TNG Deathmatch Episode 18: Coming Of Age vs Eye Of The Beholder

Coming Of Age is interesting for being so low-key. Half the episode follows Wesley as he applies for a spot at Starfleet Academy, and the other focuses on a nebulous investigation into Captain Picard, conducted by Commander Remmick. That the show was willing to entertain a continuing plotline this early on, planting seeds here that would bear their stunted fruit in Conspiracy, is impressive for its time, though it never really bore fruit. (I'm saying that now, of course. At the time we thought Conspiracy was amazing, even though the exploding head was cut in the UK and I didn't see the full glory of Remmick's death until many many years later.)

Anyway, Picard's admiral buddy comes aboard and has Remmick investigate the crew to find out "what's wrong on this ship", but there's nothing. The Admiral (yes I've forgotten his name, no I don't care enough to look it up) feels like something is amiss in Starfleet and wants Picard to take over the Academy, Picard says no thanks, that's it. 

Meanwhile, Wesley fails to get into the Academy on his first attempt, and the process of applying to Starfleet, as presented here, is just so ludicrous I can’t imagine what was going through the writers’ minds. I guess they wanted to make it seem futuristic or something, like an ordinary exam would be too 20th Century, so instead Wesley has to compete against three other genius kids for one available spot, and fails, even after enduring a psychological test that necessitated destroying part of the building. Even though it's been established that Wesley is basically a superbeing, he's still not good enough for Starfleet. So, every time he's saved the ship so far, he's been able to solve problems that were too difficult for the people who actually passed...?

So that aspect bothers me, clearly, but the actual episode is harmless enough. There's a nice scene where Worf and Wesley discuss fear, and another where Remmick tries to interrogate the crew and they all stick up for the captain, and it's a mark of the series' improvement that by this point, it feels genuine. (I especially like Crusher's "none of your business" and Worf's "Is it required? Sir?" when Remmick correctly asserts that Worf does not like him.) Overall, though, this is pretty forgettable; it feels like a breather, an episode they threw together because they didn't have a sci-fi plot that week.

Eye Of The Beholder does have a sci-fi plot, and it's a doozy. It's not very good, but I really appreciate that they tried something new with this one.

The episode starts mid-crisis, with a previously unknown officer, Lt Kwan, standing on a ledge, about to jump into the nacelle tube, apparently suicidal. Riker tries to talk him down, Kwan jumps and is vaporised. Troi and Worf set about investigating his suicide.

Long story short, there was a murder on the Enterprise when it was under construction at Utopia Planitia, and the murderer was partially empathic, so left a psychic imprint in the nacelle tube (where he disposed of the body). As Lt Kwan was also partially empathic, he was overwhelmed by the memory, relived it, and became suicidal, thinking he'd murdered his fiancee; the same thing happens to Troi, and at the last moment, Worf stops her from committing suicide too.

There's a lot going on here and it means the episode can't help but become confusing, since not only is Troi investigating Kwan's death, she's also investigating the original murder, and seeing visions of the murderer himself, long dead, wandering about the Enterprise, and there's a skeleton in a bulkhead; until the end, it's unclear which bits are supposed to be real, and there's a pervading feeling that none of this really hangs together logically, and then it's over and "it was all a dream". 

One does get the sense that maybe the presence of empaths and telepaths should be subject to greater scrutiny in Starfleet, since not only can they cause trouble by unknowingly projecting their emotions onto other people whenever they get sick or menopausal, they can also imprint their own trauma into the structure of the ship and basically force people to relive it. In a matter of seconds, Lt Kwan relived the earlier love triangle and murder, and was ready to die. This is more than just a regular occupational hazard. And Troi and Kwan aren't even full telepaths; neither was the original murderer, Lt Pierce, who had one Betazoid grandparent. Imagine the dangerous psychic impressions being left around the place willy-nilly by actual telepaths.

It's a bit of a stretch that Kwan and Troi would relive the traumatic experience in the way they do. In the original murder, Lt Pierce caught his girlfriend with another man, killed her in a jealous rage and then killed himself; in her experience, Troi catches her lover with another woman, kills him, then tries to kill herself. Presumably Kwan had the same vision. So, everyone who encounters this psychic impression is forced to relive the experience but not to react or behave in the way they would, but in the way Pierce did...? It's just unsatisfying.

I feel like it would have had more impact (and would have said something about the characters) if, mid-vision, Troi would have realised something was up, would have been able to change the course of it, knowing that she's not a murderer, not given to jealous rages, not suicidal. Had she killed someone, she'd face up to it, not kill herself. It might have given the episode some weight instead of just being a reenactment of a crime we never witnessed. Alternatively, the episode could have descended into a full-on fever dream, but that would mean giving up the pretence that any of this was real, and it's not as if Trek was ever going to go full Argento. So it kind of just ends, problem solved, everything's alright. 

It might also have been better had Troi shown any signs of emotional stress at the end, some indication that she was dealing with the consequences of - from her perspective - having killed someone, just as O'Brien later will in DS9's Hard Time. There is no such sign. Instead, there's a supposedly cutesy moment where she cautions Worf about the fury of the woman scorned, because he doesn't know that in her vision, he was the lover she murdered. Yup, it's the Troi/Worf pairing, back again from Parallels. Someone obviously wanted this relationship to happen, and there's not much else to say about it. A new relationship on Trek was still so unheard-of that it's hard to know how to assess this. Like the episode itself, I applaud that they were willing to try, and I'm sorry that the results weren't better.

Oh, one last thing that always gets me when I watch this episode: Lt Kwan's fiancee, Ensign Calloway, deserves a special mention. I would love to know what direction the actress was given or how the script described her behaviour, but in the scene where she is discussing Lt Kwan with Troi, she seems like she's discussing the death of a distant cousin two decades ago rather than the sudden violent suicide of the man she loves. It's hilarious how unbothered she seems by it. Troi seems more upset about it than she does. Riker definitely did. Ensign Calloway utters the line, "It's not like Dan to kill himself" as if she's disappointed he had one too many and left his shoes out overnight and now they're wet, and it's just not like him. It's not like him...to kill himself. As if it's a thing a person might do multiple times! Just sloppy writing, sloppy all round.

WINNER: Coming Of Age, I suppose, if only because it aims low and succeeds on those terms.