that one of the delegates may have been cannibalised – I don’t even know what to think about that. Pretty sure this episode was the first Trek appearance of Marc Alaimo, so that’s a plus. The only plus.

 

Phantasms is one of several season seven episodes that rely, one way or another, on dream imagery. (Dark Page features Troi using technowizardry to enter her mother’s sleeping mind; Emergence features the characters exploring the dreams of the intelligence that has taken over the Enterprise). It fails for me because the imagery is both too literal and too mundane to work. I guess it makes sense that Data’s dreams would take place on the Enterprise, but coupled with Dark Page – which presents Lwaxana’s subconsciousness as the Enterprise too – it’s just obvious that the show didn’t have the budget to do anything more abstract.

 

But let’s talk about the cake. This is, famously, the episode where Troi appears in Data’s dream as a “cellular peptide cake, with mint frosting”. (I’ve read accounts online that recall Marina Sirtis complaining that she was supposed to be a full-body cake with actual arms and legs, but that the budget had been blown on Intendent Kira’s catsuit over on DS9, so TNG had to make do with a crappy-looking torso. I have no idea how true that is but I find it hilarious. Crossover is infinitely superior to Phantasms, but I suppose there must be a crumb of comfort in knowing that DS9 would run its mirror universe episodes into the ground pretty quickly. Also, I love Marina Sirtis. Long may she spill the goss on all things Trek.)

 

The crew is being parasitized by alien bugs that are draining them at the cellular level, and only Data can see them – and even then only on a subconscious level. It’s an interesting idea that Data’s programming may be so complex that even he cannot readily access all of what’s in there; I’m not wholly sure it works, and certainly the idea that Data’s subconscious could compel him to stab someone, as he does here, is maybe pushing the idea too far. It opens a Pandora’s box – this isn’t like Geordi being brainwashed by Romulans, this is a machine with a glitch that makes it lethal. Then again, the crew didn’t shut down the holodeck after it tried to kill them the first time; it’s fair to say they seem pretty blasé about technology trying to murder them. Maybe to someone from the 16^th Century, it would seem insane that we all drive cars, or have electricity running through our homes at all times, knowing how dangerous those things can sometimes be.

 

Phantasms really just suffers from a pedestrian presentation of Data’s psyche, complete with a cheesy imitation Sigmund Freud. Even for a glitchy android, Data’s subconscious is pretty boring. Still, it’s better than Lonely Among Us.

 

WINNER: Phantasms