Plot Synopsis: A series of puzzling events on and off the holodeck lead the crew of the Enterprise to one conclusion: the ship is forming its own intelligence.
Plot A and B Analysis: The teaser opens with Data playing Prospero in a scene from The Tempest, then they almost get run over by a train. Plot A is about the “emergence”, there is no plot B. The Enterprise is scouting for new Federation colony sites. For no reason the ship enters warp then goes back to impulse without any explanation, which somehow saves all their lives. Geordi and Data find new circuit nodes throughout the ship and can’t get to any of them, but they all connect to a holodeck. Riker, Data and Worf enter to find themselves on the Orient Express, and after a weird time where an engineer gets shot, they leave when they are threatened. Data puts this nonsense together: “I believe the Enterprise may be forming an intelligence.” A bunch of metaphorical things occur on the train, there’s a stop at Keystone City where a mafioso puts a brick in a wall, then some kind of object forms in the cargo bay. There are themes of a puzzle being put together, a foundation being laid, and the crew eventually figures out the Enterprise is trying to procreate. They get to a white dwarf star but it doesn’t have enough juice to power the new life form, so between Picard and Geordi they generate an artificial source of vertion particles, and let the new life form develop and leave into space.
Favorite Scenes: Nothing here qualifies as a favorite scene. Picard has one quote that explains why he let his ship run wild and possibly endanger them:
Picard: The intelligence that was formed on the Enterprise didn’t just come out of the ship’s systems. It came from us. From our mission records, personal logs, holodeck programs, our fantasies. Now, if our experiences with the Enterprise have been honorable, can’t we trust that the sum of those experiences will be the same?
Use of Cast/Characters: This is something of an ensemble episode. Picard, Data, Troi and Geordi all contribute to the unraveling of the mystery (anemic though it is), and the resolution. I suppose there’s a little character development, as we see Data doing Shakespeare for the last time. It is no accident that the play was The Tempest. It’s the last play of Shakespeare, and Prospero represents the end of an age–so it is with Next Generation. Worf, Beverly and Riker don’t do as much, but they are involved in the episode as well. Thank goodness we learn that after this birth the Enterprise’s intelligence ‘dies’, so we don’t have to deal with it again. There are at least four guest stars and their performances are of varying quality, but none particularly impressive or memorable.
Blu Ray Version: I have nothing to report here.
Nitpicks: In the teaser Data increases the torchlight by 20%, but it’s pretty obvious it more than doubles. I’m not a fan of simply having Data explain everything, then Geordi explaining everything, and later on Troi explaining everything. Exposition to the audience isn’t my favorite way of moving an episode forward.
Overall Impression: This entry is really simple in concept: the ship is giving birth and the crew can’t do much except help feed it. The reason this episode fails can be summed up with a simple question: who cares? It’s sure not the audience! This episode fails to make me care or remember what occurs. This is the third forgettable episode in a row where I doubt anyone can really remember what happens in it, and there are several more earlier in the season. I found myself wanting to include details and pick photos in my review just to remind myself of what happens, because I’m sure in a year I will have forgotten again. Frankly, Emergence is a candidate for worst episode of the season, and I feel somewhat generous rating it 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Behind the Scenes/Trivia: This episode exists because Brannon Braga wanted to have one more holodeck story before the series ended. This is tied with Genesis and Bloodlines as the least-watched episode of season seven. You can talk about how sophisticated Voyager is, how much it integrates biological stuff into it, but it never reproduced! The Enterprise-D wins!
No new sets were built for this episode. All of the train sets were from the Bram Stoker’s Dracula film, Paramount’s New York city set was used for Keystone City, even some stock footage from the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express was used. It doesn’t make the episode suck any less.
Missable/Unmissable? Once again, missable. The next and penultimate episode is a step up.
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