TNG Deathmatch Episode 4: The Last Outpost vs Gambit

Vague episode synergy ahoy – The Last Outpost and Gambit both deal with ancient civilisations, and maybe there’s something to be gained from exploring how the difference seasons approached that theme. Then again, maybe not, but I’ll give it a go.

 

In The Last Outpost, the ancient civilisation is the T’Kon Empire, long dead, except for one planet that survived the destruction of the empire and is now inhabited by one guy in a wig, who traps passers-by in his energy web and forces them to come down and answer riddles. Most of the episode is taken up with the Enterprise’s first meeting with the Ferengi. (I won’t rehash how they were intended to be the series’ major new villains and how badly that effort crashed and burned. They were garbage and remained that way until Quark came along.)

 

It’s got a bad joke about Chinese finger-puzzles, and a denouement where they beam a box of the puzzles onto the Ferengi ship, a moment ripped off from The Trouble With Tribbles, the idea being that the Ferengi will be somehow inconvenienced by the puzzles just as the Klingons would have been by a horde of Tribbles, as though the puzzles are somehow going to forcibly affix themselves to the Ferengi and be impossible to get rid of…? I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine.

 

There’s also a nice moment where Troi gets to be useful (“we have ignored the planet”). Other than that, it’s interesting to see how in season one, it was apparently supposed to be Riker who was the star – it’s Riker who faces off against the portal keeper, and is later regarded as exceptional enough to join the Q. In Naked Now, Riker was the only one able to function even when infected. Interesting.

 

On the whole, though, the episode spends far too much time trying to build up the Ferengi, so that when we finally get to the actual mystery on the planet, the episode is virtually over. The plot feels like a rehash of a TOS episode, some episode where a long-dead hyper-advanced alien tests our heroes who have to prove how great humanity is, except here it happens in a matter of minutes almost as an afterthought. We spend most of the episode building up the fearsomeness of the Ferengi, watching the crew slowly freeze to death, and then when we finally meet the last representative of the T'Kon Empire, one quote from Sun Tzu is enough to keep Riker from getting his head cut off, and it's over. It's one of those episodes where it's difficult to tell what the writers were actually aiming for.

 

In Gambit, the alien civilisation is ancient Vulcan, though I’m not sure if we learn all this in episode one or two. The macguffin that powers the episode is a psionic resonator, a weapon that amplifies aggressive thoughts.

 

Actually, I take that back. The macguffin that powers the episode is not the resonator, but the concept of Picard-As-Undercover-Pirate. The episode opens with the bridge crew all grilling the patrons of an alien dive bar about their missing friend, and there’s some cute business with Worf telling everyone that they’re looking for the guy who impregnated Riker’s sister. Crusher sticks a phaser in someone’s face and wears a fantastic leather beret, and honestly, that hat is the best thing about this two-parter by a mile. Turns out Picard was vaporised in the bar, and the episode treats this as though it’s devastating news even though we all know it’s not going to be true.

 

Anyway, there’s some business back on the ship where Troi justifiably tears into newly-minted Captain Riker for activating Dickhead Mode and prioritising his own grief over the needs of the crew, and it would be a pretty good scene if anyone in the audience was even slightly worried about Picard’s welfare. We know he’s going to turn up in a few scenes, and the episode’s tone otherwise is set to Space Romp, so the argument sits uncomfortably amid all the froth; why not just literally cut to the chase so we can watch the crew puzzle it out? Answer: there isn’t enough plot to justify the two-parter, so we have to pad it. (Another observation about Riker, over the series, is that he's kind of a dickhead a lot of the time. I love the character, long may he continue to misuse chairs, but he has a petulant streak and does a lot of eye-rolling.)

 

Riker is captured while the crew investigates a ransacked archaeological site, and finds Picard among the pirates, helping them locate a series of artefacts, and it’s all inconsequential action, Trekkian torture devices and big hair. (Picard turns out to be a terrible actor, amusingly.) The episode lopes along a couple of notches below “entertaining”; it kills time, it's not offensive, but for a story judged worthy of being a two-parter, there's just nothing there.

 

WINNER: Gambit, Part 1